Ernest Becker's Educational Legacy: a Critical Reflection

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2020-08-11 Ernest Becker's Educational Legacy: A Critical Reflection

Fisher, R. Michael

In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute

Fisher, R. M. (2020). Ernest Becker’s Educational Legacy: A Critical Reflection. (Technical Paper No.99). In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/112381

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Ernest Becker’s Educational Legacy: A Critical Reflection

R. Michael Fisher

Technical Paper No. 99

In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute

Ernest Becker’s Educational Legacy: A Critical Reflection

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Ernest Becker’s Educational Legacy: A Critical Reflection

1 R. Michael Fisher, Ph.D.

Technical Paper No. 99

Abstract

The author reviews the literature in professional education that cites Ernest Becker’s work from the 1960s-70s. Some of Becker’s main ideas from his own writing on education are also reviewed. The purpose here is to establish a sketch, not a full-study, of the importance of Becker’s educational legacy and begin some critique of the biases of professional educators in regard to utilizing Becker’s work. This critical reflectivity is an appropriate model of Becker’s own integrative approach to knowledge and learning. The aim is to ensure that future applications may be cautious to certain reductive tendencies and offer more diverse perspectives that are truer to Becker’s oeuvre and core ideas about human behavior and societies in general, and education specifically. The author concludes that the future of Education, formal and informal, would do well to take a long serious look at Becker’s work, especially as the world’s children, youths and adults are is becoming more and more vulnerable to frightening conditions, with cascading collapse of systems, including extinctions of all kinds already well underway in an era of global threats nearing extremes. Becker’s oeuvre is both realistic and ideal- istic, offering Education a way to radically improve to help make for a better world.

1 Fisher is an Adjunct Faculty member of the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, AB, Canada. He is an educator and fearologist and co-founder of In Search of Fearlessness Project (1989- ) and Research Institute (1991- ) and lead initiator of the Fear- lessness Movement ning (2015- ). The Fearology Institute was created by him recently to teach international students about fearology as a legitimate field of studies and profession. He is also founder of the Center for Spiritual Inquiry & Integral Education and is Depart- ment Head at CSIIE of Integral & 'Fear' Studies. Fisher is an independent scholar, public intellectual and pedagogue, lecturer, author, consultant, researcher, coach, artist and Princi- pal of his own company (http://loveandfearsolutions.com). He has four leading-edge books: The World’s Fearlessness Teachings: A critical integral approach to fear management/education for the 21st century (University Press of America/Rowman & Littlefield), Philosophy of fearism: A first East-West dialogue (Xlibris) and Fearless engagement of Four Arrows: The true story of an Indigenous-based social transformer (Peter Lang), Fear, law and criminology: Critical issues in applying the philosophy of fearism (Xlibris); India, a Nation of Fear and Prejudice (Xlibris); The Marianne Williamson Presidential Phenome- non (Peter Lang). Currently, he is developing The Fearology Institute to teach courses. He can be reached at: [email protected]

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PREAMBLE

We are living in a time of uncertainty, anxiety, fear, and despair....Humankind will survive only through the commitment and involvement of individuals in their own and others’ growth and development as human beings....Through commitment to personal growth individual human beings will also make their contribution to the growth and development—the evolution—of the whole species to become all that humankind can and is meant to be. Death is the key to that evolution. For only when we understand the real meaning of death to human existence will we have the courage to become what we are destined to be....It is the denial of death that is partially responsible for people living empty, purposeless lives...too easy to postpone things you know that you must do....commit yourself to growth. -Elizabeth Kübler-Ross (1975, pp. 164-65)

Why Educators Might Study Ernest Becker’s Work

[re: Becker’s book trilogy devoted to a “new science of man” in the 1960s was meant to achieve] a new orientation...against the ascendancy of medical-psychiatric explanations of human behavior....[adding ] social-behavioral theories of mental illness....[to provide] a unified theory of action....to place the whole understanding of human nature into the historical perspective of the past two centuries....[creating] an integral framework.... -Ernest Becker (1968, p. xiv)2

This was a challenging paper to write. I thank several scholars for conversations, and those readers who commented on drafts.3 One reason of many, for my passionate attraction to Becker’s work now is because of his broad and deep ‘reading’ of the past few hundred years of diverse knowledges and theories, and his dedication to synthesize for readers of his time the ‘best’ picks from his experience of what would make an integral framework, philosophy, and theory for understanding human beings. Any educator with integrity ought to be in a constant quest to learn about human be-

2 This quote was penned in 1964, updated in 1966 (cited from Preface, 1968). 3 I have gained insights from Jack Martin, Joseph Scimmeca, and especially Daniel Liechty who commented in detail on this paper.

4 5 havior and society’s organization with emphasis on their deepest motivations. To find rare researchers and thinkers like Becker is a treat for me and that’s why I am dedicating this Ernest Becker’s Educational Legacy to the published works in my field of Education at-large. I will not be able to do justice to all of Becker’s ideas in this publication, but to let you know that his overall work is in line with the earlier developments in educational thought by John Dewey4 but taken to a greater extent into dialogues with anthropology, ethology, psychiatry, sociology, theology, and other disciplines than Dewey had accomplished in his time. In 1967 Becker wrote his one and only book on education itself. I wished I would have been introduced to it in my B.Ed. degree program.

One might question immediately: What’s the point of studying some old philosopher’s works? Isn’t it enough to be learning new philosophers of education and trendy views about human behavior based on up-dated scientific data? I understand that question’s relevance. At the age of nearly 69 years old myself, when I look back of my own learning, I have to say, the greatest things I’ve learned are those coming from history, supplemented with findings coming from current times. It is their synthesis of perspectives across time that I believe ‘best’ inform today’s citizens and teachers.

There is always an invisibility of great genius, since time immemorial, lurking in historical documents and past memory, which is waiting for exposure to improve Education. It takes dedicated ‘archeologists’ to dig up what most stand on with irreverence and forget. Most of us search the landscapes of cultural explosions and trending for the contemporary most styl- ish heroes for inspiration and guidance. Becker abhorred “faddism” in the domain of research, ideas and knowledge.5 Educators are susceptible to that as well, for I remember my days in the institutionalized educational System, from the pre-service undergraduate courses in how to ‘become a teacher’ through to the on-the-job learning as a public school teacher. I felt the faddish pressures and what priorities are enacted by children’s parents, peer-teachers, school administrators and political appointees, who make

4 And in an American context, before Dewey, the continuity of progressive integrative knowledge quests by Josiah Royce, William James, and James Mark Baldwin (cf. Wilber, 2000a, p. xi) are important foundations to Dewey’s oeuvre and educational philosophy. All of these powerful thinkers were challenging the hegemony of the “new rationalism” (e.g., hubris) since the French Enlightenment—and more a need to go beyond “intellectualism” and “narrow analytic intelligence” only, towards a social philosophy that includes social change brought about by good social systems analysis “during troubled times” (Becker, 1968, pp. 5-6). 5 E.g., Becker (1968), p. 6.

5 6 policy about Education. I was typically critical and very disappointed. I thought my career choice, albeit, not my first career, was right but the entire Education system seemed rigged against my being able to bloom. There came points of having to decide what I thought was ‘best’ education based on ‘best’ notions of human behavior and critiques of society. What everyone else thought was fine, but there was no way they were the only experts to listen to. Too many of them were protecting the status quo. I wanted to be my own expert in building my emancipatory educational philosophy and how I wanted to teach as a critical pedagogue. I saw this simi- lar limitation for many brightest of teachers beginning their careers, never mind how many students in schooling systems of all kinds I have wit- nessed ‘fall through the cracks,’ often because they get overwhelmed with ‘others’ agendas about what is the ‘best’ education. And, yes, so many of them become completely disenchanted with learning and schooling and the authoritarian regime of everyone trying to dominate what the ‘best’ education should look like.

Eventually, as part of maturation, one has to stop the madness of trying to ‘stay cool,’ ‘be hip,’ and ‘with it’ in our intellectual pursuits and careers. Slow down. Find your own perspective. Build on the ‘great shoulders’ of others in the past—our ancestors. Turn to the archeological digs and be willing to be courageous enough to take turns down roads less traveled. Forget about being popular. Find ideas from history to integrate back into regular life and prepare them, shift them, in order to help yourself and all of us to navigate better the oncoming future. And be prepared for conflicts when people are actually honest about their thoughts and feelings about learning and teaching.

So, on your journey of learning, in and outside of the status quo, return from such archeological digs with gifts that truly shine through the contemporary occluded travails, morass and hype of contemporary times. Shy not away from being ‘deep.’ Historical inquiries now and then bring perspectives that the current society is ‘blind’ too. Our Education systems also fall into this trap of the ‘new’ and often adopt ways of teaching and curriculum designs that are created without a lot of depth, wisdom and larger holistic-integral perspective—especially, historical consciousness perspectives of lessons learned from the past. Be critical.

Preparing for a Very Challenging (Dangerous) Future

I am the least interested of most to want to scare people about education and the future pressing in. So often that is done because people who scare

6 7 others are scared themselves and want to ‘spread the fear virus,’ because they are desperately trying to get control of the uncontrollable. My work is quite the opposite, as I present a philosophy of fearlessness. Yet, that’s not what I wish to discuss here. The above opening section gives you a brief sense of where I am coming from and why I turn often to historical figures to look at their ideas to bring into my curriculum designs and educational philosophy. Okay, you as a teacher may have other interests and priorities than my own; but it is also likely that you care about the future—the future of your students. That’s where we have one thing in common.

The main issue in all of the above disenchantments of many in Education as a field, seem to typically revolve around being in an Educational System (society) that is not up-to-date with the emerging and crucial realities of the ‘big world.’ It is not-up-to-date with some of the brightest thinking and research coming from others fields of inquiry. Instead, the focus on effi- ciency of measures of accountability, like test scores, streaming and status, and getting a good job, etc. were in past decades (still are now) valued way more than issues like ‘is the world going to survive’ in the next decade or two? ‘What use is an education,’ asked Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate activist, ‘If the world won’t be here in the next decade or two?’

This sense of terror and despair in her understanding of a world’s future quickly diminishing is reflective of my point of relevance that is too often missing in Education and the training of educators. Eventually, I got a Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction in order to attempt to help bring in more relevance. And there are others trying to do the same. But quickly many of those teachers I’ve met working at the leading-edge of relevant futures education initiatives, realized that though it is great to get kids thinking about the future on larger terms than a job market, the confronting of real “hot” issues like global warming, nuclear war, and many other global crises, leads to seeing that information is not enough to make a ‘best’ education for anyone. Most of us critical educators noticed that educating about the future has its costs—it is an affective domain at its core. And the main cost is the mental health of the learners. Just how much truth about the future can a young person handle? And by handle, I mean, cognitively, affective- ly, morally, existentially. We ethically had to ask that capacity question— and, today it is even more important. The world is becoming more threatening, more terrifying, more ‘evil’—at least, that’s what many of the best teachers know—and, many young people starting at an early age also sense ‘something is terribly wrong with the world.’

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Armed with truth, reality, and enthusiasm to confront the powers and problems of unsustainability, do we as educators have a right to crash the inno- cent worldviews and beliefs of our students? Or, of their parents, of other teachers, and so on? These mental health capacity and resilience issues are always related to well-intended “lessons” that are anxiety-provoking conversations about the future—crises—and, raise inner questions for young people about: Will there be a future quality of life to expect when they graduate? It’s a big dilemma for us educators who think about these things—about the relevancy of education. Reality and truth sound like great concepts until you realize that teaching about them can really upset the “social fictions” (worldviews and myths), that Becker (1967) referred to, by which people live by and depend upon. The core of self-esteem and identity are built-in to the ‘old’ social fictions and role expectations and pictures in the imaginaries (and fantasies) of people about the future.

I have long being searching for wisdom to guide teaching about the future, while knowing it is extremely important for me and educators to understand human behavior under extreme conditions. That’s where my interest comes in the writing of Ernest Becker (1924-74), as I see it as incredibly relevant thought for our times of great global crises and a fragile future shrinking. Becker, an American, was a product of the 1960s-70s and (r)evolution amongst the rebellious youth in those decades, who started to learn about the ecological disaster of modern progress, as well as the many inequities of capitalism that had turned predatory on life, and was out of control and debasing the very functioning of governance and democracy. Becker was searching for a better ‘unified’ and ‘integral’ way of understanding humans, and unveiled much of the why behind what humans do and when they do it. He was after understanding their motivations, for the highest deeds and the lowest (like evil). He was looking for answers to stop the destruction. And, his work reveals this sincere interdisciplinary study and understanding making recommendations from what he had learned for Education—mostly, at the post-secondary level but he also knew much of his work could be applied throughout the earlier levels too, a point I will make in this technical paper.

Ernest Becker, a professional social scientist, is not a household name in general, and as an academic he was barely recognized in North American until (mostly) after his death, when his penultimate book (The Denial of Death) won a 1974 Nobel Prize for its undeniable contribution to humanity and the future. This prize of great honor is deserved for someone so dedicated to synthesizing knowledge about humans from across landscapes and archeological digs, diversity of disciplines—and, then sincerely attempting

8 9 to put knowledge into theories and concrete practices that actually could work to improve the human condition and eco-planetary sustainability. There is ‘wisdom’ there Becker thought, and he himself was a model for its teaching in times of great historical tumult, fear and hope like the 1960s- 70s.

Invisible to Visible: The Future of Becker—Meets Education

I opened with the famous Elizabeth Kübler-Ross telling us 45 years ago that we have to attend better to the problem of the rampant “denial of death,” of which Ernest Becker said pretty much the same thing. That, is one reason to read and understand these important historical figures, because in many ways, our society today is still in “denial of death” on many scales, from individual to societal. A future educational perspective requires we deal with “death” and “rebirth,” an ancient theme found in all the wisdom traditions across cultures and times. So that Education itself does not fall into this same “denial” complex and the distortions and pathologies it can create—yes, cultural pathologies—I think we can find a ‘better’ way to enter the future and co-create it, in more sustainable, sane and healthy ways.

