Chasing Our Tales: Mortality Awareness and the Deep Structures of Human Motivation and Experience

Daniel Liechty, Professor of Social Work, Illinois State University

Abstract:Based on the highly evolved intelligence that characterizes our species, leading directly to our ability to think in categories of abstraction and symbolization, death presents a special problem for human beings. Otto Rank (Freud’s early protégé and the first psychoanalyst from outside of the medical field) linked the problem of death to human self-consciousness itself, and suggested that this is our deepest source of unconscious anxiety rather than the psychosexual material of Freudian theory. As Rank understood it, through the socialization process we create a symbolic Self, which provides the resiliency required to navigate life in world in which we know that death is our ultimate and inevitable end. Rank's insight was developed further in the work of Ernest Becker (1924-1974), who expanded the theory that death anxiety manifests itself in two distinct but complementary directions – the fear of life and the fear of death - in the formation of adult personality development and highlighted this as a key to understanding the deep structures of the human condition.

Move to Slide #2

My work has focused on editing, expounding and expanding on the writings of Ernest Becker. I first came into contact with Becker’s work in 1976, while attending theological seminary. Since that time, I have focused the major portion of my scholarly work on Becker’s writings and, I think I can say with all humility, have become widely recognized as one of the most competent experts on Becker’s ideas, expanding and applying them to a wide range of social and scholarly topics.

I have coined the term Generative Death Anxiety to characterize this theory. Death Anxiety, because it is the inevitable fruit of mortality awareness – not fear, which is a reaction to immediate and identifiable threat, but anxiety, which is the state of the long term, smoldering, slow burn of knowing you are thrust into a dangerous and vulnerable position, in which the feelings of being threatened are very diffuse, often out of consciousness, but no less real and inevitable. Generative, because, as

will be shown, the psychological, emotional and spiritual energy created by the clash of mortality awareness and the urge to victory over death, as it works its way into symbolized intelligence, is both a source of destructive and creative dynamism in human life and history.

Move to Slide #3

Who Is Ernest Becker (1924-1974)?

Ernest Becker was educated in anthropology, receiving his PhD from Syracuse in 1960. He immediately was offered a tenure track position teaching anthropology to psychiatry students at Upstate Medical College of New York. He held this position for two years.

Becker was a deeply interdisciplinary thinker, and very committed to the Enlightenment ideal that through education and social experimentation, we can create an increasingly better society for all people.

He was animated by the question “Why do people act as we do?” which is what pushed him toward the study of anthropology and to a large extent remained his ‘research agenda’ for the duration of his short but very productive career.

All did not go well for the promising young professor. Thomas Szasz was one of the full professors at Upstate Medical College. Although himself a medical doctor, Szasz was publishing widely against the ‘disease model’ of mental illness and thus openly challenging the medical basis for psychiatry. One side angle to this challenge was strong dissent against involuntary incarceration of people on the basis of the ‘medical judgment’ of psychiatrists.

Ernest Becker became part of a group of faculty gathered to study the issues Szasz raised. The administration sensed that Szasz’s challenge struck to the very heart of medical authority in psychiatry and beyond, and moved to have him fired despite his tenured position. Most members of the study group supported Szasz, not necessarily his ideas, in what they understood as a stand in favor of academic freedom. An academic battle unsued, the upshot of which was that while Szasz retained his position, all of the not-yet-tenured among his supporters were sent packing.

For Ernest Becker, thus began what stretched into some 8 years of short term contracts at many different universities and the life of a vagabond scholar.

MOVE TO Slide #4

Ernest Becker’s Approach to Academic Knowledge

Becker’s approach to answering this question was widely interdisciplinary. He was convinced that so long as a discipline could be seen as being grounded in empirical observation of human behavior, it had a legitimate voice to add to the inquiry. This includes not just the social sciences but also all of the humanities, including religious studies and theology.

