tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32978906.post1380173247670231378..comments2024-03-27T18:45:16.950-07:00Comments on Fickle Ears: Bodies and Artifacts (iv-a)—A Story of Jean and LeRoiStefan Kachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03103517356905739209noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32978906.post-65194131416603290482023-07-08T13:59:02.985-07:002023-07-08T13:59:02.985-07:00Ernest Becker
The Denial of Death
(1973)
[4] &quo...Ernest Becker<br /><i>The Denial of Death</i><br />(1973)<br /><br />[4] <i>"When we appreciate how natural it is for man to strive to be a hero,...then it is all the more curious how ignorant most of us are, consciously, of what we really want and need. We disguise our struggle by piling up figures in a bank book to reflect privately our sense of heroic worth. ... But underneath throbs the ache of cosmic specialness, no matter how we mask it in concerns of smaller scope. ... We may shudder at the crassness of earthly heroism, of both Caesar and his imitators, but the fault is not theirs, it is in the way society sets up its hero system and in the people it allows to fill its roles. The urge to heroism is natural, and to admit it honest. For everyone to admit it would probably release such pent-up force as to be devastating to societies as they now are.<br /><br />"The fact is that this is what society is and always has been: a symbolic action system, a structure of statuses and roles, customs and rules for behavior, designed to serve as a vehicle for earthly heroism. ...<br /></i>[5]<i><br />... What the anthropologists call "cultural relativity" is thus really the relativity of hero-systems the world over. ...each system cuts out roles for performances of various degrees of heroism: from the "high" heroism of a Churchill, a Mao, or a Buddha, to the "low" heroism of the coal miner,...<br /><br />"It doesn't matter whether the cultural hero-system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning. ... The hope and belief is that the things that man creates in society are of lasting worth and meaning, that they outlive or outshine death and decay, that man and his products count."</i><br /><br />(<a href="https://fickleears.blogspot.com/2023/07/beckerthe-denial-of-death-i.html" rel="nofollow">more</a>)<br /><br /><br />So, the "artifact," to use LRJ's loaded term, meets this need on the <i>concrete</i> plane. <br /><br />Both the "artifact" and that "expression" which "is beauty" may be seen in Becker's sense as products of the "hero-system" <i>du jour</i> The "artifact" too most certainly "issues from life." But it is <i>concrete.</i> This is important.Stefan Kachttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03103517356905739209noreply@blogger.com