Episode 288: The Despised Foot (The Denial of Death Pt. 2)

[00:00:01] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:18] It insists upon itself, Lois. What? It insists upon itself. What does that even mean? Because it has a valid point to make! It's insisted! The Great Impossible has spoken! Pay no attention to that man behind... Very good man. I have more brains than you have.

[00:01:02] Anybody can have a brain. Very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, we're just coming off July 4th, the holiday that celebrates our nation's independence from the British.

[00:01:23] How are you feeling right now? Are you proud to be an American these days? I mean, listeners can't see this, but I'm draped in an American flag currently. Holding a sparkler in my hand. And a MAGA hat.

[00:01:39] I mean, do you not want America to be great is all I'm saying? Clearly some people don't. Now, I find patriotism hard and it kind of makes me sad.

[00:01:49] Because you know all these other countries, you see them like celebrating their teams and they're just draped in their flags and they have their face painted. And in the US it just means something else if you do that. At this point, yeah. Which is sad!

[00:02:05] It's also hard to do it with a straight face anymore. Which is actually what we're going to talk about in the opening segment. So, in the second segment we're going to conclude our discussion on the denial of death. We'll be talking about parts two and three.

[00:02:21] Ernest Becker is the existentialist psychoanalytic Pulitzer Prize winner. That was a fun discussion that we had about it. And we don't die at the end. It's a spoiler. We already recorded it. We already recorded it and at least for right now we're still alive.

[00:02:38] But for the opening, and I almost thought I might be dreaming or maybe like Nikki got your phone or something. But you suggested what if we just talk about the debate, the famous Biden debate.

[00:02:53] And then where we're going right now and Kamala Harris and her, the possibility of her facing Trump. You just wanted to do like a political gab fest. I did. I'm not that I wasn't. Nikki didn't get my phone. I'm not blinking in Morse code to be saved.

[00:03:10] You and I were recording, I think in ambulators when the debate was going on. Which was great for me because the minute we finished I walked in and Nikki and Bella were watching the debate fully. With the volume up. And I watched 30 seconds and I couldn't.

[00:03:28] I just went to my room. I was like this is so embarrassing. It's so bad. And so it's not that I have a renewed interest in politics, although I can't help but be concerned. I'm curious as our resident political expert, I want to get some prognostications from you.

[00:03:43] But also just your hot takes on Biden's mental state, Kamala's cringeness. Like what's going to happen? You're the odds maker here. I'm just the guy who just signed up for an online betting account and I got 50 bucks for free. Oh nice.

[00:04:01] So you want to put that on the candidate that I say will be the next president of the United States. Yeah, my prognostication skills, you know, I haven't been offering them just for free on this podcast. But I have a website, politicsforthewin.com. Five thirty nine.

[00:04:22] My most famous prediction, this was only our eighth episode. I said and am reminded of this every so often, was after Obama beat Romney in 2012. I think we're done with like race baiting and, you know, trying in American politics.

[00:04:41] Like that's over. Romney, like, you know, he knew that that was not the way to try to attack Obama. And, you know, and the fact that Obama won again, not over, I think I said like a ghoul like Donald Trump. It wasn't like a joke.

[00:04:58] Yeah, it wasn't like a joke. You know, Romney is a real guy like that. You know, that just shows that we've progressed as a society racially maybe a little, you know. And it turns out, no, that was not my best prognostication.

[00:05:11] But I'll give you credit, though, for mentioning Trump as a candidate. I think that's just unwitting. Sometimes the spirit speaks through you in ways that you not even you understand. And sometimes you need to take a more esoteric reading of what I say.

[00:05:24] The main thing and you picked up on it was to highlight Trump as someone to watch. Exactly. Okay. Nostro Tamler. So my experience of watching clips of the debate, I didn't have a family who was watching it. My family knows better.

[00:05:42] But I did look at clips afterwards just because everybody was texting me. And I couldn't believe it. Like I could barely get through it like you.

[00:05:52] Like I don't like to watch shows where like old demented people are like laughed at and like, you know, purposely put in positions where they have no idea what to do.

[00:06:03] And like I afterwards I thought, okay, well, if you're going to be a Democrat right now, you know, if you're one of these MSNBC people, at least now, you know, like, okay, this can't happen. Right. Because everybody saw that he couldn't complete sentences.

[00:06:19] Never mind take advantage of like just like batting practice fastballs on like abortion, you know, which is an issue that Democrats should just be winning on down the line because very unpopular what the Republicans are doing.

[00:06:34] But he couldn't even not only not capitalize on that or or press Trump on that. He couldn't he would just bring it back to immigration and like like someone who was like raped and murdered by an illegal immigrant.

[00:06:46] Like he's just like and that was when he could be coherent, which wasn't very often. And it was like, OK, so this is over. Right. And it seemed like everybody also thought that. But like as of right now. So today's Saturday, July 6th.

[00:07:03] Biden has maintained throughout that he is staying in the election, which is just mind boggling to me. Like, I can't believe it. He said he's he beat him before and he'll beat him again in 2020. That's what he said. Whoever's running his Twitter account said that.

[00:07:20] Well, no, that was like that was a club. That was a clip. Yeah. And then he had this interview with George Stephanopoulos where like Stephanopoulos was asking him, what if you lose? You know, what if you do this and it turns out you lose?

[00:07:35] And he's like, well, if that happens, as long as I gave my all and did my best as I know I can, it's OK. Against the guy who supposedly is going to end democracy in the United States.

[00:07:48] The guy who's going to immediately usher in a new era of fascism. And he still is just like, no, you know, give it a little college. Exactly. It's just on.

[00:08:00] It's unreal. And the few people that are defending him, it's you can't even call it gaslighting because gaslighting assumes that maybe somebody would believe you. But the shit that they're trotting out, you know, like the lighting was bad on, you know, like the Biden has a hostile media.

[00:08:20] Like, right. You know, like the media wants Trump. CNN gave him the wrong angle. Yeah, the wrong angle. And I just don't get it. Like, like if you're the Trump campaign, you can just run clips of the debate and run those as ads until November.

[00:08:34] And that like, how do you respond to that? So so here's what I'm curious about. Like the the American voting public seems to be immovable by debates.

[00:08:46] So do you think that because I've heard some people say it's actually a mistake to think that if we replaced him with anybody else, that it would gain votes just because of the nature of how these things are like at best, you would lose votes.

[00:09:01] I mean, that ignores the fact that, like, you still want a competent president. You still want to chant. Yeah, exactly. You still actually want to a non-demanded president who doesn't sundown at 6pm. Right. Right. But but so so I guess what they're saying is like, no, don't worry.

[00:09:18] Like the cabinet and like whatever, you know, his administration will take care of things. We just need to win. And the political public is so just going to vote down the party line that it really doesn't it doesn't do anything. Well, so there's two problems with that.

[00:09:35] Like the first problem, the biggest problem is that's not supported by polling. Like his numbers went down after the debate and he was already losing to Trump. And now he's losing to Trump by a lot more, including in like big swing states.

[00:09:50] Stephanopoulos like kind of grilled him on this. I only saw clips of this, too. And, you know, he was saying stuff like, well, that's just we don't trust those polls. We have our own polls. And also I can draw these big crowds.

[00:10:02] Nobody can draw big crowds like I can and support for what I've done. It's like who like who talks like that? We already have a guy running for president who will just make up stuff about crowds and polls and stuff like that.

