Quotes from Jerry Piven

Human beings invent myth, ideology, and religion as means of denying reality and replacing death with palliative fantasies. Helplessness and death are blows to human narcissism. Human beings create illusions about themselves, lie to themselves as a means to feel secure and less vulnerable.

Human beings destroy nature, conquer other cultures, and conceive themselves kings of infinite space. And human beings also participate in religious illusions, which boost their self-esteem by providing them with a hallucinatory control over the universe, a sense of divine protectedness and importance. Death is evaded by narcissistic inflation and delusions of dominance.