Becker understood ‘empirical’ in the original Jamesian sense, of describing observed behavior and moving from this to theory about it. This set him at odds with many in the social sciences of that time (1960s) who wanted to elevate data-driven studies to the forefront of their disciplines, strongly devaluing and even excluding other approaches to academic knowledge.

Many in the social sciences were also hostile to Becker’s insistence that social sciences could not be conceived as ‘value neutral’ without betraying their original foundation for being. In Becker’s view, social science (and humanities and academia in general) had to be clear that its fundamental justification is in seeking human betterment. This has to be the framework out of which all academic questions and pursuits arise. In the absence of this overall value commitment, academics simply becomes an arena for power accumulation and honing the techniques of mass manipulation in the service of those with power and wealth.

The aims of academia, politics, social sciences and social theory can be summarized in the Kantian formulation:

Maximum Individuality Within Maximum Community

Nota Bene: A major strength of this idea is that it is not static, once-for-all, get-the-rules right and we shall have Utopia! It is an ideal/real formulation, rooted in the concept of social justice (though neither Kant nor Becker used that term) that is dynamic, changing and pragmatic.

Why Do People Act As We Do?

Understanding the impediments to Maximum Individuality Within Maximum Community are easy enough to spot. Why then is it so difficult to achieve? Why do the social experiments fail, often reproducing in worse or exaggerated form the very social ills they intended to conquer? You can line up Becker’s books and articles as attempts to explore and examine various answers to this question. No answer was considered sufficient, however.

MOVE TO Slide #5 As Becker (who by 1966 was in California teaching at Berkley and later San

Francisco State) watched the 1960s roll on this question became increasingly acute: the civil rights movement evolving into armed Black Power; the Hippie movement evolve into drug-centered escapism and the Manson Family; the Free Speech and New Left movement evolve into campus violence and Weather Underground bombings; the ideas associated with the Human Potential movement evolve into cults of personality;

It was during this time that Becker (re)read Otto Rank, and the death anxiety idea popped out in a way that it had never done before. Although some have seen a complete shift of gears in Becker’s thought as a result, my work has revolved more around the interpretation that Becker’s development of the death anxiety thesis is not a break from his earlier work, but rather should be seen in continuity with his earlier work. He continues to be animated by the question, Why Do People Act As We Do? However, he comes to a much deeper understanding of what is at stake in individual and social behavior.

We cling to and reproduce old habits of behavior, social hierarchies and interactions not simply because of lack of knowledge, of ignorance, of love of power, wealth, social conformity, peer pressure, and many of the other true but partial explanations. We cling to and reproduce such habits of behavior because over the course of our species history, these are the habits that have shielded us, symbolically and actually, against having to shoulder on a constant and moment by moment basis the knowledge of death and our own mortality.

Move to Slide #6

Death Anxiety as Basic Anxiety

The Death Anxiety theory is based on the following observations:

HUMAN BEINGS SHARE WITH ALL LIVING THINGS AN URGE TO CONTINUE LIVING (in psychobabble, this is called primary narcissism; in everyday language we mostly call it the ‘life instinct’ or ‘survival instinct.’ It is perhaps the most strong behavioral animator on the planet.)

UNLIKE OTHER LIVING THINGS (as far as we know) HUMAN SELF CONSCIOUSNESS DICTATES THAT THIS PRIMARY URGE TO SURVIVE EVENTUALLY COMES INTO DIRECT CONFLICT WITH OUR AWARENESS OF DEATH AND OF MORTALITY AS AN INEVITABLE CONDITION OF OUR BEING.

THIS CREATES A POOL OF POTETNIALLY IMMOBILIZING ANXIETY (a constant flight/fight/freeze mode) AND THUS DEATH AWARENESS MUST BE REPRESSED FROM IMMEDIATE CONSCIOUSNESS MOST OF THE TIME IF WE ARE TO BE A SUCCESSFUL SPECIES; OTHERWISE, WE BE PSYCHOLOGICALLY STUNNED AND UNABLE TO CARRY ON LIVING.