[00:10:16] We don't need two people, one of whom is seriously like goes in and out of coherence. This is incredible that like whatever the post-truth era thing that we used to like mock Republicans for is just like it's now too much.

[00:10:30] No, right. And I think of what they did with like the protests. You know, they're also send in like like militarized police to break up peaceful protests, like all these things that we're supposed to be worried about that Trump will do.

[00:10:43] He's doing. And, you know, I think a lot of people like normal people. Now, I'm not a I don't have my finger on the pulse of like the normal American voter who's not totally online all the time.

[00:10:57] But I think most people kind of assume, well, he didn't end democracy the last time he was president. I don't think he'll do that this time. I still don't maybe like him very much. And maybe I'm opposed to many of his positions, including what he did on abortion.

[00:11:15] But like he he still looks like he's not non-compensate day. Like he looks like he actually still can put a sentence together. And this other guy doesn't. And so like competent, basic competency and mental soundness, I think, is something that a normal voter would expect.

[00:11:35] And if they don't buy into the like panicking about Trump, but they just don't really like him that much, they'll still do it or they'll stay home. And then like that's what every poll says.

[00:11:47] What about the Supreme Court decision? Doesn't that like put us in peril of actually him more likely to end democracy? I don't think so. Like, I think I mean, it's possible.

[00:11:59] But like my sense is it's not like the Justice Department has been going after presidents for all their crimes, their war crimes, their various things before.

[00:12:10] But yeah, but it's just another reason to I thought the other one where they took away federal power to regulate things like the Clean Air Act and stuff like that. Yeah, that's I thought that might have been worse. But who knows? Maybe it will be.

[00:12:26] It's the but they're also fucking old. Like what is what difference does it make if maybe you could go to prison in 10 or 15 years when you're like 80 already?

[00:12:34] Like, you know, what's incredible is when people were pointing out that the last sort of like great example of a TV debate that went terrible because of lighting and makeup was the Nixon Kennedy one. Yeah. And Nixon was 47 and Kennedy was 43 or 42.

[00:12:53] But that's just this old decrepit nation right now. That's like all our leaders were like this tenement, like in slums that the landlord just won't like update anything.

[00:13:07] So like it's like all our appliances, our AC, like the hallways. It's like just like Barton Fink, like dripping like wallpaper dripping from the sides and like and like every major leader. Right.

[00:13:20] Pelosi's 83. Mitch McConnell, who I actually thought must be older because he has like mini strokes like often when he gives press conferences. But he's only 82. But still, you know, like just everybody who's over 80 out. You can't be in office anymore. Or a nation run by Mr. Burns.

[00:13:40] It's just but they're failing, you know, and like and they won't give up power. Right. We saw this with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We're probably we might be seeing it now with Sotomayor.

[00:13:52] We are definitely seeing it with Biden. Like they once they will not give it up. They won't just retire and like sit around and go on Facebook.

[00:14:03] OK, here's my next question. Do you think that if because it's all signs point to no. But if Biden would have sort of just given up the ghost, do you think that Kamala would have a better chance or like who's the next?

[00:14:19] Who's Gavin Newsom? Like that's a guy I hear that's a guy. That's why he's the best political co-host in the business, folks. Yeah, he's the governor of California. Like I think both him and Harris now poll better than Biden against Trump.

[00:14:34] So first of all, I still think it's more likely than not that Biden isn't the candidate. I think the more he goes out there and pisses everybody off, the more pressure he'll get from people who actually have the power to withhold support.

[00:14:51] And then if he's just headed to a complete train wreck, I think he'll rather get out because if he loses to Trump, then he'll just be like Hillary Clinton.

[00:15:01] He'll be. That's how he'll be remembered. So but Harris, I think from what I understand, is very much in the driver's seat because she can easily get the money.

[00:15:15] They've raised a shitload of money in the Biden campaign and figuring out how to get that to a Gavin Newsom or Josh Shapiro or Gretchen Whitmer, who I want to know if you never heard of any of those people.

[00:15:26] No, never heard of them. I know Gavin Newsom because Nikki's a fan of Joanna Newsom and their cousins. I didn't know that. And he was also the governor of your home state.

[00:15:41] Yeah, Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania and Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan. You may have heard of an attempted kidnapping plot of her. I don't think so. Yeah, I think it was all just instigated and performed by the FBI to try to get that one other guy.

[00:16:04] Like a Jussie Smollett? A little bit of a Jussie Smollett, exactly. I could be wrong about that, but it sounds right. Kamala Harris is already on the ticket.

[00:16:13] So like it's she could just take all the money right away. So I think she would be in the driver's seat.

[00:16:20] I just think a lot of people are rightly concerned that she also won't have much of a chance of beating Trump because the one time she ran for president, she didn't even make it to Iowa because she had so little support.

[00:16:33] And she's one of the weirdest people in politics. And it's not totally clear how people are going to respond to that. I feel like she's a little bit addicted to benzodiazepines. Do you think?

[00:16:45] I think so. Like, I feel like whenever I see clips of her, she's like kind of slurring her words and like saying weird shit. Venn diagrams, yellow school buses. I love Venn diagrams.

[00:17:01] I really do. I love Venn diagrams. It's just something about those three circles and the analysis about where there is the intersection. Right. Yeah, I see people. You agree with me. Right. So. Okay. So I asked my team. I brought props.

[00:17:17] And my God, the thing I sent you, I don't know if you saw the clip of her at this BET Awards. She did like a little video for the BET Awards. Like I know that many black Americans code switch because you have to. But when you hear her try to turn up the blackness.

[00:17:33] Yeah.

[00:17:34] It's just one of the most embarrassing. She's like, girl, we out here in the street. And she quotes like a Kendrick Lamar song. And it's just like, oh, my God, it just doesn't sound right. Like, you know, far be it for me to tell people what they're supposed to sound like. But for fuck's sake, man, it is the most cringe politician I've seen in a long time.

[00:17:56] The one thing about them is they're so weird. She like she almost look she reminds me of like an alien coming down in like a sitcom and like trying to act human sometimes and like morgue.

[00:18:09] Yeah, a little more cash maybe like in a way that it's not just cringe like Ricky Gervais, you know, in the office is cringe. It's just it's just weird enough that you kind of think, you know, this could be fun for a few years, you know, and I think she couldn't be worse than Israel and Palestine. So like.

[00:18:33] I think that she must have like social anxiety. That would explain the awkwardness of her like alien sort of trying to talk like a human. And that what I think is like a use of Xanax before talks. Like, there must be something like that going on.

[00:18:49] Maybe, although, you know, sometimes her drugs look more fun than Xanax. Because she's having a great time, you know, singing wheels on the bus go round and round, you know, have you seen that one?

[00:19:03] Yes. She's not even singing the right tune as I know having a two year old. Now the other problem for her, although this might not be a problem in the election, but it's a problem for me is she was a prosecutor in California before this.

[00:19:18] She was on crime.

[00:19:20] Yeah, exactly. Tough on crime. Tulsi Gabbard, the great Tulsi Gabbard. She took her out in one of the debates like you put like 1500 people in prison for marijuana offenses. You fought to keep someone on death row and then you laughed about when someone asked you if you'd smoked marijuana.

[00:19:39] Again, I don't know if that hurts her in a general election, though. But it is very unclear what, if anything, she believes. Like what are her convictions? That was never really something that she was able to get across then or now.

