Vital Ideas: Heroism and Ernest Becker

Ernest Becker writes:

"In times such as ours there is a great pressure to come up with concepts that help men understand their dilemma; there is an urge toward vital ideas, toward a simplification of needless intellectual complexity. Sometimes this makes for big lies that resolve tensions and make it easy for action to move forward with just the rationalizations that people need. But it also makes for the slow disengagement of truths that help men get a grip on what is happening to them, that tell them where the problems really are.

"One such vital truth that has long been known is the idea of heroism...Not only the popular mind knew, but philosophers of all ages, and in our culture Emerson and Nietzsche -- which is why we still thrill to them: we like to be reminded that our central calling our main task on this planet is the heroic.