“The sadist doesn’t create a masochist, he finds him ready made.” – Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death Masochism in Modern Man explores the psychological roots of masochism from an interesting perspecitve. When I read the final chapters of The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, I was struck by an interesting discussion about sadomasochism, … Read more
One way of understanding how something works is to divide it into its component parts, and then to study the parts individually. This is the linear way of understanding. But there is a second way, and this is the holistic way of understanding something. This requires you to understand how the whole works, and how … Read more
I first read the 48 Laws of Power, and since then, I have read the other five books that he wrote and have summarized them. Understanding Greene The reason why I enjoy his work is because they are written in a simple way, and while there is some degree of pretension, his outlook on human … Read more
Mozart’s Rebellion Mozart was a gifted child, who surprised everyone around him with his musical genius. But for his entire youth, and up until his mid-twenties, he was imitating other people’s styles of music rather than developing something uniquely his. His father was very involved in his career, and money was always an issue. Mozart … Read more
The Naive Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin loved reading and writing. In newspapers, he found the perfect outlet to improve his skills, and he did. At a young age, he wanted to display his talent. It so happened that his older brother started his own newspaper business. Benjamin worked with him for years before, but his … Read more
A mentor is a shortcut to mastery. Of course, you can teach yourself anything you want on your own, and many have done this, but there are two main disadvantages with this. The first is that you could waste a lot of time. A good mentor can give you direct feedback, and they can tell … Read more
Darwin had a domineering father who pressured him into professions he didn’t have an interest in, such as the clergy. After spending most of his time hunting and collecting biological specimens, his father scolded him, and told him that he would be a disgrace to himself and his family. One day, he defied his father … Read more
There is an idea, that since every person is unique, has never existed before, and will never exist again, that they are made up on a unique configuration of atoms, that they will have a life calling that is unique to them. That is, there is something that you are attracted to, and the reason … Read more
Greene reminds us that before industrial society, humans derived a survivalist advantage in observing and in thinking to themselves. A human hunter could afford to observe the patterns of behavior of other animals, before creating the right hunting strategy. That is, the human being figured out how to make time work for him. His physical … Read more
The Denial of Death is about man’s primal repression. Freud believed that man’s basic repression is sexual, but Becker argued that it is the denial of finitude, creatureliness, and mortality. Becker makes this argument based on the work of Otto Rank, Norman Brown, Soren Kierkegaard and Sigmund Freud. Freud observed that man’s neurosis was a … Read more