His perennial questions focused on the problem of the tragic human flaw. In his inquiries into the roots of tragedy, Becker rediscovered the insights of the ancient Greeks, Hebrews and Buddhists. The basic problems of human life are the result of the consciousness of the fact of death. From mud we came, to mud we shall return. So it is with all living things.
Nothing lasts forever.
One day, even the sun shall die. But human beings, of all the beings in the universe as far as we know, have the power to be aware of the certainty of death and to dream of eternal life. This power is based on the capacity for language and symbolism, the distinctive thread of human consciousness, from which profane time and history are woven. The presence of death casts a dark shadow on human life. Becker believed that the driving mechanism of self and society is the denial of death, that is, the creation of a web of meanings, goals and activities which generate the illusion of transcending death.