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Contemplation as an Antidote to Fear

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These days, I’m some form of anxious or scared almost all of the time. And while I could chalk this up to an anxiety disorder, or some other deep-seated biochemical imbalance, I think that it has more to do with what I study. 

For the past few years, I’ve spent most of my days thinking about death, dying, and endings. In my classes, we talk about climate change, which many of my professors and classmates theorize will lead to the fall of our civilization. After school, I go to the geoarchaeology lab and pick through the remains of a society that has fallen, trying to understand my ancestors from 60,000 years ago. I think about the shaky undergraduate assistant who may, 60,000 years from now, pick apart my life, and try to understand why my civilization has fallen. She’ll analyze every mistake we’ve made and every sign we’ve ignored. And of course, these thoughts of societal death follow me home.

This deep-seated fear I hold over the inevitable fall of our civilization can get overwhelming, and contemplative practices have been incredibly useful to me in managing this. I was scared at first, because I thought that thinking more deeply about death, in a space with no distractions, would worsen my anxiety. And, initially it did–the first few contemplative practices I participated in left me feeling off-kilter and overwhelmed.

But, over the past few weeks, contemplation on death has become my form of terror management–the concept described in Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski’s “The Worm at the Core,” as the way in which people cope with the looming terror of death. Contemplative practices allow me to center myself by sinking more deeply into my fears, but also help me to better feel connection to my physical self, which in turn quiets my mind. They entice me to focus on my present experience as a time of abundance and possibility, instead of eventual doom. And this shift in perspective has lessened my fears and, therefore, enhanced my ability to connect more meaningfully with the coursework. As Walt Whitman writes of perspective in “A Song of the Rolling Earth,”

“I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete! 

I swear the earth remains broken and jagged only to him or her who remains broken and 

Jagged!”

 

This is an image my friend took of me while caving in Washington recently. During the trip, we sat down, turned out the lights, and did a short contemplative practice together in the thick darkness just listening to our breathing and thinking about where we were within the earth. Afterward, we found that we had both calmed down significantly–contemplating in a focused way on the danger and the physical actualities of our experience helped us to cope with the fear we felt.

 

The Space Between the Earth and the Stars: Mahika’s Thoughts on Gravity

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My dad and I like to go star gazing. We drive out to central Washington in the middle of the night, he sets up his wide-angle camera lens and fine tunes his long exposure settings, and I lay on the ground in a parking lot. When I look at the stars, I like to imagine that instead of looking up, I am looking down – suspended in space, held close by the Earth. “Gravity’s Law” by Rainer Maria Rilke makes me feel the same way.

During our contemplative practices, I have pushed myself to sit quietly and think deeply about poems and my personal responses to them, both intellectually and emotionally. I’ve always wanted to be a poetry person – the idea of lyrical verses and esoteric metaphors seems romantic, and poetry is such a valuable medium used to communicate beyond simply the literal words on the page. Somehow, though, I’ve never gotten the chance to devote motivated and genuine time to its study. Through the contemplative practices, I have been able to connect the poems we read to the class material as well as to my own life. Rilke’s instructions to ground ourselves and “trust in our heaviness” – emphasizing the collective pronouns – remind me of the innate connections we have discussed between the human experience and the biosphere. I think about Avi Solomon’s piece “Working Undercover in a Slaughterhouse” and wonder how we ever became so disconnected in the first place.

And the contemplative practices could truly not have come at a better time. Going into this school year feeling confused about my future but particularly connected to the Earth after a summer spent outdoors, I wasn’t sure how contemplative practices would help me find my way. But sure enough, the moment I began thinking about the grounding feeling of the floor beneath my feet, and the constant embrace of gravity, I felt less lost. When anxious or stressed I often feel as if there are far too many things to ever control, but simply focusing on the comforting force always pulling me down makes it easier. Though our group contemplative practices only last a short ten weeks, I will take the grounding processes with me far beyond this class, into my interactions with the Earth, the sky, and other people.

