We don’t take the last place at the table because we fear being small, unnoticed, and insignificant in the face of death. We resist death, then, by inserting either resources or a heroic identity between ourselves and death. Both of these attempts produce sin: the buffer of resources makes us selfish and stingy, and the buffer of self-esteem makes us rivalrous, prideful, and violent: rivalrous toward in-group members doing better than we are; prideful toward in-group members doing worse than we are;