[00:19:55] But like, it's just like it's got to be better than Biden. So now the other people, I just don't know how they would do that. Here's where my skills as a political analyst run aground because if it's not going to be her and Biden just stepping down gracefully, I don't know how you get either not her or even her against his will to be the candidate.

[00:20:18] But I don't know like what the workarounds would be for that. And so I think it's just bad.

[00:20:24] This is just like how our democracy works. Like, I don't even know how the Democratic Party is going to do this. As long as we have a funny president, you know? Yeah, Biden's not funny. He's not funny, he's sad. Yeah, it's very bad.

[00:20:42] Yeah. OK, so here are the six leading candidates to replace her. Kamala right now on Predict It, the betting site, is still a favorite over Biden to be known. Third, who do you think's third? I would say Newsom, but that's just because that's her.

[00:20:59] Yeah. Fourth, Gretchen Whitmer. Fifth, Michelle Obama, who a lot of people think could be could definitely be. I had no idea that she would even be. I would vote for Michelle Obama.

[00:21:13] All right. Now it's this next group that I want to know if you know who these people are. So Hillary Clinton, which is incredible that she's on this list. Pete Buttigieg. Have you heard? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like him. He's the gay, right? He's gay. Yeah.

[00:21:28] I like him just because I don't know much about his politics, but the clips that I've seen him at these like whatever hearings or whatever, he just seems sharp.

[00:21:39] Like he seems smart. Like I think he's actually probably the smartest guy I see clips of. He almost seems too competent. Well, just because, yeah, I think he definitely is. What did somebody call him? LGBTQ CIA. He's like a plant.

[00:21:58] Yeah, he's a plant. He worked at McKinsey coming out of college. We're afraid of intelligence in this nation. Yeah. That kind of like cold blooded evil intelligence. I literally wouldn't mind that. No, it seems just to have someone his age, you know?

[00:22:18] JB Pritzker, who I think is the closest to somebody that would reflect the politics of very bad wizards, radical left socialist. I've not heard that. I'm a libertarian.

[00:22:32] He's an Illinois governor. I actually don't know very much about him. So I think we're at the end of our political analyst. All right. How did you like it? Should we just do this? Really a spin off podcast. It's just all politics all the time.

[00:22:49] Yeah. Pod save the wizards. All politics and then basketball analysis. Yeah, exactly. All right. But that's in the future. Coming up in the next segment, we will conclude our discussion of Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death.

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[00:27:44] All right, let's dive into parts two and three. The rest of denial of death. This was, of course, the topic that was voted on by our Patreon supporters.

[00:27:58] We talked about part one last episode. I urge you to listen to that if you haven't, because also David in that episode gave a kind of helpful background of Freud and psychoanalytic approaches in that episode. And that might be helpful.

[00:28:18] So part one kind of set up this problem that we face as gods with anuses, as people who feel this yearning for transcendence because we are conscious beings, rational agents and an urge to be what he calls kazosui, self-caused.

[00:28:42] This need to create ourselves like gods. And we have on the one hand those desires and yearnings and beliefs. And then on the other hand, this undeniable, well, not it turns out not undeniable fact that we are animals and that we decay and die and that we're creatures.

[00:29:06] We have anuses, we shit, we get older, we become less beautiful. We end up going into the ground and become food for worms, as he said. And these two things we have to reconcile somehow.

[00:29:22] And the way we do that, this is in part one, he said, is through a kind of immortality project, hero project, trying to separate ourselves from other people in a way to kind of model what gods are different from others, worth more, more valuable.

[00:29:45] This is our urge to immortality is we try to individuate ourselves. But at the same time, we have this desire to merge with everything because we're transcendent.

[00:29:57] So somehow, and I want to talk about the details of this because I'm still not sure. Somehow the way we go about doing this and a residue of this hero project, which is kind of tragic in that it's bound to fail.

[00:30:13] We can't be immortal. It allows us to deny or repress our terror of death, our terror of being animals that are going to go into the ground and be no more. That's where we left it in part one.

[00:30:29] Part two then talks about the failures of various forms of this hero project. And in broad terms, it tries to explain in one chapter human slavishness like leader worship, celebrity worship, the reason why people are attracted to a strong man or even like a cult leader like Charles Manson.

[00:30:57] It's part of this failure of our own individual hero projects. So we project what we can't do ourselves onto somebody else who is better at giving the illusion that they can and we try to participate in that.

[00:31:13] Then in the next chapter, he tries to use this framework, this terror of death framework, this paradox at the heart of our condition to explain human neuroses.

[00:31:27] And on the one hand, he thinks we're all neurotic. It's the human condition to be neurotic because we have this impossible paradox at the center of our condition. But on the other hand, some people have it worse than others.

[00:31:41] And so that chapter tries to figure out exactly why. In the next chapter, he uses this framework to try to explain kind of a general theory of all mental illness, depression, schizophrenia, psychosis, and also being gay and trans. We can maybe talk about that. This was written in 1973.

[00:32:08] And thought up probably in 1953. That's right. And then finally, it tries to come up with some kind of solution but doesn't really have one to offer because I don't think Becker thinks there is. There's certainly no kind of resolution.

[00:32:29] But I would like to talk about kind of his final bit of advice of how to, even though there's no kind of general prescription for this tragic condition that we find ourselves in, there's a way to handle it better.

[00:32:46] And it involves courage. All of these problems, all of these mental illnesses and neuroses boil down ultimately to a failure of courage. And so, yeah. And we'll talk about what he means by courage.

[00:33:03] So that's where we are. That's in general terms where we are. What was your reaction to these two parts of the book? Well, first of all, let me say that was an excellent summary. I don't think I could have done that.

[00:33:16] Thank you. I'm not written down. I was surprising myself. That was good. That was really good. I appreciate it. A strength of my normality.

[00:33:27] Well, OK. So I half of the time I'm like, yes, this is so insightful. Half the time I'm like, what the fuck are you saying? Like, this is ridiculous.

[00:33:37] But I do. I was glad to get to this part where he's talking about sort of the solutions, the solutions that humans try to come up with for the problem of the human condition.

[00:33:49] And some of these parts were ones that have stuck in my memory, like the futility of the attempt at losing yourself in the powerful leader or what he calls the romantic solution or the creative solution.

[00:34:04] All of these as sort of futile attempts at this casa suite or some sort of rising above ourselves.

[00:34:15] You know, the parts where he tries to use this central insight to form sort of the heart of all diagnoses of mental illness is like, you know, unfortunately, reality is a little sloppier than being able to reduce everything to this basic fundamental urge.

[00:34:34] But I'm not mad at him for it. I took down what he said about auto rank. He's on auto ranks dick a whole lot. I almost texted you like auto rank is his like Charles Manson. Yeah, exactly. It's like irony there.

[00:34:53] But he says something about him. You know, his books are brimming with insights. But what he lacked was some systematic framework that allows people to grasp onto it and to use it, you know, instead of just reading it and being like, oh, that sounds right. That sounds right.

[00:35:12] And he says, I think rightly so, that was part of Freud's genius is being able to take these complex thing and boil them down, even if it was too simplistic or reductive into this kind of easy theoretical framework that people can latch on to.

[00:35:29] And auto rank didn't do that. And the funny thing is, I think that's what he tries to do. But that's where the book is at its least interesting.

