Managing the Terror of Life
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Category Archives: Anthropocene
What Are Humans For?
This course’s unconventional take on politics stood out to me. I’ve taken a fair share of polisci classes both in the upper and lower levels but never once has the topic of death been brought up. I guess I’m saying that most of my polisci classes have felt empirical, to a fault. In the past three years, I’ve talked about how things are and the history behind them. And now it’s really comforting to know that political science can be about that and more. What I hope to get out of this class is a better understanding of how things SHOULD be. I want to talk about what we can do better as a society, and I think this class focuses on bettering the future.
And with all this on my mind, something that stood out to me in the course material from week one was when, in her TED talk, Professor Litfin posed the question, “What are humans for?” To me, this was an odd question. I’ve heard people ask if life has a purpose, but never any question like this. Trying to answer this question makes me dizzy. I’ve thought alot about the meaning of life but pondering “What are humans for?” makes a lot of other existential questions like “what is the meaning of life?” seem insignificant. Is the meaning of life a trivial undertaking? Does it matter? The purpose of life seems like such a self-absorbed question.
What are humans for? How do we affect the world around us? Are we a force of good or evil? This question has become more critical. How can we affect the earth and each other in a positive manner? Rather than thinking about why we are here, we should focus on using our influence to affect the planet positively.
Throughout this reflective process, I’ve asked myself more questions than I have answers to. And I’m not sure if there are any correct answers. I do know that asking questions in hopes of seeking inner meaning can be self-fulfilling, but they won’t solve world problems.
I’m sure throughout this course, I’ll be asking many questions, some small and some big. We live in a polarizing world where opinions are rampant, and people easily anger. I just hope that I’ll be able to challenge my own views and others without causing too much trouble.
Death, Institutions, Capitalism, and Climate Change
This week in class we began with a reading of James Rowe’s article “Is a Fear of Death at the Heart of Capitalism?”. The article reflects and derives its thesis from Ernest Brecker’s work. Brecker theorized that humans act reactively to their mortality in the sense that they create structures and cultures that allow them to redirect their fear of their own death or the feelings of impermanence and smallness that accompany their understanding of death. The fear that our death is inevitable and thus out of our control leads us, as a species, to try to create structures that we feel can immortalize us. This leads to us creating systems such as capitalism allows us to determine a way to value one’s existence in a tangible way. These systems allow us to act to win within these systems in order to immortalize ourselves in these assumably immortal structures. Thus, such structures have contributed to the incredible innovation but also to the destabilization of the conditions needed to allow life to flourish. Rowe believes that the solution to reconstructing capitalism and other such detrimental systems is by understanding and changing how our fears of death enforce our desire for permanence in the form of these institutions. Through discussion concerning these pieces, I find that though there is value in this approach in the long run it doesn’t seem to address any of the problems we face in the short term, specifically that of our climate crisis. However, a potentially more suitable solution for our current situation is one that Mark Hertsgaard posits in his piece the God Species. Hertsgaard claims that humans should posit that we should also understand our role in death and rather than use that to shift the foundations of our destructive activities refine them with our current capabilities that though the byproduct of destructive practices gives us a godlike power to positively shift or minimize our impact on our planet to sustain our current systems simply not at the cost of the planet. Ultimately, I believe that the idea of explaining these generally exploitative and oppressive systems, as a result of our discordant relationship with death as a species, does very little in changing the very damning impact of them on the state of our planet. Realistically if we want to address the climate crisis we must question if we have the time to reconstruct institutions that will then adequately address the pressing crises we face now or whether we must learn to work within the constraints of our current institutions.
Photo: David Cliff / NurPhoto via Getty Images- The general discontentment with systems such as capitalism by climate activists 
JANSCHWALDE, GERMANY – NOVEMBER 24: A loan wind turbine spins as exhaust plumes from cooling towers
Meaning, Purpose, and Understanding the End
Engaging with Worm at the Core this past week has been insightful and sobering, yet surprisingly fascinating. The book’s main thesis about how our uniquely human fear of death acts as the primary force that drives human activity wouldn’t seem to make sense at first, but Worm at the Core nevertheless makes a compelling argument about our relationship with death as well as implications for many of our current institutions. In particular, the book argues that our cultures and institutions exist to subvert mortality and to give ourselves a bigger purpose to ease our anxiety about death.
