Category Archives: Death

Together We Can Face the World

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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

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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.

“A Turn Towards Apathy”

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Content Warning: Nihilism/nihilistic ideation

Immortality is divisive; there are those who chase it with projects and aspirations to leave a legacy behind, and there are those who are struggling to live life as is. For the former, theories like Terror Management help to explain how immortality projects help us live a life that is meaningfully generative. This group actively looks for a contribution to life that lives beyond us as a way of immortalizing ourselves and thus, placating their death anxiety (Worm at the Core).

While Terror Management seems to explain this population well, I question its

Thred’s, “Nihilism”

applicability to the other group, a population that seems to be turning increasingly nihilistic. Class last week affirmed this idea when multiple peers agreed that chasing immortality isn’t of interest because many of us are struggling to want to live now. My extrapolation comes from a non representative population, so I outsourced to see if this feeling of struggling to engage with current life (let alone immortality) is reciprocated amongst others. 

Thred, a social change website/art platform (see image to right and below), published an article in May 2022 that observes this same phenomena. They write that, “climate change, political turmoil, growing wealth inequality, and many more knock-on capitalist trends have caused a rise in nihilistic attitudes” especially amongst young people.

Thred’s, “Nihilism”

Overwhelmed with caring about so many devastating things, nihilism (at its most extreme) points to not caring at all. It seems as though the sentiment of my last blog post is relevant here too: I struggle to think about the future when I am drowning in the present. It seems extreme, but walk across any corner of the UW campus, and I can almost guarantee students parroting the phrases “I don’t care anymore”, “I’m tired”, “I’ve given up”, “I just can’t”, “There’s too much”. 

So what implications does many’s turn towards nihilistic-like behaviors/attitudes have for TMT/death anxiety? Well, as I said last week, I’m still baking this thought (and thus, encourage others to test it/push back if it does not resonate). For right now, I’ve conceptualized it like this: it appears that for individuals (especially youth) turning towards nihilistic-like attitudes, death anxiety is disrupted by numbness. Instead of death anxiety, it more closely resembles death apathy. If this is true, I also wonder whether or not this manifests in physical consequences (becoming more risk-acceptant/engaging in less generative behaviors).

Image Description (first): A neon green background with varying neon pink skulls centered around one larger gray skull. There are yellow motion lines around skulls, signifying movement.

Image Description (second): A spiral background made of light and dark green. In the middle is a hand holding a skull, shaded and outlined in red. There are also red squiggles around the skull.

When The Bee Stings

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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.

Death is what makes life great

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What role does the denial of death have in the Anthropocene?
Humans are currently a driving force of ecological disasters. We are ruining the ecosystem, killing off species, and destroying the ozone layer, which will kill all human life if nothing changes. What can we do to change this?
I think a part of the problem is dominant modern culture ignores death. Maybe this could be because most people don’t think about their deaths. Worm in the Core quotes Michel de Montaigne’s famous essay That to study Philosophy Is to Learn to Die,

—let us learn bravely to stand our ground, and fight him. And to begin to deprive him of the greatest advantage he has over us, let us take a way quite contrary to the common course. Let us disarm him of his novelty and strangeness, let us converse and be familiar with him, and have nothing so frequent in our thoughts as death. Upon all occasions represent him to our imagination in his every shape; at the stumbling of a horse, at the falling of a tile, at the least prick with a pin, let us presently consider, and say to ourselves, “Well, and what if it had been death itself?” and, thereupon, let us encourage and fortify ourselves. Let us evermore, amidst our jollity and feasting, set the remembrance of our frail condition before our eyes, never suffering ourselves to be so far transported with our delights, but that we have some intervals of reflecting upon, and considering how many several ways this jollity of ours tends to death, and with how many dangers it threatens it.

The book points out effective terror management should constitute being comfortable with one’s death. We should normalize talking about death so we can take a deeper appreciation of life, with more empathy towards living things around us. By being comfortable and reflecting on our own inevitable deaths, we can appreciate life’s beauty. This means being conscious of our actions and how they affect others and the planet.
I propose to whoever is reading this to think about death, not morbidly but about your death, and how that affects your actions, thoughts, and world views. Thinking about what you think can help you reflect on how to live a more decisive and aware life. Hopefully, you can be more self-conscious about your actions, evaluate whether you are spending your time the way you want to, and how you have affected those around you.
Anthropocene Syndrome: a complex of environmental degradation,... | Download Scientific Diagram

Reframing the Climate Issue

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I’m taking this class with the firm belief that climate change, and by extension, climate justice, are inseparable from capitalism and the legacy of colonial and imperialist resource extraction. 

