The Worm at the Core discusses symbolic immortality as an aspect of terror management. When confronted with the knowledge that they will one day dies, one of the methods individuals use to mitigate the resultant terror is to attempt to either construct something they consider part of their identity which will outlive them or integrate themselves into a larger system and to integrate this system into their identity.

If one were to examine the actions of Otto von Bismarck, his actions in pursuit of establishing a unified German nation could be viewed as a form of symbolic immortality pursued resultant of his interpretation of Russia as an existential threat to the German states, and thereby part of his identity. In this sense, Bismarck wanted Germany, as a nation and a culture, to outlive him.

With this understanding of symbolic immortality, it is easy to interpret the Utopian Futures project as strongly related to symbolic immortality. Within the construction of a society unhindered by economic, moral, strategic, and military issues/interests, the components of that society emphasized withing the group are likely the aspects of society we would seek to utilize as a symbolic immortality project. Whether by establishing a more efficient and efficacious method of enforcing social norms or establishing equitable access to resources, these are aspects of society which, though they may not be considered possible to implement, are aspects of our individual utopianism we would see outlive us.

Given the limited time available for the action project presentations, it was not feasible to include more than a handful of the elements we consider essential to a utopia. Whether selected because we viewed them as the most important, whether personally or to our imagined society, or the most feasible, re-examination of our choices is doubtless to lead to introspective analysis of what we consider important and how we determine this worth. What, for instance, does it reveal about us if we choose to present a normative shift away from the use of relative gains as a metric of benefit instead of addressing a source of inequality such as the protectionism within trade, which, unaddressed, may continue to affect our imagined society?

Otto von Bismarck-Schönhausen after his resignation in 1890