The message of the Book of Ecclesiastes is everything we do is pointless. It doesn’t matter if we’re kind or unkind, honest or deceitful, pursue wisdom or folly, or pursue nothing at all. “All is vanity and chasing after wind,” states Ecclesiastes. He leaves only one path for meaning, salvation, and peace of mind: faith in God. But this is a hard pill to swallow for a great many modern westerners, a fact that Ernest Becker understood and grappled with in his 1973 book, The Denial of Death, which asserts that the pursuit of immortality symbols serve as illusory psychological defense mechanisms against the fear provoked by the inevitability of death.
According to Becker, the concept of mortality plagues and motivates humans. In the quest to deny death, and allay the fear of our ultimate end, we engage in a wide array of behaviors, both fair and foul. In our denial, we choose activities as diverse as simple hobbies which we hope will carry our name into the future long after we’re dead, to marching arrogantly into war because, when we’re in the grip of this denial, we don’t feel that we’ll die. Our minds, filled with symbols, dreams, and increasingly in the current epoch, images of our significance, all suggest immortality in the selves that we curate. Cultural structures, like religion, can help keep this fear in check, but it remains with us until the end. For Becker, this fear and the means by which we deny it constitute “a mainspring of human activity.”
One such activity is a concept that he calls “the vital lie.” It functions as an immortality idea, and when indulged, a person unconsciously believes that he’s strong enough to withstand death. The vital lie “can expand into dimensions of worlds and times without moving a physical limb,” and even “take eternity into itself even as it gaspingly dies.” But ultimately, Becker argues, though it’s vital in the sense that without it we couldn’t function, we come to doubt its efficacy as we age due to the degradation of our minds and bodies. A grander illusion is needed: a “transference object,” a person or thing on which man can hang his death fear. We delude ourselves that we are really “self-made” and can in fact stand solely on our own strength.
Becker makes a convincing case that the denial of death is integral in human affairs. But the book’s open to criticism for being too reductive. He relied heavily on Freudian psychoanalysis, especially the work of Freudian Otto Rank. Psychoanalysis has fallen out of favor in modern-day social sciences as an effective mode of investigating human nature, so it might not be of interest to a person educated in the social sciences. Moreover, he made many references to “clinical work” in his analysis but relies heavily on philosophy. Last, the feeling one gets from the book is like being trapped. Lay readers will pick up on this early on with his assertion (though not explicit) that our fear of death determines our lives. This might not appeal to a population conditioned to believe they’re the masters of their destiny, a point which Becker refutes, and in my view, makes the book worth reflecting on.
The book catered to my temperament. I’m pulled towards ideas and concepts that leave me with no way out. I suspect I’m not alone in the desire to be addressed honestly like an adult, and Becker didn’t sugarcoat the work or provide easy answers. It’s bracing given how common it is for Americans to be infantilized. The danger is that it’s challenging to approach critically. The exploration of mortality is an important subject, and Becker’s contribution is as relevant today as the day it was published.
His conclusions are bleak, but there’s much to appreciate in his rigor and honesty. The book corners and compels us to confront mortality and the mechanisms we use to cope with it. In doing so, we might discover ways to advance in our quest for meaning. Go back to Ecclesiastes: “This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil which one toils under the sun… for this is our lot… and to accept our lot and find enjoyment in… toil—this is the gift of God. For they will scarcely brood over the days of their lives, because God keeps them occupied with the joy of their hearts.”