Part 6/23:
Despite our awareness of mortality—an aspect Greene highlights as a defining human trait—he finds inspiration in our ability to reflect, understand, and create. This awareness of inevitable death fuels both existential anxiety and motivation. Drawing on philosophical ideas like Ernest Becker’s Denial of Death, Greene extends the conversation to the cosmic scale, noting that even protons, the building blocks of matter, will disintegrate over unfathomably long timescales, leading to a universe devoid of complexity.