Table of Harvard Youth Poll Responses.
Worm at the Core postulates that people strive to be a part of an enduring culture, as it ties us with the past as well as the future. This allows to achieve a sort of “symbolic immortality” as people would persist for as long as the culture does. For me, achieving symbolic immortality can be fulfilling to us as it gives us a greater purpose. Contributing and being a part of something that has been there long before me and long after me is so powerful. Conversely, this may suggest that cultural breakdown or transitions in states of the world may leave people feeling purposeless and immensely anxious. In the context of the Anthropocene and our current issues, I suspect that this cultural erosion is happening rapidly.
A relatively recent Harvard study revealed that 51% of young Americans (age 18-29) reported feeling down, depressed, and even hopeless, and 28% reported having suicidal or self-harming thoughts. With political polarization increasing in the US, the ongoing climate change crisis, the pandemic, and other social issues in the foreground of our minds, many political, cultural, and economic institutions are being scrutinized as well as revolutionized. This continuous, sustained existential dread we are facing has in part, in my view, been driven by this cultural/institutional erosion. We can no longer hide behind the guise of what has worked or existed, and we must face reality–something that may make us feel purposeless or a perhaps even a sense of indifference. We may believe that because Anthropocene processes may mean that nothing as we know will exist, life itself is meaningless. However, I think that if we were to reorient our paradigms to contemplate this drastic cultural change, we can effectively manage our anxieties and create a better, more meaningful future for ourselves.
Anthropocene, capitalocene, plantationocene: human issues and their specific roots
While I resonate with many of the arguments posited in The Worm at the Core, I also find myself questioning the universality posed by authors Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski. Their experiments, which largely have been performed on Americans, Canadians, and Israelis, have results which are then applied to humans as a whole, and without significant regard to class, race, and other differentiators. This is not to dismiss their conclusions, but rather to question whether every person has the same understandings and fears of death.
The movie Anthropocene as well, while helpful in showing the extent of climate crisis, at many points lacked an internationalist analysis and instead pointed to all humans as the cause of climate change. While somewhat different from universalizing fears of death, this is another example, in my opinion, of painting too broad a stroke with regards to climate and death. Specificity with regards to who/what has caused climate destruction allows for more accurate conclusions with regards to alleviating future destruction.
Creating the capitalocene: endless accumulation – CounterPunch.org
This specificity is exemplified in a shift from calling our current era the “anthropocene” toward names such as “capitalocene” and “plantationocene” (plantation including chattel slavery as well as other forms of agro-industrialization). I was first introduced to these terms by a friend last week, and truthfully I’ve done only the barest readings of either. Nonetheless, in this interview, Donna Haraway says that “the Anthropocene is […] an historical, situated set of conjunctures that are absolutely not a species act.” In the same series of articles, Sophie Sap Moore et. al. posit that the plantation was “produced through processes of land alienation, labor extraction, and racialized violence.”
This terminology correction seems valuable to me as a way to shift focus from “mankind” as the cause of climate crisis (which might lead to eugenicist and fascist solutions such as reducing births) and instead towards an understanding that global systems of imperialism and colonialism have exploited masses of people for the benefit of a few, moving everyone closer to climate catastrophe. This in itself does not pose a solution, and in all honesty I don’t have one. Just that a more thorough analysis of our circumstances will lead to a sharper understanding of our duties.
Something less heavy—I’m slowly starting to curate a (limited and not at all cohesive) death/climate crisis playlist. Please add and listen! Or don’t!
Fear: Friends and Foes
Organisms die, mountains erode, and as stars cease to shine, even the universe will experience heat death. The commonality of finitude unites humanity with itself and that which it exists alongside. Unlike the forests or the mountains, however, humans have evolved an awareness of their impending expiration. This awareness enables the emergence of death anxiety, the suppression of which, as argued in The Worm at the Core, catalyzes the development of fundamental pieces of human culture. Uninhibited death anxiety would hinder any degree of progress, yet through religion, ritual, and art, the severity of death was lowered such that humanity would come to strive. Despite this victory in our battle against fear, death anxiety still holds authority over much of our lives. Just as this lingering influence stops us from stepping into a busy street, so too can it be attributed to the conflict between ourselves.
