Welcome
The Ernest Becker Foundation seeks to illuminate how the unconscious denial of mortality profoundly influences human behavior, giving rise to acts of hate and violence as well as noble, altruistic striving.
Attention secondary school and community college educators:
This year's October conference, Understanding Violence: Tools for Educators and Communities (UVTEC), will focus on how to best bring Becker's ideas into high schools and community colleges. Presentations will detail Becker's role in education, demonstrate how to integrate his ideas into secondary school curricula, and explore how his theories can help students solve problems beyond the classroom. No matter if you teach social studies, humanities, theory of knowledge, or science, or are just interested in how to teach Becker to teenagers, we'd love you see you there. To learn more click here
Our June newsletter announces UVTEC above for October 9-11. This Annual Seattle fall conference continues our efforts to bring educators together with the pioneer teachers who already use Becker (mainly in 11th and 12th grades). We aim to:
- Allay their existential loneliness. There may be as few as 10 such teachers, scattered from Pennsylvania to Hong Kong.
- Facilitate cross-fertilization of ideas.
- Share and discuss concerns.
- Convey their excitement and fulfillment to their peers so as to attract and inspire them to seriously consider using Becker in their teaching. Please help as we try to have lots of these peers present to be persuaded.
Also in this newsletter is a reflection on Andy Warhol's Techno-Logic, a review of Irvin Yalom's new book Staring at the Sun, and several new landmarks for the interdisciplinary goals of our work.
- Professor Janis Dickinson has just published a breakthrough article in the journal Ecology and Society linking self-esteem striving and immortality ideologies to understanding human responses to climate change.
- Jamie Arndt's TMT group has published a study of medical students substantiating the likelihood that the dedication of physicians to professional standards can be compromised in mortality salient situations.
- Two psychotherapeutic organizations included the EBF in recent Seattle meetings, the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education and the NW Certified Group Psychotherapists.
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The Ernest Becker Foundation is devoted to multidisciplinary inquiries into human behavior, with a particular focus on our brutality toward one another. Drawing on Becker's writings, especially the last three: Birth and Death of Meaning (1971), his Pulitzer Prize-winning Denial of Death and its companion Escape From Evil, and now on the Becker Reader, the EBF supports research and application at the interfaces of science, the humanities, social action and religion. |
You may have noticed our new look (back to original). If you have additional suggestions, fill out our comment form or send your comments to neil@ernestbecker.org
Also, the Summer Session at the Graduate Theological Union on Berkeley's "Holy Hill" (adjacent to UC Berkeley) has posted its course offerings for the summer. One is titled "Death, Humility, and Radical Trust: Ernest Becker Revisited," and will be taught by Herbert Anderson and Sam Keen. For more information visit psr.edu/summer.
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