Death fears fuel authoritarian dependence, superstition, and insatiable greed.

Evidence

Epicurus’ follower, Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius (94–51 B.C.), explained in On the Nature of Things, that death fears make people overly dependent on religious and secular authorities and lead them to adhere to superstitious and irrational beliefs instead of relying on their own experience and critical judgment. Moreover, to avoid self-awareness and the coincident recognition of their finitude, people squander their lives in trivial pursuits, or are obsessed with greedily accumulating money and stuff or blindly lusting for power and honor. Such insatiable desires, Lucretius contended, make humans prone to unhappiness and profoundly dangerous. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 775

Categorization

• XREF: Lucretius’ claims here prefigure terror management findings from later chapters on greed, power, and worldview defense.

Related

• Death-terror drives art, religion, war, consumerism, and fame-seeking (similarity 0.78)