The Anthropocene documentary we watched in class got me thinking about the role of China as an eco-development state, coined by editors of the book Greening East Asia (Esarey et. al). Regions in East Asia are notorious for being some of the most polluted in the world, yet, paradoxically, within the last decade or so, East Asian countries have developed green energy, technology, and conservation, waste management, and urban design efforts at a scale that far surpasses developed Western countries. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that resource extraction has by and large happened within their own countries, so the costs of industrialization are borne by the domestic populations themselves. What would environmental policy look like in Western countries (including Scandinavia) if so much environmental destruction wasn’t externalized onto other parts of the world, or onto marginalized domestic populations?

A group of older Chinese ladies practicing taichi amidst heavy air pollution

I thought that the documentary presented a complicated history of Mao’s poor environmental policies as one of the single greatest contributors to climate change in order to attempt to lift the masses out of poverty. What would a documentary that centered Indigenous movements in North America look like? Would it discuss the impact of the near extinction of bison, hunted by white colonizers as part of their ‘Indian Removal Policy’, from 10 million to just over 300 within a couple decades (Phippen, 2021)?

A wall of stacked American bison skulls in the mid-1870s

Ultimate mass extinction might be inevitable unless radical change happens. Honestly, I can’t realistically foresee a timeline in our current reality past 2050, which is in 30 years. Who gets to live and who do the powerful let die? I have to believe that the earth will heal itself eventually, but what will happen between then and the more current future we are headed into?

 

Citations:

  • Bradshaw, S., Richards, J., Kyriacou, S., Gabbay, A., Ostby, M., Cassini, S., Steffen, W. L., Ellis, E., Zalasiewicz, J. A., Revkin, A., McNeil, J., Gonzalez, M. B., Odada, E. O., Vidas, D., Steffen, W. L. (William L. ., & Odada, E. O. (Eric O. (2016). Anthropocene. [Distributed by] Bullfrog Films.
  • Esarey, A., Haddad, M. A., Lewis, J. I., & Harrell, S. (2021). Greening East Asia: The rise of the eco-developmental State. University of Washington Press. 
  • Magazine, S. (2012, July 17). Where the Buffalo no longer roamed. Smithsonian.com. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/where-the-buffalo-no-longer-roamed-3067904/ 
  • Meyer, R. (2017, March 21). How climate change covered China in Smog. The Atlantic. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/how-climate-change-covered-china-in-smog/520197/ 
  • Phippen, J. W. (2021, June 7). “Kill every buffalo you can! Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone”. The Atlantic. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/05/the-buffalo-killers/482349/ 



Climate nihilism and community care

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I worked through two responses before deciding on this one, which I chose for its attempted honesty in the face of real, violent, and discriminative political/ecological threats. This short response argues for an understanding of community care as a means to mitigate the effects of climate change on the most marginalized. I assume several things which are not necessarily true and are framed imperfectly, listed below. 

  1. There is nothing the masses can do to “stop” climate change
  2. There is nothing the capitalists and imperialists can/will do to “stop” climate change
  3. Climate change is resulting in mass extinction
  4. Climate change will not kill all humans, and will discriminate along geopolitical, racial, and class lines 

These assumptions are at best incomplete and at worst false. That said, I adopt them in my life to move toward an acceptance of “our” collective fate, and move forward in my own actions. I’ve come to terms with this as “climate nihilism,” which strikes me as similar to Rupert Read and Samuel Alexander’s This Civilization is Finished, and builds off the anonymously-authored Desert (which is kind of worth the read, but not at all working toward an Indigenous analysis of climate change and its effects).

Indigenous struggle as climate struggle and struggle against the colonial state—a blockade in so-called Toronto in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en nation in so-called British Columbia displays a banner reading “NO PIPELINES: Stop RCMP Invasion on Indigenous Lands.”

With this acceptance, I try and often fail to do actions that have the greatest immediate impact on those that are most affected by climate change. This can be described as community care, which I define in line with bell hooks’s All About Love, where she attempts to redirect her readers toward a constant and true practice of love in their lives. Mutual aid, whether true to its theory or not, comes to mind—in Seattle this seems to be one common way for community care to manifest. It especially stems from the knowledge that our disproportionately Black and brown unhoused neighbors are also disproportionately affected by climate change. Long, hot, smoky summers, and long, cold, rainy winters lead to preventable deaths from exposure. A meal or a cigarette for a neighbor can be a radical act of love.

Climate change is here—orange smoke in Seattle 2020 shrouds the buildings and trees.

This line of thinking, admittedly, is dangerous. It ignores opportunities to mobilize mass lines, work on long-term campaigns, and otherwise organize in politically powerful groups. I describe it, though, in an attempt at an honest answer to the question of “first thoughts”—an acceptance of collective semi-destruction must not mean apathy, but instead move us toward care for each other. 