Terror Management Theory poses that the fear of death reinforces bonds amongst the in-group while severing them with those in the out-group. While for early humans, these groups may be easier to define, contemporary society has come to broaden the scope of what defines the in and out-groups. Grouping formed based on race and religion litter our historical records of conflict, but as a desire for further groups develops out of pressure from death anxiety, we see that such groupings can develop out of even minute differences, as suggested in Sigmund Freud’s theory of narcissism of small differences.
For many, walking the streets at night is an unnerving activity, triggering thoughts of our potential death. This death anxiety induces our Terror Management Theory groupings so strongly, that we come to view other people in our vicinity, especially those larger than ourselves as a threat. In recent weeks, however, reminders of our mortality have been ever-present. The numerous killings of students mere steps away from campus and the nightly ringing of gunshots have ignited even deeper levels of fear. Friends who live just a block away have now begun to ask for company on the way home, citing these recent events as factors for their greater distrust of people out at night. In reality, it is incredibly more likely that others outside are similar to ourselves, but our death anxiety grows so intense that anyone beyond ourselves is framed as an outsider and as a threat.
Getty Images
Terror Management and the Meat Industry
Credit: Nasser Nouri, Flickr
“Working Undercover in a Slaughterhouse” by Avi Solomon raises several questions from our course theme: why do humans care about separating ourselves from animals? How is our indifference to slaughtering farm animals similar to our indifference to loss in worldwide biodiversity? How do we frame this for ourselves so that we can remain moral and virtuous?
As The Worm at the Core and our class have discussed, animals are a harsh reminder of our mortality. Our pets die, we see roadkill as we drive down the highway, and we watch nature documentaries where wild animals kill each other. Animals remind us that we are not immortal, so we distance ourselves hoping to overcome their failures. In the meat industry, we separate ourselves so that we can continue to eat the products, work in the slaughterhouses, and excuse ourselves of wrong doing. If we embraced animals as our kin, are slaughterhouses not the same as Nazi death camps? Is our man-made 6th mass extinction not a multi-species genocide?
Solomon’s article describes how the meat industry has been designed to minimize human contact with animal deaths. Only one person works in the room that shoots each animal in the head. Everybody else works along the conveyor belt handling “beef,” allowing them to wash their hands of regret and blame because they weren’t responsible, they’re just working a job handling the aftermath.
Credit: maol, Flickr
This brings up an uncomfortable parallel for me and my desensitization to plastic waste at Starbucks. When I first began working as a barista, I was very away of every plastic cup that I unnecessarily threw away. Now I do it with ease––it’s so much faster to throw away a lid with accidental whip cream on it than to wash it. I save myself time and an irritable customer. This minor convenience for me comes at the expense of our overflowing landfills and the countless creatures that will have to endure that lid for 450 years while it slowly decomposes.
For many people, even if they refuse to become desensitized to the slaughtering of the meat industry, or the plastic waste of the food industry, they can’t escape it. As is described by Solomon, a majority of the workers in the slaughterhouse are illegal immigrants, desperate for any work and money. As I’ve seen at Starbucks, many of my coworkers are without other job prospects––sure they could move to another fast food chain, but they are stuck in the system of constant, unnecessary disposal of plastic. They’re stuck relying on terror management––distracting their consciousness, relying on culture for purpose and beliefs, and maintaining their self esteem by reminding themselves that their job is necessary to provide food to millions of people around the world.
Together We Can Face the World
The Worm at the Core comments that a world without clear meaning is one of anxiety if “everything we believe in and everything we strive for…can be challenged” (Solomon, et al., 171) In the Anthropocene where everything from political institutions to resource security are crumbling in front of us, people are feeling especially anxious. I argue that even in a world of uncertainty, we can find stability in each other. We can be each other’s rock, so whatever we face, we face together.
Being connected to other people can help us have security in a world without definite meaning. The authors compare two worldviews where the “rock” is a worldview of clear right and wrong that gives absolute meaning to the world. Contrastingly, the “hard place” is a worldview that accepts different perspectives but lacks psychological security when everything can be both right and wrong (285). In the Anthropocene, the ways of life we thought were correct are being challenged, and we have no choice but to be in the “hard place.” We have no choice but to begin to accept new, unfamiliar ways of life. This transition is especially hard when we are facing it alone. However, when we are together and supporting each other, we can give each other the courage we need to face this challenge head on to figure out what to do next.
