Anybody read this book? It won a Pulitzer in 1974. I've been slowly making my way through it and I think it is fascinating. I can't quite summarize yet what he is saying, but one of his concepts that has some explanatory power for me is that of the "immortality project." Basically this stands for whatever one/a society is doing to try to deny mortality. If this underlies most of humankind's largest projects (idealogies), it is little wonder people are pretty inflexible, and that we rely on authorities for validation.

Kind of a dark book, not a "power of positive thinking" kind of book at all, but I guess for someone as cloudy as me there is something deeply true about many of his observations.