The Birth and Death of Meaning
An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Problem of Man; 2nd Edition

An absolutely amazing work. In the introduction, Becker sets out to answer the question "Why do people do what they do?" What follows, across 200 pages, is a remarkably well-constructed and well-written study on the development of selfhood and culture. Becker's work is truly interdisciplinary and dr......more

After reading "The Birth and Death of Meaning" along with "The Denial of Death", Ernest Becker quickly became one of my personal heroes. Who else would have had the guts to write something so penetrating, so frightening, so threatening to the mechanisms we use every day to cope with life? Becker mak......more

I remember really liking this book when I was in undergrad and feeling very inspired about its message on how to find meaning in the modern world. Recently, I tried re-reading the first few chapters and felt very disenchanted by what turned out to be a horribly facile take on evolution and the cogni......more

Becker uses a multidisciplinary approach to explore questions of human meaning and existence through the lens of culture. Here is an outline of his arguments: PASS THE PARADOX PLEASE Becker begins by laying out a psychological theory of man predicated on Existentialist schools of thought (Kierkegaard)......more

You can read texts of great literature, the novelists, the existentialists etc; to understand what is the human condition. But in my opinion, no amount of reading fictional literature can compare to what psychology and anthropology can offer on this topic, probably because they have a more systemati......more