David Gregg

“And so we see the paradox that evolution has handed us. If man is the only animal whose consciousness of self gives him an unusual dignity in the animal kingdom, he also pays a tragic price for it. The fact that the child has to identify -first- means that his very first identity is a social product. His habitation of his own body is built from the outside in; not from the inside out. He doesn't unfold into the world, the world unfolds into him. As the child responds to the vocal symbols learned from his object, he often gives the pathetic impression of being a true social puppet, jerked by alien symbols and sounds. What sensitive parent does not have his satisfaction tinged with sadness as the child repeats with such vital earnestness the little symbols that are taught him?”
― Ernest Becker, The Birth and Death of Meaning: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Problem of Man

“... Half of politics is "image-making", the other half is the art of making people believe the image”
― Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, and Thoughts on Politics and Revolution

“Man is an animal who has to live in a lie in order to
live at all.”
― Ernest Becker, Escape from Evil

“People create the reality they need in order to discover themselves”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death