Understanding Violence: Tools for Educators and Communities

The Ernest Becker Foundation seeks to illuminate how the unconscious denial of mortality profoundly influences human behavior, giving rise to acts of hate and violence as well as noble, altruistic striving.

This year's EBF Annual Seattle Conference continues the process of introducing the work of Ernest Becker to young adults. They are wonderfully receptive. If parents question this new way of thinking, the phrase "Understanding Violence" brings the generations together. Becker's synthesis inspires those young minds with the intellectual tools to reflect on human behavior - including their own - and understand the relationship between culture and violence.

In the last decade or so several high school teachers have on their own started using Becker's work as a frame text for 11th and 12th graders studying in the Humanities, Social Studies, History, Literature, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Science. These upper level students are lovers of learning and hungry for syntheses, for organizing principles.