[00:35:38] But probably we wouldn't even be reading it if he hadn't done that or it's it's where it's it's at its least compelling, I think, is when he tries to jam everything too tightly into the framework. Yeah. You know, there's the old hedgehog in the fox thing. Yes.

[00:35:56] It's the hedgehog. Yeah. He knows one thing. Or knows one thing. Yeah, the fox. The fox knows many things. Whichever one it is. He's definitely sees one thing and he's like a hammer.

[00:36:08] And, you know, all of the sort of corpus of Western canon is his is his nail. It's all been making this same point.

[00:36:17] I feel like I've had in some smaller fashion this urge to to like synthesize and you see everything like when you're really excited about an idea, you see it everywhere.

[00:36:30] Yeah, totally. You see patterns and you project like when you're looking at art, when you're looking at life, we need that. We crave it. I think, you know, that is the hedgehog and the fox distinction is exactly the right one to make.

[00:36:46] But I think hedgehogs are generally more read, more talked about, more remembered. And it's even if the fox is like Mung Ten or some, you know, like just an essayist or it's just someone just piling insights on top of each other, but not part of some grander theory.

[00:37:04] It's like, oh, these people are awesome. And then you just forget about it. You know, you don't win the Pulitzer Prize. Yeah. You know what I was wondering, though? He makes a criticism of science as aiming too small.

[00:37:21] So this is he's talking about like the power dynamics, the reason why people are attracted to strong men and authoritarians. Like couldn't be more relevant today, right now. And he says in talking about this and applying it to the present day problems of slavishness, viciousness and political madness.

[00:37:44] This seems to me is the authentic line of critical thought on the human condition. The astonishing thing is that this central line of work on the problem of freedom since the Enlightenment occupies so little of the concern and ongoing activity of scientists.

[00:38:01] It should form the largest body of theoretical and empirical work in the human sciences if those sciences are to have any human meaning.

[00:38:10] And, you know, later on he will call science bureaucratic and just trying to give little what we would call today technocratic solutions to all these problems. And he's saying, no, no, we should be approaching this in the way that Freud approached it and Kierkegaard approached it.

[00:38:28] Like these are the central problems of the human conditions. And scientists are getting bogged down in their own little things about like trolley problems. And I have a lot of sympathy with that.

[00:38:40] But what I don't get and now having finished the book, it feels like I'll never get from Becker is like what is his philosophy of science? How are we supposed to judge whether what he's saying is? Yeah, I have the same question.

[00:38:57] Like I'm not sure what he thought science was because when he refers to things as like the science of human behavior and he's talking about the work of Otto Ranker.

[00:39:07] And like, wait, so like a guy just like even he's not a clinician and like I'm not clear what his data sources. Yeah, it's completely unclear to me. Like what I don't know the claims true or false. Like how would we judge the effectiveness of this theory?

[00:39:26] And that's I think the problem. And I think it's connected to the problem of maybe being too theoretical. Because, you know, we always talk about William James and his, you know, long quotes of, you know, some random 19th century amateur psychologist.

[00:39:43] You know, but we don't have this problem with him. I think in part because he doesn't present what he's saying as this kind of definitive theoretical understanding of human motivation at its very core. But Becker undeniably does do that.

[00:40:03] And so, OK, but it's unclear to me like how I'm supposed to judge these things except what we said last time, which is just does it ring true or not? Yeah. To me, the category of this is it's not science.

[00:40:21] Like at least not what I would call science. It's like the form of like a long humanistic essay and one where I think we both agree truth can be discovered and communicated.

[00:40:35] What rings hollow to me is the appeal to scientific fact when there's just such a non firm ground. The scientific method doesn't seem to be employed here. I had to stop myself from underlining all of the times that he would use language like this.

[00:40:52] So right on the next page, for example, Freud found that the leader always allows us to express. Like how did he find it? There's so much of that. Yeah. Yeah. Freud found that the leader allows us to express forbidden impulses and secret wishes. Right.

[00:41:13] By just saying it? Did he just by just writing it? That's how he found it. I mean, the truth and the funny thing about that is it's kind of a nice insight there. I buy that that's what a strong leader allows us to do sometimes.

[00:41:27] Like look at Trump. Trump is the perfect example of that. You know, if he can call Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas, then I can call her Pocahontas. You know? But yeah, Freud found that.

[00:41:40] As we have learned conclusively from Rankin Brown, it is the immortality motive and not the sexual one that must bear the larger burden of our explanation of human passion. Right, it's just like... As we've learned conclusively.

[00:41:59] You have to get past this and I don't want to spend much more time talking about it. But it's almost like you have to read those words meaning different things from how we normally understand it. Yeah, exactly. Replace it with like, it rings true to me.

[00:42:16] Like it seems right to me. Yeah. So it's like this. It inhabits this other category to me and particularly because, you know what? Becker was an anthropologist. So he's not even talking about the kind of stuff he would have done empirically.

[00:42:33] He's just relying on what were clinical observations from people 100 years ago. It's like a step removed. Like he doesn't even have his own insight from patients. Yeah, right. It is in that way kind of amazing that he took it on himself to write this book.

[00:42:51] And I think he was like somebody that we don't see often enough these days. He had his foot in a bunch of different fields, but he didn't dive into any one of them because he would have had to get too specific.

[00:43:07] I don't ever think he had a tenure track position. No. Can we talk about this twin paradox? So he talks about the twin paradox of on the one hand wanting to merge with everybody around you and on the other hand wanting to exert your independence.

[00:43:25] My understanding of it in my memory was that the reason that you wanted to merge was because merging offers a loss of self. Right. But I don't think he ever says that. And I don't think that's what it is in this case. No. Yeah.

[00:43:40] I think in this case, you know, like at one point he talks about like the average person, you know, they go out, they're trying to make themselves into something that can individuate them and give them value.

[00:43:54] But the culture isn't offering them an avenue to plausibly do that to themselves. They're just now at the mercy of their boss. They don't feel causa sui. They don't feel like they have the freedom.

[00:44:06] But here's this person that does seem like he has all these qualities that set him apart that I lack. And so I try to participate in that. That was my understanding.

[00:44:17] I'm going to try to participate in that person and through them achieve this kind of individuation that can make me feel immortal. The paradox takes the form of two motives or urges that seem to be part of creature consciousness and that point in two opposite directions.

[00:44:35] On the one hand, the creature is impelled by a powerful desire to identify with the cosmic process to merge himself with the rest of nature. On the other hand, he wants to be unique to stand out as something different in a part.

[00:44:46] The first motive to merge and lose oneself in something larger comes from man's horror of isolation, of being thrust back upon his own feeble energies alone. He feels tremblingly small and impotent in the face of transcendent nature.

[00:45:00] If he gives into his natural feeling of cosmic dependence, the desire to be part of something bigger, it puts him at peace and at oneness, gives him a sense of self-expansion in a larger beyond. And so, heightens is being giving him truly a feeling of transcendent value.

[00:45:14] So, yeah, expanding yourself. It's not losing yourself. But it's like making yourself to be of cosmic significance when you're feeling so small. Rather than the individuation of the hero, which is the other.

[00:45:28] I see. One thing I was thinking in this chapter and in a lot of the book is like the Greek myths and like the Iliad and Achilles. Like Achilles' main dilemma is, do I fight and die? Or do I go off, leave the war, quit the war?