In this paper, I wish to focus on his contribution to the professional field of Education and to the domain of learning and knowledge in general—as educational. Becker explicitly wrote one book in 1967on education. It has remained rarely found, read nor cited. The one small book written on Becker’s work applied to educational philosophy by an educator is Kagan (1994). And although there is a marginal rise of interest in Becker in the field of Education surfacing in the last few years, the two historical and intellectual ‘gaps’ in this regard are not to be taken lightly. From 1967 (Becker’s book on education) to 1994 says one thing—and, it is understandable that someone like Becker, situated in anthropology, not coming from the field of Education, would take a while to be picked-up in Educa- tion circles. On the other hand, it says something else, if we inquire and persist in that inquiry, that the 1990’s book by Kagan, interpreting Becker’s educational philosophy for educators is virtually unfound, unread, uncited—and, yes, let’s just say it, ignored as well. Ignored may be the more polite term for what has really happened. Kagan himself, then and until this day, moved on to other topics of interest, never has pursued with much follow-up to promote Beckerian-informed education.6

6 According to Daniel Liechty, pers. comm., August 10, 2020.

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You’d think if teachers and theoretical educators came across Becker (1968), or a sociologist writing about Becker’s educational philosophy (Scimecca, 1978), which was published in an educational theory journal, or an educational philosopher (Kagan, 1994) explicating Becker’s educational thought for a broader audience—would have created some kind of ‘body’ of thinking, dialogue and writing from within the field of Education(?). This has not happened, or at least I have not been able to find it yet in the literature. Perhaps, a larger intensive search in the future will turn up more than the few crumbs I have found.

As an educator myself, since the late 1970s onward, have dipped my toes in and out of Becker’s work since 1983 but mostly I have not given it the attention it deserves. So, let me begin this paper with Michael Alan Kagan, an educator and philosophical thinker in the field of Education, although not well known, he had taken serious time to dwell with and honor Becker’s work and speak to us 26 years later since his publication of Educating Heroes:

We have a world [mid-1990s] changing, at a thin edge of possible destruction. A standard response, and it seems to be a sane one, is to cry out for better education [to hold off or to turn around, the im- pending crises]....Becker’s world [1960s-70s crises] is ours....Becker provides an implicit and explicit philosophy of education....The [Beckerian] theory reflects the ambitious strivings of a brilliant synthetic thinker to perform a heroic task in a frightened world. (Kagan, 1994, p. 3)

According to the recently issued Encyclopedia of Death & Dying:

Becker’s academic career suffered enormously because of his intellectual courage and because of the skepticism of “tough-minded” social scientists toward his ideas. Becker’s writings continue to influence psychotherapeutic, educational, and theoretical work, especially as regards the pervasiveness of the fear of death in governing individual and social behavior in the twenty-first century.7

Education cannot ignore pervasive fear and the “frightened world” as a meta-context for everything, and for pointing to what it is we have to teach that is crucial. I believe this meta-context calls for a new ‘Fear’ Studies in general across all the disciplines (Fisher, 2006). The primary reason I write educational philosophy, design curriculum, experiment with pedagogies

7 Retrieved from http://www.deathreference.com/A-Bi/Becker-Ernest.html#ixzz6Sqipiueu

10 11 and study Ernest Becker’s work (among others) is because of Becker’s courageous and radical emphasis on “the pervasiveness of the fear,” which primarily motivates individual and collective structures, thoughts, affects, and behaviors. If we are really honest (beyond denial), history itself is a history of fear.8 It’s a history of fear management done well and not so well—and at times done disastrously. All there—many lessons to learn from—if we archeologically ‘dig.’ If we stop. If we take historical consciousness seriously and its role to play in developing wisdom for our times now. No one escapes this influence.

I know what if feels like, as did Becker, to face the “tough” peers, col- leagues and just about everyone, by confronting them with a theory of human motivation that focuses on “fear.” It can scare people hearing this. I was told (c. 2001) during my Education doctorate degree by a colleague that to pursue this path in academia—“Is career suicide.” She was correct. But I started on that path in 1989 before I had much choice in career; because the awareness I ‘awoke to’ would (apparently) not let me go any other direction. Truth was that important to me. I eventually was filtered, cen- sored, funneled and excluded (‘streaming’ in Education is the name), and had to become an independent scholar, which has its upsides and down- sides.

The Fear Problem is a big deal. Educators, unfortunately, want to make it (and Becker’s philosophy of education) not a big deal. If Becker is ignored, eschewed, denied access in educational thinking—it is, in my view, because of this unpalatable emphasis on “fear” in Becker’s work. Many might argue, it is “death” that Becker focused on that is most unpalatable. Yet, one could narrow the larger assessment of fear down to something much more palatable to society, even to academics—and, even to appeal to common sense. We are all afraid to die. Mortality and finitude sucks! Death is like an allergy, or so it seems.9

8 Which is the main premise of Subba (2014), and his philosophy of fearism. 9 I purposefully used this observation, claim, and common understanding of the human condition, and all educators I know, including those in this technical paper, use this phrase, more or less, and associate it with Becker’s work. True, it seems reasonable to assert in this regard; however, I want to distinguish my own referencing for this notion and claim. If one takes the Dominant worldview perspective (of 1% of human history up into contemporary times) as opposed to the Indigenous worldview perspective (of 99% of human history prior to modern times) then the claim is quite accurate. An Indigenous worldview however does not characteristically operate on a fear-based cosmology that makes death allergenic (cf. Four Arrows, 2016).

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So strategically, Becker took this road and called out the “fear of death” (actually, he called out the “denial of death”10 as the culprit to most of the worst things that humans do) but he knew well it was more than that that societies were conflicted by11 and afraid of. It can be argued the “fear of life” and “fear of death” equally motivate the most primary levels of what humans do (says Otto Rank, whom Becker relied upon in much of his thought). In Fisher (2020), I have chosen Rank and Becker as two of my ‘Big Five’ theorists as constituting the early development of critical thinking on what is now called the context of “culture of fear” in which virtually everyone and everything is embedded. That’s another way of expressing the Fear Problem. It doesn’t much matter to me the specifics per se of which “the pervasiveness of the fear” is transferred onto, projected onto, and finally named and settles as conscious expressions or symptoms (e.g., fear of x, y, z). Fear is the fundamental human motivation (a la Rank- Becker and others)—like it or not. Later in this paper, this notion is complicated in terms of a fuller picture of the Beckerian motivational theory as it relates to psychodynamic, existential and/or transpersonal transference processes, learning and education in general.

The good news is that Becker’s, mostly unpalatable (i.e., feared) philosophy, did and still does appeal to a very small but significant audience. As the encyclopedia above noted, his work has ongoing influence in “psychotherapeutic, educational, and theoretical work” across many fields. I will search out and “test” to see just how true it is that Becker’s work has influence in Education. It’s likely very little. Yet, because of Becker’s project and focus, raising the importance of pervasive fear as a motivation thesis— this is, where I start to critically think about Education as a field, across ages, cultures, and time. Fear and its power12 in human motivation is universal and ubiquitous, perhaps no more so historically than in the 21st century (post-9/11 era), which already is turning out to be a “century of ter-

10 E.g., Becker (1973). 11 Not the least of Becker’s central notions are “transference” and “alienation” as the I-We problem (using my terms). Transference especially requires an extra disciplined effort by those who study Becker and/or Terror Management Theory today—and, typically, such educators (other than Kagan, 1994) are amiss to give it proper attention. This is Daniel Liechty’s (1995) early argument in general and it coincides with my conversations with him recently—and one I am just beginning to see in its stark reality. Unfortunately, in this technical paper I can barely touch on this due to limited space. 12 More technically accurate, I would suggest knowledge-fear-power (in a Foucauldian sense) is the best “unit” and/or construct in which to pursue the study of fear and Education; yet, that would unnecessarily complexify the basic introductory nature of this discussion.

12 13 ror.”13 Educators ought not ignore this meta-context, of which I have harped on for decades, often under the label of “culture of fear” and Educa- tion.14

Quick Listing of Educators Using Becker’s Work

Although it is a task way beyond this technical paper to extensively document all educators15 using Becker’s work, and the ways they do, and the critiques I have—suffice it to say, this is a skeletal introduction to this topic. I see little legacy of Becker on Education as a field but that does not mean the influences of his life and work in educational circles is not significant—mostly, it is not documented. I’ll begin the systematic documenta- tion here and stir up my own interpretive questions for further research. Recently, I have published a paper on fear management and education generally, which includes Becker’s work in the field of Education but ex- tends a wider and historical discussion beyond Becker’s work.16

Excluding my own writing on Becker (going back to 1983) for the moment, most recently Van Kessel & Burke (2018), Van Kessel & den Heyer & Schimel (2020) have given significant attention to applications of Becker’s work in educational settings and have exposed educational philosophy to ideas they don’t typically entertain, for e.g., “existential terror” and “terror management theory” (TMT). Van Kessel et al. have a general pragmatic bent in bringing this work to professional educational practition- ers (teachers) and classrooms. One book on educational philosophy, Smith (2014) briefly mentions Becker (1973) as providing educators the direction of not completely denying death, while integrating that with a Buddhist holistic concept and a spiritual mindful attitude towards life.17 Kagan’s

13 This has been my indictment for a few decades, of which Dr. Sheldon Solomon, one of the three co-founders of Terror Management Theory and an expert on Ernest Becker’s work, has confirmed in a recent dialogue I had with him (Fisher & Solomon, 2020). 14 For a full review of that see for e.g., Fisher (1998, 2007, 2020). 15 “Educator” is loosely used in part but I am also restricting the term to those who are professionals trained and degreed (to some extent) in the field of Education per se (including community and adult education). 16 Fisher (2020a); see also Fisher (2020b) re: a dialogue between terror management theory and fear management education. 17 In this same book by Smith, my own work on “culture of fear” and “fearless” is cited, and it is posited by Smith as a viable option and potential focus for critical education in the future.

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(1994) and Gillian’s (2005) small books on Becker’s work and applications to an educational philosophy are the only books on the topic, other than a short handbook for social studies teachers by van Kessel et al. (2018). Un- like the other books, van Kessel et al. (2018) gives a good amount of attention to TMT; and, an important article by Scimecca (1978) is devoted to Becker’s ideas, which are fairly well explicated in relationship to his educational theory (in part); yet, Scimecca was not coming out of the field of Education proper but was writing as a social scientist (sociologist).

In conclusion, for some 50+ years since Becker wrote a book on education and later won the Pulitzer Prize for his famous book Denial of Death, there is very rare (published) engagement of professional teachers and/or educators in the field of Education with Becker’s work. I predict this will change for the better soon.

A Brief Synopsis: “Why” The Invisibility?

Other than death, anxiety/fear/terror, and a world in deadly crisis as context, for Becker’s work and democracy itself the overall futurist criticality and exposure of vulnerability is enough to keep most educators moving in the opposite direction. The general unpalatability of Becker’s work remains. Let me turn briefly to his education book itself for other clues of why the minimum up-take over the decades. The subtitle is rather dark, a mood not unusual in Becker’s philosophy on anything—it reads: “A Phi- losophy of Education for the Crisis of Democracy” and that’s a big topic— perhaps, an overwhelming topic for the average school teacher or even most educators. Most educators are characteristically quite pragmatic. They most want to solve a lot smaller problems; usually more directly related to actual institutions and learners under their management and governance, if not “job description.” And Becker himself does acknowledge the vastness, near hopelessness, of his big ideal trajectory, while being conscious that educational-types may already be sick-n-tired of more theoretical (often too liberal) high flying ideas on education from another time, and out-of- time with the current real world of educating on the ground:

[from his Preface:] Still another book on the “problem” of education? Frankly, no. At least I claim not. What I do claim is so ambitious and decisive, that it risks appearing pure charlatanry. Yet, I must make my distinctive claim [regardless]. (Becker, 1967, p. ix)

It’s common to experience Becker’s philosophical attitude as both brave and expansive, if not exploding in vision and truths, but equally he holds

14 15 back going too far and thinking he (or anyone) has the answers to humanity’s (educational) problems. In the end, in his Epilogue the cautionary is emphasized:

A theoretical vision [like my own], no matter how true to fact it might turn out to be, no matter how painfully long it took to be shaped, is still little more than a dream, unless it is put into practice. (Becker, 1967, p. 291)

This technical paper is dedicated to both theory and practical applications potential and/or actually going on in the field of Education at this time and in the history of such directions. In his Preface he lets us all know of his theoretical vision for a “unified world view” or at least, a “new unified science of man”18 (p. x)—and, he recommends that his audience reads both his works; the one on education proper (1967) and the larger ideas in the unified theory book, which are more developed in Becker (1968). Becker’s philosophy, infuses an affective dimension along with his, more or less, hopeful vision. Liecthy shared,19

In Becker’s own writings, this early optimism visibly peaks particularly in the ‘alienation curriculum’ [Chapter Five] Becker outlined in Beyond Alienation....That book was a fuller length treatment of his ideas Becker first published in an essay, “Personality Development in the Modern World: Beyond Freud and Marx” (1963). These works fairly brim with Becker’s optimism about human prospects. Strong and persistent advocacy for what in our current parlance we would call progressive social policy [and education] fairly character- izes this early half of his professional career (from about 1960 until 1967.) (p. 8)

Optimistic maybe, but Becker was severely critical of near everything about W. civilization. In the “second half” of his career (1968-74) “we see some shifts and serious doubts starting to creep in....something was deeply wrong,” as Becker was detecting in so-called freedom movements and rev- olutions in history to that point and “Becker began to more closely study the consistent failures of human history” (Liechty 20). By the final years of publishing during 1971-74 (when more people were finally reading this

18 This book title is for an earlier version to be published in 1965, that was changed and delayed as Becker (1968), according to the Ernest Becker Foundation website. Note, he has also used “comprehensive theory of human alienation” and “unified theory of human behavior” and “unified theory of action” (respectively, Becker, 1968, pp. xiii, xii, xiv). 19 Pers. comm. in a written draft, Aug. 2, 2020. 20 Pers. comm. in a written draft, Aug. 2, 2020; pp. 8, 9, 11.