One of my dad’s Milky Way photographs, and an example of the intimate relationship between Earth, stars, us, and the gravitational forces that bind us all

Introspection: the Antidote to Capitalism

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Though I believed I had come to terms with my mortality, the contemplative practices in class helped me wander through depths I had not previously thought to explore. As an immigrant to this country, my family relied strongly on the value of hard work, and the ability to reap the fruits of your labor in America. As a result, I became invested in the allure of Capitalism, while still having concerns over its inherent inequality. This is a commonly explored topic in the book, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene. Though the new carbon-based economic system has provided an increased amount of riches and improved quality of life, there seems to be evident winners and losers. The author explains that cheap, efficient, labor has become the cornerstone of our society with a reverse in our carbon usage to mitigate climate change, nearly impossible. 

When reflecting on this during one of our contemplative practices, I tried to imagine what my life could look like without the riches of Capitalism. Somehow, having close to nothing seemed like it would provide me with a sense of intrinsic happiness like no other. However, I would still need to have some sense of security in living which would require a foundation of wealth. Through these practices, I tried to envision societies that may not be rooted in excessive wealth but in meeting necessities. If my fundamental needs were met, I would be able to truly immerse myself in activities that would help me gain the most value out of my life.

One of Walt Whitman’s poems reads: “human bodies are words, myriads of words, in the best poems re-appears the body”. I reflected on this in another contemplative practice. I filtered memories in the past where I have felt genuinely fulfilled. I realized that these were when I created art, poems, and stories that encapsulated my ideas at the time. I thought of singers and writers whose works are remembered well beyond their passing, and it dawned upon me that I could leave a legacy of my own (admittedly, at a much smaller scale). It is possible that others may be reassured by this as well. I believe that spreading contemplative practices to the masses is a partial antidote to Capitalism; it may only be with true introspection that we as a society may begin to internalize the limit to our quest for materialistic wealth.

Human Extinction and the Misanthropic Temptation

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The ironic shadow cast by the light of self-awareness is the dark foreknowledge of that same self’s inescapable demise.  And yet, putting aside beliefs in an afterlife, we can find solace in knowing that we somehow continue through our children, our creative works, or our meaningful contributions to an enduring culture. What happens to that sense of continuity and meaning in the face the apocalyptic twins: the threats of nuclear war and ecocide?

To my mind, the possibility that humanity could cause its own extinction casts a dark shadow of radical discontinuity and meaninglessness. What are we to make of a species (even if only a small subset of that species) that sacrifices its future to the gods of profit, convenience, or military conquest? No wonder some of us succumb to the misanthropic temptation!

Source: The Voluntary Human Extinction MovementSource: Voluntary Human Extinction Movement   We can also play with the misanthropic temptation without succumbing to it. A sense of irony and dark humor can be therapeutic!

One reason I teach is to learn from my students—both the new ideas and the coping skills entailed in coming of age in a very messy world. Last week, they taught me a new word: eco-nihilism, the belief that if people cannot live in harmony with the Earth, we deserve to go extinct. As one student put it, “I’m at peace with human extinction; it would be for the greater good.”

I want to probe deeper: really? How can I be fully human while embracing our own collective demise—especially if I’m operating from a place of privilege? And who deserves extinction—the billions of people who will be hit hardest by climate disruption but who did virtually nothing to cause the problem? And how dare I say that I know what the future holds, and therefore exempt myself from responsibility?

I understand the temptation—sometimes our failings feel like too much to bear. Sometimes I need to retreat and as Wendell Berry says, “come into the peace of wild things” to regain my native vitality.  I’ve also come to recognize my misanthropy as a form of compensatory thinking, a cognitive sublimation of a far messier mélange of grief, guilt, fear, and anger. When I let my e-motions do what they’re designed to do—to literally move me—a different mode of thinking and therefore different actions emerge.

In those luminous moments of connection, I gladly yoke myself to the collective uprising that our country’s young poet Amanda Gorman calls a new form of Earthrise. Yes, we face an uncertain future but one thing is certain: we are alive now and can help shape that future!

