The Denial of Death

by Ernest Becker

Maslow talks very convincingly about “self-actualization” and the ecstasy of “peak experiences” wherein a person comes to see the world in all its awe and splendor and senses his own free inner expansion and the miracle of his being. Maslow calls this state “being cognition,” the openness of perception to the truth of the world, a truth concealed by the neurotic distortions and illusions that protect one against overwhelming experiences. This idea is fine and correct, this enjoinder to develop the capacity for “being cognition” in order to break out of the one-dimensionality of our lives, the cave of our imprisoning security. But like most things human it is a very paradoxical kind of triumph. This was already clearly seen by Maslow, when he talked about the “dangers of being-cognition.”14 Maslow was too broad-minded and sober to imagine that being-cognition did not have an underside; but he didn’t go far enough toward pointing out what a dangerous underside it was—that it could undermine one’s whole position in the world. It can’t be overstressed, one final time, that to see the world as it really is is devastating and terrifying. It achieves the very result that the child has painfully built his character over the years in order to avoid: it makes routine, automatic, secure, self-confident activity impossible. It makes thoughtless living in the world of men an impossibility. It places a trembling animal at the mercy of the entire cosmos and the problem of the meaning of it.