Escape from Evil
by Ernest Becker

With Denial of Death, a humanistic approach to explaining the evil that people do in this world. Becker takes what he finds as the essential fact of human existence that distinguishes us from the rest of the animals -- imagination -- plus the fact that we are animals, who need to eat and who will die as part of the cycle of life -- and shows how the need to imagine that we won't die has been the source of patriarchy, nationalistic jingoism, and the destructive power of modern war.

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