"Most animals experience fear only when faced with an imminent threat. However, because humans are born helpless and dependent with the ability to be self-aware and think about the future, from early childhood on, humans have a unique proneness to anxiety in the absence of an imminent threat. Becker saw this anxiety as ultimately existential and deriving from the conflict between survival desires and the reality of being a little kid that can be crushed in an instant without the protection of adult caregivers. Stephen Jay Gould notes that this knowledge of vulnerability and mortality may be the most important human spandrel, an inadvertent by-product of the evolution of the frontal lobes of the brain. This by-product creates the problem of the ever-present potential for anxiety. And anxiety often interferes with effective thought and action."
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Academics from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from the United StatesJews from the United StatesPeople from MassachusettsAnthropologists from the United States
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Description: An introductory guide about Ernest Becker's ideas.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Becker
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Ernest Becker
Ernest Becker (27 September 1924 – 6 March 1974) was an American cultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary thinker, noted for his 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death.
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