Becker in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The denial of death, says that everyone lives with a vital lie. It is called a vital lie because this lie is absolutely necessary for life to have meaning and value.
This is not really a new discovery. Philosophers and psychiatrists have long known that we human beings lie to ourselves out of necessity. Becker was very good at convincing you, the reader, that it is true and to take a hard look at yourself.
Camus, the famous existential writer of The stranger, said that the fundamental question for life and philosophy is why shouldn’t I kill myself? Given the absurdity of life where we no longer have faith in God, country, or even family, what is the point of existence? When we see people dying in the most horrible and grotesque ways, how can we believe that our lives have a destiny or a meaning?
Nietzsche, unfortunately better known for saying, “God is dead,” said that we create our own meaning. He prophesied that the biggest problem on the horizon would be nihilism. Indeed, the history of the 20th century proved it. World War I shattered our illusions that our country is looking out for our best interests (rather than fame and selfish, irrational greed) and shattered our illusion of the glory of war. World War II showed that science and technology would probably not create our future utopias, but would end up killing us all. The Cold War and modern terrorism have told us how fragile our lives are.
Because we are free human beings, we need meaning, purpose, and hope. We need to believe that our actions and our lives have meaning and value. We need to be able to hope that we have some degree of control over our lives. Animals are dictated by their instincts and biological conditioning in such a way that they never have to reflect on their decisions or their future. They live by instinct. We are the only living organism that has free will to choose. But how do you know how to choose?
Most people simply live by “social instinct” or herd instinct. Marx said that religion is the opium of the masses. But that is not entirely correct. Socialization is the opium of the masses. Culture and tradition are equally the cognitive and social instincts by which we live without realizing or thinking about it. Socrates, the father of western philosophizing, is the first to deeply question everyone about the truth of it. How do you know what is right and what is wrong? At the end of each Socrates dialogue, we find that his victim actually just has a strong opinion rather than the truth. We also.
This brings us back to Becker. Ernest Becker did not think we could overcome this need for vital lies. Instead, he hoped that we could be aware of what our vital lies were. What “immortality projects” are we pursuing? In this way, our rational intellectual side of our being could moderate our behavior and prevent us from overreacting. We could have life lies that lead to happy and productive goals, like curing diseases instead of trying to destroy others. Is this good enough? Because knowing one’s vital lie would apparently destroy all my illusions that my project makes sense. It would be as if a Christian realized that God is perhaps only his own mental creation. How could I still have faith in God then? This is the dilemma that Becker never really addressed or resolved. Which is somewhat ironic considering he converted to Christianity in his later years.
However, studying Ernest Becker’s books, such as Death Denial, gives us significant questions that may not give us answers, but give us a more accurate perception of reality.
