This is one book that while not intended to be a self-help/motivational title, is, I believe, an absolutely essential insight into the quandries of existence. Engaging to a fault, it is in equal parts devastating and inspiring. I cannot recommend it highly enough as a motivational title par-excellence! Go right past Louise Hay, Deepak Chopra, Esther & Gerry Hicks, Course in Miracles and the rest of the Monetized Motivation Mafia and collect a billion in the real motivator for so many people across all stratas of society and all countries - rich and poor. After all, if like (too) many, you are prepared to accept the mind numbing snake oil of the aforementioned mediocre blandishers, why not take a chance and leap into the void. Remembering, following the MMM, you will have to continue to pay for your medicine, all the while knowing, that nagging uncertainty that dwells within will never be healed through a sales pitch. Who knows, you may even dump your self motivation collection dependence and start living.
The Denial of Death is a deeply considered conveyance of meaning.
Ernest Becker was a Cultural anthropologist and this book was the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winner. Perhaps ironically, it was published posthumously.
Ernest writes; "Not everyone is as honest as Freud was when he said he cured the miseries of the neurotic only to open himself up to the normal misery of life. Only angels know unrelieved joy - or are able stand it. Yet we see the mind-healers with their garish titles: "Joy", "Awakening", and the like; we see them in person in lecture halls or in groups, beaming their peculiar brand of inward, confident well-being, so that it communicates its unmistakable message: we can do this for you, too, if only you will let us. I have never seen or heard them communicate the dangers of the total liberation they claim to offer; say, to put up a small sign next to the one advertising joy, carrying some inscription like "Danger: real probability of awakening of terror and dread, from which there is no turning back." It would be honest and also relieve them of some of the guilt of the occasional suicide that occurs in therapy. - Chapter 11 Psychology and Religion: What is the Heroic Individual
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