Career ambition functions as a defense against unconscious death awareness

Evidence

Only after death thoughts have been banished from consciousness do the distal defenses kick in. Back at your desk in the office, you daydream about getting the firm’s highest bonus this year and imagine your name on the plaque at company headquarters marking this achievement. By shoring up the sense that you are a significant person in a meaningful universe, you become a viable candidate for transcending death via immortality. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 638

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the pursuit-of-immortality-through-legacy theme in ‘On Sacrifice: The Real Kind, with Corpses’ — both treat fame and memorial as symbolic immortality structures.