Poetic Outlaws Weekly Recommended Books: The Human Condition

"So many books, so little time."

Happy Friday Subscribers.

It’s that time of the week when I throw out a few book recommendations. This week’s theme is the “Human Condition.” These are some of the best books that I’ve read that shed light on who we are as self-conscious creatures and why we behave and act the way we do.

At the bottom, I have a short list of books I’m currently reading.

Let’s go!

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1. ‘The Denial of Death’ by Ernest Becker

I adore this book more than any book I’ve ever read. It’s my go-to reference for trying to understand why we’re such strange, sometimes evil, egocentric creatures. I wrote a whole article about it here.

From Amazon: Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the "why" of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie -- man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates more than twenty years after its writing.

A few passages:

“The real world is simply too terrible to admit. It tells man that he is a small trembling animal who will someday decay and die. Culture changes all of this, makes man seem important, vital to the universe, immortal in some ways.”

“Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing."

“The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation, but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.”

2. ‘The True Believer’ by Eric Hoffer

We live in an age of extreme fanaticism. And there’s not a better book that explains the psychology behind it than Hoffer’s “True Believer.”

From Amazon: The famous bestseller with “concise insight into what drives the mind of the fanatic and the dynamics of a mass movement” (Wall St. Journal) by Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Eric Hoffer, The True Believer is a landmark in the field of social psychology, and even more relevant today than ever before in history. Called a “brilliant and original inquiry” and “a genuine contribution to our social thought” by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The True Believer is mandatory reading for anyone interested in the machinations by which an individual becomes a fanatic.

A few passages:

“The permanent misfits can find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement.”

“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”

“Propaganda ... serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others; and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent our propaganda.”

3. ‘Man's Search for Himself’ by Rollo May

From Amazon: Loneliness, boredom, emptiness: These are the complaints that Rollo May encountered over and over from his patients. In response, he probes the hidden layers of personality to reveal the core of man's integration--a basic and inborn sense of value. Man's Search for Himself is an illuminating view of our predicament in an age of overwhelming anxieties and gives guidance on how to choose, judge, and act during such times.

A few passages:

“Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all.”

“The human being cannot live in a condition of emptiness for very long: if he is not growing toward something, he does not merely stagnate; the pent-up potentialities turn into morbidity and despair, and eventually into destructive activities.”

“Finding the center of strength within ourselves is, in the long run, the best contribution we can make to our fellow men. ... One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him. This is what our society needs — not new ideas and inventions; important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen, but persons who can "be", that is, persons who have a center of strength within themselves.”

4. They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45 by Milton Mayer

From Amazon: They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Mayer’s book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name “Kronenberg.” “These ten men were not men of distinction,” Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis. His discussions with them of Nazism, the rise of the Reich, and mass complicity with evil became the backbone of this book, an indictment of the ordinary German that is all the more powerful for its refusal to let the rest of us pretend that our moment, our society, our country are fundamentally immune.

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Currently Reading:

The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig

The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Myth As Metaphor and As Religion by Joseph Campbell

The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems by Fernando Pessoa

Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac

The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing by Joost Mereloo

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Happy reading, folks. Hope you all have a great weekend. Cheers till next time.

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