Category Archives: Topics

Why Won’t My Brain Shut Up?

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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?

Chocolate and Chip

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During our most recent contemplative practice, which Professor Litfin recorded for us to listen to over Thanksgiving break, I took some time to reflect on where my holiday meal came from.

My aunt hosted our annual family dinner this year, so we were incredibly lucky to enjoy potatoes, green beans, eggs, and various fruits straight from her farm. But some of our food, like the turkey, needed to be bought from the grocery store. That turkey is what (or who) I thought most about during the contemplation exercise. Specifically, I considered what that turkey’s life must have been like before it ended up on our table. The article we read last month about slaughterhouses (Working Undercover in a Slaughterhouse: an interview with Timothy Pachirat) had a profound impact on my thought process.

As the article points out, death is widely normalized in our culture, but, at the same time, we all take great care to willingly ignore it. Deep down, I’m sure my family and I all understood that the turkey on our table had suffered for most of its life. It probably lived in awful conditions in a factory farm, where it was forcefully fattened up and bludgeoned to death, all for some family to eat in celebration of a holiday whose origins are rife with much of the same exploitation and violence. This reality is not one that many of us want to think about, but it’s one I forced myself to confront to help me be more appreciative of the (unwilling) sacrifice that animal made.

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

After gaining this clarity, I found myself thinking back to Thanksgiving morning, when President Biden officially pardoned Chocolate and Chip at the White House (pictured right). When I was watching this event, I felt joy that these turkeys would go on to live happily and healthily for many more years. However, I’ve realized instead that our country has this tradition of sparing the life of one or two turkeys every Thanksgiving merely to obfuscate those we’d rather not see.

In closing, I am thankful for the many insights I have gained throughout this quarter from our weekly contemplative practices, and as this class comes to an end, I am beginning to realize the positive impact they have had on me. Setting aside some time to just sit with my thoughts is something I plan to do more of in the future.

We are Social Creatures

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I’ve always found contemplative practices to be a frustration that I endure rather than something beneficial. No matter how hard I try, I often can’t even fully register what is being said by the person guiding the practice, and my thoughts will jump everywhere except where I want them to be. I find myself having not a single helpful thought when it’s just me by myself trying to look inwards.

 For our contemplative practices specifically, I wonder if my lack of connection with them is my own personal TMT come to life. Our practices are often heavy and full of mortality and death. Perhaps I am subconsciously choosing not to engage with them so I don’t have to face my own death anxiety? On a similar train of thought, maybe I just don’t like being alone with my thoughts. Maybe the topics we cover in this class are simply too heavy and big to bear alone. By nature, we are social creatures, and I personally value group discussions and group learning when faced with the monumental challenges we’ve covered in class.

The one contemplative practice that did really work for me was one we did in a group of three taking on different perspectives (everything is great, everything is terrible, and everything is as it is). After each perspective we shared about what we were feeling. It was interesting to me how the thoughts that I was so firm on in my own head were drastically changed and shifted by my group mates when they shared their ideas. I discovered that we all have deep rooted anxieties and fears about death and the state of the world, but that we all think about them differently, and all come to the same conclusion: we want to do something about it.

This contemplative practice made me realize that we all inherently fear death and for the future of our civilization, but it’s not as heavy of a burden to carry when you talk about it with others. At the end of the day, it’s important to be able to sit with your own thoughts, but it’s equally, if not more important, to talk about them and experience them with others. We are a social species, and so contemplating the problems that we face shouldn’t be a solitary experience.

A rather cheesy, yet appropriate graphic from Ben & Jerry’s

Contemplating the Contemplative Practice

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Contemplative practices, meditation, or nap time mid class-or is it all three? Each class we take the time to look inward and are guided through a meditation that reflects our course content in some form. Honestly, this form of meditation is not for me.

