En Beğenilen The Worm at the Core Gönderileri
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The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
—VLADIMIR NABOKOV
In fact, when death is close to mind, people prefer their out-groups to fit simple stereotypes. Following a death reminder, Americans prefer Germans to be neat and organized, male homosexuals to be effeminate, men to pay for dinner, and women to babysit the neighbor’s kids.
In fact, concerns about mortality influence everything from the mundane to the momentous—what you eat for lunch, how much sunscreen you put on at the beach, whom you voted for in the last election, your attitudes about shopping, your mental health and physical well-being, whom you love and whom you hate.
Examining history, the sciences and the humanities, findings from laboratory experiments, and people’s day-to-day struggles would expose death as the worm at the core of the human experience.
Our longing to transcend death inflames violence toward each other.
Research finds that after a reminder of death, adults also search for “don’t worry, be happy” thoughts. And it is quite common for adults to react to thoughts of death by turning to comfort foods and luxury goods: “Let’s do lunch and go shopping!”
Research has borne out the fact that we strive for higher self-esteem in the face of mortality. After thinking about their death, Israeli soldiers whose self-esteem was strongly tied to their driving ability drove faster on a simulator. Elsewhere, those who based their self-worth on physical strength generated a stronger handgrip after they thought about death; those who based their self-worth on physical fitness reported increased intentions to exercise; and those who based their self-worth on beauty reported greater concern about their appearance.
Money serves an archetypal role in human ritual and religion in direct service of transcending death.
Thousands of years ago, money originated in religious rituals as consecrated tokens with immortal connotations. The sacred value of the exchange was its primary purpose. In ancient Greece, families held communal feasts in honor of their heroic ancestors. The families believed that ancestors had the character and power of immortal gods and could thus provide protection, advice, and direction for their living progeny. So the living relatives sacrificed bulls (the word “capital” comes from “cattle”) and roasted them on spits. Then they distributed the pieces of meat to everyone in attendance, withholding only the “surplus,” a piece left on the spit to be “consumed” by the fire as an offering to the heroic ancestors.
The “surplus” meat on the spit was called the obelos, or “coin” (related to the word “obligation”). Obeloi were also made from pieces of metal, bearing images of individual ancestors. Outsiders could use these coins to join the feasts. People would eagerly trade goods in order to obtain these highly valued coins. Because they attributed magical qualities to the coins, people began to worship them. Carried as amulets, the coins derived their power from “basking in reflected glory” of the heroic ancestors depicted on them. In this way, the coins used in the communal feast kept the ancestors’ sacred power circulating. Sacrificing the bulls and giving the surplus to the dead ancestors showed reverence for the past. Sharing one’s food with ancestors imbued the living with supernatural attributes to ensure prosperity in the future.
Our bodies and animality are threatening reminders that we are physical creatures who will die. To manage our terror of death we have to be much more than that; and a fundamental function of cultural worldviews is to prevent our bodies from undermining our pretentions of meaning and significance. So we transform our bodies into cultural symbols of beauty and power. We hide bodily activities or turn them into cultural rituals.
According to terror management theory, the combination of a basic biological inclination toward self-preservation with sophisticated cognitive capacities renders us humans aware of our perpetual vulnerabilities and inevitable mortality, which gives rise to potentially paralyzing terror. Cultural worldviews and self-esteem help manage this terror by convincing us that we are special beings with souls and identities that will persist, literally and/or symbolically, long past our own physical death. We are thus pervasively preoccupied with maintaining confidence in our cultural scheme of things and satisfying the standards of value associated with it. But preserving faith in our cultural worldviews and self-esteem becomes challenging when we encounter others with different beliefs. Sinister complications almost inevitably ensue.