Home
Posted on December 08 2011

 

NEWSLETTER #100 AND OUR


ANNUAL APPEAL CONVERGE

 

Celebrate the first 100; contribute to the next

 

ebf_logo100

Here at the EBF plant it is annual support time for your Mortality Denial Insights and Applications Society. It’s time for us to “Make the Ask!” ------------>

Please do your part and support the EBF with a generous contribution to the work today. We have added a link to our donation page to accommodate all level of support with a hint of hope that you might, in recognition that this is our 100th newsletter, be able to persuade your keyboard to add one more zero in the amount of your donation/pledge.

Here is what is going on for you, both right now and coming up in the pipeline.

1. We keep you in touch with our amazing Sheldon Solomon.

2. You help us work with the new generations of Becker scholars like Sheldon coming along.

Melissa Soenke, a graduate student with Jeff Greenberg, did a superb job stepping in for Sheldon when he was unexpectedly unable to be with us in the Fall Conference.

3. We have great writers writing, reviewing books and blogging for you.

Use our site's search bar to find Dan Liechty and Kirby Farrell where Dan’s “Of Recent Interest” reviews are in Resources and both are in EBF Online (see The Denial File and Links).

Read all 8 points...

_________________________________________________________

The Count to a Hundred

By Kirby Farrell

paper When Neil Elgee first contacted me in the mid-90s, the Becker Foundation was an improbable halo around the moon. When I met the man, I half-feared he would turn out to be a mild eccentric with the usual pipedream of rescuing humanity. No such thing. I could flatter him by calling him generous, principled, modest, canny, droll, tenacious as a sheepdog, and blessed with a wife and family to match. But why embarrass him? This is the 100th EBF newsletter - amazing! - and it's also an occasion to observe that the halo around the moon has become an organization with backbone and the range of ambitions itemized in the accompanying stories. Where are we now?

Read More...

_________________________________________________________

Farrell's "Berserk Style in American Culture"

By Dan Liechty

berserkOf Recent Interest… is the new book by Kirby Farrell, Berserk Style in American Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Readers of the EBF Newsletter are well acquainted with Professor Farrell’s work, and a number of the ideas and examples in this book have been previewed in his conference presentations over the years. It creates a whole new impact, however, to have them presented together in one place, each building on the other.

As the title indicates, Farrell is pinpointing something peculiar about American popular culture, the adulation of what he labels as “berserk abandon.” Just consider some of the major themes of current American pop culture - “teens gone wild,” and “shock and awe,” and “just do it!” and “go for broke,” and “make a killing,” and “going postal,” and “deal or no deal.”

Read More...

__________________________________________________________________

Fall conference wrap-up

By Henry Richards

UVTECflyer1Our capacity to learn from experience is not unlimited. Beckerian blocks, and other obstacles thwart our progress. Beyond these limits, no one has yet experienced the death of a planet, or its redemption from the jaws of destruction. In October at Seattle University the EBF conference faculty and about 50 attendeesthought beyond these unthinkables and sharpened the mental and spiritual tools needed to break down the walls of global climate change denial, the focus of this year’s conference.

Read More...

 


_________________________________________________________________

Clearing house news

 
Your donation, finances and meaning
By EBF Staff   
Posted on December 07 2011
As we urge you to contribute to the EBF we are spurred on by the thoughtful tribute from Richard Mehl in the last newsletter as, facing an incurable cancer, he increased his annual giving and named the EBF in his will. See more here.
 
Joseph Lavely
By EBF Staff   
Posted on December 07 2011
John Wynn, a leader in the EBF since its inception in 1993, recently discovered that Joseph Lavely, a Seattle artist, is a serious Beckerite. It was our pleasure to have Joe with us at the fall conference where we screened some teasers of his powerful oils. See www.josephlavely.com for more.
 
Freud and Rank letters published
By EBF Staff   
Posted on December 07 2011
The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank: Inside Psychoanalysis edited by E. James Lieberman, M.D., and Robert Kramer, Ph.D., to EBF stalwarts, is due in early January. It can be ordered now at John Hopkins University Press.
 
Fox News acknowledges Becker
By EBF Staff   
Posted on December 07 2011
Martin Sawa, who conceived and hosted the 2008 Berkeley salon and forum on "Religion: The Quest for Ideal Heroism" (available at the EBF Store) spotted Becker in an article in Fox News, "Why Denying Death Means Denying Life" by Dr. Keith Ablow, published October 11, 2011.
 


Have you seen the EBF's online store? Check it out >>

Becker on Otto Rank

"Rank was—as the young people say—'something else' You cannot merely praise much of his work because in its stunning brilliance it is often fantastic, gratuitous, superlative; the insights seem like a gift, beyond what is necessary."

From the preface to Denial of Death

more on Otto Rank here