Back at home camp, anticipating behaviour was aided by the development of a symbolic social hierarchy – roles were assigned and social status became relevant. If you’re my hunting partner, I need to predict your behaviour and you need to predict mine (notice this requires a concept of “I” and “you”). Where does this self-awareness come from? Becker starts with our evolutionary history, arguing that group activities like hunting required keen perception and cooperation. To discover any sort of meaning, self-worth, or self-value, one must first develop a self. Of course, culture is artificial and meaning is therefore entirely fictional, but that’s not the short answer. Culture prescribes the roles, how well we execute the roles creates feelings of meaning and self-worth, and we assess the success of our execution by way of positive social regard. Ernest Becker’s book “The Birth and Death of Meaning” asks the question, “where does meaning come from?” The short answer is: meaning comes from culture – our lives feel most meaningful when we believe we are participating successfully in the cultural hero-system, and we measure the success of our performance through social affirmation.
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