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Ironically a good deal of evil in the world results from efforts to rid the world of evil.
“Natural and inevitable urge to deny mortality and achieve a heroic self-image are the root causes of human evil.”
-Ernest Becker
Prior to 9/11, Bush’s presidency was viewed as ineffectual and uninspired, even to many of his Republican supporters. However, the president’s approval ratings reached historically unprecedented heights a few weeks thereafter. That Bush’s tremendous popularity was in part a result of the dramatic and ongoing reminders of death and vulnerability provoked by the attacks was confirmed by experiments we conducted in 2002 and 2003 showing that following a reminder of death, Americans felt more supportive of President Bush and his policies in Iraq.
Then, as the standing president, confidently purveying the classic charismatic message that “we are divinely ordained to defeat the forces of evil,” Bush served Americans’ terror management needs far better than his opponent, Senator John Kerry, in the 2004 presidential election. In a control condition in which we reminded participants of intense pain, Americans rated Senator Kerry more favorably than President Bush. But after a reminder of death, Bush was more favorably evaluated than Kerry. Six weeks before the election, control participants reported that they would be voting for Senator Kerry by a 4-to-1 margin. But other participants, after thinking about death, favored President Bush by an almost 3-to-1 margin.
Because people need some tangible and potentially controllable cause of their residual death anxiety, they will identify or create different “others” to serve this purpose. “If we could only get rid of those [fill in the blank: terrorists, infidels, socialists, globalists, homosexuals, liberals, Tea Party Republicans, Jews, Muslims, illegal immigrants, or what have you], then all our problems would be solved!”
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.
Reminders of death make Christians more intent on persuading atheists to embrace Jesus and make evolutionists more determined to persuade creationists to embrace Darwin. Furthermore, studies show that proselytizing is prophylactic: if I learn that you have adopted my beliefs, I feel more confident of their validity and consequently don’t worry so much about my own death.
Tendency to belittle others is particularly pronounced in the wake of death reminders.
Studies have demonstrated that after pondering their mortality, Christians denigrate Jews, conservatives condemn liberals, Italians despise Germans, Israeli children dislike Russian kids,
and people everywhere ridicule immigrants. And death reminders cause us to see members of such out-groups as less human and more animalistic. Sadly, these tactics work; it’s easier to dispose of troublesome thoughts of death when one disparages “different” others.
Our longing to transcend death inflames violence toward each other.
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.
Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death….
—JAMES BALDWIN,
The Fire Next Time
charismatic leaders become more appealing when existential concerns are aroused.
they mitigate existential terror by infusing us with a sense of pride and power accompanied by the assurance that our group will persist in perpetuity.