MOVE TO Slide #7 UNLIKE OTHER LIVING THINGS (as far as we know) HUMANS HAVE

HAD TO DEVELOP A PSYCHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE CHARACTERIZED BY A MECHANISM TO KEEP CONSTANT GUARD AGAINST SUCH IMMOBILIZING KNOWLEDGE. THIS IS THE BASIS OF THE DYNAMIC SUBCONSCIOUS MIND.

THIS THEORY POSITS THAT RESPRESSED DEATH ANXIETY IS THE ENERGY COOKING AWAY IN THE DYNAMIC SUBCONSCIOUS MIND. IT IS THE PARADIGM ‘THREAT’ AGAINST WHICH THE DYNAMIC SUBSCONSCIOUS MIND GUARDS US.

THIS MANIFESTS ITSELF IN SYMBOLIC ATTEMPTS ON ONE HAND TO REMAIN SUBMERGED SAFELY WITHIN THE LARGER GROUP (fear of life) OR, ON THE OTHER HAND, TO STAND OUT AGAINST THE GROUP, TO BE ‘SPECIAL,’ MORE THAN ‘MERE MORTALS’ (fear of death).

MOVE TO SLIDE #8 – read literary quotes; repeat last bullet point, slide #7

Fear of Life and Fear of Death

To a large extent, Ernest Becker’s picture of mature adult psychology views our lives as a kind of constant dance between wanting to remain safely tucked into the protective shell of the larger group and wanting to stand out from the group as an individual. The movement back and forth is understood in this theory as the push and pull of subconscious death anxiety.

MOVE TO #9We seek the shielding merger with larger groups, to draw power for living by vicarious identification with movements, ideas, people, that we distinguish as symbolically representing ‘more life,’ life beyond the weak, fragile and temporary Self we know ourselves to be. The glitch in this solution to the death anxiety problem is that it entails an enormous amount of ‘unlived life.’ Our literature is full of characters (but we know this of ourselves intrinsically) who have always obeyed the rules, lived up to everyone else’s expectation, never moved outside the boundaries of propriety, who eventually must face death (like Ivan Ilytch) regretting a life unlived. By then it is too late.

MOVE TO #10Thus we seek also to ‘stand out’ from the crowd, to be recognized as special among others, for our accomplishments, our intelligence, our artistry, our creativity, for the power we hold, or at least for the fact that we sit on top of a considerable pile of accumulated wealth – the bigger the better. We strive to become ourselves the person other people envy and want to be. Whether on the stage of world leadership (for those with outsized egos fueled by strongly narcissistic bent) or simply to be the best knitter of the local knitting club, we strive to become the person others want to be – and thus escape the suffocating velocity of the fear of living outlined before. The glitch in this solution to the death anxiety problem is that while we might convince others of our ‘specialness,’ and that we stand above ‘mere mortals’ for good reason, we really cannot convince ourselves of it for very long or on a constant basis. Our lives soon become running ever more on the treadmill to pile up even more accomplishments, piles of wealth, bobbles attempting to prove finally to ourselves more than others that we really are special, that we really are more than ‘mere mortals’. But it is never enough, and ultimately we must face death alone. Admired, envied, resented perhaps – but ultimately alone, unloved, and without the supportive good will of a community of others.

MOVE TO #11

METAXY – A Model of Adult Human Psychology

(Metaxy, a term borrowed from political philosopher Eric Voegelin)

Looking back over the totality of Ernest Becker’s work, I have identified at least a dozen places in which Becker explored the human dance of oppositions. Again, we notice that our lives are easily characterized as this movement back and forth between these oppositions. People of given personality types may lean heavily one way or another, but most any of us will find that we are a complex mix of leanings both in the moment and over a lifetime.