15 16 material) he and his work took a “dark turn” (Martin & Liechty, 2019).21 The latter stains history, is retained more than the former amongst the readers and/or rumors of Becker. It was then and still is now bound to turn- off many educators who thrive on hope-promotion in and outside the classroom. Becker, at any stage of his career, with a glow of idealism for sure, he always returned to realism and intellectual honesty in his sophisticated mood of healthy skepticism. Again, in the Preface of his education book, he lets us know the ground base of his philosophy of education by implicitly saying that even with all the education that has gone on in human history and continues to this day (with his focus of thought on higher education in colleges and universities—especially, how to bring about a “fullest” critical liberal education22 applicable to the challenges of the era), that,

...try as he may, man cannot seem to order his world according to his [ideal] visions. Again and again it crumbles, yawns open, and swallows him up; and always in greater and more terrible numbers, or so it seems. We have learned, in effect, that it has never been up to man to make the New Being. And now we see that our best ideas still do not speak to our time.... (Becker, 1967, p. 292)

He drew mostly in this 1967 education book from others outside the field of Education proper, and c.15% is from professional educators of one kind or another—which mirrors his interests in particular thinkers. That may be another reason typical educators have not been attracted to read or share Becker’s educational philosophy. I think Becker would easily have agreed with Ferguson’s new paradigm approach in the early 1980s and her claim that “...education is one of the least dynamic of institutions, lagging far behind medicine, psychology, politics, the media, and other elements of our society” (Ferguson, 1980, p. 280). Becker would strike many as too doubtful, or even too gloomy, or too critically “negative.” The latter, according to Becker scholar Liechty23 is understandable at one level but it is mostly derived from a common under- and/or mis-reading of Becker’s ac-

21 “Becker (1975) pondered the futility of conceiving, let alone achieving [in Becker’s words] ‘a nondestructive yet victorious social system’...” (Martin & Liechty, 2019, p. 143). 22 “...a unified, universal college curriculum, a curriculum that provides modern man [sic] with the necessary unitary, critical world view that will give him maximum strength, flexi- bility, arid freedom for solving the basic problems of human adaptation....the fullest possible liberation of creative human energies...to become a true democracy” (Becker, 1967, p. x). 23 Pers. comm. Leichty, written draft, Aug. 2, 2020.

16 17 tual work and attitude in his career. Liechty noted many, beyond education circles,24 see Becker as:

...unyieldingly pessimistic and he had painted himself into a fatal- istic corner....[when he is looked at “through the lens of Becker’s wider depth psychological theory” overall, including his “expanded transference” notion that is core to all this theory] Becker continued to be animated by the original Enlightenment vision of providing theories and tools for human betterment....Becker left us not with the cynicism of doom, but with the challenge to move ‘beyond psychology’ to find and to construct [higher-grade, non-fear-based25] objects of transference truly worthy of this potential noble species. (p. 16)26

True as that maybe, Becker also was willing to admit his doubts about whether the human species is a viable species in these times.27

Clearly, Becker was focused on higher education and that limits the audience of teachers and educators involved in the massive public education system. Yet, I am convinced (somewhat like Kagan, 1994, p. ix; Scimecca, 1978), what he says about higher education, from an educational philosophy perspective is (in part) quite relevant all the way down the curriculum and grade levels. It is relevant to society-making and basic socialization— as a learning and teaching process (i.e., pedagogical) induction into culture. And in his 1967 education book it is relevant to a specific interest in a sociology of knowledge—which is not always typically focused on by interpreters of Becker’s oeuvre nor his critics, nor the professional educators who have attempted to engage some kind of dialogue with Becker, as I will review in this technical paper. By sociology of knowledge, I mean also a social epistemology of knowledge,28 but these are deep topics beyond the scope of my emphasis here—nonetheless, the point is that Becker’s Part One in his 1967 education book is clearly a statement of what he literally calls “THE PROBLEM” with the Modern World, with where societies have developed and are evolving (or, questionably, de-evolving in some

24 For e.g., Carveth (2004) called Becker a “psychoanalytic anthropologist” promoting a “melancholic existentialism” (p. 422). 25 On this particular technical point re: fear-based or non-fear-based, Liechty (and Becker) may not agree with me; it would take too long to theorize my view on why I believe Beck- er’s theory is overall heading toward and often successfully a non-fear-based (i.e., non- deficit-based, as Maslow (1968) would call it) paradigm/reality/consciousness. 26 Pers. comm., written draft, Aug. 2, 2020. 27 A point made by Becker in his last book Escape from Evil, according to Solomon (2020). 28 Cf. Popkewitz (1991).

17 18 ways he would likely argue). From beginning to end, Becker’s career (in his own words) was a search for a “nondestructive yet victorious social system.” 29

And the Education System overall is the target for him in this 300 pp. book; meaning he is not writing some small booklet or one-off monograph but rather, a full-out extensive analysis of the problems of Education. How could any educator in their schooling, their professional training and in their administrating of education by-pass such a major work on philosophy of education? Well, it happened.

So, to be more blunt to nail down Becker’s educational philosophy and critique, again, just look at Chapter One’s title: “The Problem of the Unity of Knowledge in the Modern World.” What is his big picture of what has happened to Knowledge for centuries, if not millenium, and what corrective could educational work come into play to deal with the passing on of Knowledge to make for a better world? First of all, he is saying in Chapter One, by title alone, educators, you better deal with the lack of the “unity of knowledge” in today’s world as a central intervention in the ‘norm’ ways that W. society (at least) is producing and consuming knowledge—and, in ways that professionalization and specialization of disciplines of knowledge have near totally dominated the learning, teaching and so-called “educational” landscape of the contemporary world. So, he is going to make this his foundational driver to offer a history of education and his corrective for the future of education—that is, for his offering of a vision of a ‘new’ more integrated, more holistic, more integral Education. He has to begin with a comprehensive theory of alienation30 (lack of unity) in order to develop his vision. This is his deep diagnosis of the dis-ease of Educa- tion and sociology of knowledge—which is trapped, in his view in a “social neuroses”31 by any other name. The strong language of psychology, psychiatric and sociological (clinical-sounding) diagnoses by Becker cannot be ignored. He knew the depth of the mental illness that was chronical- ly part of W. civilization. Education had to deal with this real meta-context.

29 Cited from Becker (1975) in Martin & Liechty (2019), p. 143. 30 See Part Two: “THE SOLUTION” in which he starts with his theory of “alienation” and a historical overview, with applications of that diagnosis to the current scene (Becker, 1973). “Becker (1967) had crafted his anthropodicy [analogous to theodicy in theological discourse] as a general theory of alienation [neurosis, a la Rank], an explanation for the evil in the world that is caused by human persons and points to those evils that can be prevented or ameliorated by human effort, the form of which is a liberal education...” (Martin & Liechty, 2019, p. 138). 31 E.g., Becker (1973), p. 81.

18 19

Knowledge in the modern world is, in other words, a social pathology spreading like a virus. In my words, Knowledge (as industry) has become so fear-based, toxically neurotic, and divisive, that it handicaps the entire Education System (as industry)—and, this will not be helpful for our young people growing up. That is, if they are to become the ideal kind of integrative comprehensive learners and leaders of a ‘new’ world of better possibilities. Becker feels this conflict of what’s possible and what is real now. He urges educators onward regardless of the near-impossibility of changing the Education System that’s embedded in doing the job of sustaining the society’s status quo pathologies.

This very deep dark clinical diagnosis of the alienation that accompanies the non-unification of Knowledge (aka Education) is what also is likely a big reason most educators will avoid Becker’s work like the plague. Becker’s educational philosophy all at once starts on this Chapter One plat- form—and, it takes on too big of a chunk of humanity’s problem, that is, too big because for most educators they are limited psychically by their own affective, existential and moral capacities. As Becker (1973) puts it in his decidedly existential philosophy:

In other words, men [sic; educators] aren’t built to be gods, to take in the whole world; they are built like other creatures, to take in the piece of ground in front of their noses....as soon as a man [e.g., Becker himself] lifts his nose from the ground and starts sniffing at eternal [and global] problems like life and death, the meaning of a rose or a star cluster—then he is in trouble. Most men [sic] spare themselves this trouble by keeping their minds on the small problems of their lives just as their society maps these problems out for them [and “pays” them to do their job and forget trying to solve the world’s problems]. (Becker, 1973, p. 178)

Becker totally hits on the truth with this existential observation, as I have gone through an education for 12 years and then a teacher’s professional education in North America, and indeed, this is what I constantly found incredibly frustrating: to watch this reductionism of all education players and parents—that is, their defensive fetishization and partialization (cf. Rank, Becker) of Educational philosophy overall away from (in flight from) global and existential missions of possibilities of liberation (i.e., freedom)—and, equally retraction from necessary eco-social action for basic survival on the planet. Becker’s existential philosophy (unique as it is in shaping his view of a liberal education) was (and still is) an existential- focused (dare I say, postmodern) educational philosophy. And no existen-

19 20 tialism, “a philosophy of crisis,” argues Morris (1966), has been politely respected nor welcomed into “the happy insouciance of a fun-geared, thing-ridden” mainstream North American society—cf. Gillian’s (2005) account of this resistance (denial) in society.

His philosophy is simply too deep for the shallow, too negative for the positive—and if anything tends to rule W. modern ‘enlightened’ societies (to this day) it is the positive obsession with hope-mongering32—going on perhaps for centuries; the Education System almost entirely mirrors that trajectory. Becker does however, try to come up the ‘middle’ of this polari- zation of positive (optimistic) and negative (pessimistic). Yet, most educators would ‘read’ his work distinctly as the latter. Which, is true. Beyond that allergic reaction to Becker’s educational philosophy, is a deeper terror that his work invokes. And whether Becker would have wanted to be per- ceived so threatening or not, he was “attacking” mainstream society and the society’s professional body of educator’s and their consensual (reality) worldview, be they conservative or liberal. If educators were not in active radical resistance to mass society, then Becker (in his own terror) would have concluded they were in collusion with it because, as he wrote,

We [adults/educators] have undertaken a mass-media brainwashing on the largest scale; we will not heed the most obvious criticism of our way of life; we are clinging to our institutions with a mechani- calness that is terrifying. (Becker, cited in Liechty, 2017, p. 105)

For Becker (in Rousseuian fashion), would claim that to be in such collusion is contradictory to being called an educator—rather, we are propagan- dists, if anything more than baby-sitters for the State Authority. He was

32 “Hope-ism” is another way to describe this phenomenon where “teachers” (and “parents”) are supposedly directed by some ethical assumptive principle in modern societies, whereby they are to be the hope-harbingers for children so that children are happy and look forward to the future. Ironically, this has a horrible twist (negative side-effect) where children feel overburdened (mostly unconsciously, perhaps) to be the “hope for the future” for parents, teachers, educators and society-at-large. The National Autism Association (of America) for example, uses “hopeism” as one of their tag-line positive notions for their clients with autism. Critics in education are strongly opposed to this new ideology for various reasons, as am I, because of its linkage with toxic fearism—a larger topic. Fear/hope is the motivational gross selling feature (i.e., of affective economics and politics) of most everything in the open market place today. Yet, even the brightest existential philosophers still cling to hope in their philosophies and teachings, of which Keen (2006) is an exemplar of that tradition—and, for my concern, it is exactly a North American issue—in public schooling etc.—Keen wrote: “Americans have always been a viscerally hopeful people”—be they secular or religious (p. 20). In Fisher (2010), I make the case of the importance of replacing hope with fearlessness.

20 21 attacking the generic and assumptive sense of their positive self-esteem as professionals, who were trying to do their best to ‘help’ children and youth learn and develop (fit into society)—into ‘good’ citizens. This question of “attacking” is one I’ll return to at the end of this paper.

And, another reason Becker in the 1960s would have limited his exposure (aka, approval index) in the academy generally, but in Education, was because the era of philosophy burgeoning in these times was basically ‘anti- hierarchical’33 and increasingly decolonial amongst other things thought to be the ‘new progressive’ wing of enlightenment for the generation of the time. What is worth pointing out is that Becker, no doubt a ‘progressive’ educator (he liked Dewey, for the most part for starters), was still admitted- ly in “kinship” in his general thesis about education—going right back to “the basic Hegelian framework of a self-liberating education” (Becker, 1967, p. xi).34 Well, to even mention any alignment with a dead old white man who’s “model” of liberation depended on a “consciousness” perspective and linear hierarchical path to enlightenment (and Spirit)—this was not going to get Becker invited to the oncoming movements of secularism and academic snubbery that left Hegel back under the category of ‘oppressors’ not liberators. Indeed, Becker had chosen “a necessary ‘self-estrangement’ from his own culture’s35 trending and academic privileging. He would inevitably, more or less, come across as ‘old fashion.’

One could certainly do more research and hypothesize further on “why” Becker’s work is relatively invisible to educators. Fortunately, this was not

33 “By the twentieth century...the Grand Designs began to collapse....[e.g.] Science, having promised so much, had not delivered,” (Morris, 1966, p. 2) and Becker was definitely on a “Unitive Science of Man” project, which is a Grand Design for a ‘new’ renaissance and world. He was going to have to fight against a lot of forces, because his Grand Design was not typically modernist either, nor was he fully postmodernist—and, that makes it complicated to ‘put him in a box.’ 34 There is also the problem of these times where “unified” theories of anything, especially in Humanities and Social sciences (and Education) were a turn-off, to say the least. 35 Becker (1967) acknowledged he is most attracted to one of Hegel’s followers J. R. F. Rosenkranz on “education.” And, in terms of ‘self-estrangement’ as a strategy of a liberating education, Becker was a follower (in part) of J. J. Rousseau and his “ideal-type” of critical educated thinker, as one that criticizes the very basis of the ‘norms’ and ‘taboos’ of the society one has been socialized into. The emancipatory move (for freedom) is to get beyond an overly ego-centric and/or ethnocentric identity and methodological perspective on truth; of which Becker noted: “Hegel and Rosenkranz [like Rousseau, or Nietzsche as well] understood this as a necessary ‘self-estrangement’ from one’s own culture, that served to ‘uni- versalize’ the self” (p. xi)—what in Wilber’s (2000) evolutionary-developmental language is the maturational consciousness (stage) of a “worldcentric” view (p. 20), which includes but transcends the lower levels/stages of ego-centric and ethnocentric perspectives.

21 22 the case for me in my early 30s (see below). Whether things change in the future re: popularity of Becker’s work, well, I do not know but I expect with increasing fear/terror and crises globally and locally, more educators will open to new ways to understand and manage fear/terror—especially, in regards to youth’s challenges in facing a collapsing sense (and reality) of their future, and the world’s, in the next decade. The evidence shows that “terror management theory” is rapidly gaining awareness in the general public and higher education in some pockets. Since 9/11, TMT has grown in its research capacities, diversities and popularity—as people are wanting to know better how to manage terror and conflict. I’ll also point out rather vociferously, TMT is not the same as Becker’s oeuvre, theories and wealth of knowledge. They overlap but require distinctions to avoid conflating them.

