The End of Death and the Fate of Civilization,
A Beckerian Reflection on Immortality

Ernest Becker argued that human beings are the animals who know they are going to die and cannot stand it. From that intolerable awareness, he believed, spring our highest achievements and our most destructive evils. Art, religion, and civilization are elaborate ways of denying death; so are nationalism, ideological fanaticism, and the organized systems of violence that scar human history. If Becker is right, then the modern pursuit of biological immortality, or extreme life extension, is not just a medical curiosity. It is a direct assault on the existential condition that, in his view, made us human in the first place.

Suppose the project succeeds. Not merely modest increases in life expectancy, but lifespans of 200, 300, even 500 years, or the radical case, technological “immortality” in which natural death is effectively eliminated. What happens to a creature whose whole symbolic world has been built around denying what now does not occur? What becomes of culture, reproduction, knowledge, and the biosphere itself, when the basic rhythm of birth and death is interrupted?

This essay explores that imagined future through Becker’s lens. It begins by looking at what has already happened as human life expectancy has roughly doubled in the last century, then projects forward into scenarios in which death is drastically delayed or medically defeated. Along the way, it asks whether immortal beings would still create meaning, discover new truths, or learn from their mistakes, and whether humanity might, in the end, choose to reintroduce mortality as a condition of a flourishing life.

I. Becker’s Anthropological Thesis: Death, Meaning, and Evil

Becker’s central idea is deceptively simple: a human being is an animal that lives on two planes at once. On one plane, we are biological organisms, fragile, finite, and destined to decay. On the other, we are symbolic creatures, imagining eternity, ideals, and moral orders. The conflict between these planes, between our animal vulnerability and our symbolic aspirations, generates a level of anxiety that cannot be consciously borne.

To manage that anxiety, we construct what Becker calls “immortality projects” or “hero systems.” These are cultural structures, religions, nations, ideologies, artistic traditions, family legacies, economic roles, that promise to lift our personal existence into something enduring. They tell us that our lives participate in a larger, lasting story. People become heroes to the extent that they fulfill the roles prescribed by these systems: the good citizen, the faithful believer, the loyal revolutionary, the productive worker, the successful entrepreneur, the respected scholar.

For Becker, evil arises when these defenses against death become absolute and exclusive. If my immortality project is understood as the only valid one, then alternative projects, other nations, other beliefs, other ways of life, are experienced as threats, even as insults, to the very meaning of my existence. Eliminate the threat, eliminate the anxiety. The result is persecutory violence: war, genocide, ideological purges, and countless smaller forms of humiliation and exclusion.

In this view, death is not just a biological end; it is the invisible engine of culture and cruelty alike. Our fear of non-being pushes us into grand achievements and fanatical defenses. The “denial of death” is not a minor psychological quirk, it is the organizing principle of civilization.

This means that any serious attempt to conquer death biologically is also, in some deep sense, an attempt to redesign the foundations of culture. If human beings no longer had to die, or could live for centuries, then the old symbolic bargains, religion’s promise of an afterlife, the nation’s promise of continuity beyond the citizen’s lifespan, the family’s promise of living on through children, would all be destabilized. The question is not only what medicine would do for the body, but what immortality would do to the complex psychological ecosystem that depends on death being inevitable.

II. When Lifespans Doubled: Lessons from the Last Century

1. From short, precarious lives to long, planned ones

Before imagining 300-year lives, it is useful to recall what happened when the human lifespan rose from roughly 35–40 years in the 19th century to 75–80 years or more in many societies today. This doubling did not come from conquering aging, but from reducing infant mortality, controlling infectious disease, and improving nutrition and sanitation. Nevertheless, it altered almost every feature of social life.

People now expect to live long enough to see their children’s children, to have multiple careers, to enjoy decades of post-work life. The concept of “retirement”, a lengthy period in which one is no longer economically productive but still physically alive, is itself a historical novelty. Education has stretched into many years of youth; instead of being initiated early into adult labor, children and young adults spend a decade or more preparing for an increasingly specialized future. Marriage, parenting, and career formation have all shifted later.

In Beckerian terms, the hero systems have adapted. The economic-technical order promises not only employment but a pension and medical care in old age. The educational system promises long-term competence for a protracted life. Religions, in many places, have softened apocalyptic emphases and focused more on ethical living, personal growth, and psychological well-being during this lengthened earthly span.

