The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F_ck

situations where things might be different. And it’s
because of this unique mental ability, Becker says, that
we all, at some point, become aware of the inevitability
of our own death. Because we’re able to conceptualize
alternate versions of reality, we are also the only animal
capable of imagining a reality without ourselves in it.
This realization causes what Becker calls “death
terror,” a deep existential anxiety that underlies
everything we think or do.
2. Becker’s second point starts with the premise that we
essentially have two “selves.” The first self is the
physical self—the one that eats, sleeps, snores, and
poops. The second self is our conceptual self—our
identity, or how we see ourselves.
Becker’s argument is this: We are all aware on some
level that our physical self will eventually die, that this
death is inevitable, and that its inevitability—on some
unconscious level—scares the shit out of us. Therefore, in
order to compensate for our fear of the inevitable loss of
our physical self, we try to construct a conceptual self
that will live forever. This is why people try so hard to put
their names on buildings, on statues, on spines of books.
It’s why we feel compelled to spend so much time giving
ourselves to others, especially to children, in the hopes
that our influence—our conceptual self—will last way
beyond our physical self. That we will be remembered
and revered and idolized long after our physical self
ceases to exist.
Becker called such efforts our “immortality projects,”
projects that allow our conceptual self to live on way past
the point of our physical death. All of human civilization,
he says, is basically a result of immortality projects: the
cities and governments and structures and authorities in
place today were all immortality projects of men and
women who came before us. They are the remnants of
conceptual selves that ceased to die. Names like Jesus,