Introduction to My First Encounters: With Ernest Becker’s Social Philosophy

...Ernest Becker, one of the great social theorists of our time, a philosophical anthropologist who attempted to provide an integrated view of human nature based on a synthesis of the human sciences [and social and evolutionary sciences] and philosophy. We find in his works a deep concern with the evils humans wrought....36

Yes, I have shifted throughout this paper from calling Becker’s work existential educational philosophy to now social philosophy—and, I could also situate it easily in the sub-field of “existential sociology” or “going beyond sociology”37 (analogous to Becker’s call for going “beyond psychology” to solve the world’s real problems). Beyond the emphasis on the “psychology of terror” linked directly to Becker’s interdisciplinary critical work, which has been popularized and near-glorified in a post-9/11 era;38 to note, the

36 Kagan (1994), p. 2. 37 The existential sociologists (and some others) were already launching their critique (in Beckerian fashion even if they weren’t using Becker)—when, in 2005 the 37th World Con- gress of Sociology entitled its annual gathering “Beyond Sociology” (Giri, 2009, p. 331). 38 I had raised this concern of over-psychologization (i.e., psychologism) of Becker’s work (influenced by TMT) in Fisher (2020a, p. 21, f.n. 37). Reality is, the TMT core researchers were asked by the American Psychological Association (not Sociological Association) to write a book on the psychology of terror(ism) after 9/11 (see Pyszczynski, Solomon, Green- berg, 2002)—the subtitle of that book “The Psychology of Terror.” In the “About the Au- thors” section of that book: “...the three authors are professors of psychology” and the book description tells of how these authors were inspired by “Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural

22 23 term “social” means a good deal to my ‘reading’ of Becker. I’ll stay with Scimecca’s (1978, 1979) analysis of Becker’s work and “educational theory” and less so Kagan’s (1994), Gillian’s (2005) and/or van Kessel’s et al. emphasis on the psychological tendency of default as applied to education.39 As a sociologist, Scimecca (1979) rightfully concluded: “Ernest Becker’s social theory can best be characterized as social phenomenology....Society is a fiction....a game...” (p. 62). Implicitly, critical social theory (in contrast to a functionalist (mainstream) social theory), is the ‘natural’ (radical) critique that Becker has always followed.

Now for some autobiographic/intellectual history. Recently, I published an overview of “fear management and education” and noted their “failing relationship” (Fisher, 2020a), and then published (Fisher, 2020b) on a beginning dialogue between TMT and fear management/education (and FMT= fear management theory). In Fisher & Solomon (2020), I was able to dialogue with one of the TMT founders and explore possibilities of what a 21st century “fear education” might include—and complement “death education” and the general spread of TMT ideas. Ernest Becker’s work is core to all these discussions, and I hope they continue with all kinds of educators into the future. My near 40 year history (as a professional child and adult educator) with Becker is somewhat revealed in those publications, but I offer more details below as I appear to be the first educator to engage Becker’s work and attempt to apply it to the field of Education, focusing that initiative from a radical futures transformative perspective.

The connection with Ernest Becker’s existential and social thinking came through reading his writing second-hand via as interpreted by the contemporary integral philosopher Ken Wilber (1981). Wilber was completely new to me in 1982 when I picked up one of his books in the University of Calgary bookstore, glanced over the pages, and then in detail scanned the Index, then the Table of Contents. I was emotionally and intellectually blown away by the scope of Wilber’s “transpersonal view of human evolu- anthropologist Ernest Becker” but then immediately what is emphasizes is “...their work lays the groundwork for an experimental existential psychology, a new perspective on the human condition influencing current thinking on a wide range of issues within psychology” (and, yes, book was published, perhaps funded (in part), by the American Psychological Association). In other places, the term “social psychology” is often associated with TMT; Kagan (1994) focuses on the “depth psychology” of Becker’s oeuvre in his application to “educating heroes.” Liechty (2017) refers to his work in mental health as “a psychosocial view.” Becker would never reduce or wanted his work in the future reduced to psychology—he was interdisciplinary; see sub-section 9 in Part Three by Liechty (2017), “Beyond Psychology” (a term he borrowed from Otto Rank). 39 Again, see my elaborated critique on this tendency in Fisher (2020a).

23 24 tion.” History, development, evolution and a metaphysical explanation for the ‘evils’ of humankind throughout our entire species time on earth—well, it was a profound eye-opener for me. I barely knew anything but a scientific (external) story of biological evolution and I had more or less situated humans as an animal species within that (e.g., in the late 1970s I read a lot of sociobiology, what was to later become evolutionary psychology). Yet, other parts of my intellectual life and growth came from reading more in psychology (e.g., William James), mythology (e.g., Joseph Campbell), philosophy, religion, mysticism (e.g., Carl Jung, Alan Watts, Fr. Matthew Fox), and eclectic writers like Wilber—and, eventually Becker. I was always attracted to thinkers ‘outside’ of Education circles per se and wanted to bring their ideas into the ‘inside’ of Education. So, I started my first education book proper in 1982,40 which is where I am scanning from my draft copy now in order to recall how Becker showed up.

Reading Wilber’s (1981) book Up From Eden (UFE) gave me a developmental and evolutionary perspective on (in Wilber’s words):

history—not as a chronicle of individual or national feats, but as a movement of human consciousness [spirit]...the story of men and women’s love affair with the Divine. On again, off again; loving and loathing; moving toward and recoiling from.... (p. 1)

This was a grand synthesis of East-West wisdom and empirical knowledge all combined. It included but transcended cultures. It was universal. It was fascinating in its weaving of so many disciplines of knowledge and perspectives. A door flew wide open in my intellectual life and has continued to be the most significant lasting shift for me. In UFE I couldn’t help but notice a new name for me—that was Ernest Becker. His work (two books41) was being cited continually by Wilber to support his own thesis. Wilber noted in writing UFE he drew inputs along the way from “existential anthropology”—whereby, he acknowledged he’d selected Becker and N. O. Brown (p. xi). When I began reading UFE, I had no idea what existential anthropology was or contributed.

40 My book ms was entitled [somewhat after E. F. Schumacher’s 1974 book sub-title on Buddist economics—Small is Beautiful] : Appropriate Education: Future Education as if the Human Being Mattered. 41 Becker (1973, 1975) were only cited by Wilber; these are Becker’s two latest, perhaps most dark (shadow-focused) works, which Becker called his “mature” works, according to Liechty (pers. comm., Aug. 2, 2020). Becker has near a dozen prior books to those.

24 25

Wilber, like so many great minds before him, was setting out a philosophy of the meaning of history (UFE, p. 3). And, that, by necessity, would be intimately intertwined with the meaning of man [sic]. It is a human story told from a (mostly) ‘high level’ (i.e., transpersonal) viewpoint—that is, with macroscale generalizations. And how complicated that story was and still is. It was foreign to my mind that’s for sure. After UFE’s publication many critics went after Wilber re: this book’s universalist ‘grand narrative’ and theses of all kinds—because of many reasons, but ultimately, I see they just didn’t get what a transpersonal viewpoint was—or they, resisted going there. I sensed the critics were ubiquitously threatened by the dark under- belly quality of the ‘human’ narrative of this Wilberian-Beckerian synthesis in UFE. And, sure, it was a synthesis extremely hard for me to understand at first. I needed many years to digest it.

Becker, not a transpersonalist thinker42 per se but more so an existentialist, certainly added a significant dimension to this ‘big story’ Wilber was crafting. But I can only speculate as to how much Becker’s influence was influencing Wilber43—because at base, Wilber is a Zen Buddhist as well as an independent scholar with a strong “spiritual” emphasis, which is not so obvious in Becker’s work.44 And yet, when I read back into that text from UFE today, what pops out is Wilber’s ‘corrective’ conclusion and/or pro- posed declaration in his Preface (with a good deal of existential flavor—“a tragic angle”):

[H]umankind is an essentially tragic figure with a beautifully optimistic future—if they can survive the transition [“half beast, half god”]. I have, therefore, told the story of mankind’s growth and evo-

42 So Wilber is a transpersonalist as self-identified in the mid-to-late 1970s at least, but by the early 1980s he was disenchanted with transpersonal psychology and the movement (with “new agey” elements) that was popularized with it in the sex-drugs counterculture of the 1960s-70s especially. He has said he left, with his critiques, the transpersonal movement (as his intellectual identity) in the early 1980s; for a good sense of why he left see Wilber (1981, p. 328)—he eventually, many years later dubbed his work “integral psychology” and led a branch (ongoing) of the Integral Movement (and Integral Theory). I situate my work (mostly) in this latter movement/theory and am a staunch critic of much of where Wilber and the movement has gone (especially, after 1996). 43 Fact is, after UFE, it is virtually impossible to find Wilber speaking of, or writing about Becker’s work, much to my chagrin. 44 Another reason (hypothesis) potentially that Wilber took only what he wanted from Becker and left behind most of the rest, would be due to Becker’s staunch criticism of Zen Buddhism in his dissertation and a follow-up book (Becker, 1961). Becker was no fan of guru-student learning or developmental “hierarchies” (a la the rebellious 1960s), whereby Wilber had made peace with them in a complicated spiritual/philosophical way.

25 26

lution from a tragic angle—we tend anyway to be much too glib about our rise up from the apes, imagining each new evolutionary step as a wonderful leap forward that brought new potentials, new intelligence, and new abilities. That is in one sense quite true [transpersonally], but it is equally true [existentially] that each new evolutionary step forward brought new responsibilities, new terrors, new anxieties, and new guilts....the gods are immortal, and they know it—but poor man, up from beasts and not yet a god, was that unhappy mixture: he was [animal-] mortal, and knew it. And the more he evolved, the more conscious he became of himself and the world [now, comes Becker’s influence, I think], the more he grew in awareness and intelligence—the more he became conscious of his fate, his mortal and death-stained fate. In short, there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness, and only that perspective, I believe, can place mankind’s evolutionary history in proper context. Most of the accounts of man’s evolution err to one side or the other of that equation. They either emphasize the growth aspect...thereby ignoring the fact that evolution is not a happy-go-lucky series of sweetness-and-light promotions, but a painful process of growth. Or they tend to the opposite direction and, seeing the agony and despair of mankind, look back nostalgically to that lost Eden of inno- cence....This [latter] view tends to see every evolutionary step out of Eden as being a crime [sin, a Fall]....What I am saying is that, in the main, both views [light-positive and dark-negative] are correct.... [that said] I have chosen to tell the story of mankind’s “painful growth” in terms of several major “eras”....a quite complex story. (pp. ix-x) [italics added for emphasis]

Wilber has admitted over the years, of his nearly 40 books, UFE is his darkest (shadow-focused) of them all. He was 32 when he published it. On my part, looking into the Wilberian-Beckerian alignment at 30, I was attempting to craft my very first book—and basing it on my first read of Wilber’s. And I dove in it deep. The words in the above quote resonated then (still do now) with my reality-truthing motivation to understand human motivation and behavior: “new terrors, new anxieties, and new guilts” occur every step of the way, from the primal organizations to the most complex civilizations, from the child to the adult and post-adult of higher reaches (i.e., non-consensual non-mainstream identities—the transpersonal). This darkness is Beckerian in essence, I believe. It is his honest realistic vision generally, and Wilber integrated it easily into his own integral and transpersonal perspective of human growth and development—and the evolution of culture. UFE was Wilber’s own (and first) anthropological and sociological investigation—as usually he was philosophical and psychological in orientation. At the end of UFE he suggested he was crafting “a truly unified, critical sociological theory” (p. 329)—and, applying that to every-

26 27 thing about understanding humans and their societies and especially their politics (see Chapter 19). “Truly unified” and “critical sociological” sounds a lot like Becker’s desire. It’s a pity Becker wasn’t alive to engage Wilber’s work as I think they would have had an ‘interesting’ conversation.

For many critics of UFE, they would have preferred Wilber stay in his own territory of E-W. psycho-spirituality and consciousness theorizing, and leave the sociopolitical and cultural domain alone. But that is not how Wilber thinks as a synthesizer-integralist, nor is it how Ernest Becker did either. My preference, along with Scimecca (1978, 1979) is to categorize Becker’s work as “social phenomenology” among other things, secondarily as depth (and/or existential) psychology (e.g., Gillian, 2005; Kagan, 1994) and anthropology. Becker was always in pursuit, even with his aging doubts, of “a nondestructive yet victorious social system” (his words).

Again, I am not wanting at this point to get caught up in too tight of boxes to fit Becker’s work within, and prefer to return to what is much more important in what Wilber is saying about human/cultural evolution: it is an up and down struggle but what is usually (dis-)missed by observers (for various reasons that could be explained) is the dark-shadow-side of the journey; that is, “new terrors, new anxieties, and new guilts” (i.e., new fear patterns) at every step of the way—up from Eden (metaphorically). And in that context: development, history, and evolution are thus in Becker’s work and Wilber’s (and some others) a declaration that fear management (and/or terror management) is natural, inevitable and constant. It makes up one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful primary motivational tem- plates, I believe as well, of everything that make human behavior what it is.

The corollary point would be: societies, cultures, worldviews of the collective, are fundamentally going to teach everyone from cradle to grave how to ‘best’ manage fear/terror. In other words, the Wilberian-Beckerian alignment is a direct linkage to analysis of a curriculum—a “fear education” (my words) that goes with being human. We can learn from it and critique as just that—it’s education. Later, not foregrounded, I offer the dictum (via my own Fear Management Theory) that: when fear appears, so then does fearlessness. Not Wilber or Becker make such a claim, nor do they typically ever use the word or concept of fearlessness45—note, that I use it ultimately, as a “spirit of fearlessness” at the base of evolutionary

45 However, to note, Rank (who Becker highly respected and drew upon) would use it, as he articulated the ideal artist’s death, Rank wrote that one may “yield up his moral ego for a moment, fearlessly and even joyfully” (Rank, 1932/89, p. 110).

27 28 drives and motivation, growth, self-regulation, healing and transformation. Yet, that is not the topic here.

To conclude this introduction to Becker and my own early intellectual biography, suffice it to say, for the past 38 years I have dipped into and out of the work of Ernest Becker. I have not read his work carefully at all. I have mostly read Wilber on Becker as well as other interpreters. But that is changing of late (e.g., see Fisher, 2020, 2020a). I cited Becker a few times in my earliest 1982 book project (unfinished), what was envisioned as my ideal book on Education, entitled: Appropriate Education: Future Educa- tion as if the Human Being Mattered (e.g., see Fisher, 1982/20, 2020b). I’ll briefly review some of my uses, as this is foundational to the literature overview of how educators have used Becker’s work over the decades, especially since Becker’s own educational philosophy book (1967)—a book I did not find until just weeks ago during the writing of this current technical paper.