2. Demography, fertility, and the slowing of cultural turnover

The demographic transition offers further clues. As life expectancy rose and child mortality fell, fertility rates dropped in many societies. Families shifted from having many children, hoping that some would survive, to having fewer children, investing heavily in each one’s education and well-being. The result has been aging populations, shrinking youth cohorts, and debates about how to support large retired generations with smaller working ones.

Longer life also slows cultural turnover. When people routinely died at 40, each generation replaced the previous one quickly; norms, values, and political arrangements could change rapidly as new cohorts took power. When people live 80 years or more, the same generation can hold key positions for decades. Knowledge and institutions may stabilize, but innovation and social mobility can be constrained. Young adults face systems designed by, and for, older generations reluctant to relinquish influence.

Becker’s analysis helps explain why political and cultural conflicts often appear as clashes between different hero systems anchored in different historical eras. Longer lives mean that older symbolic worlds persist side by side with newer ones. When these worlds define themselves as exclusive sources of meaning, intergenerational tension intensifies. Longevity has not eliminated death anxiety; instead, it has given people more time to invest in, and stubbornly defend, their chosen immortality projects.

If doubling life expectancy in the last century has boosted both individual opportunity and the rigidity of existing orders, one can only imagine how lifespan multiplication to 200 or 500 years would magnify those dynamics. What has been a partial conquest of death would become an attempt to dethrone it entirely.

III. The Immortality Project Realized

1. From symbolic to biological immortality

In Becker’s universe, “immortality projects” are symbolic; they promise forms of meaning that survive the individual’s physical death. A patriot believes the nation will endure, a believer trusts in an afterlife, an artist hopes her work will speak to future generations. The body ceases, but the project goes on.

A successful technological conquest of aging would change the terms of this bargain. The goal would no longer be symbolic survival after bodily death; it would be to postpone or avoid bodily death altogether. The immortality project would become literal. Instead of faith in heaven, we would invest in regenerative medicine, gene editing, nanotechnology, or mind uploading. Laboratories and corporations would replace temples and cathedrals as the primary institutions promising salvation.

Becker might see in this a shift, but not an escape, from the denial of death. The anxiety remains, the fear of non-being, but its defense system is medicalized and technologized. People would still cling to hero systems, but those systems would be organized around access to life-extending technologies: belonging to the class, the corporation, or the social order that secures continued existence. The old conflicts between religions and nations could be compounded by a new line of fracture: between the immortal and the merely mortal.

2. Denial of birth: when no one can die

If natural death is eliminated or drastically delayed, the logic of the biosphere is broken. The Earth is a finite system: limited land, water, energy, and ecological capacity. Under current conditions, population growth is balanced, however clumsily, by mortality. But if no one dies, the only way to avoid ecological catastrophe is to limit births severely.

The immortality project would therefore require a complementary project: the control or denial of reproduction. If a society is to maintain stable numbers in the face of negligible death, births must be rationed. Reproduction becomes a privilege granted by a planning authority, a randomized lottery, or a market-based licensing system. Parenthood ceases to be a common destiny and becomes an exception.

In this world, the denial of death is accompanied by a new psychological predicament: the denial of birth. The continuity that once came from having children and participating in a lineage would be replaced by continuity of the self across centuries. The symbolic promise of “living on through offspring” would fade; instead, one would live on as oneself. Ironically, by abolishing death, humanity would cut itself off from one of the oldest, most intimate forms of meaning.

3. Personal identity across centuries

Philosophers have long debated whether a person remains the same individual over a lifetime as memories, character, and circumstances change. Stretch that lifetime to 300 or 500 years, and the puzzle intensifies. Would someone who has lived through centuries of change be psychologically continuous with her younger self? Or would she become, in effect, a series of different persons inhabiting one physical trajectory?

Becker’s insight suggests that the self is defined not merely by memory, but by its immersion in a particular symbolic order. The “you” of your twenties, pursuing a particular career and ideology, is sustained by a certain hero system. Fifty years later, you may have shifted to a different one, religion to secularism, nationalism to cosmopolitanism, perhaps back again. If you live 300 years, you might participate in many such systems, each organized around its own denial of death.

