The Denial of Death

I read a book called Denial of Death. It was written years ago by an author who won a Pulitzer and later died of cancer. I don't agree with it; I think it's kind of psychoanalytic babble and I found it didn't resonate with me.

I read a book by a guy named Ernest Becker called Denial of Death. I don't know if you've ever heard of this book. It was big in the 70s and won the Pulitzer Prize.

I've mentioned this guy scores of times at least, but as the great... Thomas Mann? No. It's Charles Mann, you're thinking of him. Oh, okay. Great psychologist, Ernest Becker.

Shout out to our pal, Joe Randazzo, who's like in the Becker now. Isn't it Ernst? Or is it Ernest? Ernest. Okay. You're thinking of Max Ernst. Okay. Ernest Becker wrote The Denial of Death, the seminal work that basically says we're all just doing everything we can to think about our own demise.

I've mentioned this guy scores of times at least, but as the great... Thomas Mann? No. It's Charles Mann, you're thinking of him. Oh, okay. Great psychologist, Ernest Becker.

Ernest Becker wrote The Denial of Death, the seminal work that basically says we're all just doing everything we can to think about our own demise.

I've mentioned this guy scores of times at least, but as the great... Ernest Becker wrote The Denial of Death, the seminal work that basically says we're all just doing everything we can to think about our own demise.

And there is some sort of health, whether it's spiritual, emotional, there's some sort of health or well-being, I think, from facing the fact that you're going to die.

If you read, uh, the denial of death, you learn about this.

I happen to be reading - it's a hard book, a genuinely difficult book, but I'm really enjoying it. I'm reading Ernst Becker's The Denial of Death. I highly recommend it to everyone. One a Pulitzer, after all.

In 1972, Ernest Becker wrote a book, which you'll know all about the book based on the title, called The Denial of Death. He won the Pillaritzer Prize for it.

Ernest Becker wrote a lovely book called The Denial of Death. And he says, like, the driving force of the modern world is this concept of immortality cults.

It's a book by Ernest Becker, it's called The Denial of Death.

I really think I'm an intellectual granddaughter of Ernest Becker, who famously wrote The Denial of Death.

He was an anthropologist as well and his take was that society everywhere is a living myth of the significance of human life, that we defiantly create meaning where none exists because we do not want to deal with the terror that the ultimate mistake is one that's going to get us killed.

And again, I'm just Becker's granddaughter, because his argument was if we distract ourselves and we try to push down our fears of failing, ultimately that's about our fear of dying, that ironically trying to push all of that down and not talking openly about it creates more problems.

So I grabbed the next book, The Denial of Death. And again, the first paragraph, Becker writes, the idea of death, the fear of it haunts the human animal like nothing else. It is a mainspring of human activity.

the book that got the denial of death it's I think Ernest Becker

I've been reading the the denial of death dude.

It's such a good I like read it for a little bit and put it back down.

It's about how basically most of our deepest insecurities and are kind of like the personas we build so that we can kind of like go out and function in the world or typically build on like a lie or like we like restrict what we pay attention to so that we don't freak out about the fact that we're just like floating through space and we're gonna die.

It's pretty tight.

It's pretty tight.

The terror management theorist characters, right? Deriving their theories from Ernest Becker.

But he's also deeply wrong. The hero myth that Becker lays out is not an illusion. It's actually the fundamental principle by which adaptation takes place. Because confronting, so confronting a sequence of minor, no, confronting a sequence of minor traumas, let's say is exactly what fortifies you.

And so did the terror management theorists in consequence.

It's also an interesting and compelling alternative to the death anxiety model, because the fundamental enemy in the entropy model isn't death per se.

I don't think all these things we do in life is based on trying to deny death, which is of course Becker's notion.

That's based on Ernest Becker's work the denial of death which is a great book I think he's fundamentally wrong, but it's a great book nonetheless he's wrong in a very interesting way and he's very, very smart person.

So the denial of death is a great book yeah and I'm familiar with some of the major researchers in in a terror management area. I've met a couple of them and we've had some discussions.

That's why the books called denial of death right at some level you have to deny that that's it right now this and and you have to transform yourself into something symbolic and so one of the arguments that becker made is as humans live in kind of two kind of two worlds we live in the material physical world.

The denial of death is a book. I mentioned the show before was written in the 70s by a guy named Ernest Becker who ironically died shortly after it was published; he won a Pulitzer I think for the book but was not alive to receive it because he had died.

There was a book written decades ago by a guy named Ernest Becker, which I just read recently as a matter of fact, somebody recommended it to me. And the book is called Denial of Death.

He was a psychoanalyst and there's a lot in his theory that I don't agree with... the central thesis of his book, in my opinion, is compelling and persuasive.

He argued that our repressed anxiety about death is a driving factor in our lives and in the culture, and that much of human culture is set up specifically to distract us from thoughts of death.

So much of human culture, in fact, according to him, is set up specifically to distract us from and to evade thoughts of death.

He won the poll surprise for that book a few months after it was released, but he wasn't around to receive the award because he died shortly after finishing the book.

This is the terror of death. To have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings and excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression. And with all this yet to die.

Power means power to increase oneself, to change one's natural situation from one of smallness, helplessness, finitude, to one of bigness, control, durability and importance.

It is still a mythical hero system in which people serve in order to get a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning.

Civilized society is a hopeful belief and protest that science, money and goods make men count for more than any other animal.

necessary and basic dishonesty about oneself and one's whole situation.

This is the terror of death. To have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings and excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression. And with all this yet to die, end quote.

Power means power to increase oneself, to change one's natural situation from one of smallness, helplessness, finitude, to one of bigness, control, durability and importance. End quote.

necessary and basic dishonesty about oneself and one's whole situation. End quote.

kill out of joy, as Becker says.

That is the theory proposed. Shout out to our pal Josh Clark, who is out Egypt way now as you hear this.

Well, maybe back. But let me save you some time and say that the thesis of that is exactly as put in the earlier conversation. The concept being that people generally do things that are recreational beyond reproductive or survival needs entirely to distract themselves from mortality.

Well, it's not a great book. It's a very long book called The Denial of Death, which is all about fanatology, the study of death. And in that book, the author posits that everything people do is really just to avoid addressing the fact that up until now, everyone who was ever born has died at some point.

There's a great...Well, it's not a great book. It's a very long book called 'The Denial of Death', which is all about thanatology, the study of death. And in that book, the author posits that everything people do is really just to avoid addressing the fact that up until now, everyone who was ever born has died at some point.

It's called The Denial of Death. Mentioned it in past episodes.

You do not have to read it. The thesis is that every single piece of all human technology and all religion and all of what we call society, all all the things that the humans are doing is to distract themselves from the fact that one day they will no longer be around.

There's a great... Well, it's not a great book. It's a very long book called The Denial of Death, which is all about fanatology, the study of death. And in that book, the author posits that everything people do is really just to avoid addressing the fact that up until now, everyone who was ever born has died at some point.

The worm at the core by Ernest Becker about terror management helped me a little bit with this area...

Ernest Becker, brilliant Pulitzer Prize winning sociologist, in his book *The Denial of Death* said, the reason people are stingy, the reason we have trouble giving away our money, the reason that we need money so much is we're, we don't want to admit that we're going to be whisked away.

the reason people are stingy, the reason we have trouble giving away our money, the reason that we need money so much is we're, we don't want to admit that we're going to be whisked away.

a modern person is someone who feels like a sinner but has no word for it.

My sense of self comes not from other people but from, from, my sense of self comes not from other people but from myself.