Ernest Becker, Prophet Of Reason

If he is right Ernest Becker the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "The Denial Of Death" and the author of "Escape From Evil" may go down in history as one of the great thinkers of all time.

His central thought is very simple and very profound. Becker believed that the great motivating force of all mankind is the fear of life and the fear of death. Fear ,he believed, is the great unnamed shadow that inhabits all men's minds and haunts our dreams. It is always present and always whispering to us that we will suffer and we will die.

This leads us to cover our fears with religion first and foremost but also addiction, consumerism, entertainment and any other thing that can mask the fear.

Becker said that maybe, just maybe the fear is amendable to the conscious mind. The goal is to stop living the the shadows of fear and start living in the light of reason.

Big Thoughts that I believe deserve serious thought. Becker's books are a bit dry but not hard reads and the payoff is huge.

This is just a gut feeling but my feeling is that Becker is on to something here because there is nothing complicated or convoluted about what he says. His ideas are simple and elegant like one of Einstein's equations.