[coberst]

Humans seek to transcend nature via culture

But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement.--Yates

“What will come of my whole life…Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”—Tolstoy

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker suggests that we all create an artificial world to avoid confronting the hopelessness of the human condition.

The basic premise of The Denial of Death is that human civilization is ultimately an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our mortality, which in turn acts as the emotional and intellectual response to our basic survival mechanism.

Meaning is number ONE. What wo/man fears most is extinction, which includes insignificance.

Wo/man wants assurance that their life has somehow counted; if not for her or his self then at least within the overall scheme of things. If there is some kind of “judgment day” then I want to be in ‘that number’ that matter. While alive I want to know that “I am somebody”.

Religion is our primary means for responding to that basic need to be somebody. Otto Rand says that all religions spring up “not so much from…fear of natural death as of final destruction.”

“It is culture itself that embodies the transcendence of death in some form or other, whether it appears as purely religious or not…culture itself is sacred, since it is the “religion” that assures in some way the perpetuation of its members.”

Our dichotomy of sacred and secular aspects of social life is an egregious error. There is no such thing as a distinction between sacred and secular in the symbolic affairs of sapiens. Sacred is that which transcends the natural world while secular is that which is of the natural world. In the world of symbolic affairs such distinctions do not hold.

“As soon as you have symbols you have artificial self-transcendence via culture. Everything cultural is fabricated and given meaning by the mind, a meaning that is not given by physical nature. Culture is in this sense “supernatural” and all systemizations of culture have in the end the same goal: to raise men above nature, to assure him that in some ways their lives count in the universe more than merely physical things count.”

Self-transcendence, i.e. transcending nature via culture, does not provide a simple means to deny the primacy of death; the terror of death still lurks beneath the veneer. We have shifted the fear of death onto a new level of anxiety; we must “now hold for dear life onto the self-transcending meanings of the society in which we live…a new kind of instability and anxiety are created.”

In our attempt to deny evil, i.e. death, we bring a new and grotesque form of evil. “It is man’s ingenuity, rather than his animal nature, that has given his fellow creatures such a bitter fate.” Wo/man has, through ingenuity, heaped great evil on the world; far greater than could ever be created by our animal nature.

Quotes from Escape from Evil—Becker

[Fitter]

Personally, I hold media and communication responsible for this. It conveys message without sufficient feeling or experience thus creating separated understanding and reference points.

Reports on the war in Afghanistan for example, are not interpreted as acutely by those who do not have a reference point with which to identify the feelings.
Violent computer games represent death insomuch as it means 'going back to the beginning' rather than the end of everything; thus the psyche does not register the loss in the correct way.
People exposing themselves to overt criticism and ridicule on reality television shows create an image of acceptance of abuse that is frequently upheld in the street that evening by completely unrelated individuals with inhibitions lowered by alcohol consumption.
The modern culture of 'one better than the Jones's' creates a competition scenario where none should logically exist: someone with a year old Ferrari thinks he has a better car than someone with a brand new Skoda.
Someone can type any old claptrap that they wish onto an internet forum and hold that it's true. If they are convincing enough, someone will believe them, as the media type is inherently unprovable.

The list is endless. Trouble is, there isn't really an alternative. Even if you take the manipulation out of the media, you are still left with the disconnected message.

F

[DurgaMata]

Death is definately the ultimate taboo in western culture we just dont like talking about it, facing it.

[Fitter]

DurgaMata, on 04 November 2009 - 03:08 PM, said:

Death is definately the ultimate taboo in western culture we just dont like talking about it, facing it.

So is this the place for religion in our culture, to balance the fear of this ?

F

[tinieblas]

Here's my addition to this thread and I apologise if some think it does not entirely fit; but I think it does somewhat.

