"In Escape From Evil, Becker explains how the loss of primitive/tribal religiousity i.e. the loss of truly expansive cosmic significance or “heroism” in civilization, led to a more “driven” human race— driven by the scarcity of available self-esteem.

To this “drivenness” we must add the inevitable new dynamics generated by agriculture, technology, and populations larger than the small primitive tribe i.e. the competitive allocation of a new surplus and the less direct (and thus more abstract) relationships between millions of strangers— whether in cities, kingdoms, empires or more recently—nations. Perhaps we can call this drivenness “scarcity-heroism” — a more earthly and desperate hunger for self-esteem exacerbated by the related loss of close tribal ties— which additionally eroded the somewhat distinct need for true collective belonging. Close relationships engage brain regions and chemicals beyond self-esteem acquisition, but it is cultural self-esteem (mainly via spirituality in the case of primitives) that provides most of life’s meaning and allows for the synergy of close tribal relationships to flourish i.e. close human relationships without cosmic significance/heroism are insufficient for human flourishing—unlike the close relationships of other biological creatures. (This, incidentally, explains Becker’s preferred use of the more informative term “heroism” instead of “self-esteem”. The self-esteem of other animals does not rely on fanciful creations of meaning “defying” the meaninglessness of the cosmos and resulting in cultural ego inflation). Within civilization, the inertia and (often violent) self-replication of pyramidal or elite social structures, together with this desperate new hunger for heroism, largely explain the aura and allure of ruling elites and celebrities. It explains how most distributions of power, status and wealth in history have been considered legitimate by large numbers of people— mostly as specious backwards rationalizations for vicarious cultural heroism. In Becker’s analysis, the meager heroism of the average person in civilization comes from largely vicarious or supportive participation in the (more) heroic collective, which *relies crucially* on elites and celebrities. In this sense we could say that the alternative to this meager heroism risks meaninglessness, because there is no clearly superior heroism —certainly no religious or spiritual reality that the individual can take refuge in with trust and confidence. No viable heroic options or possibilities. As Becker writes: “We consult astrology charts like the Babylonians, try to make our children into our own image with a firm hand like the Romans, elbow others to get a breath-quickening glimpse of the queen in her ritual procession, and confess to the priests and attend church. And we wonder why, with all this power capital drawn from so many sources, we are deeply anxious about the meaning of our lives. The reason is plain enough: none of these, nor all of them taken together, represents an integrated world conception into which we fit ourselves with pure belief and trust.” While Becker characterized the majority of individuals in civilization as “Philistines” who “tranquilize themselves with the trivial”, this analysis of the loss of heroic options in civilization also implied a certain degree of depression. As Becker writes in The Denial of Death, the uncertainty of (and thus lack of trust in) more heroic realities is a major cause of depression".

JS