/lit/ - Literature

>>21517964
Let’s check his early life section on Wikipedia.

>>21517967
/pol/ please

Just like not think about it bro.

>>21517970
Obsessed

>>21517964
There's no need to cope with death when you realize it is illusory to begin with. That's when you realize everyone is actually coping about life, and not death. Becker is a counterfeit thinker and you'd be better off just reading anything by Nietzsche.

>>21517989
dumb underage /pol/ phoneposter

>>21517964
death literally isn't real you fucking dork

>>21518004
>le pol whiner

>>21518009
Ok then, kill yourself if you are so confident in its unreality.

>>21517964
The faggot who wrote it was dying of cancer.
It itself is cope in the form of projection. It can safely be dismissed.

>>21518222
what would it accomplish?

>>21518224
our entire existence is fucking cope.

why the fuck are you on 4chan? cope.
Why do you jack it to anime tits? cope.

>>21517964
Life is on repeat brother

>>21517964
It's a pseud book. I've yet to see a single excerpt which would make me consider reading it. Try me. Show me something that proves this is more than slop.

>>21518693
If slop can win the Pulitzer, why haven't you won it?
>inb4 da joos

>>21517967
I'm not concerned with him being a Jew - anthropologist on the other hand.

>>21518695
It isn't that slop can, but that largely only slop does, or else wins are divvied out politically. Now either put up or shut up.

>>21518700
If it's so easy, where is your Pulitzer?

>>21518705
I don't write slop, obviously, nor do I pander to politics. There was a time when those awards meant something. We do not live in that time. All that's left is the Fields Medal and a dozen or so lesser known awards.

Now where's your counter-slop evidence, or is all you have "le pulitzer?"

>>21518713
My point is that if you are so above the Pulitzer, why not get one just for fun?

>>21518722
Annnnnnnnnnnnd the conversation is over. You clearly won't be producing any evidence. Besides, why would it be fun to write slop, you insufferable idiot? Smart men don't enjoy doing dumb things. Hence, ending this conversation.

>>21518725
Easy prestige. Most men want status. Seems like you have talents you are aren't using.

>>21518732
Most men are also idiots. They seek status to further their material comfort. Not understanding that the abyss of materialism is all consuming and never sated. Only the search for truth, and by extension God is important.

>>21517964
He literally gives you a cope in the book. Read The Perennial Philosophy for more on it.
If you want no cope read The Last Messiah.

>>21518809
big cope

>>21517964
yes death sucks getting old sucks good things end bad things tend to stick with you very original and profound now fuck off

>>21518818
That’ll be $24.99

>>21518821
Do I get an afterlife with that?

>>21518845
No he’s a secular Jew

>>21518732
You can tell I have talent from that short interaction? You're being disingenuous. Regardless, prestige would be meaningless were I renowned for a work I loathed. That would only succeed in making me hate my own fame. This anon, isn't wrong either >>21518809 - though he isn't me. I was actually hoping you'd post an excerpt you found worthwhile. I have the book in question sitting behind me, atop a stack of books. It was a gift from an English professor of mine. I've never read it. I don't put much stock in academic perspectives on life and death. They are nothing more than confirmation biases - akin to "scientific" research on transsexuals.

>>21518853
Oi vey! I'm gonna start kvetching and no mistake!

For the record, I'm a philosemite.

>>21518853
Is there any other kind?

>>21517964
There are plenty of copes for it. Didn't you read the book?

>>21518897
Of course...

>>21518897
yes?

>>21518722
Recent reddit "gotcha" neckbeard upsurge is getting out of control. Could you please kindly return to your echo-chamber, sir?

>>21517964
... Man's search for meaning is much better.

>>21518693
I read this book for a book discussion circle and I strongly advise you NOT to read it.
What this guy basically does is he takes Freuds retarded theory and replaces it with his own retarded theory. At least Freud did some actual field work with patients. Becker was just making shit up

>>21519509
>some actual field work
nobody cares faggot, nonethenless TMT boys did "actual field work" based on Becker's theory.