When Death Comes, I Hope We’re Holding Hands

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It is a bit comforting that, as the supposed great equalizer, death comes for us all in the end. Hamlet tells us that “your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes, but to one table.” Similarly, climate change, pandemics, and eventual societal collapse are existential, planetary threats that could force us as humanity to truly band together. Why then is our psychological response to death, in this current global-capitalist-industrial era, to draw further within ourselves instead of to reach out and connect? I would like to think that shifting our cultural mindset towards a collective, selfless responsibility to each other would mitigate both the threats that face us and our approach towards them.

Solomon, Greenburg, and Pyszczynski write about terror management theory in their book The Worm at the Core as a potential pathway to this shift in mindset. We take comfort in cultural worldviews that “imbue our sense of reality with meaning,” and we tether ourselves to the self-esteem that comes with participating in that worldview. They claim that it is instinctive human nature. My question then becomes, how do we expand our tent of “us” to include the entire living system? I agree with their thesis that death awareness, both conscious and subconscious, is significant to how we carry ourselves through this life. I want to explore using that awareness to build something bigger than ourselves.

To make this shift, to find stability and meaning in an ultimately unstable and meaningless world, I think we might take our cues from Mary Oliver’s “When Death Comes.” She emphasizes the precious potential in our individuality – “each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular.” But just as beautiful is the community we build – “a brotherhood and a sisterhood” – and the passing on of the gift to the next generation. The Worm discusses symbolic immortality as a form of terror management, and James K. Rowe writes about how capitalism instructs us to pursue wealth as an immortality project, but if we rejected capital accumulation in favor of relationship building – if we considered ourselves wealthy in care and support – I imagine that death would not be so ominous. Sad, yes – leaving behind those you love – but not scary, as one would hope that those bonds will stand the tests of the great beyond.

Ophelia by Sir John Everett Millais. A quintessential symbol of the pain of death surrounded by the beauty of life, but not love or empathy.

Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski (2015) The worm at the core: on the role of death in life, New York: Random House.

James K. Rowe (2016) Is a fear of death at the heart of capitalism? The Arrow.

Mary Oliver (2017) Devotions: the selected poems of Mary Oliver, Penguin Books.

Millais, John Everett (1851) Ophelia, Tate Britain.

Death is a system

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With the never-ending imploding climate disasters of our world, my desires to learn more about my connection with our environment and the not so scary concept of death are increasingly prevalent. At the beginning I was a little frightened to be talking about death but as we continue the importance is ever so increasing.

The attempts to extend our human lives leaves this catastrophic effect of disorder in our life cycles. Trickling down to disasters and death in our animals and ecosystems. As we are increasing human lifespan, they’re consequences that come with the typical American lifestyle filled with consumerism and a negligent lifestyle that carelessly increases our emissions. Climate change makes our part in this world complex. Is recycling really going to help the earth? Is using a reusable bag going to stop the earth from warming? Is what I learned in church and school going to stop wildfires? Our systems have failed us when it comes to climate change, yet we need them for our sanity and to keep our minds at bay.

Humankind blankets our self from death with symbols. Our worldwide views that we assimilate into and adopt such as religion helps us manage our terror of the inevitable end. In the worm at the core there is an example from the bible “to love our neighbor as ourselves”. However even people that adopt religion don’t follow commandments and this idea of using religion to compass our morals is just another way of navigating our systems of life. Neither less our sense of worth is determined by our self esteem that emerges from our culture views imposed by our connections to our past. Religion keeps us in check with our morals, even if not everything is followed there is some justice by making us acknowledge our connection with the earth as seen in many cultures. We discussed in class how there is a disconnect in where our food comes from depending on your culture, whereas in others its seen as normal to honor animals and see where they come from. This difference in culture is also seen when talked about death.

Our culture dictates our efforts on everything we touch, from the ground we walk on to the food we take home. The acknowledgment of death pushes us to change the life we so thought we had succeeded in. Climate change touches us on every part of the earth. Mother Earth is dying along with us, even though the fight for longevity is contradicting our ecosystems. Death is so simple, yet also complex when it comes down to human’s psychological needs.