In my 1982 book on appropriate education, in the aim of my critique for wanting a world that was healthy and sustainable, I crafted a vision for Education generally that included many philosophers, psychiatrists, an- thropologists, futurists, environmentalists, ecologists, spiritualists and others who were very critical of Education in the modern West (especially). I had included a lot of their writing on the problem of “world view” (or worldview), and the “materialist world view” was pointed out as the most vicious as it hooked up with (capitalist) economics—and, all things of real life-based value in that hegemonic worldview were turned into objects for the purpose of seeking “possessions and the single-minded pursuit of wealth and power,” I wrote. I footnoted Wilber (1981) and Becker (1975) on the word “power”46 in that sentence. This was Becker’s second book on

46 Later in Chapter Three (Fisher, 1982), I wrote more about universal ‘power struggle’ in the mythic-membership stage of human cultural evolution and human development as an individual developmentally recapitulates cultural evolution to some degree. I wrote “...only at the human consciousness level and with the existential fear of death [via ego- consciousness] is there a concern about evolutionary change [and change itself]. The plants and animals around before humans, couldn’t care less about their fate. They didn’t have the capacity for anxiety. Change became associated with death for these early human beings who could image the future and the inevitability of their own death both physically and psychically.” I linked the psychic defense of “projection” in this discussion as well, where the inner psyche is projecting fear onto the environment outside of itself, and/or onto sym- bols of ‘power struggles’ (or enemies) (p. 44). And I linked this evolution of ego- consciousness (in the West) with “dualism, linear time and space, myth of dominance, myth of progress, materialism, utilitarianism and reductionism” (p. 45) (now, I would call types of violence, and based on a Dominant worldview). Erich Neumann was cited in line with a

28 29 evil. I said nothing else there in the text (p. 11). By Chapter Three I was using Becker more with Wilber (1981) to attempt to describe what the “Atman Project” (e.g., self-preservation via immortality drive) was about, which came from Eastern spiritual Hinduism, Buddhism and mysticism but also from Becker’s work on denial of death and formation of evil—and, escape from evil (p. 22). This drive of self-preservation of humans (especially, at the stage Wilber called Typhonic or magical human societies) was a time when culture as a defense against death or annihilation became po- tently dissociative and led to dynamics (e.g., “negative Atman project”47) that made humans very susceptible to pathological dissociative formations out-of-balance and connection with nature (and their own body)—it was a period of arising heavy symbolization/language/mythic (heroic) development (and a bigger brain), etc. One footnote on this material linked Otto Rank’s view more or less with Becker’s view, re: this proclivity and vulnerability of the symbolic immortality-seeking via culture as a defense—of which I wrote, “Otto Rank said this is the cause of all our human problems, cited in Becker (1975)” (p. 23). Nowadays, I would call this the ‘Fear’ Project(ion) instead of Atman Project. Note, technically there are more complex issues here re: what is the Atman Project48 and its variants like “negative Atman project” (a term Wilber used then49). I’ll skip these here (see e.g., Wilber, 1981, pp. 12-17).

Beckerian view as well as Wilberian: [in Neumann’s words] “Our cultural unease or dis- ease is due to the fact that the separation of the systems [mind and body]—in itself a necessary product of evolution—has degenerated into a schism [dissociation = a differentiation gone too far, as Wilber would say] and thus precipitated a psychic crisis whose catastrophic effects are reflected in contemporary history” (cited in Wilber, 1981, 194) (cited in Fisher, 1982, p. 48). That psychic crisis is a cultural crisis! 47 Following the percepts of the “perennial philosophy,” “...above all else, each person wants true transcendence, Atman consciousness and the ultimate Whole; but, above all else, each person fears the loss of the separate self, the ‘death’ of the isolated ego” (driven by fear all the time as a fear of death on this plane of existence leaves “the dilemma, the double bind in the face of eternity”) (Wilber, 1981, p. 13). This dynamic overlaps with Becker’s notions of alienation and expanded transference motivations and dynamics—a slightly different variation on the same perennial philosophy (Wilberian) themata. Wilber has used several other important conceptions, more or less, equivalent to “Atman project” since he began publishing his writing in 1977 (for a summary of these, see “The Fear Project” in Fisher, 1997, pp. 65-66). 48 “The repercussions of the Atman Project can be seen in the development of materialism and narcissism. Both are attempts to deify the ego [separate] self and the material world in a hope that both will become immortal. They are futile attempts [of transference] to make ourselves into gods and earth into heaven. This is only one aspect of the Promethean spirit as we will discuss below” (Fisher, 1982, p. 43). 49 Wilber has not typically given a good description of distinction between the “positive” and “negative” Atman project(s). His one statement in all his work on the latter is: “The study of the types of [violent] exploitation is the study of the types of negative Atman pro-

29 30

In summary, Fisher (1982) was, other than Scimecca’s (1978) article from a sociological perspective, the earliest intense investigation that I know of into Becker’s work by a professional educator for Education—albeit, Madenfort (1981)—interestingly, at the same time Wilber was relying on Becker’s work—had for a few years already been modestly engaging Becker on death and death denial specifically.

Late-1970s

I make an exception to include Joe Scimecca, (American) professor of sociology, and advocate for a “humanist sociology.”50 He recently wrote to me as I told him I was writing on Becker and education that, “I’ve concen- trated more on Becker’s notion of the need for meaning, and really never looked at fear in the way you do. It made me go back and reread some of Becker” (pers. comm., July 8, 2020). Scimecca (1978) is included here because: (a) his article was published in a reputable professional educator’s journal and, (b) he has often cited Becker’s (1967) book on education and given a generic focus on education and society (1980) and has, off and on, cited Becker in his books up to and including 2018.

Scimecca has all along agreed with Becker’s critique of social sciences as being too limited and it needed to expand into more humanities-informed (I would add integrally-informed51) approaches and applications. His 1979 jects, and the lessening of exploitation is the lessening of the Atman projects themselves. This is a least theoretically possible...” to alter (Wilber, 2007, p. 359). 50 Scimecca (1994). 51 Becker’s (1967) book on education, as well as other of his writings, repeatedly mentions and appreciates the integral approach to psychology of James Mark Baldwin (1861-1934), in which Baldwin, according to Wilber (2000a, p. xi) was following Gustav Fechner’s approach to psychology and emerging from a line of integral thought from William James prior as well. Baldwin is a critical player (in the American scene) in understanding much of Becker’s take on social-psychological sciences and humanities, in my view. To be brief, this “daylight view” approach to psychology (coined by Fechner) was one that avoided the ‘dead-dark’ reductionism of sciences that was dominating the 19th century (in a “night view”) where everything was “inert matter, lacking in any teleological significance,” says Wilber. And it is with Fechner-James-Baldwin that the daylight view was being kept alive (at least for a short while before it got submerged in positivism, experimentalism, materialist and secularist, flatland explanations only); and, Wilber tells of the importance of the three daylight view thinkers as pivotal to the history of modern psychology (and science) in that they pronounced with great fervor and sound philosophies and observations that it is best to keep the newly emerging 19th century science of psychology on “speaking terms with the ancient wisdom of the ages—with the [developmental verticality of] perennial

30 31 paper is an excellent outline of Becker’s “social phenomenology” and “social theory” for the social sciences. Rightfully, he labels Becker a “social critic” and gives due presence to Becker’s critical “Ideal-Real” social science (and social phenomenology) in his 1978 paper; which is arguably one of the best sources, invaluable in my view, to any professional educator attempting to understand Becker’s work and overall applications in Educa- tion. Despite its great value, unfortunately, Scimecca (1978) is not cited by Averill (2014), Fisher (e.g., 1982, 2003, 2010), Gillian (2005), Kagan (1994), Liechty (2010) or van Kessel et al., thus leaving a hole in the scholarship and good integrative engagement on Becker’s educational theory to date.52

Briefly, Scimecca (1978) breaks down Becker’s social theory as the essential background context: “we must understand what Becker refers to as his “ideal-real” social science before we can begin to analyze his educational theory” (p. 100). He divides the paper into “Ernest Becker’s Social Theo- ry—The ‘Ideal-Real’ Social Science,” “Human Motivation: Self-Esteem and Immortality Striving,” and then finally to the two education sections, “An Ideal Curriculum—An Anthropodicy of Alienation,” and “The Impli- cations of Becker’s Educational Theory for Radical Social Change”— whereby, he summarized (paraphrasing) his take on Becker re: liberation and liberal education:

The focus of education must be upon human liberation, self-reliance, on the self-creation of meaning. General education would be a study of alienation, of how human powers are and have historically been constricted in the search for meaning. The reasons for alienation from self and society form the core of Becker’s ideal curriculum. Al-

philosophy, with the [evolutionary] Great Nest of Being, with the Idealist systems, and with the simple facts of consciousness...[i.e.,] consciousness is real, the inward observing self is real, the soul is real...and thus these truly great founding psychologists—when their real stories are told—have much to teach us about an integral view, a view that attempts to include the truths of body, mind, soul, and spirit, and not reduce them to material displays, digital bits, empirical processes, or objective systems (as important as all of those most certainly are). These pioneering modern psychologists [fighting for their daylight view against the odds of the hegemony of their times] managed to be both fully scientific and fully spiritual [without relying on ancient esotericism]...” (Wilber, 2000a, p. xi). My point, is that Becker’s call for “Idealist-Realist” science means a lot historically and it tells of his project to ignite a holistic-integral (and spiritual) (r)evolution of knowledge. Thus, he wanted this also for Education, which many of Becker’s interpreters can easily miss—the “fully scientific and fully spiritual.” 52 Although I have corrected this somewhat in citing his 1978 paper in Fisher (2020a, 2020c).

31 32

ienation implies powerlessness; it implies failure [of the social system].... (Scimecca, 1978, p. 103)

As much as he embraces much of Becker’s work on educational theory, Scimecca also points out some of the weaknesses: (a) too heavily focused on university curriculum and ignores the many problems of schooling, (c) doesn’t give enough detailed attention to “learning” per se in “the sociopolitical context” and that Becker “shares” too many features of “utopian educational theorists.” But he validates the stand point theory (my term) from which Becker brings to the educational sphere: “suffice it to say that the important claim of Becker’s curriculum of alienation is its provision of a vantage point from which individuals can examine their lives, their society, their world” (p. 103) from a (somewhat conscious) liberated stance, one foot in and one foot out (or what I have called “in and out of the ‘Fear’ Matrix; see Fisher, 2003). Scimecca, embracing some utopian elements, summarized:

...what Becker’s educational theory offer[s] us, [is] a view of an individual who has enough self-esteem to act without anxiety even in the face of his [her] knowledge of his [her] own mortality....[in Becker’s image of such an individual, in his own words:] ‘[they would] perceive the world with a minimum of bottled-up frustration, distortion, dependency and fear....The self-reliant person would be suspicious of easy promises and wild expectations because he [she] has learned that reality is not generous but has to be approached cor- rectly and patiently; and so he [she] would also mistrust those who scorn reality by trying to push it, force it into fantasy, or who fear it and try to over-control it. [this is like a “fearless society”53]

Becker’s curriculum, I suggest, is very compatible with critical pedagogy (and the concept of conscientization in this regard of a “vantage point,” for critical literacy and transformation—a la Paulo Freire et al.). Albeit, Scimecca (1978) focuses on the meaning-making side of society, self- esteem, indeed, he ends the paper with the purpose of a Beckerian education (which he agrees with in general): “While the fear of death is a real fear, we cannot allow it to constrain human freedom and self-direction” (p. 105).

53 E.g., Fisher (2000).

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Early-1980s

Duke Madenfort,54 an American art educator, wrote a few essays on death and denial of death and their impacts, and cited Becker at times,55 and at other times was clearly being informed by Becker, writing existential teacher-relevant phenomenological and reflective essays. Madenfort (1981) offers insights re: Becker’s ideas, not typically offered by the rest of the educators in this technical paper; a small sample being that,

We are blind to the fact that our denial of death is actually our denial of living a life of integrity....We are [due fear of pain, death, life] re- pressing our immediate aesthetic awareness of life itself. (p. 11)

Fisher (1982) in an unpublished book ms. utilized the work of philosophy Ken Wilber, and Wilber (1981) relied heavily on Becker’s last books (see all of this discussion above). It is beyond the scope of this paper to investi- gate but I was from the start most interested in Wilber’s transpersonal version of the “immortality” striving (project) notion as foundational psychology to understand human motivation—what Wilber did, by design or by accident, was to synthesize his own E. mysticism insights into “immortality” striving and integrate them with the W. existentialism and psychoanalysis he drew primarily on via Becker (and implicitly, prior via Becker who drew upon Otto Rank). Thus, I have fused their work on immortality striving (a type of transference-transcendence dynamic56) as the Wilberian- Beckerian synthesis.57 I will be writing on this and its implications for terror management theory, fear management theory, educational philosophy, curriculum and pedagogical practice in the near future.

Mid-1990s

In Kagan (1994), we encounter the first book by a (American) professional educator (i.e., educational philosopher) on Becker’s work applied to Edu-

54 Apparently Madenfort was a student of the American artist-educator-researcher Ken Beittel. Not surprising to me, Madenfort was attracted to Becker because Beittel, one of the rare educators in the 1980s-90s was attracted to the work of Ken Wilber. 55 E.g., Becker (1973) and Sam Keen’s 1974 article at the death-bed-side interview with Becker. Madenfort published a 1979 essay on death as well but didn’t cite Becker per se. 56 Cf. Liechty (1995). 57 Such a synthesis, with my own thinking and Liechty’s, there is a great deal to critique about TMT especially because of their leaving behind an explicit discussion of “transference” and especially as it applies to their near-caricatured uses of “immortality” (note: in Solomon, Greenberg, Pyszczynski (2015), the word “transference” is not even in the Index).

33 34 cation. Kagan focuses on the “hero” in Becker’s work and how to best support a healthy heroism in a society that recognizes and discerns the healthy from the pathological hero impulse and patterning. Education, schools, and socialization processes are essential platforms in this hero formation, he argued. For Kagan (1994), like Liechty (2010) (see below), the “crisis in education” and citizenship overall today is one of a mis-guided understanding, and propagation of pseudo-heroic images and processes, all which have led to the demise, more or less, of a healthy sociality, education, and democracy.

