“Our heroic projects that are aimed at destroying evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the world. Human conflicts are life and death struggles—my gods against your gods, my immortality project against your immortality project. The root of humanly caused evil is not man’s animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image.”

— Ernest Becker, book The Denial of Death

Foreword
The Denial of Death (1973)

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Ernest Becker26

American anthropologist 1924–1974

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