Terror Management Theory and The Fear Of A Meaningless Life & Death

WARNING!

Scientific experiments have proven that if you read the following story, you will likely be changed. Your ideas about religion, politics - yes, even your appreciation of art and beauty will be changed... at least temporarily. So if you like the way you feel about life right now, maybe you should skip this article.

I'm going to tell you something that you already know. It's something obvious. But it's also so horrific and terrible that it must quickly be forgotten or it could literally drive you insane. Just the reminder of this fact will be enough to change your behavior, your outlook on the world and the look on your face.

Funny stuff right? I saw this warning this morning when I started researching this theory. But, we don't come to this blog to run and hide from what could potentially scare us. No, we look that dark abyss dead in the face, and we laugh.

Well, maybe not laugh, but rather, we learn to understand its mysteries as much as humanly possible. If you think you can't handle certain dark aspects of the universe, you need to take a step back, look inside yourself, and find the underlying problem. Then, come back to this blog and take some baby steps into the dark. Don't worry, I'll hold your hand through the tunnel. I won't let you go astray. Not until you're ready.

Is that enough of a disclaimer for everyone? Alright, let's get to the topic at hand:

Terror Management Theory

Terror management theory (TMT) attempts to explain a type of defensive human thinking and behavior that stems from our awareness and fear of death. According to TMT, death anxiety drives us to adopt worldviews that protect our sense of self-esteem, worthiness and sustainability and allow us to believe that we play an important role in a meaningful world. Our survival instincts, and the need to reinforce our cultural significance in the face of death, often result in displays of prejudice, or the belief that the group with which we identify is superior to other groups. In this way, we confirm our self-importance and insulate ourselves from our deep fear of merely living an insignificant life permanently eradicated by death. TMT proposes that we are motivated to develop close relationships within our own cultural group in order to feel immortal, to convince ourselves that we will somehow live on—if only symbolically—after our inevitable death.

The fact that you and I will eventually die and be "no more" is a fact known and understood only by humans. Although animals have an avoidance of death, they live in the present. They don't comprehend their destiny. Only humans have the capacity to project reality in time and imagine the future. Only humans realize the significance of being "no more".

The theory originated with anthropologist Ernest Becker's 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning work of nonfiction, The Denial of Death, in which Becker argues:

"All human action is taken to ignore or avoid the anxiety generated by the inevitability of death."

The terror associated with our unstoppable annihilation creates a subconscious conflict or anxiety called cognitive dissonance. We try to cope with having to accept two contrary ideas. On one hand, we want to become involved with life and think of ourselves as a meaningful part of the world. On the other hand, what does anything matter anyway if we ultimately become "no more" - if all this wonderment of life is temporary?

If All This Is Temporary, What Does It Matter?

According to Becker, people spend their entire lives trying to make sense of these conflicting thoughts. We are so afraid of death that we create alternate realities - realities where we won't "cease to be". We take comfort in the fact that others share this alternate reality.

Often symbols are used to reinforce our confidence in what psychologists call our worldview.

Three Lines of Research Provide Empirical Support for TMT:

• The anxiety-buffering function of self-esteem is established by studies where momentarily elevated self-esteem results in lower self-reported anxiety and physiological arousal.
• Making death salient by asking people to think about themselves dying (or viewing graphic depictions of death, being interviewed in front of a funeral parlor, or subliminal exposure to the word “dead” or “death”) intensifies strivings to defend their cultural worldviews by increasing positive reactions to similar others, and negative reactions toward those who are different.
• Research verifies the existential function of cultural worldviews and self-esteem by demonstrating that non-conscious death thoughts come more readily to mind when cherished cultural beliefs or self-esteem is threatened.

TMT has generated empirical research (currently more than 500 studies) examining a host of other forms of human social behavior, including aggression, stereotyping, needs for structure and meaning, depression and psychopathology, political preferences, creativity, sexuality, romantic and interpersonal attachment, self-awareness, unconscious cognition, martyrdom, religion, group identification, disgust, human-nature relations, physical health, risk taking, and legal judgments.

In 2015, Greenberg, Pyszczynski and Solomon published The Worm at the Core, which reviews this vast body of research supporting Becker’s central claim that the fear of death is “the mainspring of human activity.”

St. George's Defeat Of The Dragon

This story is a strong symbol for the fight against death:

The town had a pond, as large as a lake, where a plague-bearing dragon dwelled that envenomed all the countryside. To appease the dragon, the people of Silene used to feed it two sheep every day, and when the sheep failed, they fed it their children, chosen by lottery. It happened that the lot fell on the king's daughter, who is in some versions of the story called Sabra.[8] The king, distraught with grief, told the people they could have all his gold and silver and half of his kingdom if his daughter were spared; the people refused. The daughter was sent out to the lake, decked out as a bride, to be fed to the dragon.

Saint George by chance rode past the lake. The princess, trembling, sought to send him away, but George vowed to remain. The dragon reared out of the lake while they were conversing. Saint George fortified himself with the Sign of the Cross, charged it on horseback with his lance and gave it a grievous wound. Then he called to the princess to throw him her girdle, and he put it around the dragon's neck. When she did so, the dragon followed the girl like a meek beast on a leash.

Live It ... Or Live With It 

The lesson of St. George and the Dragon is that we may not be able to defeat death, but we can tame it. We can make the most of our life and forget about the inevitable. Death can become a quiet and subdued creature that follows after us like a pet. Rather than triumph over death, we can learn to coexist with it.

That's a lesson we can all learn. Death is not the enemy. It's a way of life, in a sense. You can't live without the thought of death waiting at the finish line. I think what people fear more than death, is the fear of death after a meaningless life. We all want to be unique, important, "special," but the fact of the matter is that our perceptions of ourselves is way to large.

Think about it: Constant stream of media of celebrities - especially young ones - at our fingertips 24/7. We all have hopes and dreams to travel, make tons of money, not work at a shitty job for the rest of our lives; so of course the idea that could die before crossing those things off our bucket lists is terrifying. That shouldn't be surprising to anyone. All we can do is work hard, be good people, and try to ignore that never-ending itch of death. We have to accept that it can't be stopped, so there's no use worrying about it. 

Try and live your lives as best you can, and I'll see you all tomorrow.

Buh-bye.