Kagan (1994) summarizes the greatness of Becker’s social theory with its accompanying germane deep psychological insights:

Ernest Becker provides a depth psychology of heroism in the context of a philosophical anthropology of tremendous importance. He codi- fies, as it were, insights from the psychology of William James, Freudian and neo-Freudian [and post-Freudian] psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, and Kierkegaardian existentialism. Becker argues that “unfiltered” experience is too much for us, that human character with its myths and defenses is a [necessary] vital lie shield- ing us from an overwhelming reality [e.g., Lacanian Real] we can tolerate only for moments, if at all. “Man,” he wrote, “had to invent and create out of himself the limitations of perception and the equa- nimity to live on this planet....we need to create and live [heroically] by the best myths we are capable of devising....We cannot not re- press; we cannot face the world of experience without the filters of transference, projection, and other ego-defenses....The theory [of Becker] reflects the ambitious strivings of a brilliant synthetic thinker to perform a heroic task in a frightening world. Becker’s world is ours [is the teachers in the classroom]—troubled, threatened with imminent destruction—a world in which the macho dances of hand to hand combat and face saving challenges are conducted with nuclear [and/or biological] weapons....Avoiding facing doom, ignoring death, seeking distractions, we live in a world [and/or classroom] in which one of the most advanced countries [USA]....[is] at a thin edge of possible destruction. A standard response, and it seems to be a sane one, is to cry out for better education. Becker provides an implicit and explicit philosophy of education. The explicit philosophy is stated in Beyond Alienation. The implicit philosophy is suggested even in the early work [from his dissertation in the late 1950’s] on Zen, where Becker’s major criticisms are focused on the methods of [trance-based, fear-based] inculcating belief [rather than critical thought and autonomy] in the master-disciple relationship of Zen Buddhism [as one example of many teacher-student relationships; see Becker, 1961]. This philosophy can be seen developing [in

34 35

Becker] in parallel with his depth psychology of heroism. It challenges us to educate our children [and adults] to survive in and help in the task of mending this world, repairing its broken seams, of im- proving it. This task is a heroic one.... (Kagan, 1994, pp. 3-4)

There is a large volume of work by Kagan here in not a very thick book. It is far beyond what I can adequately cover. Suffice it to say, this is a mar- velous book for starters, which keeps true to Becker’s oeuvre and points out that even with the theory of heroism via Becker, that we all have some “hero” inside us, Kagan has to be honest (not unlike Becker) that “it does not inspire enough of us enough of the time”—and, perhaps a great liberal (Beckerian) education could reverse that.

Becker however, goes into great depths of exploration of history, philosophy and sociology of education—never mind psychology—and, shows that the problem is “alienation” at core and that is not something easily corrected. Cultures have both helped individuals and have enchained them—more or less, he concluded. The therapia required for education is just as well a therapia required for culture itself. And, that I could not agree with more, especially now that it has been recognized by so many that a “culture of fear” has become the matrix of our lives. To be “heroic” in any way has to be more than “macho” (p. 3) and that’s for sure—that’s where a greater understanding of the nature and role of fear, bravery, courage—all the way to fearlessness and fearless must be addressed by educators and beyond that, if we are ever to recover this heroic impulse in the best ways it can be. Education today, to be liberational, says Becker (and Kagan), ought to be a supportive culture for heroes to develop from the moment of birth (if not sooner, as Rank would argue). All this said, it is quite evident generally to me, that Becker is an amazing theorist and synthesizer but that does not mean that he was adequate in his study of education overall, in order to be effective to inspire educators and bring about the educational vision he had. Thanks to Kagan (1994) for picking-up the rope of healthy criticism for Becker’s educational writing as well, as he did in Chapter Five “Remedy- ing the Remedy.”

One of my publications during this decade that cites Becker (and, there are some others I won’t mention here), is Fisher (1997). Although I barely mention Becker (1973), I do so in connection to Wilber’s work, and the “denial” emphasis—be it of death or life or of spirit itself (the latter Wilber emphasizes)—and, its (usually negative) impacts that are ubiquitous and large in human history and development. I could have added to education as well. This highly technical paper is a study of Wilber’s career uses of “Phobos” and “Thanatos” as ‘fear’ forces (in opposition; and/or in dialecti-

35 36 cal relation) in contradistinction to ‘love’ forces (Eros-Agape). In relationship to Becker’s pivotal idea of his social theory first, and depth psychology theory second—is the idea of “alienation” and the dynamics of transference (e.g., immortality striving). I end my paper on Wilber’s take on the two meta-motivational forces of ‘fear’ (Phobos-Thanatos) by implicitly linking denial-alienation-dualism-dissociation—projection and so on— with the conclusion that “Clearly, Phobos, for Wilber, plays the most significant role in developmental dynamics, as it is the very source [cause and effect] of dissociation [as distinct from differentiation]” (Fisher, 1997, p. 28). As far as I know Becker never engaged Phobos consciously in his work—and, for that matter, nor has any professional educator that I know of, other than myself. I wished Becker was alive to discuss his views on this, on fear, and on ‘fear’ (i.e., what I call the ‘Fear’ Project(ion) problem).

2000s

Fisher (2003), a Canadian educator, was my doctoral dissertation. I had brought a good deal of my previous reading re: the Wilberian-Beckerian synthesis with me into grad school (in an Education Faculty); but it was not well received and virtually disappeared by necessity into the background in order to successfully get my doctorate. Because my dissertation was on the “culture of fear” (i.e., ‘Fear’ Matrix) and its meta-contextual impact on everything going on in Education (including the university I was studying at), I did cite at once only three of Becker’s works 1971, 1973, 1975. In Becker (1971) I was impressed with his interdisciplinarity, along with Wilber’s likewise, led me to construct a notion of a new field called “fearology” as the inter- and transdisciplinary study of fear (and ‘fear’). I focused on a critique of “culture” (more accurately, now I would call “cul- turalism” as an ideological, largely ‘failing’ structure). I wrote in one end note:

I am using “culture” in a very biased and loose way, and I am not saying all “cultural” phenomenon are ‘fear’-based everywhere throughout all time (cf. Ernest Becker for a contrast). Becker (1971, 1973, 1975) and his many other existential-anthropological writings, and his followers with their “terror management theory” are doing important scholarly work that is very relevant and close to my own, albeit, they are steeped in a psychological discourse/paradigm, com- pared to my transdisciplinary inquiry [or Becker’s interdisciplinarity]” (Fisher, 2003, p. 98)

36 37

All along, my critique of Education was that it was in (deadly) denial re: the role of fear/terror. Becker would no doubt agree.

Averill (2004) (published on Oct. 1, 2014) is the only paper document that shows up re: “Education” on the Ernest Becker Foundation website, from my search recently. It is from a 1996,58 and 1997 lecture by Lloyd Averill (academic dean), who has a religious scholarship (American) background. Although he cited Becker (1967) on Becker’s “vision of the absolutely serious, the awesome, the might, the all transcending, the divine mystery” as core to liberal education, Averill then went on a long speech about love and Becker’s critical educational analysis (and political implications) were ignored—love trumped all fear (and denial) talk.

Gillian (2005) is the second book published on a distinctly Beckerian (American) view of education, albeit, unlike Kagan 1994), Sam N. Gillian is not an academic nor trying to write such a book. He writes from as a black African-American who has lived often at the edge of poverty in rough neighborhoods often, in a society where blacks are typically op- pressed via racism and classism. It is explicitly dedicated for school teachers and parents of school children. He was both a primary school teacher and adult community education teacher in New York for many decades. Rather than go into details here of his legacy of applying (mostly) Becker’s philosophy to Education, I ask readers to go to Fisher (2020c) for a thor- ough account of how he understands education and the major role of fear/terror that he puts as central to his own teaching and philosophy. Liechty (2004) noted this book was distinctly Rankian as much as Beckerian, and I noted that “Gillian was not too impressed with such a focus on “fear of death” as is typical by existentialists and Becker himself. I also noted “Gillian is a definite Beckerian in outlook. That said, I have no evidence that Gillian had read Becker’s own philosophy of education book” (Fisher, 2020c, p. 13).

The chill and thrill of reading an iconoclast like Gillian (2005), is that he has a very unique way of interpreting Becker’s work, especially in his direct discourse on fear/terror. He argues that we’re all terrified, and our problems come when we ignore that fact. If schools and educational systems in general were to start from that premise, then a curriculum and pedagogy would unfold that is, at least, not a lie. When we lie, fear/terror rule out lives and educational outcomes with it. In his words, “Teaching chil-

58 This talk was given at “the Skidmore Conference” (where Sheldon Solomon, one of the three core founders of TMT works).

37 38 dren to fear learning...can be done in either a negative or positive way....Awareness is fear of knowing...” (cited in Fisher, 2020c, p. 22). Again, one really has to read his original work or my paper on him in order to absorb and appreciate how he talks and how it could very well be some of the best (straightforward no-bullshitting) interpretations of Becker’s educational theory to Education today. Whatever the rest of history will make of Gillian’s contribution to Beckerian educational thinking and practice, the former school teacher, now long-time professor of social work and expert on Ernest Becker, Liechty (2004) concluded Gillian’s two book indicate “the work of a really great pedagogue.”

2010

Daniel Liechty (2010), American professor of social work and long-time Beckerian,59 is included in this survey via my operating criteria because he was a trained former middle school and high school teacher, then becoming a social work professional and academic. Education has been core to his interests and his 2010 article is a most overt rendering of his views on (American) Education and its “crisis.” This paper was an address to the Ernest Becker Foundation at their c. 2010 conference, he told me. He cites Becker’s work generically and comes from many of the same critiques of Education that Becker had. He wants to see that “education is as much about producing [well-informed, critical, good] citizens able to wield responsible civic power as it is about being able to maximize economic benefit” (p. 2). His great concern, like Becker’s of the loss of the sacredness of and purpose of life as part of curriculum, that schooling and higher education will fall prey to a diminishing democracy and instrumentalism—which promotes “naked greed” (materialism) all of which, via popular culture, “is a recipe for sociopathy” (p. 3).

After sharing several critical forces moving society and Education in this darker side of civilization itself, he brings forth a foundational Beckerian idea/theory that humans have historically proven to show a “natural tendency” to become subservient (if not slaves) to authority; he wrote, “Becker saw clearly that on the most basic level, human beings are moti- vated by deep-seated anxiety [fear/terror], which is ultimately the anxiety of mortality and death”—by which an evolutionary and anthropological view of this basic human vulnerability is articulated. Yet, Becker also of-

59 He was past vice-president of the Ernest Becker Foundation for decades, and is a recognized expert on Becker’s work.

38 39 fered a theory of human beings (like Rank’s) that there is an “opposing motivation” to be creative, autonomous individuals willing to be heroic and keep “a handle on fears and anxieties” (p. 4). Liechty (2010) nicely articu- lates what Becker called the “Twin Ontological Drives” –the desire for safety and desire for freedom (p. 5) (what I and other Beckerians60 have called the “dual motivation” theory61: Fear <-----> Freedom spectrum). Amongst many good points of consideration in applications of Becker’s work to Education (focus on America), Liechty concludes with a “cautious optimism” of whether humans are realistically capable to “self-governing democracy” as was designed into the American Constitution and Declara- tion of Independence. He concluded: “our public schools could be the pivotal institutions for reviving in us that sense of heroism [i.e., courage over fear] we share as American citizens—what he called “a revival of the great heroic project” (p. 6) (cf. Kagan, 1994).

Basically, I see in his interpretation a poignant emphasis on the “Ideal/Real”62 social theorizing of Becker (cf. Scimecca, 1978), where fundamentally a major stream of that stance is implicated in how well citizens and the State manage fear/terror (e.g., anxieties of existence ontologically, sociologically and psychologically). Liechty summarized what a good Beckerian “democracy curriculum” (i.e., solving the I-We Problem) would offer:

The community [school and State] is there to support the emergence of creative individuality, without which we have only the tyranny of the group [institutions]. But creative individuals also remain responsible for maintaining the good of the community, without which we have only the tyranny of anarchy....the ideal toward which Becker pointed was a dynamic tension between maximum individuality within maximum community. This implies that there are times when the community must shoulder anxiety and discomfort in support- ing the ventures of its most creative individuals. But it equally implies that creative individuals must at times demonstrate

60 Pyszczynski, Greenberg & Arndt (2011). 61 Abraham Maslow also used this form, with his own variation. 62 “Earlier in his career, Becker (1967) had crafted his anthropodicy as a general theory of alienation, and explanation for the evil in the world...that can be prevented or ameliorated by human effort, the form of which is a liberal education” (Martin & Liechty, 2019, p. 138). According to Liechty (2005), “Becker characterized the educational system in the ideal/real democracy as a Great Conversation....[for] an ideal social existence in the ideal/real democratic state” (p. 21).

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self-restraint [i.e., should anxiety for the collective]. [italics added for emphasis] (p. 7)

In Fisher (2003) I asked (with a Beckerian flavor), just who will teach, adequately, this very capacity (call it immortality transference, heroic, bravery, etc.) to lead under challenge—that is, within the most distressful and terrifying conditions of a world tipping into cascading crises—when, clearly others (vast majority) are not able to manage fear well?

Who will, be it individuals or the State (e.g., schools), be exemplars of that fearless leader(ship)? What curriculum and pedagogy is designed for this task?63 In Fisher (2010), I summarized nearly 25 years of my inquiry into the nature and role of fear and fearlessness and arrived at a critical integral theory of fear management systems. It is not appropriate to arc out that evolutionary theory here but suffice it to say, that I make a crucial distinction in the notion of bravery and bravado. The latter, is where our immortality transference formation64 really can get messed up big time and lead to diverse faux heroic impulses and sets of actions65 that are incredibly violent (gross and silent and often pathological), as acting out (by necessary, says Becker) psychological defenses—yet, when twisted (and denied), they tend to act against Life, Death and against Fear itself. They propagate self- harming—for individuals and the collective—including the abuse of the very sustaining ecosystems we all depend on. Again, that’s a discussion for another time.

