What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consiousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax, which is why one type of cultural man rebels openly against the idea of God. What kind of deity would crate such a complex and fancy worm food?
Ernest BeckerWhen you confuse personal love and cosmic heroism you are bound to fail in both spheres. The impossibility of the heroism undermines the love, even if it is real. This double failure is what produces the sense of utter despair that we see in modern man... Love, then, is seen a religious problem
Ernest BeckerThe creativity of people on the schizophrenic end of the human continuum is a creativity that springs from the inability to accept the standardized cultural denials of the real nature of exยญperience. And the price of this kind of almost "extra human" creaยญtivity is to live on the brink of madness, as men have long known.
Ernest BeckerWhy would a person prefer the accusations of guilt, unworthiness, ineptitude โ even dishonor and betrayal โ to real possibility? This may not seem to be the choice, but it is: complete self-effacement, surrender to the โothers,โ disavowal of any personal dignity or freedom โ on the one hand; and freedom and independence, movement away from the others, extrication of oneself from the binding links of family and social duties-on the other hand. This is the choice that the depressed person actually faces.
Ernest Becker