>>21519274
Epicuckold

>>21518222
>implying I haven't
Even in death I shitpost

Let’s read some excerpts:
>As anal play is an essential exercise in human mastery, it is better not interfered with. If the adult anxiously cuts it short, then he charges the animal function with an extra dose of anxiety.
>It becomes more threatening and has to be extra-denied and extra-avoided as an alien part of oneself. This extra-grim denial is what we mean by the "anal character." An "anal" upbringing, then, would be an affirmation, via intense repression
>Penis-envy, then, arises from the fact that the mother's genitals have been split off from her body as a focalization of the problem of decay and vulnerability. Bernard Brodsky remarks about his female patient: "Her concept of woman as fecal greatly stimulated her penis envy, since the lively erectile penis was the antonym of the dead, inert stool"
>Phyllis Greenacre--outstanding student of the child's experiences--had already remarked on this same equation in the child's perception: penis = movement, therefore life; feces = inertia, therefore death
Wowee.. there really is no cope for this

What is the author's opinion on suicide?
Is it "denial of death" too through some contrived psychobabble or does he recognize it as based?

>>21517964
Yes there is, unironically study NDEs and realize that there actually is an afterlife and that we are eternal and will go to heaven unconditionally when we die.

Here is a very persuasive argument for why NDEs are real:

https://youtu.be/U00ibBGZp7o

It emphasizes that NDErs are representative of the population as a whole, and when people go deep into the NDE, they all become convinced. As this article points out:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mysteries-consciousness/202204/does-afterlife-obviously-exist

>"Among those with the deepest experiences 100 percent came away agreeing with the statement, "An afterlife definitely exists"."

Since NDErs are representative of the population as a whole, and they are all convinced, then 100% of the population become convinced that there is an afterlife when they have a sufficiently deep NDE themselves. When you dream and wake up, you instantly realize that life is more real than your dreams. When you have an NDE, the same thing is happening, but on a higher level, as you immediately realize that life is the deep dream and the NDE world is the undeniably real world by comparison.

Or as one person quoted in pic related summarized their NDE:

>"As my soul left my body, I found myself floating in a swirling ocean of multi-colored light. At the end, I could see and feel an even brighter light pulling me toward it, and as it shined on me, I felt indescribable happiness. I remembered everything about eternity - knowing, that we had always existed, and that all of us are family. Then old friends and loved ones surrounded me, and I knew without a doubt I was home, and that I was so loved."

Needless to say, even ultraskeptical neuroscientists are convinced by really deep NDEs.
>>21517991
>>21518009
This.
>>21519971
NDErs say that suicide still gets you straight to paradise.

isn't the book a warning about copes?

>>21517991
You need to accept both life and death. But accepting death helps you accept life.

>>21517964
I don't agree with TMT because I don't like its implications; that every aspect of Human culture is just us trying to distract ourselves from death. Why did we go to the Moon? To forget we're going to die. It's absurd.

>>21520148
If you look at everything as a deathcope, you'll end up with tautology, of course. However, that doesn't mean deathcope isn't a huge driving force of human activity.

>>21520156
You can argue that the afterlife is deathcope, I can see that. I would argue that various cultures believed that death was preferable to life, and that dying a horrible death was the best way to die because it guaranteed you a reward in the afterlife. The Nahua believed that dying a bloody death in battle was the best way to die, while Christianity was founded and built upon by martyrdom.

I just feel this is a very naïve way of looking at death in anthropology; that everyone knows there is no afterlife and are lying to ourselves by creating elaborate rituals and institutions. It's an extremely bleak outlook on life from someone in an extremely bleak position.

>>21520195
>that everyone knows there is no afterlife
no, they cope and explain it away and believe their own bullshit. Why does every single religion addressess death as a very important topic? Because people want to cope.
>It's an extremely bleak outlook on life
Life IS bleak.

>>21520195
Cope

>>21520195
>>21520207
>>21520366
Why would you want life after death? We deserve to rest.