MOVE TO Slide #12

Fear of Life Fear of Death

SCHIZOPHRENIA DEPRESSIONGUILT SHAMESELF BODYINDIVIDUALISM MASS IDENTITYCREATIVITY PREDICABILITYEROS AGAPENARCISSIM ANALITYAGGRESSION SUBMISSIONEXPANSION CONSTRICTIONINNER MEANING PUBLIC MEANINGDOING UNDERGOINGSADISM MASOCHISM

The oppositions are arguably rather abstract when presented outside of the context of Becker’s discussions of each. Most of the time, his discussion emerges in dialogue with what particular psychological theorist, political philosopher, or religious writer he is engaging. But I hope this is enough to at least communicate some sense of the categories in which Becker constructed his ideas.

Suffice to say that in Becker’s view, mental health is not seen as a static entity. Like the concept of maximum individuality within maximum community, mental health is an ideal/real concept, moving this way or that in relation to actual life circumstance.The Ontological and the Existential Axes

Thus fear of life, of living, of standing out too much on our own drives us into the safety of the community, while fear of death, of suffocation, of being smothered, of never really living life to the fullest, drives us toward individuation and making our mark, finding our niche, pursuing our dreams, that which makes us special. The myriad ways that we pursue the dance between fear of life and fear of death is contoured by time, history, location, personality and personal experiences. We are inherently social beings, beings of culture. We learn from the culture in which we are members what is to be desired, what is heroic, what the rules are for respectable behavior (and thus what we need to do, be, have, accomplish to qualify for symbolic immortality.) The type of person highly valued in one culture might be an outcast or considered quite bizarre in another culture.

One criticism often heard, especially in reaction to less nuanced and more simplistic presentations of Becker’s thought, is that Becker is one more of those theorists who tries to make everything fit into one little box (often this is accompanied by dismissive references to Becker as a white, cis, western, educated male.) Some of this criticism is no doubt valid. Becker was a person of his time and certainly reflected many of the glaring intellectual foibles of his time (just as his current critics do of their own time.) I would point out, however, that as a critical anthropologist, Becker was perhaps more aware of this type of intellectual pitfall than were many of his contemporaries. He tried to answer this nascent by outlining what he called the Ontological and the Existential Axes of analysis.

MOVE TO Slide #13The Ontological Axis includes that which is common to all human beings simply by the fact of their common humanity. Human beings universally eat food, procreate, urinate and defecate, speak and sing, have arms and legs, and ultimately die. Therefore, the cultural lives of all human beings revolve around symbol, rules, rituals and regulations for these things which all humans have in common. They emerge from our ontology. Becker’s theory simply notes and highlights that death and death anxiety (and hence the myriad cultural strategies for dealing with this basic anxiety) is one of those human universals.

MOVE TO Slide #14The Existential Axis in contrast is the arena in which time, place, history and all of the specifics of cultural diversity come into play as specific strategies for dealing with basic death anxiety. It can be a strong tool of cultural criticism, unmasking the motivations and pretensions of the powerful, which, as I understand it, is the intention of those making the criticism of Becker from the diversity perspective.

MOVE TO #15

What Are Some of the Main Strengths of This Theory?

With all of the competing theories out there, why pay attention to the theory of Generative Death Anxiety? Here are a few points to consider. (read them through from slide)

MOVE TO Slide #16The theory of Generative Death Anxiety is fundamentally, integrally INTERDISCIPLINARY. Because this theory concerns itself with the deep structures of the mind, it offers insights into many fields of study, especially in the social sciences and humanities, but without fundamentally undermining the existing knowledge in any field. To the extent that the accumulated knowledge in a given field is based firmly on rigorous empirical observation of concrete human behavior, when that knowledge is viewed through the lens of Generative Death Anxiety, it will not erase that knowledge as wrongheaded, but rather provide creative bridges to other aspects of accumulated knowledge both within that field and between that discipline and others. This has been demonstrated many times over in peer reviewed publications in areas as diverse as political science, individual and social psychology, aesthetics, religion, behavioral economics and literary criticism.

