Speaking of Death . . .
- by Linda Starkweather–
There is one huge question that has bothered me since I was a kid. I’d ponder this in Sunday school and church almost every week. Why is it that “everyone wants to go meet Jesus, but nobody wants to get on the bus.” Death and dying, even with the promise of a glorious eternity is an unsettling mystery and our culture has deemed it a forbidden topic.
I first became painfully aware of death anxiety when I was eleven. One Christmas Eve we had traveled to my grandma Ruth’s house to spend the holiday with extended family. My dog and best friend Sandy was acting very strange. My parents had never talked to me about the possibility of her dying. My uncle and my father took Sandy to the vet. I waited anxiously and they returned an hour later without my dog. No one explained anything and I was too afraid to ask. I decided to believe that she was at the doctor’s overnight to be treated. I can’t remember how or when or who finally told me that they had to “put her down” – a curious term – and I, of course was devastated and now privy to the practice of ‘Death Denial’.
As far as we know, humans are the only creatures that are acutely aware of their own mortality, although I suspect that many animals are more sentient than we can imagine. Being a person who likes to reduce the big questions in life to the simplest, least complex answers I have grappled, since I was a kid, with “why is there so much evil in the world? “ Ernest Becker’s treatise “The Denial of Death” is one book that has helped me answer that question.
Ernest Becker was an American cultural anthropologist and writer. He won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for The Denial of Death, and followed it with a sequel called Escape from Evil. In it, he argues that “the basic motivation for human behavior is our biological need to control our most basic anxiety, to deny the reality and the terror of our own mortality.” Becker continues, “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.”
Becker suggested that a significant function of culture is to provide successful ways to engage in Death Denial. He then suggests that all evil that exists is born out of our basic terror and denial of our own mortality. “The real world is simply too terrible to admit. It tells man that he is a small trembling animal who will someday decay and die. Culture changes all of this, makes man seem important, vital to the universe, immortal in some ways”
We see this being played out right now, in our country, in the midst of the pandemic by those who arm themselves and rush their state capitols insisting on their right to go back to work, or their golf games, or the beaches, or for a haircut. Believing themselves impervious to death, they also believe that those they will infect will not die either. This is perhaps the clearest evidence we have that Denial of Death actually propels many to defiantly charge into their own demise.
And, of course the creation of religion with all of its rules and prescriptions for earning a gilded, eternally peaceful afterlife introduced belief systems that help to reduce the fear of death. But, as we know from ancient history to the current, perverse, evangelical fervor we see today, religion has also been used to have power over others: to condone war, slavery, misogyny, unbridled wealth, racism, dominion over the earth, her resources and her animals.
The king might say to his conquests, “ I have the power of life and death over you.” When in reality he only has the power of death — to execute his enemies. The real power of life lies solely with the feminine, the one who gives birth, the mother of the defeated – and of the king. Misogyny may have arisen from the fear that women have the ultimate power. The frantic need to proselytize and convert others to a particular belief system may indicate the underlying fear that they may find they were wrong, once on the other side of death. Not surprisingly, a recent study by researchers at the University of Oxford finds that atheists are among those least afraid of dying.
Second to religion as a way of coping with our fear of death is nationalism, war and the drive toward heroism. Because any threat to a culture’s belief system, either political or religious, would mean symbolic annihilation and death of the ego. Becoming part of something bigger than one’s self, especially in the service of God and Country is an insurance policy that one will live eternally as a hero and a worthy crusader.
Becker explains that humanity has a unique quality distinct from all other animals – we distrust, even when no immediate danger is present. We see this now, playing out on the world stage, making people of different belief systems or cultures or religious doctrines the enemy without proof of harm or malfeasance.This innate fear has paved the way for our military industrial complex to thrive. We cannot vote to eliminate Death, but we can continually create an enemy to conquer, a foreigner to shun, or a race or lifestyle to demean, thus distracting us from some very real and serious threats like the imminent collapse of our democracy, the threat of climate collapse, and the awareness that in our current cultural and economic divide, there is little common ground.
Our death defying coping tools are many. Shopping reduces anxiety, by releasing endorphins and the addiction is aided by our religion of rabid consumerism. You might remember President Bush’s primary charge to the American people in the aftermath of 9/11 was simply to “go shopping.” The remedy for our outrage and our grief was to divert our attention and silence our questions about why those deaths happened.
Controlling nature has always been a way to cope with our death anxiety. Nature is awe-inspiring, but she is also terrifying, brutal, violent, and relentless.We have sought to conquer nature in order to create a false sense of power. Feminists understand this and have linked it to the violent treatment of all women. The climate crisis denial of many of our citizens is also the Denial of Death as we now stand on the brink of a potentially real, human extinction. We have plundered, raped and abused our mother, until she is gasping for breath. Perhaps the Covid virus is her way of communicating what is happening to her lungs as we deforest the Amazon – the literal lungs of our planet.
Hoarding seems to be a particularly modern form of Death Denial. Piling things around us like some medieval wall that will somehow protect us from the grim reaper. We venerate those self-made billionaires who are hoarding resources of another kind – I truly believe that the current eight billionaires that own more than half of the world are the most terrified of all. The fact that we have hoarded enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over has to tell us something about our own fear of this nameless “enemy”.
And it looks like both the wealthy (mostly white) men, and the poorest (mostly white) men are afraid of something almost as terrifying as their physical death – the loss of their belief systems, their control and their power over others. The violence and acts of terror we see from them today are symptoms of the changing world – a revolution that is asking them to share their power, their status and their wealth for the common good.
Our obsession with staying alive often results in useless, painful, medical intervention, especially at the end of our lives. Drugs, tests and procedures promoted to extend life are more often than not extending our death and our suffering. Then, after death, the funeral industry pumps us full of chemicals and applies make up to create the illusion of life. We’re encouraged to spend exorbitant amounts of money on containers that don’t break down, making us the only species that does not give back to the earth when we die.
Distraction is the number one goal of a death phobic society. Social media, entertainment, travel, dinners out, bigger houses and cars and boats. But people are beginning to realize that denying death also diminishes our lives and many approaches are being used to bring death into every day awareness. One approach are Death Cafes – intimate gatherings held all over the world for the purpose of bringing death out of the dark and into the light. Small groups are convened in a festive gathering providing a chance to speak our thoughts. These are not morbid gatherings at all but are very alive, engaging, and often hilarious conversations.
Talking about death won’t kill you. But not talking about it may result in a life less fully lived and appreciated. The more we recognize, accept, and incorporate the reality of death, the more precious and vivid our lives can become. And perhaps the evil that is so ubiquitous in our world will begin to wane.
There is an upcoming virtual Death Cafe: June 21, 2020, 3-4:30pm
You can request to join the Zoom Meeting Additional information about the Cafe (and the link) can be found on the Naples Library FB page.