"As far as we can tell—as I put it elsewhere—“all organisms like to ‘feel good’ about themselves.” They push themselves to maximize this feeling. As philosophers have long noted, it is as though the heart of nature is pulsating in its own joyful self-expansion. When we get to the level of man, of course, this process acquires its greatest interest. It is most intense in man and in him relatively undetermined—he can pulsate and expand both organismically and symbolically. This expansion takes the form of man’s tremendous urge for a feeling of total “rightness” about himself and his world. This perhaps clumsy way to talk seems to me to sum up what man is really trying to do and why conscience is his fate. Man is the only organism in nature fated to puzzle out what it actually means to feel “right.”"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from the United StatesJews from the United StatesPeople from MassachusettsAnthropologists from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Becker
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Ernest Becker
Ernest Becker (27 September 1924 – 6 March 1974) was an American cultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary thinker, noted for his 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death.
77 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Ernest Becker →
Related Quotes
"The crux of the terror management answer to the question, "Why do people need self-esteem?" is that self-esteem funct…"
"To say the least, Becker's account of Nature has little in common with Walt Disney. Mother Nature is a brutal bitch, …"
"For Becker, the psychological purpose of self-esteem is to serve as an anxiety buffer. In other words, self-esteem se…"
"TMT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory Terror Management Theory starts with the proposition that …"
"Most animals experience fear only when faced with an imminent threat. However, because humans are born helpless and d…"
"Man does not seem able to “help” his selfishness; it seems to come from his animal nature. Through countless ages of …"
"One of the key concepts for understanding man’s urge to heroism is the idea of “narcissism.” As Erich Fromm has so we…"
"The prospect of death, Dr. Johnson said, wonderfully concentrates the mind. The main thesis of this book is that it d…"
"When we appreciate how natural it is for man to strive to be a hero, how deeply it goes in his evolutionary and organ…"
"Our heroic projects that are aimed at destroying evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the worl…"