I first encountered the work "Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker while listening to a Lex Friedman Podcast. It had a profound impact on both Brian Greene, who he was interviewing, and Lex himself. Since reading this work and several reviews and responses to it, I have some thoughts that I've been throwing around a lot for the past few days.

So my main critique if you could even call it that is that Denial of Death puts a heavy focus on how our fear of death, or rather this notion of non existence is the fuel or motivating factor for all societal foundations, world religions, spirituality, significant parts of the human condition and more.

I do find death to be an obvious and significant motivating factor in my life and the lives of the masses that without a shadow of a doubt is a fundamental contribute to the shaping of the aforementioned. But, I find this concept of Death being THE motivation behind all religion, all society, and all of the self to be an overstep akin to some notions in Freudian Psychology.

For example, I think Becker, or at least those attempting to follow his line of thinking discount that the human psyche is able to formulate scenarios and circumstances worse than death, or non existence. I want to compare this to the idea of a parent losing their child.

Imagine you are a parent whose child has passed away. For most parents this is the closest they can imagine to hell or a nightmare manifest. Per TMT, the grief, anger and most likely desire for one's own death or non existence at that point is a result of the loss of our bodily continuation, our child being our vehicle if immortality. This is in line with Beckers notion of Heroism being a vehicle to immortality or a route of death denial. To live on through others.

Additionally TMT, would suggest that this desire for death or suicide that is significantly common and increased among parents who lose a child is a result not of that but of some form of Insanity. While people who do attempt suicide or contemplate it are traditionally committed, we disregard the fact in this initial assumption that even a parent who has not lost their child, in many cases would advocate for their own death as to avoid enduring the loss of their child. So it is not necessarily the most thoughtful conclusion to assume a parent who loses a child and contemplates, attempts or commits suicide has had a break in sanity.

Further there are those that would argue that the loss of the child has forced the parent to not only come face to face with their own fate of non existence but of that of their childs. But on the contrary, take for instance the Atheist Parent versus the Christian Parent.

In this thought experiment consider an Atheist Parent, they have no afterlife beliefs, and proclaim to accept their imminent non existence upon death. Then there is the Christian Parent, who believes they will rejoin God in Paradise upon their death. Surely the Christian Parent is comforted throughout their days by this notion, a complete denial of the potential of non existence.

Now consider that both parents lose a child, again, surely the Christian Parent will be able to overcome their grief quicker and will be able to circumnavigate the depression, the anguish and the suicidal ideation that the Atheist Parent will no doubt struggle with. But what we find in psychoanalysis is this is not necessarily the case. Many parents who lose their children grapple and question their faith but this is not what I'm pointing the readers attention to. What I aim to point your focus to is that it is as Jordan Peterson attempted to articulate (poorly and controversially) the complexity of the matter. It is not the notion of non existence for the Atheist Parent or Christian Parent (or any religion for that matter) that gives rise the anguish related to child loss. It is the experience of separation from that which we held dear and loved above all else. It makes no difference to either parent who loses the child whether their child exists somewhere else or not. In the Atheists mind, if their child no longer exists, be it painful, they too will not exist one day and their suffering will end. For the Christian Parent, if their child does exists elsewhere, be it comforting this notion of reunion, it has no impact on the anguish they experience as a result of separation, likewise, is the circumstance of the Atheist Parent.

There are more devastating matters that play a crucial role in the foundations of societies, world religions and the human psyche than the fear and denial of death alone. Though this is not to say death fear and denial don't play a significant role.

Freud postulated that unconscious urges and desires such as sexual desire for our caretakers played a vital and center role in our shaping as human beings from infants into adulthood While Freud contributed irrefutably to the field of psychoanalysis, and many of his hypothesis hold gravity to this day, in the 21st century modern psychology has all but done away with this notion of sexual attraction to our caretakers playing the role Freud postulated among others.

In my own personal opinion, which is not to say I don't believe Ernest Becker to be one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, is that we can not consider Becker's work on Death Denial or the resulting TMT as a sort of unified theory in the social or psychological sciences, in the sense that I have encountered many individuals doing so.