[00:45:51] I hate these people anyway. Fuck these people. I'm better than all of them. Like, you know, he doesn't have like the strong man possibility because he thinks he's the best of all of them. And he might be right. So, he has this choice.

[00:46:03] This is his like tragic condition. Fight and be immortal forever. We'll be talking about him on a podcast today. Or just quit the war forever and be forgotten. And like he doesn't know what to do.

[00:46:21] And it's only when his friend slash lover is killed in the war that he then goes on this violent rampage and commits back to the war. And then ultimately dies. But what's so super fascinating is in the Odyssey, Odysseus goes down to Hades and meets Achilles.

[00:46:44] And he says to Achilles like, I bet you're like everybody's worshipping you down here. You're like known as the greatest warrior of all time. And Achilles says, don't try to sell me on death, Odysseus.

[00:47:00] He said, I'd rather be the dirtiest little peasant farmer, like a slave to a peasant farmer and be alive than lord it over the living dead down here. So, I think it perfectly captures this paradox that we have.

[00:47:17] It's like we want this thing, like this immortality, but it's not possible. We can't get it. We can't have it because we're going to die. That's why we can't have it. It's because like that's the thing that we really want and can't have, you know?

[00:47:32] Yeah. I guess spoiler for the end of the book. I was satisfied that he didn't try to like spin something. He's like, no, this is just what it is. I completely agree. And not only that, but he did a kind of a takedown of these people.

[00:47:50] He said, no, the thing to do is to just embrace your bodilyness and probably sexual revolution kind of things and just run around naked, live in a hippie commune. The unrepressed ego will be like a utopia.

[00:48:07] And then that just doesn't work almost immediately because it doesn't address the fundamental problem. And then he thought, you know, Freud also erred too much on the side of where worm food were just bits of flesh that are going to rot away soon.

[00:48:23] Fuck you. And then Kierkegaard too much on the other side, dive too strong into faith. And it's like he's pretty much like find a good spot for you somewhere in the middle of that.

[00:48:34] Yeah. I mean, I almost feel like at the end of this, right, as somebody who buys into this central problem of the human condition, that his description of the Philistine and then of the immediate man, of somebody who just takes part in culture and the roles that culture allows them to have.

[00:49:00] And by doing that, bring some measure of meaning into their life.

[00:49:05] Be like unreflectively because if they really thought about it, they would realize that, you know, your little life, you know, going to your little PTA meetings and town boards and going to your little job that doesn't actually give you any meaning.

[00:49:22] But there's something healthy, especially in his description of the extremes of mental illness that he believes are all again a part of a failure to deal with the necessary heroics for this human condition. That seems like a pretty good middle to me.

[00:49:40] And I was left wondering as I was sort of reflecting this and taking a piss as soon as I was done. I was like, so why not that?

[00:49:50] What is it that is supposed to be good about us courageously facing the existential problem if we might just be happier all just doing our little part, living our little lives? Because I think what he thinks is we're ultimately not going to be satisfied.

[00:50:07] You will hit a crisis point as the average person. You'll hit that point where, wait a minute, like it's not that you don't have this yearning for transcendence and immortality and being distinctive. At some point, that's going to show itself and it could show itself in like rape.

[00:50:29] It could show itself in violence. It could show itself in all sorts of unhealthy neurotic ways. I think that's the idea. But you're right, when he does describe it, it almost sounds like their problem is more like they're simpletons.

[00:50:45] They can't experience anything rich in life because they've bogged themselves down in the trivial. We bog ourselves down in the trivial to block out something and it doesn't fully satisfy you. Think of every time you get lost on your phone or in the internet.

[00:51:08] A lot of the time, the thing that makes you go there in the first place is this little bit of inarticulate anxiety that you have that you're looking to distract yourself from. Absolutely. Just the description of why people turn to drugs and alcohol for this.

[00:51:29] Yeah, I do that. Yeah, of course I do. It's what I would describe as a boredom, but it really is probably just an anxiety. It's an anxiety that maybe there's something I should be doing.

[00:51:41] There's like some niggling voice in the back of my head that is telling me that I should be doing something else. That's what it is and he gets at the bottom of it. It's that niggling voice.

[00:51:52] It's like we can't even enjoy these bits of wasting time because I think there's… Let me pop a few craters. Because I think one of the things we feel is I'm not living. I'm not distinguishing myself, but I'm also just not even alive. I'm essentially tranquilizing myself.

[00:52:13] He says, as soon as man lifts his nose from the ground and starts sniffing at eternal problems like life and death, the meaning of a rose or a star cluster, then he is in trouble.

[00:52:24] Most men spare themselves this trouble by keeping their minds on the small problems of their lives just as society maps these problems out for them. These are what Kierkegaard calls the immediate men and the Philistines. They tranquilize themselves with the trivial so they can lead normal lives.

[00:52:43] But I think this idea is that's refusing reality and then it's going to pop up, I think, in you at some point. And there's a serious price to pay. You see that.

[00:53:00] You see that in people having the most cliched but very common midlife crises where they're like, what am I doing? Why am I working for an oil and gas company for the last 15 years? What am I doing? Yeah, absolutely.

[00:53:14] One of the things I struggle with with this book is that it is very individualistic. I mean, just sort of like blatantly so obviously, right? Like it's just like this individualism is a desire of the entire. It's one of our core desires to individuate.

[00:53:34] And maybe it is true. Maybe what's going on with other cultures is that their cultural systems are strong enough to not bring out that dissatisfaction.

[00:53:48] Like that smelling of the rose and looking at the stars that kicks us into some sort of existential dread because those social structures or those religious structures are protective enough that it doesn't.

[00:54:01] And I think that that's certainly true for people I know who are true religious believers, because all you say is like, oh, look at the wonders that God has created. Like it doesn't toss you into some sort of extra crisis.

[00:54:16] He almost assumes that we're like all like what he calls the modern man, which essentially is like intellectuals. It's like post-religion. He knew his audience. Totally. Like religion for us is no longer an option. You know, like Nietzsche thought it's like that's over. Like it won't work anymore.

[00:54:39] It worked for those other people. You know, like it could work for them. It could give them it just answers the problem. It's like, no, you actually will be immortal. Right. He's like, yeah, that was like the ultimate solution.

[00:54:51] Right. And he never really talks about how that was a lie. Like he doesn't say that. He never says, well, one reason to not rely on these structures is that they are fundamentally untrue. No, no, no. That's right. Like he doesn't go about it.

[00:55:08] And part of that is he thinks we need illusions. Right? Like he says, we need legitimate foolishness. An illusion that can, it's not going to solve the problem, but it will give a kind of equilibrium between these two central incompatible urges or forces within us. Right?

[00:55:29] So he says, okay, you have the reliance on group, like on a leader or on merging with a group. That's no good. He thinks that's just sort of like pushing the problem away because fundamentally those leaders are going to disappoint. Because they're just like you. Right?

[00:55:46] They're not actual gods walking the earth. You're just sort of treating them that way. Or the group entity is not a god. So then in the next chapter, where he's talking about auto rank and the closure of psychoanalysis on Kierkegaard, he talks about the romantic solution.

[00:56:00] Right. Sort of losing yourself. And it's sort of like getting rid of the guilt of the body by enjoying somebody else's body. Yeah. So this is on page 166.

[00:56:13] He says, God's greatness and power is something that we can nourish ourselves in without its being compromised in any way by the happenings of this world. No human partner can offer this assurance because the partner is real.

