My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.--Ursula K. Le Guin |
Union Avenue An Urban Journal Exploring Place, Purpose, Literature, Memory, and This Time |
Journal Entries
| October 2001 back ...The urge to write has been numbed since Sept 11. And reading fiction is out of the question--the sustained attention that a plot demands has been as sabotaged as sleep. But I am doggedly digging into psychology--finishedThe Atman Project by transpersonal psychologist Ken Wilber and The Denial of Death, 1974 Pulitzer Prize winner of Ernest Becker.
Becker has an interesting section on transference [p.155] which explains something of fanaticism which, in turn, explains, in part, Bin Laden's al Qaeda. Becker attributes the urge to higher heroism to man's narcissistic nature--if man cannot fulfill his own desire for omnipotence, he transfers that power to another. I say 'in part' regarding al Qaeda because Bin Laden's followers obviously don't fall into even the meanest aspect of traditional narcissistic personality, i.e., that practically everyone is expendable except ourselves--the Taliban believe martyred death leads to eternal life. Friends tell me that a better psychological explanation of the fanatic lies in Eric Hoffer's The True Believer, so maybe that book is next. |