"Man is a frightened animal who must lie in order to live."
"Societies are standardized systems of death denial."
-Ernest Becker
"A continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity-is so much the rule and law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have risen among them. The are deeply immersed in illusions...What does man actually know about himself?...even concerning his own body-in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers!"
-Friedrich Nietzsche
"Societies are standardized systems of death denial."
-Ernest Becker
"A continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity-is so much the rule and law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have risen among them. The are deeply immersed in illusions...What does man actually know about himself?...even concerning his own body-in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers!"
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Eternal life for humans? Sex is sacred for humans? Humans are special? God makes humans the center of the Universe? E.O. Wilson stated that at its base humans are tribal carnivores. To think that the world was made for your tribe and to think that you are superior to the animals you kill for food and consume is flowing from this tribal carnivore.
This solipsism and speciesism is what made the discoveries and ideas of Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin and the greater awareness of deep space and deep time in modern science such a threat to human culture and society. Humans may be a different species but we are not special, sex is not sacred, death is certain and we humans are tied to our mortality like all other animals on Earth. The Scientific perspective and reality is too much for a creature that survived on storytelling myth and delusions of grandeur to propagate itself in a hostile and indifferent world. As Becker stated in so many words human society is built on denying death through symbols, culture, religion, and even heroic "immortal" feats of a secular nature. Humans hide their bodies, their waste, their dead and the source of their food for the most part. The great escape from reality and mortality is the will to significance and superiority through human civilization. Suppressing reality and hiding the mortal animal becomes an everyday operation for the tribal carnivore.
This solipsism and speciesism is what made the discoveries and ideas of Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin and the greater awareness of deep space and deep time in modern science such a threat to human culture and society. Humans may be a different species but we are not special, sex is not sacred, death is certain and we humans are tied to our mortality like all other animals on Earth. The Scientific perspective and reality is too much for a creature that survived on storytelling myth and delusions of grandeur to propagate itself in a hostile and indifferent world. As Becker stated in so many words human society is built on denying death through symbols, culture, religion, and even heroic "immortal" feats of a secular nature. Humans hide their bodies, their waste, their dead and the source of their food for the most part. The great escape from reality and mortality is the will to significance and superiority through human civilization. Suppressing reality and hiding the mortal animal becomes an everyday operation for the tribal carnivore.
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