WHAT IS HUMAN NATURE?

The basic problems of human life are the result of the consciousness of the fact of death. The word "human" comes from "humus" which means mud. From mud we came, to mud we shall return. So it is with all living things. Nothing lasts forever. One day, even the sun shall die. But human beings, of all the beings in the universe as far as we know, have the power to be aware of the certainty of death and to dream of eternal life. This power is based on the capacity for language and symbolism, the distinctive thread of human consciousness, from which profane time and history are woven.

The presence of death casts a dark shadow on human life. Becker believed that the driving mechanism of self and society is the denial of death, that is, the creation of a web of meanings, goals and activities which generate the illusion of transcending death. At the center of this web is self, and at the periphery is society. In Becker's view, self and society are a tangle of fictions which individuals take as reality in order to repress the inevitability and finality of death. The root of tragedy lies in the fact that the desires, hopes and dreams of human individuals are eventually doomed to be frustrated by the fact of death.

Becker called the techniques by which individuals and groups create the illusion of transcendence of death "immortality mechanisms." The chief immortality mechanism of every individual is what Becker terms "the oedipal project," the project to transform one's self from a child into an adult person in society. To accomplish this task required taking (mistaking, really,) personal and social fictions as realities. This is the meaning of Becker's statement that every person must choose in what level of illusions to believe and act upon in order to project meaning and purpose into life.

The root of evil, Becker believed, is in the restless strivings of individuals and groups to transcend death and nonexistence through the pursuit of eternal meanings. This implies that the source of evil lies in the selfish strivings and ambitions of egos and nations. Confirmation of this fact does not require experimental research. Buddha became aware of it twenty-five hundred years ago, without the benefit of modern science. It requires only the effort and the willingness to recognize the evidence of the ordinary life that the stubbornly aggressive, self-serving desires of individuals and states are the primary causes of self-induced human suffering.

Becker's most precious legacy to us is his encouragement to ask fundamental questions, ultimate questions. Unless there is free and open inquiry into these questions we will never know the difference between truth and fiction. Individuals and nations are very vulnerable to mistaking for truth their self-generated fictions which are basically myths and ideologies which justify the aggressive enactment of their immortality projects.

It is but a small step of logic to realize that knowing the difference between truth and fiction is vital for the evolution of the human species.

From The Legacy of Ernest Becker, a review of Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death, New York: The Free Press 1973.
Post-Traumatic Culture is UMass English Prof. Kirby Farrell's website exploring American culture at the millennium, and reflecting Becker's thesis in current film and events.