Culture of Life vs Culture of Death

Works cited:

Is a culture of death gaining supremacy over a culture of life in today’s World? our bloggers fight it out: Flipped. ED Times | Youth Media Channel. Retrieved November 3, 2021, from https://edtimes.in/is-a-culture-of-death-gaining-supremacy-over-a-culture-of-life-in-todays-world-our-bloggers-fight-it-out-flipped/.

Solomon, Sheldon, et al. The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. Penguin Books, 2016

Immortality Projects in the Anthropocene

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How do we cope with the knowledge that we will all die some day? In his book “The Worm at the Core,” Sheldon Solomon argues that, due to the sophistication of our neo-cortex, humans are uniquely haunted by the prospect of our own death. Solomon discusses many theories of death “terror management,” or how people cope with the looming terror of our own death. 

Many people unconsciously practice terror management in the form of immortality projects, which are ways of extending one’s legacy after death and ensuring a personal sense of meaning in our lives. Many immortality projects, such as having children or producing art, are largely benign. However, many actually work against the longevity and well-being of our species, although they may work to preserve our own personal sense of immortality. Immortality projects are commonly based on wealth or the accumulation of material goods, which is environmentally destructive. Because many of our current environmental problems come from overconsumption, it is deeply ironic and sad that many choose to extend their legacy through material means.

This drive to create immortality projects can also be harnessed for good. Humans will always need a way to cope with the idea of our own deaths. And, as the effects of climate change become more prominent for those in industrialized nations, the drive of the globally wealthy to create immortality projects will increase. 

Given this, a cultural shift away from consumerism as an immortality project in industrialized nations, and toward the enactment of positive environmental change as an immortality project may be one of humanity’s best tools in combating the climate crisis. Many in industrialized nations have extensive global influence in comparison to those in other parts of the world. If we choose to cope with our own deaths through environmental action, perhaps we can use immortality projects as a way to sustain the livelihood of our species and others, not just our own personal legacy.

Works Cited:

Solomon, Sheldon, et al. The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. Penguin Books, 2016.

ANTHROPOCENE EPOCH. Vajiram and Ravi. (n.d.). Retrieved November 3, 2021, from https://vajiramias.com/current-affairs/anthropocene-epoch/5cee5ced1d5def75e6de0fce/. 

Terror Management and Empathy

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To the extent that I can accept terror management theory, I am appreciative it as an opportunity to feel more connected to other human beings. It is a comforting concept that we are all, in one or another way, reckoning with the inevitable negation of the self. I can more easily tolerate efforts people make to be “valuable participants in a meaningful universe” (Solomon et al., 39) when I choose to believe we are, at least fundamentally, up against this same reckoning. Terror management theory helped me to understand my disdain, and ultimately feel compassion for, the author of one of our readings by reminding me of our common ground: we are both trying to find meaning in the face of the Anthropocene.

Because the Anthropocene forces me to confront human caused extinction and death, it brings me to question many of my anthropocentric constructs of meaning and value. Thus, engaging the concept of “Anthropocene” represents both biological and ideological die-off. How can I be sure of my way of life when confronted with the destruction it necessitates? To tend to this profound discomfort, I gravitate toward a sense of purpose quite like the “natural transcendence” mentioned in The Worm at the Core (221). As the Anthropocene threatens my sense of belonging as a human, I find greater comfort in a sense of a more permanent “self” as a part of nature.

I was initially surprised by how angry I got while reading excerpts from Lynas’s The God Species. However, the lens of terror management theory provided a possible explanation for this anger – I see Lynas’s perspective as a threat to my “natural transcendence” worldview! Even the title poses a threat, as it suggests the omnipotence and immortality of humanity. His rhetoric about the “flaw” in natural systems (Lynas, 19) or his contention that “nature can no longer tame us” (8) represent, to me, a human-centric threat to the sense of meaning I have constructed. Faced with the same global crises, Lynas appears to have doubled down on human exceptionalism, whereas I’ve tried to refute it. I am grateful for terror management theory as a tool to expand my compassion for Lynas and others as we collectively reckon with death in the Anthropocene.

