instinct

Overcoming health concerns, and despite "safety nazis," Vollmann continues his sojourns outward as well as inward, and this dual journey may be what reinvigorates his life instinct.

"If live is lived according to one's inner needs and not merely the edicts of society the Life Instinct is strong enough to win out over the magnetic pull of the grave."

On the one hand there is the "life instinct," or eros.

Sure, the growth might be slowing down, but what's really important is that "Europeans have laid out a visionary roadmap to a new promised land, one dedicated to re-affirming the life instinct and the Earth's indivisibility."

Freud describes the interplay of the life instinct and the death instinct (Eros-Thanatos).