The Denial of Death

Becker states that humans live in both the physical world & a symbolic world of meaning, which is where our 'immortality project' resides. We create in order to become immortal - to become part of something we believe will last forever. In this way we hope to give our lives meaning. 

In The Denial of Death, Becker sheds new light on the nature of humanity & issues a call to life & its living that still resonates decades after it was written.

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Ernest Becker was already dying when “The Denial of Death” was published 50 years ago this past fall. “This is a test of everything I’ve written about death,” he told a visitor to his Vancouver hospital room. Throughout his career as a cultural anthropologist, Becker had charted the undiscovered country that awaits us all. Now only 49 but losing a battle to colon cancer, he was being dispatched there himself. By the time his book was awarded a Pulitzer Prize the following spring, Becker was gone... 

Only by confronting our own mortality, Becker argued, could we live more fully. To hold that terror is to see more clearly what matters & what does not — and how important it is to grasp the difference. Contemplating death is like a cold plunge for the soul, a prick to the amygdala. You emerge renewed, your vision clarified. “To talk about hope is to give the right focus to the problem,” Becker wrote. — Alexander Nazaryan, NY Times, Dec. 2023