63 Amongst many offerings over the years, I recommend (as one e.g.) a “pedagogy of fearlessness” (Fisher, 2011). 64 Liechty (2010) did not bring “transference” and transferential relationality (theories) into the paper but could have, as they are core to Becker’s work (cf. e.g., Liechty, 1995, 2002, in prep.). ITF (immortality transference formation), a term I’ve coined recently, analogous if not homologous to the psychiatric term “counterphobic reaction formation”—is all about the various forms of bravery (heroics) that are deeply genetic (meta-motivational in terms of desire for creativity, risk, growth impulses) and conditioned by societies (and culture). Bravado, machismo, braggadacio, etc. are (via patriarchalism-chauvinism-militarism) twisted (arguably, fear-based transferences—or what I label as weak and/or pathological ITFs) bravery; see upcoming articles I will publish on this ITF, as well as see my critique of the world history of “Bravery” discourses in Fisher (2010, pp. 113-36). Fearlessness is a strong ITF relative to the above. Albeit, people (including educators) use the words “fearlessness” and “fearless” regularly in quite distorted ways (e.g., see Fisher, 2015). 65 Liechty (2010), like myself and many other critics of “safety culture” (or “victim culture”) today, recognized that a consistent pattern (individual and collective) was (still is) growing to choose ‘safety and security’ over freedom—justifying near anything unjust in order to (as they say) “to keep us safe”; “We pretend this is actually an heroic defense” but clearly it is not—it’s a twisted faux heroism (e.g., bravado-driven) (p. 5).

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Fisher (2010), an educator and fearologist, offers: “The World’s Fearless- ness Teachings; [a book which] addresses the human fear problem in a truly unique and insightful way, summarizing the teachings on fearlessness from around the world and throughout history. The author then utilizes critical integral theory (a la Wilber) as an approach to categorize the developmental and evolutionary spectrum of fear management systems known thus far.” This is taken from the back cover of this book to illustrate the methodological approach as pivotal to everything in this book—that is, Wilberi- an, and as I pointed out in my 1982 (above) work on “appropriate education” that I was implicitly seeding a Wilberian-Beckerian approach to understanding the deepest levels of human motivation and why humans do what they do. In Fisher (2010) that Wilber-Becker influence is all over it but not always explicit (see also Fisher, 2007a); especially in terms of fea- turing Becker’s influence. Although, I do cite Becker 1973 and 1968. I have some 20 pages in this 2010 book relating to Becker’s work and TMT. For brevity, I’ll leave it up to researchers to check that out. However, one example of my engagement in the book is worth quoting (and, remains a working hypothesis to this day):

[re: Becker on “the heroic”] For him [Becker] and others, it [the hero impulse] was the foundation for understanding human nature and cultural evolution, which in many ways is a particular interpretation of the spirit of fearlessness itself. Although, Becker never (apparently) used the word “fearlessness” (as most pure existentialists wouldn’t). Becker argued that, “In times such as ours there is a great pressure to come up with concepts that help men [sic] understand their dilemma; there is an urge toward vital ideas, toward a simplifi- cation of needless intellectual complexity....One such vital truth that has long been known is the idea of heroism; but in ‘normal’ scholarly times we never thought of making much of it, of parading it, or of using it as a central concept. Yet the popular mind always knew about how important it was...”....Becker, a transdisciplinary thinker, also brought forth the idea of narcissism as central to understanding the inherent urge toward heroism. (Fisher, 2010, p. 127)

As I re-read this passage from a decade ago, my educator-self is highly curious to see if indeed a weak-to-pathological narcissism (even if it’s an inherent part of the Beckerian package of psychological defenses against mortality) is equivalent to a weak-to-pathological immortality transference formation (e.g., twisted bravery= faux heroism); and, thus, Becker again proves to offer so many layers for a depth analysis of motivation and its role in learning, teaching—and, the design of Educational systems overall.

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Turning to the next educational philosopher (and Buddhist), David G. Smith (2014) is a rare occasion of an educator citing Becker in a book on education. The specialty here is “wisdom” in education; and while discuss- ing the corrective importance of valuing principles (if not the “Law of Life”) as expressed in ‘Dharma Cycles’ conceptually and historically, Smith offers such a notion today and how it can provide a larger and healthy perspective on all things educational and beyond, including notions of freedom, fate, progress and of destruction. Smith noted,

Inevitably, concepts such as the Dharma Cycle can only be specula- tive, but their value is to serve in reminder that nothing lasts forever, that things are always in motion, and that the phenomenon of death is built into the phenomenon of birth [as dialectical reality]....In his classic work Denial of Death, Ernest Becker (1973) argued that the Western tradition, based on Christian languages of hope and eternal life, has been unable to face mortality [in a healthy way] as fundamental to the human condition, and yet it is a universal insight of wisdom that one cannot truly live until life and death are appreciated in their [complementary] essential unity....The basic achievement of wisdom is therefore not cleverness or knowledge or even strength in the usual manner. No, the basic achievement of wisdom is freedom—freedom from fear, freedom from delusion, freedom from the limitations of parochial culture. (pp. 85-86)

“So... can Wisdom trump the market as a basis for education?,” asks Smith, and while integrating teaching from Becker and Thai master Achaan Chah, Smith wrote, “the primary vision of wisdom is for us to become ‘fearless,’ which involves the long and difficult work of learning to know ‘phenome- na as they are’....It may be, therefore, that the first responsibility of wisdom work, is, as Chah suggested, to examine the phenomenon of fear itself...”.66

2018-19

Cathryn van Kessel, a Canadian educational researcher and former social studies teacher, has been one recent significant leader in applying Becker’s work generally, of which she has focused her work on “evil” and how to deal with it in social studies curriculum via what she introduced as a Hannah Arendt-Ernest Becker synthesis of sorts. She asks,

66 “As noted earlier, Michael Fisher (2011) has characterized [as would Becker have also] the pervasive atmosphere, particularly in Western societies, as a ‘Culture of Fear’” (Smith, 2014, p. 55).

42 43

How might we teach about genocide [evil] with a view toward a less violent future?....The essay offers one way for educators to open up thinking about human-driven atrocities by shifting focus from singu- lar villains or mindless drones to the processes that shape ordinary folks like ourselves into killers....[in this essay I draw] particularly [on] his [Becker’s] observations about the human capacity to fetishize evil. (van Kessel, 2019, p. 160)

“Becker has been largely ignored in the field of education” (van Kessel, 2018, p. 165), and yet his concept of fetishization of evil (with how we “fetishize our fears,” p. 165)67 is very useful to understanding the ways of participation of diverse peoples in violence/evil/genocides. The only cita- tion of Becker in this paper is 1975. She draws on “worldview threats” literature as well as TMT, concluding “The combination of Arendt (informed by the work of Minnich and Milgram) and Becker can help us comprehend why genocides continue to occur” (p. 168). Van Kessel (2019) is a summarizing of her (and others’) investigations for years (using Becker 1973, 1975, in part), in order to direct ways for curriculum, pedagogy and general socialization to be better educated in the processes of ‘evil.’68 Van Kessel et al. (2018) is a simplified teachers’ practical guidebook done with many other educators so as to explain Becker’s basic theory, principles and ideas that are relevant to the study of evil, at least as determined in van Kessel’s view and leadership for this guidebook.

An excellent introductory paper on TMT and education, which relies heavily on some of Becker’s theories and ideas, is van Kessel, den Heyer & Schimel (2020). For educators looking for a readable summary of TMT, this is a great place to start. These authors wrote,

In this paper, we explore how TMT enriches curriculum and pedagogy by providing a summary of the theory with a focus on the role of cultural worldviews and illuminating the ways that TMT operates in relation to other theories that aid in the understanding of emotional or affective responses in education....TMT can act as a valuable supplement to Critical Race Theory, psychoanalytic approaches to education, as well as research in the emotional aspects of teaching and learning. (p. 429)

67 Most basically, fetishize in this context, more or less, means to make ‘pleasure’ (satisfac- tion, at least) out of the use of violence or evil. 68 As of writing this, her book was not searchable online to comment on specific uses made of Becker’s work.

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A good proportion of the paper focuses on emotions and affect, something I have not seen in others Beckerian works reviewed in this technical paper summary. This psychological emphasis (including worldviews analysis) is then applied to real conflicting situations in classroom settings where diversity tensions existed. The practicality of their paper is very evident and will be useful to many educators, no doubt. “Managing death” (aka managing fear/terror) is acknowledged by these educators69 and Becker’s work and TMT especially is seen as a guide to fear/terror management in schools—including, helping better understand, if not reduce such affect when necessary in conflicts over worldviews and diversity in general. To be noted, these authors rely on only the 1970s publications by Becker (1971-75). It is unfortunate, they chose that selection alone, while even neglecting Becker’s (1967) education book itself. They conclude from the literature overview and real classroom examples of undergraduates (e.g., van Kessel’s students etc.),

TMT helps us anticipate our threat-and-defence cycle and thus act more thoughtfully [aka peacefully] as we address and learn from educational content that taps into our existential fear....[TMT helps] us tolerate uncertainty regarding our own worldview and thus help[s] us relate in more amicable ways to those who hold different views.... (p. 438)

Reduction of conflict, and enhancing peacefulness (“more amicable ways”) sounds good for any classroom teacher, especially, who teaches controversial content like on violence, race, genocides, etc. This focus raises questions about learning sites and what is comfortable and safe and how that relates to change and transformation potentials. Becker’s educational philosophy needs to be fully understood to make assessments of how ‘best’ to use Beckerian ideas in the classroom. The above authors in this surge of interest in applying TMT have not for the most part critiqued the foundations of TMT in their publications and teachings. And that is something in the future that ought to be self-reflected upon as well as offering mere useful applications of TMT. Becker’s overall oeuvre would be a good means of contextualizing both what TMT has become and what it could (or ought to) become—especially, when it comes to applications in the field of Edu- cation.

69 The first two authors are former social studies teachers, now teaching social studies pre- service courses and are authors and educational researchers in academia. The third, is the spouse of the first author, and is a doctoral student in social psychology, who studied under two of the core founders of TMT (pers. comm. C. van Kessel, July 2, 2020).

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2020

In Burke & van Kessel (2020), the authors focus on evil in educational discourse. They examine conflict and legalization as a way of coming to terms with educational debate far too often—all of which, reinforces a process of creating “evil Others.” They point to “classroom treatments of evil tend to be reductive” or “largely absented from the curriculum for fear of the implications of making a relationship with difficult knowledge” (p. 1). They frame their view using Kaveny’s arguments that revolve “around the Jere- miad and prophetic indictment” re: controversial issues—and thus polarizing unnecessarily views on schools and schooling. Also using Becker and TMT, they search out roots of evil-causing mechanisms and “determine divergent views as contrary” in many cases to a healthy prophetic indictment and dialogical encounter—and, thus, that such “divergent views” have a tendency to be “deeply rooted in evil” (p. 2). A good deal of the problems they address are due to worldview clashes and they note that includes “religious assumptions at the root of secular schooling” that place excessive constraints on the kinds of arguments allowed (p. 8). They cite only Becker 1973, 1975.

In van Kessel & Burke (2020), we have a profound theoretical work, integrating “the Anthropocene” as context. It is a work that challenges in some ways the Rankian-Beckerian positive and driving inspirational notion of “immortality project,” and shifts to “de-escalate”70 such a drive in professional teachers in training especially—with a guidance offered by TMT along with “weak theology” philosophy—in a combination of critical thought and moral direction meant to “re-orient the educational project” overall. It is a futures, colossal and controversial claim, and would require a much longer summary than what I can do justice to here. So far, only one educator from the UK has cited this paper in two years it has been published.71 Suffice it to say, the authors claim:

Teaching as a profession can be read as an immortality project, a form of compensation to help resolve a certain kind of existential

70 “Part of this task involves a de-escalation of teaching as an immortality project. Through a recognition of possible harmful processes in play...[in re: to seeing] the role of educator as one that does not require that we change our students into our disciples....We posit an educational disposition that is humbler, which, paradoxically requires more courage” (van Kes- sel & Burke, 2020, p. 226). 71 Kristjansson (2020) wrote, that van Kessel & Burke (2018) challenges the dubious practice (largely unconscious) of “teachers using the profession [of teaching] as a compensation for [their] existential terror” (p. 39).

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terror. Terror management theory can help us understand the ways teachers might compensate for their limitedness as humans by im- posing prescribed attributes on their students. In response to the freighted reality of teaching as quasi-missionary work, we suggest a new orientation, namely that the profession embrace the terror of the future that it cannot know....we hope to re-orient the educational project into one with lower stakes, a shift from immortality to more ‘goodness.’ The desired result is to refocus on the relationships we develop with other humans as well as with the planet. (p. 216)

Becker is cited from 1971, 1973, 1975, indicating that earlier profound work by Becker in the 1960s is not engaged and/or seen as not so relevant to the van Kessel-Burke project. Very little discussion of Becker’s work on “immortality project” (including Rank’s, whom Becker relied on) is given in this work and many more theorists are brought in, while TMT offers the foundations for that topic as well as how several other educators in history have used “immortality” and “teaching” together (typically, done so without a Beckerian orientation). Bottomline, van Kessel & Burke want teachers to be aware of the Beckerian notion of “vicarious immortality” (moti- vated by trying “to stave off the terror of not existing”) and how it could be a manipulation process for the benefit of teachers of teachers and teachers of students, and harmful potentially to learners underneath the authority of such teachers (p. 219).

One other ‘urgent’ area of van Kessel’s work (and others) is on the issue of how to teach in school settings, and beyond, about climate change crisis (e.g., global warming) and the vulnerable future. In van Kessel (2020), drawing on many others works, including TMT research and much less on Becker’s oeuvre, she wrote the standard opening premise and favored interpretation of many: “Ernest Becker (1973, 1975) claimed that humans fear death, and such fear is the root of a lot of defensive behavior” (p. 130).

Indeed, what could be more relevant and challenging to the systems of Ed- ucation today, but climate crisis. With focus of citations nearly 80% from psychology, and worldview, the emphasis of this paper is on emotions and emotional education/management in classrooms etc. The “anxiety-induced intolerance” to difference (the Other) is given priority, and rightfully so, as teachers, parents, school administrators and policy makers will pay attention (more or less) to that—“the idea of intolerance” (p. 139). Van Kessel (2020) wrote,

Members of democratic societies desperately need thoughtful (and not defensive) dialogue to decide how to tackle the very real prob-

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lems of climate catastrophe. It is urgent for educators to manage the deep existential roots of the barriers to education and activism about the climate crisis, both their own and those of their students....[citing Kissling and Bell, 2020:] the roots of the crisis are cultural.... (p. 139)

Climate crisis is an Education crisis—is the overall tone of van Kessel (2020). Indeed, the climatological, psychological and cultural—within the sphere of Education—have to be critically analyzed together; neither discipline is more important than the other; interdisciplinarity is called for, something which Becker himself would have applauded.