>>21520384
Cope

>>21520443
I've gotten everything I've wanted in life so far and guess what? It's still life. I can't wait to die and rest. Hopefully it's a sweet nothingness like a deep sleep.

>>21520454
Cope

>>21520478
With what?

>>21520486
.......

>>21520509
I think you're just unfulfilled.

>>21520535
cope

>>21518818
>coping by pretending these revelations don't shake you to your core and devour your life (literally and figuratively)
weak cope

>>21518222
Isn't it the opposite? If death were real, you would kill yourself, as you're confident that it would instantaneously end all of your problems, and do so permanently. If death weren't, killing yourself would, at best, achieve nothing, and at worst, incur terrible consequences.

>>21517964
>there is le nothing after you die
Cool so there's no "me"... I won't know I'm dead then, right? And I won't care. What about this is supposed to make me "cope?"

>>21517991
Death is an illusion?

>>21519274
Epicopitus.

>>21517964
Of course there is, it's called opioids, the most powerful and effective cope there is, God's very own apology for giving us mind and suffering.

>Life is just a big cope for death
To be is just a way of dying, sad.

>>21517964
Just like not think about it bro.

>>21520894
>Death is an illusion?

The soul is neither born, nor does it ever die; nor having once existed, does it ever cease to be. The soul is without birth, eternal, immortal, and ageless. It is not destroyed when the body is destroyed.
- Gita 2-20

i quite liked it, but it's a slog to read the second time. it has something of a paralyzing effect if you're at a point in your life where you're unable to muster the psychological resources to overcome its tenets. personally i find Games People Play to be closer to actual experience. the leap required to see death-fear as ubiquitous is a bit much. i find the fear of life to generally be more accurate, and more usable. i'll stick to taking bites out of life i can chew. isn't it all a bit strange to think being unable to swallow the whole thing as some kind of failure? it's merely the anxiety of those who cannot accept their place. caught in the snare of unfreedom by searching for freedom. the trap of meaninglessness by searching for meaning. to be gods with the equipment of animals? perhaps the better challenge is to be animals with but the equipment of gods. man gets himself in such a delicious array of confusions! conceptual distinctions that paint our fleshy canvas blue and red and... haha! why accept the form of such arguments as granted? i can't beat you in chess, dear sir, when you make the rules. many leaps and many falls before one makes it the other side. live dangerously! or not at all. sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. and though he slay me, yet do i trust in him.

But mine own ways do I maintain before Him.

>>21517964
>There Is No Cope For This!
Got you bro

>>21521458
cope

>>21517964
>The ideal human form is a woman with a penis
Yes, this statement is literally in the book. Ernest Becker was a sad twisted little man.

I feel like at least half of this book was a waste of paper. His statement that most things are copes is interesting, it's not something that many people think about, but he makes this point in the first few chapters. Later he does some additional psychological and societal analysis, which was not very interesting to me.

>>21522649
I understand you, but he was building his argument upon Freudian and post-Freudian psychologists, as well as making a more general argument for our universal fear of death and how to deal with it, how to overcome it. A lot of it is outdated by tdday's standards, he was aware of it himself, especially when writing on mental illnesses, but I still found it worth my time and think it's a great and informative read, whether you're interested in psychology or wanted a book focused on our fear of death.

>>21523638
I think I worded that a bit too harshly. I still think the book is 100% worth reading.

>anyone says anything non negative
>"cope"

I think OP is just some insanely bitter person on a campaign to make sure as many people as possible become as unhappy as he himself is. This is what all of 4chan is nowadays really.
>inb4 cope

>>21517964
I feel like people miss the point of this.
It's not supposed to be a revelation. It's supposed to be obvious to you that people do what they do because they know one day they will die. Yes of course you already know all this because you can imagine how differently you would live were you immortal. This is all just a simple does of reality injected straight into the veins. That's the whole trick see. If it DOES surprise you to realize this it only means you were not living in reality all along...