Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

perpetuity. Now, we must not only fear death, but also fear the loss of our self-transcendent meanings of
the society in which we live.
As we operate within the cultural institutions into which we have poured so much meaning, we
compete to stand out, to achieve the status of heroes within our immortality systems. In this effort to
sustain our symbolic immortality, we construct a conscious symbolic self-esteem for ourselves, and a
supporting cultural hero-system to feed our competitive self worth.
We compete to carve out the immortality of our individual success in our families, our schools, and
our work, and we compete, as well, for the long-term growth and success and dominance of our abiding
institutions: our sports teams, our universities, our political parties, economies, nations, and yes, our
religions.
Becker says that the main task of human life is to become heroic and transcend death, but he also says
that that this truth is the root of human evil, and that in our struggle for individual and collective
immortality, we construct institutions requiring our protection against the demonized “other,” leading us,
in the extreme, to participate in genocide and holy wars.
Religion provides comfort, certainty, and the promise of immortality in the face of our inescapable
fear. This is good. Religious institutions provide family, community, and symbolic immortality over time,
while charismatic leaders give us a hero, and our emulation of that leader offers us each the chance for
individual heroism. This is good.
But, in Becker’s analysis, all culture operates to bestow symbolic immortality. This means that all
culture operates as religion does, and in this analysis, the firefighters and civilian dead in 9/11 became
immediate martyrs, ground zero is sanctified space, which must be defended from demonized “others,” i.e.
all Muslims, and from those who speak for tolerance.
If, as Becker believed, our use of symbolic social and cultural structures to deal with death anxiety is
an inevitable outgrowth of inherent human psychology, then each of us, consciously and unconsciously,
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