The question then becomes: what happens when a single biological life houses multiple, successive immortality projects? Does anxiety diminish, as each system is revealed as provisional? Or does it increase, as each collapsed project deepens the sense that no structure can finally secure meaning? Immortality might not cure existential dread; it might exacerbate it, as the self confronts not only eventual non-existence but the erosion of countless symbolic worlds.

IV. Ecology, Evolution, and Reproduction in a Deathless World

1. Death as nature’s engine of creativity

In biological terms, death is not merely a tragic necessity. It is a mechanism of evolution and ecological balance. Generations turn over; genetic variations are tested in changing environments; species adapt or vanish; ecosystems adjust. The “wastefulness” of nature, the huge numbers of seeds, eggs, and offspring that never reach maturity, is also the source of its creativity, constantly exploring new combinations of traits.

Human beings are not outside this process, however much our symbolic worlds pretend otherwise. Our bodies age and die; our cultures evolve and disappear. When we imagine erasing death, we imagine freezing parts of this dynamic.

An immortal or near-immortal human species would interrupt the usual pathways of natural selection. Genetic variation would slow, as fewer births occur. Evolution would shift from natural to artificial selection: deliberate genetic interventions, controlled reproduction, engineered traits. The diversity that once arose from random mutation and selection might be replaced by top-down design, with all the attendant risks of uniformity and unforeseen consequences.

2. The ethics of birth under immortality

If no one dies, every new birth adds to a permanently accumulating population. In a finite world, that is unsustainable. Therefore, a deathless society must restrict births, not for a generation or two, but indefinitely. Human reproduction becomes a problem to be solved rather than a basic fact of life.

How would such restrictions be justified? Perhaps by appeal to planetary limits: “We can sustain ten billion immortals; therefore we can only allow X births per year.” Perhaps by appeal to fairness: “Everyone who wishes to be born into immortality must have equal chance; therefore we allocate births by lottery.” Perhaps by appeal to merit: “Only those who have contributed sufficiently may reproduce.”

Each scheme raises profound ethical questions. Lottery systems treat birth as a kind of cosmic game; merit systems enshrine inequalities; market systems, in which birth licenses are bought and sold, reduce existence to a commodity. The ordinary sense in which everyone is the child of someone, participating in an ongoing chain of life, would be radically altered. A person might live 300 years without descendants, without any direct involvement in the natural cycle of parents and children.

Becker might say that one of the most ancient routes to symbolic immortality, having children who remember you and continue your line, would be cut off from most people. The immortality project would be monopolized by the self, extended in time, but not reflected in posterity. The question, “What is my life for?” would no longer be answered by pointing to future generations; it would have to be answered in terms of one’s own endlessly prolonged trajectory.

3. The biosphere under permanent human presence

The broader biosphere would also be transformed. Predation, competition, and extinction would continue among non-human species, but they would be increasingly constrained by a technologically dominant, ever-present human population. Immortal humans would have a long-term stake in environmental stability, they would, after all, be around to suffer the consequences of ecological collapse. This might encourage more responsible stewardship, long-term planning, and a sense of shared fate with the planet.

Yet the same immortality that encourages long horizons also enables indefinite accumulation of power, wealth, and consumption. Individuals or groups that seize control of resources once may never relinquish them. Instead of natural turnover of elites through death, we would have self-perpetuating classes whose interests could diverge drastically from those of the wider biosphere.

V. Knowledge, Discovery, and the End of Generational Renewal

1. Innovation as a function of generational turnover

Sociologists of science and culture have often noted that intellectual revolutions tend to occur when new generations replace old ones. Paradigms become entrenched as their originators rise to positions of prestige and power; challenges are marginalized until enough younger thinkers, less invested in the status quo, push through a new framework. In many fields, progress arrives not because older scholars change their minds, but because they retire and die.

Extend lifespans to 300 years, and this process slows dramatically. The same individuals might dominate a discipline, a political order, or a cultural scene for centuries. Their early insights could be brilliant and transformative, but over time any framework hardens into orthodoxy. The longer the rule of a particular generation, the more difficult it becomes for dissenting perspectives to gain traction.

Knowledge may continue to accumulate in detail, more data, more refinements, but the big shifts in worldview might become rare. The combination of long-lived elites and risk-averse institutions could lead to a civilization that is technically sophisticated yet intellectually conservative, clinging to old paradigms long after their creative possibilities have been exhausted.

