“People create the reality they need in order to discover themselves.”
"The Spell Cast by Persons—The Nexus of Unfreedom", p. 158
The Denial of Death (1973)
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Ernest Becker 26
American anthropologist 1924–1974Related quotes

“In order to create and to heal, to do and to serve,.. to act we need detachment.”
All Will be Well (2004)

“Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves.”
Source: Gift from the Sea

“We need a dream-world in order to discover the features of the real world we think we inhabit.”
Source: Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge

Vol. I, Part 4.
The German Ideology (1845/46)
Context: Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organisation is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the conditions of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar as reality is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves.
Weick (1993, p. 635), as cited in: Bruce K. Berger, Juan Meng (2014), Public Relations Leaders as Sensemakers, p. 7
1980s-1990s

Audio lectures, Decadence and the New Age (March 10, 1989)