Yes. In my day 'straight' meant socially conforming, suit and tie type, whereas 'freak' meant anything but that. Over the decades, I have learned that while self-definition is important, mostly who we are comes, as sociological studies also show, from the outside in as much as from the inside out.

Somewhat different issue. You call yourself queer. Is that kind of like when I was young (probably about your age) many of us referred to ourselves proudly as 'freaks'? I like it!! Sounds like a very unusual background yielding very unusual insights into what gets 'taken for granted' in society.

Sounds a lot like Wm James's "Moral Equivalent of War" - something socially constructive that will, like war, foster a collective sense of solidarity, heroism, sacrifice and transcending sense of 'conquering.' James suggested conscripted fire-fighting. Does seem to be onto something important.

I hope you are correct that more collective consciousness can be cultivated by education and spiritual practices - I am banking my life on it, in fact. But realistically speaking, I think it will come more as what is left over following a major civilizational collapse of current individualist ethos.

...but still with tribal violence aplenty, even in the precolonial era (though harder to document because no documents). This is one reason northern invaders found it easy to colonize. People were already at each other's throats, thus easily used by the invading Euros.Same as in India and elsewhere.

JDR, I hope I am replying correctly - I am not adept at short spurt messages,,, Asian civilizations also developed as hierarchical empires, driven by building magnificent tomes for their leaders - plenty of death denial going on there as in Western civilization. African civ less so...

I'm now more interested in solutions than strictly analysis. Becker is light on solutions, but he died very young (49) - I want to explore where he might have gone had he lived longer and absorbed and responded to more of the criticism of Denial of Death.