Image Source: https://www.mindful.org/are-you-really-available-for-connection/

Works Cited

Lynas, Mark. The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans. National Geographic, 2011.

Solomon, Sheldon, et al. The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. Penguin Books, 2016.

Ponderings About My Perspective on Death

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The human race seems determined to remain in denial about the limits to our existence; we set up both psychological and physical walls to preserve our mental state.

The first example of this is our collective ignorance to the dependence society has on death. This in itself is not a bad thing, animals have consumed other life forms since the beginning, the true issue is that we are largely unaware of the life that was sacrificed to feed humanity. In “Death and the Ecological Crisis” by Steven Peck this is addressed by taking a magnifying glass to how the food industry has wrapped up all of the death into neat little packages that do not nearly resemble the living beasts they came from. Another author, Avi Solomon, interviews the political scientist Timothy Pachirat in “Working Undercover in a Slaughterhouse” about how the factory itself is organized to hide and ignore the thousands of deaths. Walls, a miniature hierarchy of workers, and technical terms draw the life out of the animals sentenced to die. These two pieces of reading really opened my mind to how spoiled and separated we are from what we eat and made me question my vegetarian beliefs. Am I feeding into the ignorance of society by thinking I can avoid being involved with death by avoiding eating meat?

Another example is our dependence on religion and the hope that we may leave a mark upon the world before we go. It seems we are unsatisfied just being and have an innate desire to be remembered. While reading “The Worm at the Core” I truly realized how deeply death, and the flee from it, drives many of the institutions we depend on for a more meaningful life. I myself have always been religious as when I am feeling at my lowest it is a comfort to know that my mistakes will be forgiven and that I will be ever beloved. I will not be changing my beliefs or losing my faith, but it was interesting to consider that foundationally religion is terror management. Am I avoiding thoughts about death by convincing myself that I will live on in Heaven?

Heaven by Zac Kinkade

https://zackinkadeart.com/product/heaven-limited-edition-canvas/

The Worm at the Core

Steven Peck, “Death and the Ecological Crisis”  Download “Death and the Ecological Crisis” (pp. 105-109)

Avi Solomon, “Working Undercover in a Slaughterhouse: an interview with Timothy Pachirat”

Religious and Food a Defense Mechanism

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The Anthropocene seems a massive mess for people to comprehend due to the issue of how significant the problem is. If I were to talk about the Anthropocene my family would not believe me because it is too big an issue even to understand. Due to dealing with the concept of death. As the beliefs of my family and others think of death as a taboo or never talked about unless it is a tragedy or not the end (Catholicism). The self-esteem terror management theory applies to my family and others to think about their morality. Religion that I learned as a kid was not worrying about death, being afraid of my mortality. The theory explains that cultural views and religious views can help us manage the trauma of death. Like my family and I, we believe in our truths to comfort our boundaries with death. My family, especially my mother, has the same self-esteem as death. However, you can never take it away from her with religion. The book The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life said religion could protect your views and esteem on death and the unknown. This is understandable, but they do have drawbacks to explaining objective evidence of the Anthropocene and how the earth is dying.

 

I like the self-esteem terror management theory because it makes sense why people ignore the death problems. However, in the bigger picture, I realized how we use it often to do regular tasks like what I found out we get our food. Mostly our meat. In Working Undercover in a Slaughterhouse: an interview with Timothy Pachirat. Pachirat explains how workers do not kill cows. However, one person does, which is interesting to preserve that trauma from the other workers. The situation reminds me of my situation when clinging to morality choices to preserve my death trauma. And in a larger sense like with the relationship between food, the earth, and humans. We all have ways to preserve ourselves when it comes to death. Moreover, the relationship with food is like that because our food is alive also. Nevertheless, we have ways to think about what we can do to preserve or defend that truth. The way we see ourselves in religion and food can still work with the Anthropocene because what we do as individuals makes up the bigger picture, just like food or religion.