[00:56:28] However much we may idealize and idolize him, he inevitably reflects earthly decay and imperfection. And as he is our ideal measure of value, this imperfection falls back upon us. If your partner is your all, then any shortcoming in him becomes a major threat to you.

[00:56:49] If a woman loses her beauty or shows she doesn't have the strength and dependability that we thought she did, or loses her intellectual sharpness, then the investment we've made in her is undermined. She lessens equals I die.

[00:57:02] He says, this is the reason for so much bitterness, shortness of temper and recrimination in our daily family lives. We get back a reflection from our loved ones that is less than the grandeur and perfection that we need to nourish ourselves.

[00:57:19] We want this to be something it can't be. And then we get really peevish about it. Yeah, I think it's so insightful. I think so many people do throw themselves into human romantic relationships in this way that is so unhealthy.

[00:57:39] And they're just completely shattered by the fact that the other person is just actually very flawed. And their flaws will then, because you had this impossible expectation, get on your nerves even more. Because this isn't how it should be. We should be together transcending.

[00:58:01] And instead, you're telling me I didn't wash the bowl properly. The lover does not dispense cosmic heroism. But again, I think there's no real solution. There's healthier or less unhealthy ways of entering a relationship. But fundamentally this is going to be a problem, I think, in any relationship.

[00:58:28] We just need to maybe lower the expectations, make the illusion not quite... We can't get rid of it entirely because then we probably won't want to be with them at all. But we have to make it not too grandiose.

[00:58:43] I think you would probably say the healthier relationship with another human being will be when you're both sort of dealing with your own existential dread by not relying on the apotheosis of your partner. Yeah, but to what extent do you think he thinks that's possible?

[00:59:03] He really doesn't talk about what a healthy relationship with another human being would be. So I actually don't know what he thinks there. I think he's just sort of like, don't make this the solution. But I think you're probably right that it's tempting for that reason.

[00:59:18] There is a section on women. So he does talk about the problem of being a woman today. It used to be your purpose was kind of culturally determined and now it isn't. But you still have a lot of the expectations.

[00:59:36] So for the first time he acknowledges that women exist. But I still think this is written mostly from the perspective of a man and a very highly... You may know a woman who has gone through this.

[00:59:50] Exactly, right. Not just a male perspective but I think a very highly educated male perspective. So there's this passage on 187 that I wanted to ask you about. He's talking about the creative soul but then he now goes to the proletariat.

[01:00:11] The proletariat demands the obsession of work in order to keep from going crazy. I used to wonder how people could stand the really demonic activity of working behind those hellish ranges in hotel kitchens. The frantic world of waiting on a dozen tables at one time.

[01:00:29] The madness of a travel agent's office at the height of tourist season. Or the torture of working with a jackhammer all day on a hot summer street. The answer is so simple that it eludes us. The craziness of these activities is exactly that of the human condition.

[01:00:43] They are quote-unquote right for us because the alternative is natural desperation. The daily madness of these jobs is a repeated vaccination against the madness of the asylum. Look at the joy and eagerness with which workers return from vacation to their compulsive routines.

[01:01:02] They plug into their work with equanimity and light heartedness because it drowns out something more ominous. Men have to be protected from reality. And then he says, you know, this is the problem for Marxism.

[01:01:16] If you take away all these works, what are it's going to keep humans or men, as he says, from going mad? It does seem like at least an alternate explanation that could be considered for why they're doing it is because they need to feed themselves and their family.

[01:01:35] And those are the only jobs available for people of their level of education. Like, you know, to conclude that with a kind of shot at Marx when you have completely ignored what seems to be the more obvious plausible explanation.

[01:01:56] And then in addition to that, like say, oh, and they're so happy. You know, we shouldn't even give them vacation because they really just want to get back to their jobs. Maybe increase their hours so they don't even get a glimpse into the existential.

[01:02:12] Exactly. Like the abyss that I'm as a professor and writer, you know, I have to face. But I'm going to spare them that by cutting their vacation time. And, you know, that's a really off putting part of the text.

[01:02:27] And it comes up a few times in the way he talks about people who are not like the kind of people who would read this book. Yeah, no, I felt that same thing. But on the other hand, both can be true.

[01:02:41] It can be true that they're doing it because material conditions force them to. But in doing so, this is sufficient to distract them from that. And, you know, the few times in my life where I've had day to day jobs, like there is something nice about it.

[01:03:01] You do the job and then when you're home, you're not thinking, oh, I should be doing this. I should be doing that. You're just home. And then you get up and you go like honest day's work. There is something really satisfying about that.

[01:03:15] Yeah, I've done it too. It's just slowed down. It did remind me, you know, one of the things that when God kicks Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, he says he's going to curse man by having to work.

[01:03:29] Like apparently in the Garden of Eden, you couldn't even tell that you were working. You're just enjoying it. But like now by the sweat of his brow, he's going to have to. Yeah, exactly. And that's what's going to give your short ass life meaning.

[01:03:43] Like the rest of your short ass life. Oh, right. That's why they have to work just to get something to do given that they're going to die. He doesn't explicitly say that. Yeah. But like your job now is going to be to work.

[01:03:57] My dad used to tell this joke that like then he told Eve and you're going to pay me in blood, but in monthly installments. Nice. Nice, Mr. Pizarro. Yeah. So right after he talks about the romantic solution to the existential dilemma, he talks about the creative solution.

[01:04:19] And here's where he talks about the artist. He says like you can one way to try to get past this is to be an artist and create something new.

[01:04:29] You know, he'll go on to diagnose artists as a particularly neurotic type, but this probably is the best you could do. Like creating something brand new is like the closest you're going to get to any mortality.

[01:04:43] Well, I think that like the thing that I think is admirable about it from his perspective is that the artist has courage because the cultural script that gives all us non-artists meaning, the artist actually can't rely on that because they're creating something new with their work.

[01:05:07] And so they have to go outside the cultural framework, the meaning given symbolic framework that nourishes the rest of us to the extent that it can. Yeah. They're the ones who are creating this stuff for all of us.

[01:05:21] Exactly. They're going to take it some different place, but that takes them out of the comfort like the womb of culture and really puts them face to face with like eternal problems.

[01:05:36] But they're willing to do that and that takes courage. The things that we do are like forms of cowardice, forms of distraction from facing the problem. But like an artist has to face this problem to some degree.

[01:05:50] Yeah. So the work of art then is the ideal answer of the creative type to the problem of existence as he takes it in, not only the existence of the external world, but especially his own, who he is as a painfully separate person with nothing shared to lean on.

[01:06:05] It's a little much, but you know, I wonder if he considered himself an artist.

[01:06:10] It's very melodramatic. Yeah, I do think like he thinks like Freud, it might be an artist in a certain sense and probably himself. And I think there's a way in which he is an artist. Like this is a really good work of art.

[01:06:27] Right. So he says, which I think is right, he says like the deep problem with this is you can't justify yourself to yourself. You'll never really be able to do that. Yeah. What we're craving is external justification of some sort and the artist can't get there.

[01:06:46] Because they're outside the cultural framework that would give them that. Yeah. Right. And the universe doesn't give us yet.

[01:06:53] No, exactly. But I do like it is melodramatic, but I like how he's just basically frames the artist as somebody willing to sort of sacrifice this for the sake of giving us a gift.

