Sam Keen - Identity Quotes

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The man who comes home exhausted because he has been taught to believe without question that his male identity is based on nine-to-five loyalty and the giving of his best energies to the corporation has made a decision about his sexuality. He sacrifices his corpus to the corporation. His chosen method of expending energy and structuring time disallows afternoon dalliance with his wife or lover.

Sam Keen
If you live out of a negative identity, … others will always be cast in the mold of the enemy against whom you must struggle.

Sam Keen
[Some of the] rules and articles of faith [of the western myth]:
Questions that cannot be answered should not be asked.
Knowledge and power are the twin pillars of human identity.
Knowledge consists of organized facts.
Sensation, intuition, and feeling are primitive, immature forms of thought.
Wealth is created by fabricating natural, raw materials into finished products; the production of goods is the basis of value.
Economics has replaced religion as the ultimate concern.
The chief motivation (eros) of human beings is to accumulate and consume.
Advertising and propaganda are the chief erotic sciences of the modern age.

Sam Keen
The moment I step out of my adult identity, it becomes obvious that my tribe is not significantly different from other tribes in its habitual projection of blame for conflict onto an enemy. It is disturbing for an individual to reject the tribe's claim to self-righteousness because it excludes him or her from the civil religion, the social immortality system, and the ritual of scapegoating, in which guilt is alleviated by being assigned to an outcast or enemy that the tribe may destroy in the name of God.

Sam Keen
Neurotic identity crises come when our defense mechanisms have been too successful and we're encapsulated in the fortress we have constructed with nothing to refresh us in our solitary confinement. So we play the old movies with their stale fears and their unrealistic hopes until we become bored enough to risk disarmament and engagement.

Sam Keen