I've been writing a lot lately, hence all the quotes.


"[Immortality striving] was a universal principle firmly anchored in each individual person, no matter who he was; it was present in each culture, no matter how varied its beliefs might seem, or how much mankind itself seemed to change from epoch to epoch. Beliefs were not fixed and final realities; they varied from period to period, from one social from to another. What was fixed was the principle of a “dominant immortality-ideology.” In each historical period or social group, man though that he lived absolute truth because his social life gave expression to his deepest innate hunger . . . “Every conflict over truth is in the last analysis just the same old struggle over . . . immortality” . . . Each person nourishes his immortality in the ideology of self-perpetuation to which he gives his allegiance; this gives his life the only abiding significance it can have. No wonder men go into a fit of rage over fine points of belief: if your adversary wins the argument about truth, you die. Your immortality system has been shown to be fallible, [thus] your life becomes fallible." - Ernest Becker, from Escape From Evil.