How to Save the World: Individualism to Community

Posted on December 15, 2022 by taliamp

My biggest takeaways from the course The Political Ecology of Death in the Anthropocene mainly came from our lively and engaging class discussions. One of the main, most pivotal thoughts that often came to the forefront of my mind during this class, was how the fear of death in Western society often provokes the cultural worldview of individualism. Therefore, my final synthesis paper explored this thought and the ramifications of it particularly relating to the Anthropocene.

This thought connected to the course content in multiple ways. One was through the contemplative practices. As stated in my previous blog post, I struggled to connect with the contemplative practices through this course, as I often found myself distracted by the productive cycle of the Western education system. However, this made me question how inextricably hard it is for participants in the capitalist system to be comfortable with the notion of ‘doing nothing’. This is linked to Terror Management Theory, as doing nothing, or sitting with your own mind for a second is contradictory to the productivity cycle of a worldview dominated by individualism. As most in the US, have this worldview, either as a choice or an indirect indoctrination by the institutions built upon it, when we do not conform to the capitalist system, we feel closer to death.

So, what is the solution? How do we live? The action project in this class allowed me to appreciate the idea of community. As someone who has not participated in a group project since secondary school, I forgot about the value of social connection within a classroom. In our increasingly isolated society, community is rare but increasingly more important. The fear of death is something inextricably linked with human behaviour, but by finding immortality projects within community action rather than individual prosperity, there can be a shift in cultural narratives. In Active Hope, this is spoken about regarding shifting the notion of power from being a dominating force to a collaborative one. Individualism in our society causes so much destruction, it can be linked to the mental health crisis, the ecological crisis and may even be the downfall of our civilisation. However, with a shift in our cultural worldview, from individual to community, this may be the shift we need in order to save humanity.

A John Berger quote, in a ‘meme’ format that I think beautifully describes how lonely our society can become when it is dictated by individualism, how social connection is craved, and how this relates to the fear of death.

Image source

Why Won’t My Brain Shut Up?

Posted on November 29, 2022 by taliamp

When we first started contemplative practices, I couldn’t focus. My mind has a habit of wandering. I find myself lost in streams of consciousness, daydreaming, dissociating – whatever you want to call it, I cannot focus on a thought. When told to close my eyes in a dark room in the morning, my brain rushes – when told to think of one thing, it tries even harder to think of something else. Specifically, when asked to think about my death and mortality, I want to think about it and try to, but I struggle to produce fluid thoughts. What comes out is fragmented notions of what I think I should think about death rather than anything connected to an actual feeling.

I constantly feel distracted, and the contemplative practices have often only exacerbated it. So, why won’t my brain shut up? Why is it continually running from something, like it is afraid to take a break like it is afraid it won’t come back on again? I can tie my fear of death to

‘Busy Brain’ stock image represents the way capitalist productivity infiltrates the human mind.

my experiences with contemplative practices. I am constantly distracted as if my brain is allowed to settle for a second, and I just do nothing, my mind no longer feels as if I am living a fulfilling life. In Western capitalist society specifically, it is not common to just do nothing. The way society functions are through extreme productivity, individualism and competition, meaning you cannot sit and think, you cannot do nothing, and you cannot contemplate. Once you do, you are no longer a meaningful part of society.

In The Worm at the Core, Terror Management Theory explains that people are constantly craving distraction, either consciously or subconsciously, from their looming mortality. To subscribe to this, they chase a cultural worldview that fills them with a sense of self-worth. Western capitalism plays into this model extremely easily. Using contemplative practices to face this, therefore, seems beneficial, so why has it still been extremely difficult for me? Am I too caught up in the cycle of productivity that my mind will not contemplate? Is my mind too indoctrinated with the Western capitalist system? Or is it rather the contemplative practice itself that will not work in a classroom, in a university, that is entirely orientated around productivity and capitalist prosperity?

Death, Sex and Heteronormativity

Posted on October 31, 2022 by taliamp

The Worm at the Core has a chapter about the interplay between sex and death, largely pointing to shame around sex and how it is fuelled by our desire to differentiate ourselves from animals. Although, the chapter took a largely heteronormative and patriarchal stance on this concept by only talking about heterosexual sex and implying that men’s sexual urges lead to violence towards women – I do still feel there is substance to this theory.