2. The burden of memory and the temptation of forgetting

Immortality brings not only extended time but extended memory. A person who has lived three centuries has accumulated a vast archive of experiences: projects begun and abandoned, relationships formed and lost, traumas endured, joys savored, trends watched rise and fall. The sheer weight of that memory could be crushing.

Even now, older individuals sometimes speak of “living in another world” when comparing their youth to the present. Multiply that discrepancy by centuries, and you obtain a consciousness carrying several distinct historical epochs within itself.

To cope, immortals might resort to intentional forgetting. Technologies that allow selective erasure or restructuring of memory could become as important as those that preserve life. Paradoxically, the immortality project would require managed mortality at the level of experience: parts of the self would have to “die” to make room for new growth. An immortal person might choose to erase, say, the first eighty years of life in order to remain psychologically flexible, sacrificing biographical continuity for the sake of ongoing creativity.

Becker’s perspective complicates this picture. If death anxiety drives hero projects, what happens when parts of one’s life narrative are intentionally discarded? Does the fear of non-being attach itself to those erased chapters, producing a new form of haunting, “ghost lives” missing from memory but known to have existed? Or does the ability to forget reduce anxiety, allowing individuals to reinvent their projects without being crushed by past failures?

3. Stagnation versus deepening

It is tempting to assume that very long lives would inevitably lead to stagnation: entrenched elites, rigid paradigms, exhausted institutions. But there is another possibility. Individuals who know they have centuries might undertake projects of extraordinary depth, a single grand experiment, a multi-century artistic cycle, a patient exploration of a philosophical problem across radically different contexts.

Where mortal lives must choose between breadth and depth, immortals might pursue both. They could spend fifty years mastering a craft, then another fifty undermining it; they could live within multiple cultures and languages, weaving a rare kind of global understanding. The intellectual and artistic achievements of such individuals could surpass anything seen in human history.

Whether immortality yields stagnation or deepening depends on the surrounding structures of power and meaning. If hero systems reward conformity and control, immortals will likely become custodians of the past. If they reward curiosity and critical reflection, immortals may become pioneers of genuinely new forms of life. Becker’s warning is that even in the latter case, the underlying motive remains the same: to secure a sense of significance in the face of an unchanging horizon of potential annihilation. The long-lived sage, like the long-lived tyrant, still builds an immortality project; the difference lies in whether it opens space for others or suffocates them.

VI. Moral and Political Consequences: Eternal Hierarchies, Eternal Anxiety

1. The unequal distribution of immortality

It is extremely unlikely that life-extending technologies, if developed, would be distributed evenly. They would arrive first as expensive treatments available to the wealthy, the well-connected, or those deemed strategically important. A global hierarchy of mortality would emerge: some groups would age and die in the usual way, while others would remain indefinitely young and healthy.

Becker’s framework suggests that this would not be a mere economic inequality; it would be a metaphysical one. The immortal classes would embody, for themselves, the successful denial of death. Their lives would appear as literally more valuable, more real, than those of the mortal majority. The old tendency to treat some people as “expendable” would acquire a new biological basis: some are, in fact, being expended to preserve the environment and resources for others who do not die.

The potential for organized systems of evil here is immense. Wars, resource conflicts, and repressive regimes could be justified as necessary to maintain the conditions for the immortals’ continued existence. The defense of the immortality project, the literal, technical conquest of aging, could rationalize extraordinary violence against those excluded from it.

2. Permanent rulers, permanent systems

Political systems rely, at least in part, on turnover. Even authoritarian leaders eventually die; even entrenched elites must yield to biological limits. Immortality removes one of the few guarantees that power will change hands. A ruling class that consolidates control early in the era of life extension could, in principle, remain in power for centuries.

This is not to say that no change is possible, revolution, technological shifts, and external shocks could still disrupt any regime. But the basic rhythm of politics would be altered. Instead of cycles of rise and fall bounded by lifetimes, we could see extraordinarily long periods of continuity, punctuated by rare, catastrophic breaks. The stakes of any conflict would be amplified: a successful coup against immortal rulers might involve genocidal violence, as the losers would not naturally fade away.

The hero systems of such a world would wrap themselves around the legitimacy of permanent leadership. Ideologies would justify why it is right that certain beings persist and others do not. Becker’s insight, that evil escalates when immortality projects are defended at all costs, would be written into the structure of the state itself. To challenge the immortals’ rule would be to challenge the social foundation of their very existence.

