The denial of death

Ernest Becker grasped the insight that a primary motive of mental life is the denial of death. The mechanism for this denial is the construction of a fictional, tragic-heroic self which is the center of our lies, delusions and immortality projects. - Ernest Becker Foundation Newsletter: April 2000.

According to Becker, "everything that man does in his symbolic world is an attempt to deny and overcome his grotesque fate. He literally drives himself into a blind obliviousness with social games, psychological tricks, personal preoccupations so far removed from the reality of his situation that they are forms of madness."

Now what stands out for me is the idea that the symbolic world, which I imagine is another term for culture, is a form of denial. What is denied is the ineluctable fact of death. To many existential philosophers this fact points to the fundamental absurdity of the world. And by absurdity is meant inherent meaninglessness. In which case meaning, the symbol, is a projection and that is all that is available. There is nothing else, nothing else that can protect us from this meaninglessness. If the symbolic construction is all there is and we provide it, we alone, then we have total and ultimate responsibility for it. Another way of putting this is that the symbolic constructions we make are the meanings of the world. But they can not in any way protect us from death or indeed from contingencies.

Ron.

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Sort of

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