I’m reading The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker (read it a long ago but don’t remember it). Next I’ll read Escape From Evil and next the books of Otto Rank (which I also read a long time ago) and maybe some books of Norman O. Brown which I never read.
This all came about when I put my 19 year old dog down. I think like most people I had denied death which I hadn’t seen happen to someone close to me in about 40 years. Then now at 71 I came face to face with it in putting down this dog who was our constant companion for 19 years.
It only hit me after I did it (putting a dog down is such a common thing, right?): I caused his death.
Okay. What’s death? And so after I had stopped reading with the zen belief - truth, the map is never the territory - I’m reading again.
You see, I am just like the Gang Stalkers, who I will talk about in a moment – a human being who deep down feels powerless and helpless, a creature who will die and turn to dust, like the countless plants we see shriveled and brown on the ground. That’s what nature does to us. We have this thing called a personality which comes prepackaged as genetic inheritance and then is sprinkled with lots of conditioning from family, culture etc. – and then puff it’s gone. Where’d we go? Where’d we come from? What the hell is this all about?
So I read. It’s what I’ve always done when I’m lost and maybe hurting. Tell me oh wise psychoanalysts, psychologists (their answers rather than religious ones always made more sense to me), explain to me the mystery of being, this painful, scary thing that is our lives. Tell me what death is.
Now the Gang Stalkers, the group I am most familiar with having been Gang Stalked since 2006, it seems to me don’t look to books for answers.
They lose themselves in the group. This is what Becker says about that
“In the transference we see the grown person as a child at heart, a child who distorts the world to relieve his helplessness and fears, who sees things as he wishes them to be for his own safety, who acts automatically and uncritically, just as he did in the pre-Oedipal period.”
“Perhaps we could even say that men were all too willingly mystified by hypnosis because they had to deny the big lie upon which their whole conscious lives were based: the lie of self-sufficiency, of free self-determination, of independent judgment and choice. The continuing vogue of vampire movies may be a clue to how close to the surface our repressed fears are: the anxiety of losing control, of coming completely under someone’s spell, of not really being in command of ourselves. One intense look, one mysterious song, and our lives may be lost forever.”
Thus explains the lure of celebrity culture. Tell me what to do, what to value, who to be and I will worship at your altar – movie star, sports hero, billionaire, war hero – explain it to me, save me, instruct me.
We repress our desire for uncritical obedience which Becker says is present in everyone. We desire to merge with power figures. We helpless, powerless creatures that we are, food for worms, need to subject ourselves to someone – stronger, wiser, more self-confident. We want to blindly follow the parent – oh no I mean – leader, abandon our egos, identify with their power.
We are horde animals who need a leader so we can strut our passive-masochistic true selves.
Thus, we need authority figures, to participate in their omnipotence, to revive the oceanic feeling of safety that we enjoyed when we were loved and protected by our parents.
In this spirit George Floyd called out for his Mother as we all do when we Gang Stalk, join a movement, are so happy for a strong leader.
It is this need of our helpless/powerless/food for worm souls for power, a savior that knits members of a group like Gang Stalkers together.
Natural Narcissim Becker says – the feeling that the person next to you will die, but not you – is reinforced by trusting dependence on the leader’s – (Mommy’s) – power.
In group behavior – like Government Gang Stalking – anything goes because the leader okays it, Becker tells us.
And so, he concludes, we understand the terrifying sadism of group activity.