With a preliminary study of critical corpse studies, Helmsing & van Kessel (2020) continues the inquiry into shifts in ethics in teaching and curriculum, in this case “corporeality and morality as a curriculum of denial.” Becker (1973, 1975) along with many other theorists are brought into the conversation. The author wrote, “if we can overcome our denial of death and our associated creatureliness, we might engage in a different [more ethical] ethics” (p. 158). They offer a “radical” hope from such an inquiry and typical of van Kessel’s work is the aim to have humans/teachers be more humble about their creatureliness, vulnerability and mortality (and morality)—in a Beckerian sense; they cite Critchley (2009) “To be a crea- ture is to accept our dependence and limitedness” and such would be “the condition for [more] courage” [not less] (p. 159). In van Kessel (2019) in this regard she critiques the discourses that re-enforce the ”teacher as sav- iour.”72 This theme is the main thrust of van Kessel & Burke (2018) above.

Preparing pre-service teachers is a large focus of van Kessel’s work in general,73 and in van Kessel et al., 2020, emotions once again are discussed as central, along with worldviews clashing, as part of the challenge educators face in classrooms and that educators of pre-service teachers face in post- secondary professional training settings. “This study asked pre-service teachers to engage with ideas from Ernest Becker (1973, 1975) and terror management theory (TMT)...about defense responses” (p. 145). The study

72 van Kessel (2019), pp. 133, 134, 138, 139; see also “Immortality” (teaching as) in the book Index. 73 Her latest publication van Kessel, Jacobs, Catena, Edmonson (2020) is only available in Abstract at the time of my writing this; the Abstract says: “Emotions are central to teaching potentially polarizing content. This study asked pre-service teachers to engage ideas from Ernest Becker (1973, 1975) and terror management theory...about defensive responses....[the results] For participants, TMT became both an attitude and a teachable theory” (pp. 145-46).

47 48 showed TMT ideas “became both an attitude and a teachable theory” and the researchers hope “both direct and indirect uses of TMT in educational contexts can help nourish less fraught social relations, helping us (as educators and humans) gain perspective on our beliefs and those of others without devaluing emotional [fear-based] responses” (p. 146).

A Few Concluding Remarks

[T]ry as he [sic] may, man cannot seem to order his world according to his visions. Again and again it crumbles, yawns open, and swallows him up, and always in greater and more terrible numbers.... -Ernest Becker (1967, p. 292)

Your [Michael] “fear problem” weighed heavily on him [Becker]. - Jack Martin74

I keep wondering if there are other professional educators out there, through time, who have dedicated some effort to integrating the work of Ernest Becker.75 That is a larger study. Also, even those educators and others in academic circles who appreciate and utilize Becker’s work, they have also their generic critiques as well, including that Becker’s “question- able language” (re: gender, re: “value laden vocabulary like ‘primitive’”) is not seen as progressive or politically correct these days and needs up- grading.76 As well as summarizing the literature herein, there are some notes that indicate places for critique of the uses of Becker by educators but the latter is not the focus of this technical paper.77 I’m grateful for all

74 Pers. comm. Jack Martin, June 29, 2020 75 Thanks to Daniel Liechty’s contact, I have found Peter A. Pompa, a school teacher and philosophical thinker, who is very committed to what a Beckerian education might be. I found one website (Anon.) (agrrrleducator.wordpress.com) recently that talked about Becker’s work positively a bit; and, van Kessel had gathered a number of teachers of various kinds to complete the guidebook on evil (F. Catena, K. Edmonson, N. Jacobs, K. Boucher, R. M. Crowley) and one ought to watch if they continue promoting a Beckerian educational revision in the Education system. For names of others not mentioned, I would appreciate being informed, so email me. 76 This, for e.g., is made issue of by van Kessel (2019), p. 126. 77 Amongst various such critiques, one of them has been the recent educators use of TMT as the way to apply Becker’s work, but the concern of myself and Liechty revolve around potential short-circuiting the critical social theory dimension of Becker’s oeuvre with a

48 49 attempts by educators, at least in intention, to integrate something from Becker’s work into the field of Education.

Has a Pandora’s Box appeared? Horrors or Hopes? A bit of both? Perhaps, it is much too soon to tell. A Beckerian education is more than a handful to even begin to grasp, never mind to implement and evaluate? We simply are not there yet—as my overview shows proof of how little anyone has sys- tematically applied Becker’s oeuvre, theories and ideas (in toto) to Educa- tion. I get the sense current educators are, at best, peaking under lids, tak- ing bits, then shutting the lid before too much is revealed from an endark- enment trail (legacy) that Becker had forged for decades, with little to know success. Whom today, would risk their career track reputations on such a gamble to integrate truly the depths of this heroic pioneer?

Yes, there are many lids opened in this technical paper, as a way to collec- tivize an experiment. There are many lids not opened yet. I pried at a few and maybe I ‘bent’ them out of shape more than the scholarly Beckerians would approve. Yet, I do not apologize for my naiveté and curiosity. The experiment seems to me to boil down to the aim of some sort of vitalization and/or re-vitalization of the spirit of education as a therapia for a univer- salistic notion of humankind’s well-being and the world’s sustainability, health and sanity. Becker was well aware of his “unified” and universal trajectories at times, which were a little more accepted (not much more) in his day than today in the trenchant postmodern attack of anything smelling of the tainted flesh of universal theory (e.g., theories of everything). But be it clear that we do not forget Becker was not a flat-out bought and sold “pluralist”78 and to ignore his reasons for this would be disastrous, I believe, in applying his work or TMT’s advancements of Becker.

I understand that word ‘therapia’ (like therapeutic), may sound too clinical and overly psychological on first glance; it may sound like it needs to be

more palatable reductionism (i.e., psychologism) emphasis via TMT (e.g., see Fisher, 2020a; Liechty, pers. comm., draft paper, 2020). 78 In the social pursuit of “freedom” and democracy, he writes about “universality” and the “monolithic” trend and “irrationality” of the pluralism “fallacy” (i.e., of the idolization of the plural, the diversity ‘law’ over everything else); see Becker (1968, p. 395). This is relevant to and in support of my own integral search, as a sub-text in this technical paper, for a unified therapia for appropriate education today and in the future. I believe Becker would have supported this trajectory, in general. Integral evolutionary thinkers (e.g., Wilber) iden- tify a “post-pluralism” stage in human evolution and consciousness that is ‘an ideal’ of sorts to correct the problems (if not pathologies = immortality transference formations) of postmodern pluralism.

49 50 kept ‘free’ of the Educational functionalist enterprise79—and free from the transgressions potential by dipping toes together in another discipline along the biomedical line and its territories, like Psychiatry. But if there is anything clear to me about Becker’s oeuvre, it is that he not only would not shy away from psychoanalytics and Psychiatry but he was a teller of its tale and its revolution80 (e.g., Becker, 1964), even if that revolution did not fully manifest then or until this day. He wanted to free the rigid disciplinarity and concomitant isolation that had befallen Psychiatry and Education, and Sociology and Psychology in general—as he once wrote, “...psychology and sociology...need the broadest and most daring thinkers.”81 Education likewise, needs daring thinkers, in and out of the classrooms.

To be very brief, this Beckerian therapia is still evolving and many interpreters are required for that venture. Myself, I would bring a Wilberian notion of therapia,82 with its philosophical approach, to the table of analy-

79 Interestingly, Becker (1964) points out that although he has drawn his philosophy from across many disciplines, “Indeed, [John] Dewey’s views on human nature and man’s con- duct are so prominent in the book that it might almost be subtitled “A Deweyan Theory of Mental Illness” (p. 3). It is not that radical in educational philosophy (even as mainstream as Dewey’s is overall) to engage with the therapeutic as central and as Becker was aiming to do. To note: Becker (1964, 1967) makes repeated emphasis that Dewey was heavily influenced by the brilliant psychology of James Mark Baldwin (the latter, who was also deeply important in the movement called integral psychology (“daylight view”)—see Wilber, (2000a), pp. viii-xiii. 80 “The tradition of psychiatry...merged into the tradition of sociology: Evil in social life results from the narrow and uncritical performance of the social fiction [illusion]” (Becker, 1967, p. 155). Tracking their history in the modern West, Becker sees both psychiatry and sociology as “natural partners” involved in an imperative and applicable social history and social criticism; and, without that unification they each become weakened, and further prey to hegemonic forces for experimentalism, positivism, and [in my words] psychologism— which is the cautionary around TMT that Liechty (pers. comm., Aug. 2, 2020) and myself, in particular, have raised. 81 In End Notes of Chapter Two (Becker, 1968). 82 To cut this down most simply, I’ll cite one of Wilber’s general explanations: “That is the very nature of holon, contexts within contexts within contexts. And each time we spot one of these larger (deeper) contexts, we find a new meaning conferred on a given holon [i.e., a part/whole].... each discovery of a new therapia, a new therapy, namely; we must shift our perspectives, deepen our perception, often against a great deal of resistance [fear-based motivations/designs], to embrace the deeper and wider context” (Wilber, 1995, p. 73). The philosophical intervention into the new therapia (for Wilber) is also that of Becker’s view of exactly what needed to happen: “What is the revolution in psychiatry if it can include all these currents [in history]? It is the invasion of psychiatry by philosophy and the social sciences....The aim of the upheaval is to present a broad [and deep] behavioral view of human malfunction, and to subordinate firmly the persuasive [so-called values-neutrality] but

50 51 sis and offerings—the need to “embrace the deeper and wider context,” as Wilber (1995, p. 73) would call it; and I cannot help think Wilber in the early 1980s had been forever grateful for the influence of Becker’s work in the decades prior. My sense of the needed therapia then, revolves around (but is not exclusive to) the Wilber-Beckerian synthesis I spoke of in this paper.

And, to bring things down to more basic grounds of critical analysis, it is this effort to point to the problem of alienation (as meta-context) that I wish to conclude with in this paper. According to Martin & Liechty (2019), “Becker (1967) had crafted his anthropodicy as a general theory of alienation, and explanation for the evil in the world...that can be prevented or ameliorated by human effort, the form of which is a liberal education...” (p. 138).

Of all the educators I have cited and summarized, none of them has taken up this problem near adequately to date. We need to think through our re- sistances83 to doing so, if we are to understand how important it is to everything Becker was thinking about and teaching. Counter-alienation is his social project,84 just as he argues it was for Marx on the material-economic level of existence, for Freud on the psycho-sexual level of existence (e.g., parenting and teaching)—and, Wilber would continue his spectrum synthesis of others invoking a counter-alienation project suggesting next would be Habermas on the mind-rational level of existence and Wilber on the psychic-spiritual level of existence. But to be clear, Becker’s “revolution” was a social project that needed to be grounded in “the pre-Freudian tradi-

inadequate and inverted physio-chemical approach. The medical model offers only a reduc- tionist approach...” (Becker, 1964, p. 2). 83 There is no intent to make “resistances” (like coping defense mechanisms, like fear itself) bad or wrong; this is natural when involved in encounters of learning itself, a decon- struction and reconstruction process—and, yes, a therapia as well (see f.n. 54). A deeper analysis here would link resistance to transference to truly embrace a Beckerian analysis of learning, growth and development, healing, transformation and the design of Education itself. 84 “Immortality project” also is a counter-project to the problem of alienation—so, if educators are not well engaging the Beckerian problem of alienation at core, then arguably, they are not well engaging the immortality project with deep understanding. TMT is also somewhat susceptible to this problem. Ideally, I propose a Rank-Becker-Wilber notion of immortality project that is more nuanced, developmental, and holistic-integral than the uses of immortality project I see from the educators I summarized in this technical paper. See Fisher (2007a) for a first attempt to upgrade TMT via an “integral” lens/theory.

51 52 tion” where so much of “what we need [today, is]...lost.”85 Yet, let that not distract us here from the focus.

What about an anthropodicy of humans, alienation, and fear—all into a configuration of the “crisis in education”? Yes, I trust readers of this technical paper will re-examine what they believe is the “crisis in education.” Everyone seems to have their own versions, across the political stripes. But for a Beckerian analysis and education we have to include a concept like Becker’s anthropodicy. He called Freud’s work (could also be Marx’s work) “a critical anthropodicy, a theory of the alienation of man [sic] in society” (Becker, 1968, p. 148). It is a notion of a “secular theodicy” (p. 18) that was to give a potent reading of the history and meaning of human behavior and its fundamental malfunctions. In my own work, I have labeled this the “Love vs. Fear” theodicy but now it is equally a strand of Becker’s project for a critical secular anthropodicy of the competing meta- motivations of, yes, Love vs. Fear, But in his language off affect, it is more so relevant to this discussion of humanizing vs. de-humanizing, concomi- tantly wholeness vs. alienation (i.e., fragmentation). I have made Fear, in this meta-theoretical (kosmic) sense the barrier of all barriers to everything that Becker desired to achieved in Education and beyond.

Basically, if we as contemporary educators are not going to forefront this problem of alienation (I call the Fear Problem), then we have to ethically86 ask ourselves what does it mean to be an ethical educator? Especially, now, in the early 21st century, it is regarded as a “culture of terror” (and/or necrocene87) which several critics (including TMT co-founder Sheldon Solomon88) have risked to name. Denial of this condition and the problem of culture itself—which produces humans and other species as “cultural

85 Becker (1964), p. 1. 86 And aesthetically—to make sure, as did Rank, that the aesthetic dimension is foundational to any ethical and/or political analysis and interventions. This central valuation of the aesthetic is particularly noticeable in James Mark Baldwin, Dewey, and most all Becker’s 1960s works. Ettinger (2006), the matrixial psychoanalytical post-Lacanian theorist (artist- activist), also sets out argumentation from her own phenomenological and arts-based inquiries for decades that there is a priority of aesthetic to ethical to political that is essential to the matrixial real, a non-essentialist non-genderized ‘feminine’ recovery and corrective to the world today. Later writing on this topic is critical to establish a values-aesthetical basis which avoids the tendencies of interpretive and pedagogical moralism (e.g., character, personality and virtues discourses)—as the latter, are secondarily of interest (arguably) to Becker’s oeuvre. 87 van Kessel (2020), p. 121. 88 Fisher & Solomon (2020).

52 53 artifacts” via mass trance—hypnotism—and numbing apathy—or twisted bravado heroism, clearly that denial will lead to extinction much sooner than later.

We have our ‘calling’ as Becker has brought straight into Education. A challenge and a gift, I welcome you all who wish to take it up and/or continue to take it up. We’ll do best when we truly work cooperative together. I invite critiques.

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