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Deep down, we are terrified of death — and according to Ernest Becker, that fear quietly shapes everything we do. This lecture from Academy of Ideas explores his haunting book, The Denial of Death. Because facing our own end would be paralyzing, Becker argued, we hide our creatureliness behind illusions, inflating small concerns into cosmic importance just to feel that we matter. We chase wealth, status, and legacy not for their own sake, but to outrun the worm. It is a bracing look at the one fear under every other fear.
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The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus once wrote,
So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us, but when death comes, then we do not exist.
It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.
But is death nothing to us, as Epicurus proposed? Or rather, does death cast such a long and dark shadow that it is of immense concern for the living?
Ernest Becker, a 20th century cultural anthropologist and writer, maintained that the idea of death is in fact constantly with us.
As he wrote in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Denial of Death,
The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else. It is a mainspring of human activity.
In this two-part mini-series, we are going to examine the ideas of Ernest Becker.
In this first lecture, we will investigate Becker’s ideas regarding the fear of death and how it influences our experience of reality.
In the second lecture, we will explore Becker’s ideas regarding how the fear of death drives human behavior, giving rise to what he called the universal urge to heroism.
Like many thinkers, Becker proposed that the capacity for abstract conceptual thought,
which enables one to contemplate objects and events divorced from the here and now,
is responsible for transforming human beings into the most adaptable and
advanced species
ever to roam the earth. Becker even went so far as to state that such an ability
qualifies the human animal for the title of a small god.
Man is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and
infinity,
who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space
and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion,
this dexterity, this ether-reality, this self-consciousness
gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature.
Yet this ability to think conceptually also imposes a terrible burden on the
human species.
Like all creatures, human beings are destined to die at some point in the
future.
However, human beings as far as we know are the only creature who can contemplate
the inevitable nothingness which awaits them,
and thus are the only creature aware that one day they will die.
What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous
if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms.
This is the terror, to have emerged from nothing, to have a name,
consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning
for life and self-expression,
and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax.”
Becker maintained that if one were to grasp the full significance of their
impending death,
it would thrust them into a state of paralyzing anxiety.
Therefore, he proposed that in order to act in this world with relative composure,
human beings alleviate the fear of death by striving to avoid the fatality of death,
to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.
With the decline in adherence to organized religion, most of which maintain the existence of an afterlife,
Becker believed individuals increasingly mitigate the fear of death
by attempting to live a life which will influence the course of things long after one is gone.
The logic behind this is that if one’s legacy lives on, then death is not one’s final destiny,
for one’s influence will live on even after one is buried in the ground.
What man really fears is not so much extinction, but extinction with insignificance.
Man wants to know that his life has somehow counted, if not for himself,
then at least in a larger scheme of things, that it has left a trace, a trace that has meaning.
The fact that human beings need to create a meaningful legacy as an antidote to the terror of death
presents a monumental problem. The problem arises, according to Becker, because the human
animal is a creature whose life in the scheme of things cannot count for anything, any more
than the life of a worm or a rodent can count for something. Becker proposed that this problem
places human beings in a terrible existential predicament, for we are creatures who want
nothing more than to deny our creatureliness and to believe that in the scheme of things
we are more important than all other animals and are somehow capable of achieving lasting
significance here on earth. The creatureliness is the terror. Once admit that you are a defecating
creature and you invite the primeval ocean of creature anxiety to flood over you. But it is
more than creature anxiety. It is also man’s anxiety, the anxiety that results from the human
paradox that man is an animal who is conscious of his animal limitation. Since, as Becker put it,
the creatureliness is the terror, Becker asserted that individuals shape their experience of reality
so as to delude themselves into thinking they are somehow vital to the universe, not merely insignificant creatures.
The real world is simply too terrible to admit. It tells man that he is a small trembling animal who will decay and die.
Illusion changes all this, makes man seem important, vital to the universe, immortal in some way. Becker thought there were three
characteristics of the universe which makes humans particularly sensitive to an awareness of their creatureliness and hence their insignificance.
Firstly, the universe is a terrifying place which indifferently imposes senseless sufferings
and dark tragedies on human beings.
Arthur Schopenhauer recognized this feature of the universe, and claimed that if one were
truthful about the nature of reality, they would have to live with the awareness that
at any moment tragedy could befall them.
As he wrote in his masterpiece The World as Will and Representation,
If one would still in the end make evident to anyone, the horrific pains and torments
to which his life stands constantly open, dread would take hold of him.
Secondly, the universe is an overwhelmingly majestic and awesome place.
Becker proposed that human beings often try to minimize and repress their awareness of
the awesomeness of the universe, because it only serves to remind one of their puniness
and insignificance.
The world as it is, creation out of the void, things as they are, things as they are not,
are too much for us to be able to stand.
Or better, they would be too much for us to bear without crumbling in a faint, trembling
like a leaf, standing in a trance in response to the movement, colors and odors of the world.
I say would be, because most of us, by the time we leave childhood, have repressed our
vision of the primary miraculousness of creation.
Finally, the unfathomable mystery of the universe also reminds individuals of their insignificance
and creatureliness.
We are not equipped to grasp the truths of the universe, but are merely animals here
for a brief flicker of time. Creatures who will live and die in utter obliviousness as
to what it’s all about. Søren Kierkegaard nicely described the universe as a dread-evoking
mystery with these words.
The whole order of things fills me with a sense of anguish. From the gnat to the mysteries
of incarnation, all is entirely unintelligible to me, and particularly my own person. Great
is my sorrow, without limits.
According to Becker, humans distort the terrifying awesome and mysteriousness of the universe
so as to delude themselves into believing that their life has meaning and significance.
Instead of experiencing to the full extent the dread-evoking characteristics of the universe,
which dwarf individuals and their petty concerns, individuals focus their awareness on a very
narrow portion of the world, be it material wealth, social status, or one’s spouse or
child, and live as though such a thing contains cosmic significance, or at least a significance
for the course of mankind.
As Becker explained, man focuses himself on something narrow at hand, and pretends that
the whole meaning and miraculousness of creation is limited to that.
Artificially inflating the significance of a certain element of one’s life allows one
to block out their cosmic insignificance, and to believe that their life is meaningful
in their actions of cosmic significance.
And through the illusory conviction that one’s actions are of cosmic significance, one can
keep the fear of death at bay, and live with the belief that their actions can influence
the course of mankind.
This is the uniquely human need, wrote Becker, what man everywhere is really all about.
Each person’s need to be an object of primary value, a heroic contributor to world life,
the heroic contributor to the destiny of man.
In the next lecture we will investigate how the fear of death gives rise to what Becker
called the heroic urge, and look at the different ways Becker thought individuals attempt to
achieve heroism.
Source: Academy of Ideas