Our self-awareness and developed consciousnesses have provided us with a plethora of benefits,  but our constant awareness of death has left us in a  permanent state of terror. As stated in The Worm at the Core, “only we humans, due to our enlarged and sophisticated neo-cortex, can experience this terror in the absence of looming danger”. This fundamental state of anticipation leaves our species perpetually in a state of terror. 

In a constant search to find meaning in the seemingly bleak circumstances of the cosmos, humans have established multiple methods to try to and defeat this monster. To manage this terror, humans “sustain faith in our cultural worldview, which imbues our sense of reality with order, meaning, and permanence”. There is a constant search for a value system that supersedes death; humans cling on to their religions, political views, and educational perspectives. These systems of belief may be the reason why individuals seem to be so polarized in their political views as they stand their ground on “being right”. For example, take the politicization of climate change. Some groups derive meaning in their lives out of “fighting for something greater”, whereas other groups may deny the existence of our effect on the earth in order to justify their current behaviors and quests for capital. 

An additional way that humans manage this looming terror is by finding ways to remain immortal. The “path to literal and symbolic immortality laid out by our world-views require us to feel we are valuable members of our cultures”. Extremist political acts or quests for power seem to be the result of this framework of thinking. The argument can be made that our entire capitalistic system runs on this strategy for terror management. In Escape from Evil, Becker claims “power means power to increase oneself, to change one’s natural situation from one of smallness, helplessness, finitude, to one of bigness, control, durability, importance”. We’ve established an environment where the means to achieve this power and change in status is through wealth accumulation. The greed to achieve this faster has led us to exploit the resources around us in a quest to separate ourselves from the animal kingdom. 

There are ways to manage this terror in the Anthropocene without permanently destructing our environment. For example, we can incentivize and educate individuals to work on their symbolic selves as opposed to physical selves through positive immortality projects.