Those who know me know that I shy away from reading fiction. It’s not that I don’t enjoy a good novel and the like, but that I’ve only so much time, so want to focus on reading “meatier” things. (This is a big unfair, I know, as a good piece of fiction can illuminate more than any non-fiction can.) And so I read tomes on the history of civilizations, cookbooks that weigh as much as a large roast, and so forth.

Recently, I’ve been reading a book called The Denial Of Death by Ernest Becker. Nothing like some light reading before bed. I’m still rolling through it, so I can’t offer any great insights. However, I wanted to bring up a couple of points which I’ve encountered so far.

One of which is a mystery I’ve been working through for a while: Why is it that people are so in love with disaster? The disaster can take any shape, from a horrible day at work to a terrorist attack. We almost take pleasure in bad things happening, to the point of inventing problems where there aren’t any. Here Becker offers an interesting comment:

Early men who were the most afraid were those who were most realistic about their situation in nature, and they passed on to their offspring a realism that had a high survival value.

So, being scared shitless about your environment makes you pay attention. Paying attention is good, when the animals around you would like nothing better than to eat you. However, being on the lookout for the hungry lion doesn’t do modern man much good. Becker continues:

The result was the emergence of man as we know him: a hyperanxious animal who constantly invents reasons for anxiety even where there are none.

That line really triggered an “a-ha” moment for me. Our anxiety is based on millions of years of evolution, and taken out of a deadly environment, we have to focus that anxiety on something. Often it’s focused on all the petty things around us. Scared of our own shadow, as it were.

On the next page, Becker offers a wonderful insight for all the tired parents out there:

The child lives in a situation of utter dependence; and when his needs are met it must seem to him that he has magical powers, real omnipotence. If he experiences pain, hunger, or discomfort, all he has to do is to scream and he is relieved and lulled by gentle, loving sounds. He is a magican and a telepath who has only to mumble and to imagine and the world turns to his desires.

Isn’t that a wonderful paragraph? It clearly identifies the whys behind a child’s thought process. As a non-parent, I can’t tell you if it helps, but it does seem to offer a sound explaination as to why children are so darn fussy and perplexed, especially from ages 0 to 5.

Following the footsteps of Freud and Otto Rank, Becker covers the usual suspects. Sections on penis envy and the like can be found. However, Becker loves to add his own wry commentary:

With anal play the child is already being a philospher of the human condition.

Sentences like that make books worth reading.