> ![INFO] Book Application > [[My Outputs/My Book Applications/The Denial of Death Application]] ## Summary Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death" explores how self-consciousness leads to human dread and anxiety, which animals do not experience. He discusses Freud's struggle with reality and his desire for immortality, suggesting that people's attempts to achieve individual greatness often result in neurosis. Ultimately, the text highlights the existential challenge of reconciling the need for approval with the fear of death. ## Highlights Becker’s radical conclusion that it is our altruistic motives that turn the world into a charnel house—our desire to merge with a larger whole, to dedicate our lives to a higher cause, to serve cosmic powers—poses a disturbing and revolutionary question to every individual and nation. At what cost do we purchase the assurance that we are heroic? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jj6xg14wqj5m67xgy0b754ge)) - 💭 sounds a lot like the focus on altruism I have to have some form of unique impact because of the ego. the need for heroism to achieve a sense of immortality One of the reasons, I believe, that knowledge is in a state of useless overproduction is that it is strewn all over the place, spoken in a thousand competitive voices. Its insignificant fragments are magnified all out of proportion, while its major and world-historical insights lie around begging for attention. There is no throbbing, vital center. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jj6xs8qa991hfh4e7cjv4wjh)) - 💭 in the crater economy everyone's trying to brand ideas as their own One thing that I hope my confrontation of Rank will do is to send the reader directly to his books. There is no substitute for reading Rank. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jj6xzfn87edavr6rjh227k9g)) - Tags: #toread Still others see Rank as a brilliant member of Freud’s close circle, an eager favorite of Freud ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jj6y29n5r81tgf080a2esxta)) It doesn’t matter whether the cultural hero-system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jjerx00c0xctah431pk7mpyq)) - 💭 this can take place in many forms as long as it leaves some essence of you in the world, whether it be grand like major figures we still think about the day, or this minor in your local communities and based on things you personally find meaningful in the world like your family The crisis of modern society is precisely that the youth no longer feel heroic in the plan for action that their culture has set up. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jjerspdpd4ha8taxjw4vk7c6)) - 💭 nowadays the sense of heroism is being labeled as having a purpose in the world