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I'm surrounded by death. It's not an intentional design, at least not a conscious choice so far as

I'm aware. Being fascinated by religion and mythology, I find death entertained,

disgust, and dissected in dozens of the books surrounding the desk at which I now sit.

Some argue that it is the only topic to really take seriously. Besides, of course, how to

fill the space between now and then. One such book is The Denial of Death. Ernest Becker's 1973

classic that he was, without irony, posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Becker was a lapsed

Freudian who, upon rereading some of the psychologist works, decided that there was enough value to

explore the Austrians thinking, especially as it relates to the death impulse. Becker's book

posits the idea that civilization is effectively an elaborate defense mechanism against mortality.

We construct society and the ways in which we act within society to emotionally protect ourselves

against the inevitable. Thanks to our pension for dualism, we're able to separate our narrative

voice which Becker believes always ends up positioning the individual as the hero from the physical

world of objects. This is how we're able to, for example, listen to podcasts on phones that we

know somewhere along the chain, involve child or slave labor or the mining of precious minerals,

or both, or all three, and consider only the value we derive from them, not the cost to others to

deliver them into our pockets. Or maybe we read about the terrible labor practices

...