MOVE TO Slide #17The theory of Generative Death Anxiety is fundamentally and integrally EVOLUTIONARY. Although there are new challenges emerging around the edges to the hegemony of random gene variation as the source of change in evolutionary theory, the basic concepts of evolutionary theory remain firmly established. Any valid theory in the social sciences and humanities must be compatible with the evolutionary paradigm, and the best ones enhance and expand the horizons of that paradigm. Although the Generative Death Anxiety theory received some initial resistance from evolutionary theorists (why would any mental mechanism that works to fundamentally distort our perception of reality be selected for favorably in the evolutionary process?) further reflection on evolutionary history demonstrates that the natural selection process continually produces unintended side effects that come as the inevitable companion of traits that strongly impact survival and thus would be strongly favored in the selection proces. Stephen Jay Gould labeled these unintended side effects spandrels. In a nutshell, increased intelligence up to and including narrative self-consciousness clearly had powerful

survival value, but one eventual side effect of this peculiarly human type of consciousness was recognition of mortality. Thus in the artifact record, alongside the evolutionary development of higher consciousness we would expect to see evidence of increased concern with death as a special problem for our species. And this is exactly what we do see, from earliest burial grounds leading into the development of religious rituals and on to ideologies of immortality and the afterlife. A theory focused on the dawning development of death awareness and the need to cope with the inevitable anxiety this produces is well borne out in the archeological history of our species.

One of the open questions in human evolution is the fact that homo sapiens emerged some 200,000 years ago, for all but the most recent of those many thousands of years, our ancestors lived as gatherers and scavengers with only incremental changes in their way of living. Then at some relatively recent point in our species history, it is as if we took a sudden turn and began rapidly developing all aspects of what we now call culture. Many specialists designate this as an emergence of a new species entirely, homo sapiens sapiens, although there does not appear to be any distinguishable physical or genetic difference between members of the species before and after this turn. Anthropologists talk about this sudden turn as depending on some sort of cultural release mechanism, and mostly point toward the emergence of language as that mechanism. I would only point us toward the intimate connection between language, the development of narrative consciousness and the emergence of mortality awareness to suggest that this theory of Generative Death Anxiety may have utility as a point for further exploration of this particular aspect of human evolution.

MOVE TO Slide #18The theory of Generative Death Anxiety is fundamentally and integrally congruent with current directions in the study of BRAIN DEVELOPMENT AND NEUROSCIENCE. In the social sciences, and increasingly in the humanities as well, reinterpreting social and behavioral theory in light of the ongoing results of the last couple of decades of research in brain development and neuroscience represents the cutting edge of progress. This progress has often come in the form of reviving respect for older theories that had become somewhat passe’. A good example of this is the cognitive learning theory of Jean Piaget, formulated in the 1920s and 1930s. Although never refuted in a strict sense, Piaget’s ideas became sort of ‘old hat’ and less exciting among educators, until it was noticed more recently that Piaget’s stages of cognitive development mapped almost perfectly onto what was being discovered about the process of human childhood brain development itself. As Piaget’s ideas could be taught in conjunction with the new

science of brain development, a revival of interest in Piaget emerged. The same could be said about Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory of Development, and of Laurence Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development. These people could not have known about the recent discoveries in brain development, but they were unquestionably meticulous observers of human beings and based their theories directly and closely on empirical observation. Hence, it is proving to be of lasting value. The theory of Generative Death Anxiety also maps easily onto concepts emerging from brain development and neurosciences, examples of which we can discuss during the Q&A after this lecture.

We also might note here that although the work was being done simultaneously and independently, there is easy connection between Becker’s formulation of adult psychology and that of Attachment Theory, which seeks to ground human psychology and emotional development in more general categories of mammalian emotions and behavior. Attachment Theory also conceives of human behavior as emerging in a lifelong dance between the desire for close connections, on the one hand, and independent action on the other hand. Although AT grounds this need for attachment on one hand and independence on the other, the dance is understood also as driven by basic anxieties of being smothered on one side and being abandoned on the other. This maps just about perfectly onto Becker’s concept of fear of life/fear of death we discussed above. I have engaged at length in discussion with Attachment Theory advocates, and have come to the conclusion that while Attachment Anxiety predates Death Anxiety chronologically in the life of a normally developing human individual, at some point in that developmental history, usually between the age of about 4 and 7 years (when the child comes to understand death as inevitable, and thus begins to symbolize abandonment as a pathway to failure to thrive) the larger concept of death anxiety displaces abandonment per se as a basic motivating anxiety. One could easily argue on the basis of Attachment Theory alone that fear of death, of failure to thrive, conceptually underlies all mammalian attachment needs, but this underlying conceptual connection is only recognized by a species that comes to understand mortality as an ontological condition of life.