3. Would the immortal still fear death?

One might object that if immortality is successfully achieved, death anxiety would recede. Why be terrified of something that no longer happens? Becker would likely question this assumption. First, technological immortality is never absolute. There will still be accidents, catastrophes, and the possibility of system failure. The longer one lives, the more one may fear such contingencies. The loss of an immortal life is, in a sense, more tragic: so much accumulated experience, so many relationships and projects, extinguished at once.

Second, the horizon of death might move from the individual to the collective. Immortal beings could become consumed not by fear of personal demise, but by fear of species extinction, planetary collapse, or the failure of the entire technological apparatus that sustains them. Their hero project, the civilization that keeps immortality possible, would need defense against any perceived threat: asteroids, climate change, political movements that challenge the structure of life extension.

Becker’s diagnosis suggests that the locus of anxiety can shift without disappearing. The immortality project, once internalized, is never fully satisfied. It always finds new dangers to ward off, new enemies to suppress. The frightening possibility is that immortality, far from calming our deepest fears, might metastasize them across new dimensions of time and power.

VII. Could Humans Choose Mortality Again?

1. The appeal of finitude

Against this dark panorama, one might ask whether human beings, having achieved immortality, could voluntarily return to limited lifespans. After centuries of extended life, would some begin to feel that finitude is not merely a curse, but a condition of meaning?

Even now, people often experience the urgency and poignancy of life precisely because it is short. Love gains intensity from the knowledge that the beloved will one day be gone. Projects gain focus because they must fit within a limited time. The background hum of mortality gives each decision a certain weight: this meal, this conversation, this morning may not come again.

In an immortal world, the opposite danger arises: “There is always more time.” Tasks can be postponed indefinitely; commitments can be delayed; risks can be avoided in favor of safety. Life stretches out into a horizonless present, in which nothing is definitively urgent. The promise of “someday” becomes a trap.

Some immortals might come to see death not as an enemy, but as a form of completion: a punctuation mark that gives structure to a narrative. They might advocate for a return to finite lifespans, not imposed by biology, but chosen as part of an ethic of flourishing. To live well would be to accept a limited arc of time and to shape it into a coherent story.

2. Voluntary mortality and designed lifespans

In such a scenario, technology could enable “designed lifespans.” Instead of being forced to die, individuals might decide, after a certain period, 100 years, 200 years, to relinquish life. Death would not be the inescapable end; it would be a chosen exit. The immortality project would be transformed into a finitude project: the art of deciding when and how to complete one’s existence.

This raises difficult questions. Could such choices be truly free, or would social pressures, economic calculations, and hidden coercions shape them? Would some groups be subtly encouraged to “step aside” for others? Would the very possibility of endless life undermine the sincerity of choosing death? A person might always wonder: “Did I give up too soon? Should I have stayed to see what happens next?”

Becker might see in this a paradoxical maturation of humanity’s relationship to death. Instead of denying it through fantasy, religion, or technology, we would confront it as a fact that can neither be avoided nor fully mastered. To choose mortality in an age of immortality would be to acknowledge that meaning arises not from infinite duration, but from how we inhabit a limited span.

3. The “second innocence”

In some religious and philosophical traditions, there is a notion of “second innocence”, a return to a kind of simplicity, not by ignorance, but through having passed through complexity and doubt. Applied to Becker’s ideas, we might imagine a second innocence about death. Early human cultures accepted mortality as an inescapable given and wove myths around it. Modern science challenged those myths, exposed death anxiety, and sought to conquer biological limits. A fully developed immortality project would be the culmination of that effort.

If, after living in such a world, humanity were to choose mortality again, it would do so with open eyes. We would know what it is like to extend life indefinitely, to concentrate power across centuries, to burden individuals with endless memory. The return to finite lifespans would not be a regression into naïveté but a considered judgment about what kind of beings we wish to be.

In that sense, immortality might serve as a cosmic experiment, a dramatic test of Becker’s thesis. If, after gaining the power to abolish death, we found ourselves compelled by psychological, moral, and ecological reasons to reintroduce it, we would have discovered something profound: that death, unwelcome as it is, may be woven into the very possibility of meaningful, humane existence.

