In 1972, Ernest Becker wrote a book called The Denial of Death, which I knew even then that I ought to read. I bought it, but years went by and it never made it remained unopened on my bookshelf. Becker proposed that all of human civilization—art and literature, architecture, music, settlements and empires, stories of heroism, religious teachings, projects great and small—all of it stems from a drive to compensate for our mortality by creating something more permanent than our physical selves. Even if this is only a little true, we have to wonder: Who would we be if we weren’t trying so hard to avoid death?

https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/