[01:07:06] Like the first astronaut to go out into space, you know, they're going beyond the comforting bounds of what man has experienced to that point.

[01:07:18] I also like, OK, why can't we just face our creature-liness and just be a hardcore like my old dissertation advisor Alex Rosenberg, nihilist reductionist like, yeah, this is what we are. And we're nothing further. And that means that nothing has value. Embrace the anus.

[01:07:43] And so here's what he says. The answer is on one level that they have to leave tragedy behind as part of the program to awaken some kind of hopeful, creative effort by men.

[01:07:56] Reality is partly the result of human effort. The person who prides himself on being a hardheaded realist and refrains from hopeful action is really abdicating the human task.

[01:08:08] This accent on human effort and vision and hope in order to help shape reality seems to me as largely to exonerate from from the charges that he is really a rabbi at heart.

[01:08:21] If the alternative is fatalistic acceptance of the present human condition, then each of us is a rabbi or had better be.

[01:08:29] So what I take this to be the human project is in some ways to create a myth that will give us this meaning that we crave, even though we can't have it.

[01:08:43] But if you're too much of a skeptic realist, embrace the anus and the biology, fleshiness of human beings. You're not doing part of what humans are bound to do, must do, ought to do. I'm not sure what he thinks about that.

[01:09:07] Yeah, you're like opting out in a way. Yeah, you're just denying one horn of the tragedy, even though we can't have the thing that we ultimately are striving for.

[01:09:18] Like part of the human project is to strive for it. Achilles wanted to escape fate and couldn't because none of us can. But it's the striving for it that is what humans are like essentially, I think is what.

[01:09:32] I don't know if he thinks the alternative is living an impoverished life. So if you're just like Dawkins pilled, are you going to have that part of you express itself in other unhealthy ways?

[01:09:49] Or will you just live an impoverished immediate life? I don't know. But you're not doing the thing that humans do. Yeah, I mean that makes me want to go to talk about his view of mental illness. So like his diagnosis of what's at the heart of mental illness.

[01:10:07] I like what he says there because it's like you have to admit that humans create reality in a real deep and meaningful way. And your little hardcore stance is like not impressing anybody.

[01:10:19] The artist may be at the farthest end of it, but part of us we're all artists in some way because we need that meaning.

[01:10:28] So one answer to why not just be the immediate man or why not be that realist could be that you're just going to be a worse human being. Like you will be like a less good person. Like morally or just like you'll have a less rich life?

[01:10:46] Probably both he would say. Both there. Like he never really says, right? So you could imagine that one reason not to be the the philosophical and the immediate man is that your little view of the world will make you into a petty person.

[01:11:01] And you will find yourself reaching for ways of acquiring sort of cosmic significance in stupid trivial ways. Like people with little power flex whatever it is they have to try to make others feel bad. Those are the partializers.

[01:11:18] They just make everything about their little problems and then they're just going to fixate on the little problems because they have to elevate them to greater significance.

[01:11:31] Exactly. Yeah, but he doesn't actually ever talk about whether you'll be a better or worse person morally if you choose one of these solutions. No, I think he thinks that could be different. Like artists can be terrible people. I think he thinks sometimes they are.

[01:11:46] He definitely doesn't think there's one solution for everybody because he thinks we're all the result of our individual histories. And so we're all going to find our own balance and there's no perfect solution.

[01:11:58] He says, men should wait while using their best intelligence and effort to secure their adaptation and survival. Ideally they should wait in a condition of openness towards miracle and mystery in the lived truth of creation.

[01:12:13] Which would make it both easier to survive and to be redeemed because men would be less driven to undo themselves and would be more like the image that pleases their creator. All filled creatures trying to live in harmony with the rest of creation.

[01:12:29] Today we would add too that they would be less likely to poison the rest of creation. So there's something about that openness. We're not supposed to be doctrinaire, dogmatic like you're going to hell if you didn't get baptized.

[01:12:46] But we're supposed to keep that air of mystery alive in us. I think we're supposed to keep up that there's something fundamentally mysterious and possibly value giving about the universe. We have to be open to that without subscribing to any particular version of that.

[01:13:07] Right. We've already kind of mentioned the role that culture plays in helping solve this problem. But his section on ritual specifically I thought was really cool.

[01:13:18] Where he's sort of like wistfully talking about the dramas of the past, the heroic dramas of the past that we just don't have anymore. He said in anthropology we call these the myth ritual complexes of tradition, of traditional society.

[01:13:34] He's basically saying that these ritual systems served as this protective buffer against this problem. So it makes me think he really does want to diagnose the modern man like right after we've sort of lost the mystery of the world, like post-enlightenment as being in a completely different place.

[01:13:58] So psychology is like an imperfect replacement for religion, what religion used to play. We've lost the meaning behind rituals and stuff. So is it the case that mental illness would have just been lower? Is it really the case that this alienation...

[01:14:18] I've always wondered, were there just crazy people back in the pre-enlightenment era? We just didn't talk about it. We just called them demon possessed. You really think that his diagnosis of what mental illness is, is fundamentally a problem of the modern man.

[01:14:35] Yeah. I mean you certainly see that what's defined as mental illness is culturally determined. I think what gets defined as mental illness changes from culture to culture. But that's not really the heart of your question. Like were people riddled with anxiety back in...

[01:14:55] Not even like when we were hunter-gatherers, but like in ancient Rome or something like that. Or in China in the third century BC. I don't know. You certainly see a lot of the same in the literature and the philosophy.

[01:15:16] I mean you certainly see a lot of the same expressions of this angst. Like he quotes Ecclesiastes and Ecclesiastes is dealing with a lot of the same fundamental problem and issue. We don't know. We're going to die. We don't know what happens afterwards.

[01:15:34] Everything just repeats and repeats and repeats and it's not clear like what distinguishes anything from anything. And what the point of it all is. So I do think to the extent that mental illness is a reflection of that, a product of that.

[01:15:49] I think that seems not just the modern person. Yeah. It does strike me as what a cultural anthropologist might believe. Like when we had these societies where the order... I mean it might still be true, but where there was more order.

[01:16:07] Where order was created for you, you don't have to struggle with the anxiety of creating the order yourself. So I don't know how you want to tackle the rest of this.

[01:16:18] I want to know what your response is to the charge that as one of these hardheaded realists and scientific bureaucrats that you're abdicating the human task. It's weird because I read him as being a pretty hardheaded realist in some sense.

[01:16:39] Where like he's unwilling to say, like here's the solution. Like just have faith. That's like the kind of realism that I like of his. Where you could be a realist and a scientist and still accept this wonder of what it is to be human and have this.

[01:17:00] There's almost this deep pessimism throughout that we're cursed with this. At some point he calls it sort of like this curse of evolution. That we're animals that have this consciousness. But there is something that's just like a profoundly... It's a gift too, right?

[01:17:20] Because I suppose you could imagine it as being pure spirit or being all animal. And then we wouldn't be like the anxious monkeys that we are. But being the anxious monkeys that we are means that we have a motivation to create.

[01:17:32] And we create meaning and we share it with each other. And I wasn't reading any of that optimism. It's like... I know it's not an optimistic book, right? Like this is just like face, you know, naked monkey.

[01:17:47] It's a monkey that's literally lost its hair and gained consciousness and has to look at itself in the mirror and be like, oh. But like the counterfactual of what it would be like to be an animal without this degree of self-consciousness, we kind of know.

