"A second result of man's animal vulnerability to death and his
symbolic consciousness of it is the struggle to get power to fortify
himself. Other animals must simply use those powers that nature
provided them with and the neural circuits that animate those
powers. But man can invent and imagine powers, and he can invent
ways to protect power. This means, as Nietzsche saw and shocked his
world with, that ALL MORAL CATEGORIES ARE POWER CATEGORIES; they are
not about virtue in any abstract sense. Purity, goodness, rightness—
these are ways of keeping power intact so as to cheat death; the
striving for perfection is a way of qualifying for extraspecial
immunity not only in this world but in others to come. Hence all
categories of dirt, filth, imperfection, and error are vulnerability
categories, power problems."
~Ernest Becker