VIII. The Fate of Life on Earth: Extinction, Transformation, or Renewal?

1. Would human life eventually cease to exist?

The question arises: in a world of immortals, does human life persist indefinitely, or do the dynamics Becker describes lead, in the end, to self-destruction? Several scenarios suggest themselves.

In the first, immortality drives escalating conflict. The defense of the immortality project, securing access to life-extending technology, resources, and environmental stability, becomes the dominant motive of politics and war. The combination of powerful technologies, entrenched elites, and heightened anxiety about existential threats produces catastrophic violence. Human life may not vanish entirely, but it could be drastically reduced or confined to narrow, controlled conditions, with much of the biosphere damaged beyond repair.

In the second scenario, immortals retreat into digital or artificial environments. The physical Earth is left scarred or abandoned, while human consciousness migrates into virtual realms or off-world habitats. The biosphere continues without us, slowly recovering or evolving along new paths in our absence. Human “life” persists, but in a form unrecognizable to our current understanding: disembodied, machine-enhanced, detached from the ecological matrix in which it evolved.

In the third scenario, humanity integrates immortality into a balanced relationship with the biosphere, only to realize over time that a certain level of death is necessary for the vibrancy of both natural and cultural life. We redesign our systems, not to maximize lifespan indefinitely, but to optimize it for flourishing within ecological limits. Human life persists, but not as an undying species; rather, as a finite, self-limiting community of beings who acknowledge their dependence on cycles of birth and death.

2. The ecology of transience

What these scenarios share is the recognition that life, at every scale, depends on transience. At the cellular level, old cells die and are replaced. At the organism level, individuals are born, reproduce, and die. At the ecosystem level, species rise and fall, feeding into one another’s existence. Death is not an external enemy attacking an otherwise static system; it is part of the system’s metabolism.

Becker approached this from the angle of psychology and culture, not ecology. But his insights resonate with the ecological view. The denial of death is also, in some sense, the denial of transience. It is the refusal to accept that we are immersed in cycles we cannot fully control, that our being is intertwined with countless others who precede and follow us.

Immortality, then, may not simply be “more life.” It may be the attempt to step outside the ecology of transience, to occupy a position of stasis in a dynamic universe. That attempt can have far-reaching consequences: not only does it alter human psychology and society, it can destabilize the very ecological systems that made our existence possible.

IX. Conclusion: Death, Meaning, and the Wisdom to Refuse Immortality

Ernest Becker proposed that our fear of death underlies both the heights of human creativity and the depths of human cruelty. Art, religion, science, and politics are, in different ways, responses to the unbearable fact that we are mortal. If this is so, then the modern pursuit of immortality or radically extended life is not merely another medical advance; it is a civilizational wager.

The wager has several interlocking parts. Ecologically, it bets that we can maintain a large, permanent human population in a finite biosphere without collapsing it. Politically, it bets that we can prevent immortal elites from ossifying into permanent hierarchies of power. Culturally, it bets that creativity and discovery can survive the loss of generational turnover. Psychologically, it bets that our death anxiety can be appeased by technical means rather than transformed into new forms of fear.

This essay has suggested reasons to be skeptical of each part of that wager. The biosphere depends on cycles of birth and death; immortality threatens to overload it. Political systems rely on turnover; immortality endangers that. Cultural innovation thrives on generational succession; immortality could entrench paradigms and elites. Death anxiety, far from vanishing, might intensify as immortals live long enough to witness multiple civilizational crises and carry the cumulative weight of centuries of unfinished projects.

None of this proves that immortality would necessarily destroy humanity or that all life extension is dangerous. Rather, it underscores Becker’s core insight: our relationship to death is foundational. We cannot simply change that relationship biologically without also transforming the psychological and cultural systems built upon it. Any attempt to abolish death must be accompanied by a profound reflection on what kind of lives we wish to live and what kind of world we wish to inhabit.

It is possible that, having experimented with immortality, human beings would eventually choose limits: not because we have surrendered to despair, but because we have learned that finitude is the soil in which urgency, love, responsibility, and creativity take root. In that future, we might remember Becker not as a prophet of doom, but as an early diagnostician of a deeper truth: that to live fully as a human being may mean not to flee death at any cost, but to accept it as the condition that makes a meaningful life, and a living world, possible.

(This essay is a speculative philosophical reflection inspired by Ernest Becker’s work, particularly The Denial of Death and Escape from Evil, and does not attempt to predict specific scientific or technological developments.)