Michael C. Kearl

TL;DR: Kearl as discussed by the authors argues that death is the central force shaping our social life and order, and draws on a wide variety of disciplines to provide a broad sociological perspective on the interrelationships of life and death, showing how death contributes to social change, and how the meanings of death are generated to serve social functions.

TL;DR: In this article, it is shown how the state has inherited the traditional religious task of maintaining the ideologies of death fears and transcendence as mechanisms of social control, and beyond the more apparent functions of the dead in legitimating regimes, they symbolize the capacity of nation-states to address the modern anxieties of meaningless premature deaths and personal extinction.

TL;DR: The authors argue that extreme individualism, capitalism, and technological innovations have together heightened the potency of transcendence drives and increased the number, visibility, and influence of postselves, and that the events of 9/11 affected this immortalist zeitgeist, fueling the nation's culture wars.

TL;DR: One predominant theme of The Denial of Death and Alan Harrington's The Immortalist is the impact of individualism upon orientations toward death as discussed by the authors, which is a common theme in all of the works.