The Worm at the Core

The title says it all. The Worm at the Core peers behind the layers of terror management all humans (perhaps unconsciously) become familiar with in early childhood and beyond. In this book, Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski provide many evidence-based examples of how we humans, in the past and in the 21st century, have developed many (peculiar) behaviors that are triggered by reminders of our mortality. Connecting the “terror management” framework the authors describe in this work with the increasingly relevant discussions in the artificial intelligence community concerning consciousness and agency seems like an important next step for humanity to take, and I believe this book’s authors have done a superb job distilling terror management theory’s main findings into a format most people can easily digest and relate to. If you are interested in peering behind your own layers of consciousness and mortality, give this book a try.