The contemplative practices in our class are heavy, often broaching the subject of social racism, white supremacy, and even our own death-all topics that to me take more time than the allotted fifteen minutes in class to reflect and meditate on. I don’t usually partake, but I always respect my classmates and sit quietly to not distract from their experiences. In my mind, meditation is supposed to be calming, centering, a time of peace in a busy day to help get my mind and body back on track. Taking the time to meditate about the heavy issues of our world is difficult, a task that should not be taken lightly or with brevity.

https://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/tree

When I googled “contemplative practice” this was the first thing that came up, the tree of contemplative practice. This image gave me a greater insight to what a contemplative practice truly is. It is more than meditation, is about action and intention. This is something I can appreciate as I begin to understand it more.

With all this said, one contemplative practice that stuck with me more than some of the others was when we were guided to take the feeling of white supremacy and racism and to feel the weight in our right hand as our left hand felt the weight-or lack of weight-of freedom. Once we distinguished those two feelings, we were asked to squish them together as we folded our hands and to think about how our hands felt. The weight of freedom ad racism all mashed together and what it did to our hands, mind, and body. I don’t know why this stuck with me, maybe it was because it caught me off guard-maybe it was because I focuses on the emotions linked to these two topics a little more than I usually do. Most likely, it is because I get to experience freedom in my everyday life. I am white, I can speak my mind, I can wear what I choose, I have freewill-all of these freedoms I take for granted and I feel as if this practice reminded me of how lucky I am.

Personal Perspectives

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When I think of death, it is simply just a thought. When I try to imagine what it is like to be dead coupled with the fact that means one day I will cease to exist, I feel a pit develop in my stomach like I am going to pass out. It cosumes me with fear of the unknown and my breath quickens as my body cannot comprehend the thoughts of that experience. The anxiety that results is one that can disappear quickly with a distraction away from those thoughts.

Other anxieties that I harbor don’t leave as readily, and I often must focus on my breath or close my eyes to eliminate the closing in of my surroundings. This form of concentration on myself is something I have incorporated as fundamental to my existence, while the anxiety that comes with facing the fear of my death has not. The contemplative practices we have done in class this quarter while discussing reactions to mortality have helped me understand how to combine these practices.

The Double Secret is a surrealist painting done by Rene Magritte that is said to represent the confrontation of what lays beyond the human figure, including thoughts of death.

Contemplative practices forced me to shut out the distractions of the room and people around me and focus on the concepts of the course materials as we guided our breaths and tuned into the feelings of our bodies in the context of Terror Management Theory and death anxiety. I was more readily able to work through what had previously been feelings of dread when confronting death and move across perspectives.

The movement I prefer is within my own thoughts in mind through the stillness of my body in order to isolate my thoughts. When we engaged in a contemplative practice of moving within spaces that were shared with others, I found myself slipping into thoughts outside of the ones I was trying to center–invoking anxiety rather than escaping it. 

There is value within perspectives, especially in hearing and experiencing it with others. However, I believe that the contemplative practices allowed me to gain perspective within myself and confront ideas and feelings I would otherwise push down. The chaos of our world can distract us from our finitude but understanding that it will come and facing it has made me all the more ready for it.





Contemplative Practices Ease Existential Anxiety

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Perhaps the best place to look at Terror Management Theory on a personal scale isn’t in the worldly examples we talk about in class, but rather in our class environment itself. Whether we’re talking about mortality directly or circling around it through conversation of climate change and world strife, one could argue that our class content serves as a continuous series of death reminders. 

What’s the result? Well, we see it every class session. People strongly assert their values, speak with fervor, and often try to sway others to their own beliefs. This isn’t a bad thing – it simply means that the role of contemplative practices is especially crucial and has the potential to have a great impact.

Contemplative practices break open an environment full of seemingly-endless existential pondering. During our first practice, after a class period that overwhelmed me in ways my calculus and biology classes never have, I let myself simply let go of an obsession with thoughts. I treated them like clouds moving across the sky and found a peace that I often lose when engaging in difficult conversations. 

