self worth

'what [naturally self centred] man needs most is to feel secure in his self-esteem. Man is not just a blind glob of idling protoplasm, but a creature with a name who lives in a world of symbols and dreams and not merely matter. His sense of self-worth is constituted symbolically, his cherished narcissism feeds on symbols [medals, honors, a celebrity moment], on an abstract idea of his own worth, an idea composed of sounds, words and images, in the air, in the mind, on paper [on the screen]. And this means that man's natural yearning for organismic activity, the pleasures of incorporation and expansion, can be fed limitlessly in the domain of symbols and so into immortality. The single organism can expand into dimensions of worlds and times without moving a physical limb; it can take eternity into itself even as it gaspingly dies.'

Ernest Becker, 'The Denial of Death'

Seems to me a useful way of thinking about the limitations of mortality on one hand, and the boundless nature of symbolism, free of space time, on the other. Acknowledging the selfishness of healthy narcissism, and also the creativity of symbolic thought and imagining .