After this wordy response—more words! Here are so many books (should be linked to free online versions) that inform these thoughts. In no order:

  1. All About Love
  2. Accomplices not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex
  3. Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact (will have to make an account then download)
  4. Desert
  5. Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerrilla
  6. The Progressive Plantation: racism inside white radical social change groups
  7. The Land of Open Graves 
  8. National Union of the Homeless: a brief history
  9. Primer: Transnational Weapons Corporations (click through to w-tnc.pdf)
  10. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next!)
  11. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Liberalism

Citations:

Abbas, Freya. “What Canadians should Know about the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s Struggle.” InkSpire, https://inkspire.org/post/what-canadians-should-know-about-the-wetsuweten-nations-struggle/-M2R80RtqjuC-63LBrof. 

Alexander, Samuel. “This Civilization is Finished: Conversations on the End of Empire—and What Lies Beyond.” The Simplicity Collective, June 14, 2019. 

Anonymous. Desert. E-book, The Anarchist Library, 2011. 

hooks, bell. All About Love. HarperCollins Publishers, 2000. 

Live Storms Media. “09-12-2020 Seattle, WA – Wildfire Smoke – Major City With Worst Air Quality in the World.” Youtube, September 12, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH6Spfsntjc.

Nature Is My Religion

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Recently, I have begun to see myself as a piece of the earth rather than a being separate from it. This is something I began to feel not only in thought but as part of my soul. From skiing pillows in remote British Columbia as snow dumped onto us for days, to watching seals cover themselves with sand for protection from the sun on the shores of the Redwood Forest, I began to truly believe that the God I worship is mother nature and my religion is the natural world we live in.

Clouds above a mountain peak over looking a frozen lake.

Summit of Alpental after 4 inches of fresh snowfall.

With this spiritual discovery came the painful awareness that the things I saw and experienced are in danger of disappearing or being irreversibly altered by the effects of global warming. Less rainfall means shallow streams and Salmon not being able to make it to spawning grounds, wildfires destroying thousands of acres causing ash to rain from the sky states away, and homes being brought out to sea by extreme hurricanes doesn’t even begin to describe the effects that climate change has had on our planet. 

So, I took this class. Because how can I see the earth as my mother without understanding how to grasp my own mortality as humans continue to kill it? Can we save it? If I ride my bike and take short showers, does that manage the terror I feel for the future?

Sunlight breaking through fog over the trees on the shore of a beach covered in large mossy rocks.

Early morning where the freshwater river enters the oceans on the California coast in the Redwoods National Forest.

In class, we talked about systems theory in the context of understanding that we are living in the world rather than on it. I resonated a lot with this because it forces people to see something as a makeup of parts and how those parts function together to make a whole. Which is what the Earth is and how we participate in that system.

However, I think that it is important to see the interconnectedness of everything that works together to create the environment we live in, but Deep Adaptations provides a pessimistic view of climate change that not only seems to perpetuate an idea that the Earth cannot be saved from the harm that has been caused to it. This seems to embody the extremes of terror management theory that we have discussed in class and come to understand through various educational materials that show the extremes resulting from being reminded of our own mortality. In this case, the extreme of believing there is no reason to have hope.

Sources and References:

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/13/760599683/were-all-gonna-die-how-fear-of-death-drives-our-behavior

lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf

youtube.com/watch

Qualms About My Demise

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“Political Ecology of Death in the Anthropocene” is a fascinating title––oddly specific, yet broad enough to cover so many things. Signing up for this course, I was hooked.

My death is something that I contemplate quite often. It entails considering the possible ways that I want my body disposed of: I hate the idea of being eaten by worms, so burial and composting are out, and while I don’t enjoy imagining my body burning, at least my cremated ashes won’t be a direct meal for some creature. It entails thinking about my soul––will I have a next life, or will my “soul” and conscious just cease to exist in the universe? It also entails significant FOMO (fear of missing out), which is my ultimate motivator in life to do my best, please as many people as possible, see as many places as I can, and consume without need. To quote the NPR podcast We’re All Gonna Die!, “the fear of death haunts the human animal like nothing else.” I can certainly relate.

Now, only a week into this course, I’m realizing that there are many problematic implications with how I approach the fear of my death.

Using systems thinking, my death and following disposal is individual, in that it is important psychologically to me. It is also part of a larger system of the earth’s ecology. How then should I approach the subject of my body? Do I respect myself and get cremated to avoid the “ew” factor? Or do I respect the Earth, future generations, and climate action, and instead choose composting? The fact that I have a choice is part of the problem and demonstrates how our species is out of bounds. I am inclined to choose an option that hurts the environment, other humans, and the entire planetary system. To the question of “what kind of species will we be,” from Professor Litfin’s Becoming Planetary, it will someday be up to me decide in this one small, yet impactful decision and make the mature choice.

Considering terror management theory, it may be my fear of the unknown that drives my FOMO and qualms of the soul. Maybe if I were religious, I would not feel the need to travel so much or buy so many things because I could find comfort and security in a certain “after.”

I’m curious to see how this course’s content, discussions, and contemplative practices will continue to insight deeper understandings and challenge my views about death.

Image Source: Ken Lambert, The Seattle Times. Recompose, the first human-composting funeral home in the U.S. in Kent, WA.