When we spend so much time thinking and talking about death in our class, contemplative practices offer a time to decompress. It feels like a reversal as we move from brain to body. Contemplative practices ground me. When life’s larger questions and existential dread become too much, our class contemplative practices give me the space to focus on my body rather than my thoughts. 

For some people, perhaps the practices are about an appreciation of the mind, thoughts, and thinking. I personally find the most peace when I let my mind do what it wants and focus rather on the physical space I occupy in the world. We spend most of our class time leaning into our thoughts and thinking deeply about the world. Then through contemplative practices we’re away from the structured, analytical thinking we bring to class discussions. I feel my presence in our classroom and always am in a better mental state to connect with my classmates afterwards.

Contemplative practices ease the jarring effects of death reminders. In practices, I don’t feel the pressure to prove my world views and cling to social beliefs, but rather a sense of stillness in appreciating my presence in our world. I’m not pessimistic about the future or fighting against an overwhelming sea of issues. For a precious moment, life is as it is. 

 

Terror Management: a Necessary Evil?

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Throughout this class, I think I’ve realized one thing. Nothing is set; reality is perception. Facts are relative, and the truth is relative. The only real thing we have is the inevitability of death. In Baldwin and Buddhism: Death Denial, White Supremacy, and the Promise of Racial Justice James K. Rowe quotes James Baldwin.

“Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.”

In short, death is the one thing we can rely on. We focus a lot on the present during these past few cognitive practices. I’ve noticed that these reflections are centered around processing the current moment.

This might not be directly related to the course, but I think these contemplative practices have made me realize that to acknowledge death is to appreciate life.

In class, we talk alot about terror management because of its centrality to the course, but we never ask the question that I think is critical to understanding human behavior, “Is terror management essential to living a fulfilling life? If we didn’t have lows, we wouldn’t appreciate highs. Terror management is ingrained in our human psyche; if we are products of evolution, terror management must be an important part of human survival. Why do we deny something we cannot control? And what is the evolutionary benefit of existential self-consciousness? If death is inevitable, why are we made to fear it?

Death Symbolism & Death Personification in Art History | Art & Object

What Are Humans For?

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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.

Pondering death can make or break society

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Thinking more deeply about death has shocked me out of my daily rhythm. In some moments I’ve wished I was more religious as a way to “beat” the fear of death by utter belief in something else. The Worm at the Core tested me – it made me think, how is grappling with death culturally beneficial? Is finding my way through intense existential thoughts going to build me into a better person, or only blur my focus of reality more? 

A holistic and healthy relationship with death, rather than blind ignorance and avoidance, is the path I want to take. In The Worm at the Core’s “Living with Death” section, the authors propose that “being mortal, while terrifying, can also make our lives sublime by infusing us with courage, compassion, and concern for future generations.” (225) I strive to find this.

Sometimes the idea that I’m going to die one day doesn’t scare me though, but rather gives me a sense of nonchalance and indifference, which can often be equally damaging as fear of death. Climate change seems too overwhelming? Many of the repercussions will be hundreds of years from now, it’s not worth stressing about! Might as well give in to consumerism, it’s the path laid out for me!  

This is a coping mechanism that I believe many people, especially from industrialized consumer cultures hold. They warp fear of death into destructive acceptance and use the idea that they’re going to die at some point to justify overuse that sets future generations up for failure. 

Purposeful thinking about death that The Worm at the Core describes provides a different outlook. Everyone needs to grapple with death in their own way, but understanding death as a cyclical continuation of humanity lessens the fear for me. For more people to come after us and experience the joy and beauty of Earth, we all must die. Not die with the intention of draining all of the resources we want to experience before our own mortality – die with the intention of leaving room for a new generation of people. 

I want future generations of children to marvel at trees – to walk through forests with soil staining their feet and adore waterfalls, to see the remarkable diversity of animals in our world, and to gain joy from the things we take for granted. We will die, but our legacy and “immortality project” lies in preserving this remarkable place we call home.