[01:18:03] We know what that might be. We don't know what it's like to be an eternal spirit that has no fear of death. And I think that if you really take seriously what that would be, it would be hard to come up with a theory of motivation.

[01:18:20] Like what would motivate you in that regard? If you were invulnerable. So like the condition that we're in as human beings is what makes life interesting and meaningful. And yeah, it's like full of suffering and pain and anxiety and terror.

[01:18:37] Again, if you look at the Iliad and the Odyssey and you look at the gods, you know, they have their dramas too. But the gods' dramas are so petty.

[01:18:47] And like, you know, you can tell they're just struggling to figure out like a way to pay attention and they'll get wrapped up in human dramas. They're like a Mexican telenovela that's been going like for 23 years. Yeah, they just don't know exactly. That's exactly what they are.

[01:19:05] Whereas the very thing that gives the human beings like meaning and value and like personal connection with others, real deep personal connection is precisely the mortality. Yes, that's a tragic condition to be in. But like you said, it's not clear what the better condition would be.

[01:19:27] This is written right around the same time as the absurd, right? The nagle. So if you contrast it with the nagle just saying, yeah, on the one hand we take our lives seriously and we have to.

[01:19:42] Like we have to think what we're doing has a point and we have to invest it with that. And at the other hand, we can always look and think, yeah, none of this matters. Like we can do both those things.

[01:19:54] And there's something like ironic about that, you know, so we could appreciate the irony of it. Appreciate that we're in that absurd condition. We don't have to despair about it. We don't have to be driven to suicide as Camus worried.

[01:20:10] It's just an interesting fact about us. Why can't we accept that? Like what would Becker say to that, I wonder? Yeah, it's almost like not what he's interested in talking about. It's weird. I think he would think nagle is ignoring something about the problem.

[01:20:29] You know, maybe that there's a form of repression and taking this kind of cool ironic stance. Maybe it's the failure of the human project. You know, like you're being too hipster about it and that doesn't allow you to actually appreciate the thing.

[01:20:45] Right. But, you know, again, like if all of this is in line with the psychodynamic theories about what's motivating us to act where he doesn't think it's sexuality, but rather this terror of death. Like that's what's moving us.

[01:21:03] So maybe he thinks that nagle hasn't properly like faced, you know, stared into the terror of death. But on the other hand, like it's still motivating him. Exactly. So why do you have to like stare into the abyss?

[01:21:20] You know that much longer, you know, the abyss is there. Just why do you have to stare into it constantly? Yeah, that's a good question. It's enough to have these dreams like he describes here was my favorite passages of the book.

[01:21:33] Anxiety over the body shows up to in all anal dreams when people find themselves soiled by overflowing toilets, someone splashing urine in the midst of the most important affairs and all dressed up in their social finery. No mistake. The turd is mankind's real threat. No mistake. No mistake.

[01:21:54] As Brown discovered. The turd is, as Becker found, the turd is mankind's real threat. But so in his defense, let me read the last paragraph of this. Of the book?

[01:22:12] I can conclude that a project as grand as the scientific mythical construction of victory over human limitation is not something that can be programmed by science.

[01:22:24] Even more, it comes from the vital energies of the masses of men sweating within the nightmare of creation and is not even in man's hands to program.

[01:22:34] Who knows what form the forward momentum of life will take in the time ahead or what use it will make of our anguished searching.

[01:22:45] The most that any of us can seem to do is fashion something, an object or ourselves and drop it into the confusion and make an offering, so to speak, to the life force. There is something maybe a little more inspiring about that than how Nagel concludes.

[01:23:09] Like, yeah, we can just treat it with irony instead of despair. Like, no, I want to make an offering to the life force. I'm just going to dive into the confusion. Totally. I mean, I love that.

[01:23:21] And in the whole book where he's talking about this terror and, you know, he goes through a large part saying essentially, look, the only question is what level of lying to yourself is the appropriate one to be a healthy individual?

[01:23:39] And we don't even know what it means to be healthy. So it's like, who knows what's the right level of illusion? Either hardcore scientists or are... They want you to shed the illusion. Yeah, they're not going to give you shit.

[01:23:51] But we know like the myths of old aren't true either. Like it's a pretty pessimistic book throughout. And in this end, he gets like poetic, like he himself is coming to terms with the existential dilemma and how it's almost like this was his gift.

[01:24:11] And it's just like sad that he died soon after releasing it. But that's his answer is this book. It's an offering to the life force. Like that's his creation of a new form of meaning giving, he thinks. And this is very existentialist.

[01:24:30] Like we're at this moment as a culture where the old things aren't working. The old solutions can't work anymore. And so we have to create a new solution.

[01:24:41] And that's the human project is to like make an offering as part of the project to build up new value giving frameworks. Everybody bring your drop of water into this bucket and humanity will drink it. Yeah, that's good. I like that.

[01:25:02] Like that is kind of what I think. Like I have both Nagel in me, but then I also have a healthy dose of that kind of Becker in me too. Of like, yeah, we do want to do that. We want to put our here.

[01:25:17] What about this? Try this. Maybe this will work. And it's not just for us, it's for ourselves and for others. And even if it's impossible, we got to do something. Yeah, that's good. It's good. It's like we're integrated. Like as good existentialism should do.

[01:25:38] Yeah, even if it ultimately presents you with an insoluble paradox. I just scream for hours into the mirror of a naked body, a naked aging body. I'm going to be a transvestite. That's the true way to get into that. I urge the reader. Urge the reader.

[01:26:30] I mean, it's like exerting a control over your animal nature. Like I'm torn sometimes and it's like, obviously I don't think that's what trans people are doing. But there is this just poetic beauty to the way that he's trying to unify all of these disparate strands of thought.

[01:26:58] And be like, no, this is all some sort of like urge to not be just a body. So he says, if the fetish object is a magical charm, then it naturally partakes of the qualities of magic.

[01:27:11] That is, it must have some of the properties of the thing that it seeks to control. To control the body, then it must show some intimate relationship to the body. To have an impress of its form, possess some of its smell, testify to its concreteness and animality.

[01:27:25] This is why I think the shoe is the most common fetish. It is the closest thing to the body, and yet it is not the body. And it is associated with what almost always strikes fetishists as the most ugly thing.

[01:27:41] The despised foot with its calloused toes and yellowed toenails. The foot is the absolute and unmitigated testimonial toward degraded animality. To the incongruity between our proud, rich, lively, infinitely transcendent free inner spirit and our earthbound body.

[01:27:58] Wow. I think Quentin Tarantino wants to have a word with Ernest Becker. I was going to say half of the internet wants a word with Ernest Becker. I think we're learning a lot more about Ernest Becker there than we are about fetishes in general.

[01:28:14] Oh man, I love how he's like, you know, Freud almost got it right when he was like, the shoe is the mother's penis. But its auto rank has shown conclusively that the shoe is the ultimate fetish object. It would be lovely to be cited with such praise.

[01:28:40] The funny thing is, it didn't take. I don't think people talk about auto rank any more than they did before. They do not. I suspect that more people talk about Ernest Becker than auto rank. That's what I think I'm almost certain.

[01:29:01] Alright, so sorry auto rank, you didn't achieve immortality but Ernest Becker. It's a little bit longer in Very Bad Wizards. Alright, join us next time for another attempt at immortality on Very Bad Wizards.