The Dark Psychology Of Giving

The psychology of giving and gift-making is far darker than most people realize. It goes back to the fundamental challenge facing the human spirit - death.

Here we explore what lessons about human nature we can gain by looking more deeply into the sinister and existential roots of giving and gift-making. Our guide will be Ernest Becker and his powerful book called Escape From Evil. There, Becker uses the ideas of thinkers such as Otto Rank, Marcel Mauss, Norman O. Brown, and Freud. His synthesis concludes that the two primary motives behind human gift-making are heroism and guilt. These, Becker writes, are two fundamental forces that arrive from a person's existential situation.

Because we are mortal, we wish to immortalize ourselves in culture - this is the heroic impulse. Because we are alive, we feel undeservingly blessed with existence - this is the guilt impulse.

All this goes to show that charity, giving, and gift-making have far darker roots in human depth psychology than we realize.

#philosophy #wisdom #existential #psychology

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