Refer to slide and ‘fire in the mind’ – E.O. Wilson and Chas. Lumsden – the theory of Generative Death Anxiety provides a very good candidate for the mechanism for the creation of this ‘fire in the mind.’

MOVE TO Slide #19

The ongoing results of TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY (TMT) in social psychology lend a solid foundation in empirical laboratory work of the highest standards in support of the ideas of Ernest Becker and the theory of Generative Death Anxiety. Granted, TMT concerns itself only with limited areas of Becker’s thought, and TMT easily stands on its own as an independent theory. But it originated from insights gleaned from Becker’s work, and that connection is important to note in making the case for the theory of Generative Death Anxiety.

TMT theory hypothesizes, in effect, that if Ernest Becker was correct in his suggestion that a main function of culture is to act as a buffer against death anxiety, then under a condition TMT calls ‘mortality salience’ (essentially, when a person is reminded, either directly or indirectly, of their mortality) that person should feel especially kindly toward those who share and strengthen their cultural values, and especially hostile toward those who undermine and threaten their cultural values. In tightly controlled experiment after experiment (into at least the high hundreds by now) this hypothesis has been overwhelmingly confirmed across age groups, educational levels, and in many different countries including at least 8 different languages. This is important because, in one sense, depth psychologies are all ‘equal’ in that they deal with areas of life largely shaped by the stories we tell about them, and these stories are not easily accessed by empirical testing. But at the very least, the results of TMT research should indicate that Ernest Becker’s theory of the deep structures of human existence, what I have called a theory of Generative Death Anxiety, has earned a place of first among equals. I think of it this way. Most of an iceberg is submerged and we only have some clues to what is under the surface in terms of size and shape. But if repeatedly and consistently an approach to measuring what is accessible above and just below the surface accurately predicts the location and contours of what is empirically measurable, it lends solid credibility to those more conjectural aspects of the iceberg that remains hidden. At the very least, therefore, based on TMT research results, we would be justified in thinking of Becker’s theory as ‘first among equals’ in the company of competing depth psychological theories.

MOVE TO Slide #20

The theory of Generative Death Anxiety is NONPARTISAN. In other times and places this aspect of things might be less important than it is in our current circumstances. I don’t have to argue here what we see all around us every day, that there are deep divisions in our social life and body politic that, if left unattended, will fester and become destructive of the very democratic ideals we hold as the

highest fruits of our culture and our experiment in republican political processes of self-government.

We are in great need of a perspective that is both progressive, but also nonpartisan. I am quite frankly alarmed about the degree to which we are divided by angry factionalism. I just cannot see what good results can come from erasing the social bonds that hold us together as a nation. There are many good books and articles aiming to help us analyze and interpret what is going on in the realm of politics, and especially the increasingly divided lenses through which we view the current political and social situation. The problem is not a shortage of ideas, but rather the fact that so much of this material claiming to analyze the divisions in effect simply reflect the divisions. We are still in need of a theoretical perspective that provides an analysis that applies equally and critically to all sides.

Without myself lapsing into my own messianic narrative of heroic victory and salvation, I would simply humbly suggest that the theory I am supporting here might be worth looking at in this context.

