juliet's tomb

The denial of death

06/13 2021

"The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive."¹

'The Denial Of Death' by Ernest Becker is a book in the psychoanalytic tradition that changes some fundamental aspects of Freud's original vision, mostly taken from Otto Rank's work. While Freud held the view that the guilt that generates our anxieties lies in suppressed unconscious sexual urges Becker means that he was right to suggest that anxiety was generated from some aspect of our bodily condition, only, it's actually in virtue of the duality between the physical and the spiritual --- not the sexual urges themselves. In other words it is the fact that we are inherently dualistic creatures and thereby in virtue of the dissonance that arises from our "spiritual" (or mental, symbolic etc.) side when it realizes that it will die.

This is what Becker calls our strive for 'heroism', i.e. our strive to transcend our mortality by symbolic means. We build monuments, buildings, families in an effort to remain --- in some way --- forever. It stems from our biological urge to survive, seeing as it forces us to thing about means to achieve that, something that when you think about it isn't necessarily tied up to things that directly impact that goal (like food, water) but also things that indirectly impact it. These are 'immortality projects', which are things that satisfy our 'symbolic' side while at the same time --- because they are abstract in the sense that they are meanings/symbols --- extending far beyond the limitations of our bodies. This fear of death is, however, something that cannot be universally present. Because otherwise we couldn't function. Therefore we usually repress it through the guise of 'heroics', through arbitrary made up rules that we allow ourselves to be governed by in order to function in the world.

The institutions we build are attempts to solve our anxieties by putting up arbitrary restrictions that limit our character's self-discovery, i.e. our ability to realize our duality and mortality. We feel better if the ground beneath our feet is solid, and tangibly real. Just like how those restrictions present many aspects of our everyday lives as tangibly real --- for example the importance of living by the creed of God as providing that genuine footing. This means that a large portion of our character is bound up into these arbitrary restrictions, which is why getting rid of them --- or in other words the process of self-discovery --- is so hard to hope to accomplish. But beneath all of those layers of illusions, Becker suggests, that our "authentic self" resides.

As a result all norms in societies become a structured vehicle for earthly heroism; "cultural relativism", similarly, merely becomes relativity inherent in regards to the differing hero systems around the world. Whether or not these systems are secular, religious or magical doesn't matter --- at its core the desire remains the same. To outlive death through the things we do and/or the things that we create. This denial of death is also reflected in our ideologies, in the ideals that make it easier for us to be confident in our personal heroic struggle.

This strive for the heroic too remains in passive individuals, in that they follow the rules set up by society as the "recommended path of heroic action" that it has set up. The crisis that has arisen in modern times, according to Becker, is that the youth doesn't see the things society has set up to be heroic as heroic. In other words the youth lacks meaning because it sees through the illusions inherent in ideas like following the creed of God or what the American dream or Ronald Reagan supposedly says.

The Self

One interesting assumption on Becker's part is the idea of a self that is waiting to be discovered and something that is fundamentally different to our physical bodies. As he writes on page 82:

"This, after all is said and done, is the only real problem of life, the only worthwhile preoccupation of man: What is one's true talent, his secret gift, his authentic vocation? In what way is one truly unique, and how can he express this uniqueness, give it form, dedicate it to something beyond himself?"

This, among many other passages (especially in the chapter on Kierkegaard), seem to hint that there is something definitely unique about the individual --- something bordering on divine. But if we think about it is this something that necessarily must be so? Why is it that this view of the self seemingly fits perfectly with the Christian idea about the spirit? Is it because it just happened to be right, all those years ago? Maybe, it is indeed possible. But it is an assumption that I think is weird not to question, and here I think that Becker is guilty of the same thing that he suggests that a Kierkegaardian approach can elucidate, namely that "[he] is attempting to ferret people out of the lie of their lives whose lives do not look like a lie, who seem to succeed in being true, complete and authentic persons.". What is to say that Becker isn't proposing a view of life that doesn't look like a lie, and that seems to succeed in being true, but that at the same time nonetheless is just that?

It becomes especially interesting if we present another starkly differing idea about the self, that can be found in Confucius. Confucius said that nothing is innate when we are born, and that who we become depends on how we live our life and the kind of situations we happen to be in. This means that we aren't defined by some innate idea of the "secret gift" but the habits, or dispositions toward certain things, that we have throughout life.

Habits is an important element of his philosophy because it allows us to dispel the notion of an innate self by saying that the things that we perceive as static are simply ruts in our thinking, ruts that simplify our cognitive load during decision making. They are formed out of our instinctual responses to any given situation, because the first time we experience something we might respond by the current emotion we experience --- but we quickly start forming patterns that govern our response to similar events, not in virtue of the emotion felt, but by the similarity itself. The self thus becomes just a bunch of ruts and patterns that have been ingrained from a young age. So then, according to Confucius, if you want to change you must break those ruts and patterns. Or, in the words of himself: Confucius said, “People are similar to each other by nature; they diverge from each another because of practice.”²

This is a notion that is entirely missing in Becker's ³ analysis of the self, and deliberately so. If the entirety of humankind's culture is a rebellion against the very fact that we are mortal, then how is that compatible with the idea that we only diverge in ourselves because of practice? Because, as Becker writes above, "In what way is one truly unique, and how can he express this uniqueness, give it form, dedicate it to something beyond himself?". If this is only because of our diverging practices then it undermines the very notion that we have something special, distinct from our physical nature, that needs to be express. It becomes something that only is, as a result, and therefore also conditions, for our actions.

Conclusion

Becker's idea⁴ that many aspects of our culture is based around the idea of immortality projects is one that intuitively strikes me as valid, and almost intuitively obvious. But that it would necessitate a Christian idea of the self as something distinctively different from the physical realm, and almost transcendentally so, only strikes me as the byproduct of the time --- and perhaps the authors upbringing. A Confucian view of the self isn't necessarily opposed to the idea that the majority of our society is based around the notion of transcending our mortality, only Becker's solution and description of the self. Perhaps it performs even better than Becker's notion because of how dynamic it is.