Escape from Evil

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Denial of Death , a penetrating and insightful perspective on the source of evil in our world. “A profound, nourishing book…absolutely essential to the understanding of our troubled times.” —Anais Nin “An urgent essay that bears all the marks of a final philosophical raging against the dying of the light.” — Newsweek “Brilliant and challenging…adds another bit of reason to balance destruction…It is, in the best sense of the words, both scientific and philosophical…of the highest importance.” — Los Angeles Times Introduction. The human condition: between appetite and ingenuity The primitive world: ritual as practical technics The primitive world: economics as expiation and power The origin of inequality The evolution of inequality The new historical forms of immortality power Money: the new universal immortality ideology The basic dynamic of human evil The nature of social evil Social theory: the merger of Marx and Freud Retrospect and conclusion: What is the heroic society? reason for overlooking the momentous place that ritual has had in the life of mankind. The fact is that primitive man imagined he could transfer life from one thing to another, that he could, for example, take the spirit-power that resided in the scalp on an enemy and, by proper dancing and chanties, transfer that life from its former owner to the new one. An exploration of the natural history of evil.