MOVE TO Slide #21

DRAWBACKS: 1. Does it explain ‘too much’?Although this theory of Generative Death Anxiety is not in itself a grand

theory of history, with predictive implications for the direction history is heading, there is a sense in which it is such a grand theory. It does indeed imply that there is a specific hermeneutic key to understanding why people act the way they do and that we can know to employ this key before examining any specific historical situation. In terms of individuals, the hermeneutic key is to search for the ways in which that person sees himself or herself as engaged in heroic struggle against evil in the world and thus maintains his or her sense of ongoing personal value (self-esteem.) For most people, this is confined to the quotidian routine of everyday life – raising a family, putting food on the table, practicing one’s religion and passively or actively supporting those who engage in the battle against evil on the larger stage of social politics. For others, it expands into the desire to engage in that larger stage, up to and including the desire to rule the world.

On the collective level, the hermeneutic key proffered by this theory is to understand, within the symbol world of the society in question, the ways in which that society provides a panorama of meaningful roles to the people in regard to its social pageantry of transcending values; how widely those roles are spread throughout the society; and, on the one hand, who pays the costs (internally and

externally) for, and who chiefly benefits from, maintaining the social narrative of transcending value as truth.

Foucault et al., have taught us to be highly suspicious of such grand theory and simply to engage in politics directly as a struggle for relative power within the collective. Does that criticism apply to this theory as well? Perhaps so. I would argue, however, that the real consequences of this theory is quite compatible with Foucault’s suspicion of grand theory. The theory of Generative Death Anxiety would identify the cultural narratives of transcendent value as the very grand theories that Foucault intents to criticize. Recognizing that all such cultural narratives of transcendent value are human artifacts (that is, cultural constructions), this theory then proceeds, as seen above, to examine the question of who benefits and who pays the costs of maintaining such cultural narratives in specific situations. This is not necessarily the same thing as ‘value free’ political struggle for relative power (it might well tend to see that ideal itself as a social fiction) but does provide a powerful tool for analyzing the contours of ideological power within the context of political struggle.

DRAWBACKS #2: Is death simply our own cultural pornography?If we look at human history, we see a repeating pattern that each era seems

to have its own special ‘pornography,’ that is, a particular element of special concern which both fascinates and repels in equal (perhaps reciprocal) measure. Just to look at recent history, we see the fascination of the demonic and satanic taking place in the European witch craze following on the heels of the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries. During the Victorian era, human sexuality was such a source of fascination and moral panic. Likewise, in the immediate aftermath of the second world war we experienced a social panic about Communism in this country. Might it not be that just as Freud identified sexual anxiety as the root anxiety of his (Victorian) era, Becker et al. may have identified Death Anxiety as the root anxiety of our time, simply because death is the pornography of the modern scientific world?

I have given this a lot of study and thought, and my current conclusion is that even if this were so, we could not make legitimate claim to know this because we live, breath and have our being within the ‘bubble’ of our time. We can see pornographies of the past – the witch craze, sexual anxieties, virulent anticommunism, etc. – as symbols of evil, specific to time and place, contained within the overall symbolization of mortality and death. But if it is true that death is the ‘pornography’ of modern scientific culture, it will have to be left to those who come after us to outline the wider symbolic puzzle into which mortality and death fit as a piece of that puzzle. In terms of its symbolization (the void, the abyss, ceasing to exist, etc.) it would seem we have reached some kind of limits. But even

if this criticism cannot be sustained by citing examples, it is a good reminder to us that the theory of Generative Death Anxiety is itself historically and culturally situated, is a human artifact, and must largely be sustained on the pragmatic grounds that it allows us to see important objects in ourselves and our surroundings that we might otherwise miss or misinterpret.

DRAWBACK #3: Does this theory apply equally to males and females?Ernest Becker was a male, as were most of his main intellectual ancestors. Is

it not true that all of the important things he writes about, such as maintaining a sense of oneself as ‘heroic’ in life, represent mainly male concerns? On the face of it, this is certainly true. Becker died in early 1974, just as ‘second wave’ feminism was taking off. Although he certainly supported basic concepts such as equal rights, he was not deeply exposed to the far-reaching criticisms of patriarchy that were soon to come. His family life was relatively conventional. His main laboratory was examining his own (male) life through widespread reading of other (heavily male) social philosophers. His language was had not been disciplined by feminist consciousness – his use of male pronouns in the generic is rather jarring at times.