Within Western culture, shame and degradation have often been associated with sexual practices – particularly ones that do not conform to Christian sexual morality. Sex has often been associated with impurity, the spread of diseases, animalistic desire and youthful hedonism. So why is one of the practices entirely orientated around human life so heavily associated with death? In The Worm at the Core, it is largely argued that sex is associated with the human body at its most vulnerable, this reminds one of their mortality and therefore as the process of TMT explains leads individuals to associate sex with the fear of death.

However, where sex and death are most heavily related is in the heteronormative cultural worldview. Sex that threatens one’s cultural worldview is considered perverse and punishable as it threatens one’s beliefs of a practice that is already shaped by fear of death. Views of sex and heterosexual morality are both shaped by the fear of death, therefore when these are both threatened this fear is exacerbated. In the US, this has usually been portrayed through the fear of homosexual sex. When AIDS came to the forefront of public consciousness in the 1980s many Christian preachers and evangelists saw the disease as God’s revenge for sexual misconduct (Newtown, 1989). Moreover, fear of how AIDS could be passed on swept the cultural consensus and as it was revealed it was often passed through homosexual sex, this fear of death became a fear of queerness. Moreover, many gay people were villainised for ‘risking their own lives for sex’. Yet, there was a turning point when action groups such as ACT UP released projects such as “Silence = Death”, subverting the narrative by moving the thought away from equating sex with death to equating misinformation and lack of sexual education with death.

References:

The Worm at the Core

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4612043.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A51106171d2b01cab1f529d2e89a8c2ac&ab_segments=&origin=&acceptTC=1

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-confusing-and-at-times-counterproductive-1980s-response-to-the-aids-epidemic-180948611/

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/d2mxjdkb?wellcomeImagesUrl=/indexplus/image/L0052822.html

Teenage angst to revolutionary spirit: can the youth turn our civilisation into an innovative successor?

Posted on October 11, 2022 by taliamp

Before taking this course, and increasingly since, I have tried to view the world through the lens that the systems we create are a constant coping mechanism to deal with human mortality.

Whilst engaging with the podcast this week I became enthralled with the relationship between death and the ego. The accumulation of ‘death anxiety’ into one’s own greed and prosperity and how this affects the planet – could this lead to the downfall of our civilisation?

However, I have also been playing with the thought that rather than this being an inescapable death cycle, maybe our civilisation itself, as a construct, can die and move into a post-industrialisation era without mass global collapse. Arguably we are at breaking point, meaning that now is the time to move from one era of human innovation into another that centres around planetary protection or we will fall into the death cycle and drive ourselves into complete extinction.

Moreover, engaging in Thursday’s reading materials lead me to reflect on my own relationship with climate change, specifically in relation to my own relationship with death. I remember at around fourteen I developed quite a cynical attitude towards climate change, basically ‘we’re all going to die and there is nothing you or I can do about it’. However, my switch from nihilistic pessimism fuelled by teenage angst to climate positivism or at least the ‘we should at least try to do something’ attitude was also accompanied by a mass cultural shift. It was that of the Fridays for Future movement that saw a whole generational shift – an uprising of youth, and an increase in ‘climate anxiety’ as well as education. The movement, although influential, did not span to the lengths it could have, but it may have created an incandescent generation, one which can launch society into a new era of human revolution and away from the ever-looming death cycle.

Image credits: Talia Pettitt, Nov 2021

Teenage angst to revolutionary spirit (a playlist):

Attached is a playlist I made to encapsulate the feeling of teenage angst turned to the revolutionary spirit that drove that Fridays for Future movement and should continue to provoke all people to take a stand and push our civilisation into a new sphere of human living that puts planetary survival first. Music change often accompanies large cultural shifts in our society and therefore should be a highlight of any political movement – art and protest go hand-in-hand.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ErqHTS6y1h68owiTI3Hfq?si=6b81b0fd7cf544db