To summarise, I am a psychic and have had a number of very wierd experiences, including the sudden, inexplicable knowledge of events which will take place my own future. Over the course of the years, all of my foreknowings have come to pass expect this one. I have had this foreknowning since I was 15 but only recently come into the details; I know the date of my own death and the manner in which it will happen. Previous foreknowings together with information I could not have guessed (the day of the week and the closeness of a total eclipse) I am convinced things will happen as I "saw" them. At first I could not sleep or relax, I was on edge and found this knowledge hard to accept but I spoke to my wife (not telling her the date obviously....I kind of had to tell her as she knew something was wrong) and in the telling I came to accept, at least being to accept the inevitable. Since I have come to accept this and not worry about it, my life is changed...I can begin to plan, knowing I have approximately 11 more years of life and good health (which most of us don't have with certainty) left to me. I no longer fear my ultimate demise as I feel the knowing has been a gift (from somewhere) because it has take away the fear and uncertainty of death....i feel free

[coberst]

Fitter, on 04 November 2009 - 10:19 PM, said:

So is this the place for religion in our culture, to balance the fear of this ?

F

Repression is a basic characteristic of human behavior. We repress our knowledge of mortality because we cannot handle the anxiety that results from that consciousness. We have created religion as a means for everlasting life and thus to hide from mortality.

[Fitter]

coberst, on 05 November 2009 - 11:41 AM, said:

Repression is a basic characteristic of human behavior. We repress our knowledge of mortality because we cannot handle the anxiety that results from that consciousness. We have created religion as a means for everlasting life and thus to hide from mortality.

So religion is a vital part of the human psyche, yes, I think most people would agree with you on that... even those with more obscure religions !

I see a parallel to be drawn between the decline of religion and the increasing lack of moral fibre and degradation of cultural piety prevalent in the world today. One wonders if the world were to take as great an interest in God as they did in their electrical gadgets, then the world may not be in the mess that it is.

F

[DurgaMata]

I would go far as saying the creation of the ego is a fear of death - the need to live on by being remembered. The fear of death also makes people defend their views in as much as being proved wrong means death of the ego.

[Fitter]

DurgaMata, on 05 November 2009 - 05:24 PM, said:

I would go far as saying the creation of the ego is a fear of death - the need to live on by being remembered. The fear of death also makes people defend their views in as much as being proved wrong means death of the ego.

That happens to be a pet hate of mine.... people who cannot admit they have made a mistake. To see someone I previously held in high esteem or even just liked squirm around a few hastily chosen words and try to hide behind the thinnest veil of accused misunderstanding or misinterpretation is for me, the surest and most direct way to lose all credibility.

The ego has a lot to answer for in that respect, but back to the OP, I was under the impression that defence against the fear of death and non-existence was at the heart of religion. One could say art mirrors life, well, in the case of religion, that has never been truer. I remember years ago, an analytical psychotherapist (though he would not have been called that in those days) came to the 'astonishing' conclusion that green was a more restful colour on the eye than any other. My RE teacher leaped on this as proof of the cognizance of God, as He made most all of natures background green in the main. Grass, trees, shrubs etc. But this is reversed rationalization, surely ? Green is the most restful colour because the background of life is green, not in spite of it !

So it is with this scenario.... The ego has been discovered to defend the notion of death and it is believed that this is a major breakthrough in human psychological research, but surely that's obvious ! The ego is there because of the fear of death, not death there because of the ego.... and once you accept that the ego was always there, it's only a short step to add a mechanism to rationalize and contain the ego, the belief system.

The belief system rose many hundreds of thousands of years before it was ever called religion, of course, but it was always there, as soon as you have sentient thought, you have religion by any name. It's inherent, it's hard-wired, you can't have people without it. I guess God put a line of code in our BIOS.

The great evil rises when you have two different interpretations of the same idea. As Kevin Smith said "....especially the factioning of all the religions. He (God) said humanity took a good idea and, like always, built a belief structure on it.""Having beliefs isn't good?""I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant."

F

[jules99]

I admit; I think a lot more of a person if they are graceful in defeat. Its an admirable trait.
Religion is strange, I would personally prefer mortality to the prospect of either returning an infinite number of times to repeat my mistakes, or to being condemned for an eternity for them. Each to their own though.
People are largely creatures of habit and prefer the familiar to the foreign. Even a scientific theory will become like a comfortable old pair of shoes and the thought of changing isnt always welcomed by all. Maybe thats why religious belief is popular, its just part of the human condition to seek stability amidst the chaos.

This post has been edited by jules99: 08 November 2009 - 10:34 AM