Although it would be anachronistic to make Becker out to be a proto-feminist, I do think it would be a mistake for feminists to dismiss the theory of Generative Death Anxiety for that reason. Certainly there is no evidence that Becker was more misogynistic than other male academics of his time. The trajectory of his life and active support for civil rights suggest that he would have taken feminist criticism seriously and likely would have become a supporter. But more than that, this theory of Generative Death Anxiety lends heavy support to the critical analysis of patriarchal culture, norms and values.

What about death anxiety itself? Is this experienced equally by males and females? Here Becker did make some interesting observations for consideration. He noted that one of the most effective balms for death anxiety is to see yourself as part of a great chain of life that was present before your birth and will be continue after you have died. Robert Jay Lifton characterized this as the powerful immortality symbolism of the ‘continuity of life.’ Becker noted that females integrally know they are an element in this continuity of life. They regularly feel it in their very bodies with their monthly cycles. It is in their bodies that life grows and from which life emerges. For males, in contrast, knowledge of their connection to continuity of life is mainly intellectual. They are reduced to creating social ‘rules’ for mating that increase the likelihood of their paternity; to charts and drawings of sperm fertilizing egg; to graphs of DNA. In short, they are left with nagging doubts about their connection to the continuity of life that are simply answered for females by the very workings of their bodies in nature.

Females die as well as males, and so we must assume that on some level at least females also experience the existential angst of finitude. On the other hand, we might well expect that females do have a very different relationship to death and the continuity of life than males, and so we might well expect much different symbolization of death in the female consciousness than in the male consciousness. We can’t do much more here than note this expectation – and as a male, it is ontologically beyond my ability to configure such female symbolization. We simply note the expectation here, and would throw out the bait that at least one of the major sources for examination might be in contrasting the symbolizations we find in ancient and modern Goddess religions as compared to those of the great monotheistic God religions.

DRAWBACK #4: Does this theory place at the center something that would better be pictured as one element among others?

Even if we were to grant the validity of the theory of Generative Death Anxiety in pointing us toward death anxiety as an important element of concern, might is not be that it is but one element among worthy of our attention? In short, yes. This theory is not an ideology, and the worst thing that sometimes happens when some young enthusiasts becomes acquainted the theory is that they start endlessly analyzing other people’s problems – “you haven’t dealt with your death anxiety” can come to be used similarly to the older orthodox Freudians positing everyone else’s ‘unanalyzed Oedipus complex’ as the one-size-fits-all retort to any and all challenges!

I do think those elements of life we identified above as ‘ontological,’ – birth, eating, defecation/urination, bleeding, sickness, sexuality, growth and maturation; in short, those things that every human being experiences simply because we have bodies – form a cluster of symbolic meaning that function at a deeper psychological, emotional and spiritual level than more derivative concerns. Death is certainly one of those elements, and I think we must take our anxieties surrounding death more seriously as a basic anxiety. This does not preclude that there are other basic anxieties as well, however. It may well be that the way forward now is to pay closer attention to the way death anxiety and its symbolization interacts reciprocally in relation to other basic anxieties. Just as an off hand example, it strikes me that we will have a much better understanding in the area of economics with our irrational attachment to “growth” (though we know it is ruining the very planet we life on) if we were able to better discern the element of death anxiety working within the symbolization of growth and maturation in our economic life.

But finally, we come to the MOST IMPORTANT drawback of this theory.

Move to Slide #22

It is not much fun at parties!! (Allow time to read the slide)

Here, for example, is the ‘elevator presentation’ I use for my work:

I study the ways in which our repression of the inevitability of death generates the psychological energy that motivates our behavior, both positively and negatively.

Those of you old enough to remember Arlo Guthrie’s rant. Alice’s Restaurant, will remember the famous line…

‘…and they all moved away from me on the group-W bench…’

Believe me when I tell you, I know from hard experience exactly what that feels like!

Thanks so much for your indulgence.