This community includes non-human beings as well. The authors observe that people often assert that we “belong to the world of culture, not the world of nature” (201). Our mortal bodies can make us anxious because it reminds us of our inevitable death, but it can also be a reminder of our deep connection to other forms of life. Thus, even if the meanings we created for the world seem to be falling apart, we will always still have other connections to the earth around us. Whatever happens, the sun will still rise again, and the moon will shine just as bright.
It is scary to face an uncertain future alone, then it’s a good thing we are not alone.
Source: Henri Rousseau The Dream 1910. Caption: We belong to a world of culture AND a world of nature.
Humans, Hubris, and the Anthropocene
The Worm at the Core touched on how humans have developed systems of culture and domination that suppose to keep us placated in the face of death. One thing that escaped me, though, is how the fear of death inspired such rapid technological innovation (and subsequently spawned a myriad of climactic issues) and why our fear of death does not spawn action in the face of the deadly consequences of climate change.
In a separate course, I am reading Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement. One of the points he makes, which I think applies neatly to this course, concerns the increasing rates of destruction and lack of infrastructure to adjust to climate events linked to climate change (Ghosh specifically talks of Mumbai’s lack of preparedness for cyclones). Ghosh also points out that, while much of the 19th, 20th, and 21st century concerned themselves with dominating nature, we have subsequently made ourselves more vulnerable to the volatility of the climate.
Western, industrialized societies view the Earth and, subsequently nature, as a resource to be mined, extracted, or dominated. The building of dams, destruction of mountains, and filling of lakes represent efforts to change the natural environment for the sake of human advancement at the expense of the natural environment. While we now understand the many scientific processes that cause hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, etc., we are still wholly unable to stop them or even effectively cope with them. The irony then is that, through the unfettered mining and exploitation of Earth’s resources, we have worsened the conditions we already struggle to cope with. In the quest to become the master of nature, nature has become even more untamable.
I think the emphasis on technology as the primary solution to climate change is hubristic. Already, our attempts to master nature have ended in disaster that harms the people least involved in the creation of the problem. Unchecked economic growth and technological advancement inherently fails to recognize and reflect on how we got to where we are in the first place, and not every society has sought to expel fear of death through the domination of the planet as the West has. We might look towards nations like Ecuador, who established the “rights of nature” in their constitution, recognizing Earth and nature as stakeholders in the conversation surrounding climate change. Substantial, effective change is not possible until this is recognized on a larger scale.
When The Bee Stings
credit: Ryan Haskins
I have a facts-based, biological view of mortality and existence, which I think is what has allowed me to find peace. I’ve accepted the simple fact that when I die, the same thing will happen to me that happens to all organisms on our planet: my corpse will be feasted on, and I’ll be turned into energy for other living beings.
As far as why I exist, I recognize that an organism’s singular purpose in life is to reproduce and contribute to evolution. Yes, this seems like a depressing outlook (especially because I’m gay), but it has led me to pledge to use my time here on Earth to “maximize what [I] can get out of life and minimize the harm [I] do to others” (Solomon et al. 224). Maybe this is emblematic of Terror Management Theory at work.
I’ve found it useful to apply that same ‘hard place’ worldview to my thoughts about living in a time of so many uncontrollable crises. I’m afraid of where America’s current struggles with capitalism, democracy, and international peacekeeping amidst the Anthropocene might take us. However, it motivates me to try to make a difference (however small), even when it seems futile. I choose what I get out of this life, so I am going to make the most of it and do my best to make society better for those who will come after.
When I started reading The Worm at the Core, I’ll admit that I had doubts about Terror Management Theory’s explanation of why people behave the way they do. In some ways, I still do. The book focuses almost solely on Western countries in experiments, ignores different gender perspectives, and overgeneralizes some claims without evidence. However, upon finishing the book and reflecting on some of my life decisions, I can see how TMT played a role, especially regarding my worldview.
As I review our other (sometimes quite bleak) course materials, I try to stay committed to my ‘hard place’ worldview and remember that change is possible if we envision it. I think this is why I’ve particularly enjoyed “The Ecomodernist Manifesto” and The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans. When the bee stings and my time here on Earth is up, I may not have fulfilled my animal purpose, but I am confident that I will have fulfilled my human one.