“Wait, You Mean To Tell Me Course Material Actually Affects My Mental Health?”

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“Depression” by Disability Arts Online

On October 13th, Professor Litfin prompted us to “scan” our bodies during a contemplative practice. When I got to my chest, I felt a vast heaviness, taking the form of a dark hole near my heart. With each beat, I visualized the darkness “leaking out” into my veins, seeping throughout my body, carrying waves of what felt like grief and guilt. The more focused I became on the darkness, the more class images flashed through my mind – specifically, bits and pieces of the movie we had watched the Tuesday before (The Anthropocene). Abruptly, I realized I had internalized course materials, such as the feelings of climate guilt, without even realizing how much they were affecting my physical or mental state. 

One of my favorite books, “Untethered Soul”, stresses the importance of “untethering” yourself from negative emotions/experiences so that your body does not harbor (and build) upon them. While I felt I had mastered this practice, I was violently surprised to learn that I was internalizing feelings directly related to what I was learning in my classes. In my conceptualization of mindfulness and wellbeing, I had divorced education from my personal well-being, despite the fact that everyday I was learning about environmental degradation, crimes against humanity, war atrocities, and the psychological consequences of the death-penalty. 

“Untethered Soul” by Michael Singer

Since this realization, my notes post-contemplative practice have continued to illuminate the intersections between course materials and personal quandaries, which have allowed me to more deeply engage in both. While October 13th brought me insight to guilt and grief related to living in a capitalist society and trying to preserve the environment, contemplative practices on October 18th and 25th indicated that I was really struggling with the idea of death anxiety and was more aligned with the idea of death apathy. This facilitated my interest in nihilistic-like attitudes (especially for younger generations), which is an idea that has made an entrance into each one of my blog posts and usually at least one comment in each class. 

As I reflect on the use of contemplative practices in the classroom, I am astounded at the insight they have brought me. It seems so obvious that students internalize the psychologically “weighty” lessons they learn in class, but for the past three years, I’ve been oblivious. It prompts me to wonder what my education (and personal self-awareness) would have looked like if I had been practicing in classrooms before this quarter. 

Death on the Brain

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Throughout this course I have had to alter my opinions on contemplative practices. When we were first introduced to contemplative practices I thought of them as a waste of time, something that would only lead to a distraction rather than aiding our learning process. As we have moved through many different practices I have found myself becoming more and more immersed in them and am finding out more and more about myself. I have always been a major advocate for the idea that resolutions to problems or questions mostly occur through conversation and putting thoughts to words but these practices have forced me to challenge that idea. It seems to me that some questions are too large or too personal to be spoken about easily and these kinds of questions have been especially prevalent during this course. When considering these kinds of questions, especially those that pertain to human mortality, contemplative practices have been invaluable. 

Using the methods that have been deployed in this course I have been able to better understand not only the different philosophies when confronting death but my own personal philosophy as well. The practices give me a unique perspective on this as I have narcolepsy which is a sleeping disorder where I will fall asleep with little to no provocation. As we work through these exercises I can feel myself fading towards the darkness that is sleep and to be doing this while debating the momentous topic of human mortality leads to an incredibly sobering, if not terrifying, line of thought. These types of thought fall in line perfectly when addressing Terror Management Theory and how it affects the way we address death. When doing these exercises it forces one to evaluate their distal defenses in order to better understand how they combat their own mortality and how they view their impact on the world. For myself, as someone who is not religious I questioned what my existence amounted to and what I thought my goals should be in order to be a benefit rather than a liability. Going though these very personal journeys has provided me with insight that I doubt I would have found if left to my own devices. Contemplative practices have become a daily occurrence for me and something that I will continue past the end of this course.

 

Resources and Inspirations

 

The Worm at the Core. Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski.

 

Class Discussions and Practices


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. 

Death, Institutions, Capitalism, and Climate Change

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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.

The false choice between capitalism and saving the planetPhoto: David Cliff / NurPhoto via Getty Images- The general discontentment with systems such as capitalism by climate activists Climate Change And Global Pollution To Be Discussed At Copenhagen SummitJANSCHWALDE, GERMANY – NOVEMBER 24: A loan wind turbine spins as exhaust plumes from cooling towers at the Jaenschwalde lignite coal-fired power station, which is owned by Vatenfall, on November 24, 2009 in Janschwalde, Germany. The CO2 emission will be one top of the agenda and will be discussed at the summit in December in Copenhagen. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)

 

Meaning, Purpose, and Understanding the End

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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.

Extinction is not Exclusive

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Grappling with the thought of death has shown to cause fear, and in Worm at the Core, it is argued that this fear we encounter greatly influences how people live their lives. When reminded of their mortality, Worm at the Core shows how people tend to make pronounced differences in their decisions and behaviors. With the threat of if the world can even sustain the next generation as a result of climate change, death anxiety may be more at the forefront of people’s minds than ever. 

Terror management theory cites culture and society as distractions from an inevitable end noting how religion provides a comfort of what awaits in life after death. But regardless of whether people worship a god or healthy lifestyles, one thing remains true: if we can’t save the planet from ourselves, there will be no more fear because humans won’t exist as a species anymore. I can’t help but wonder, how does the mass extinction of species around us due to climate change affect death anxiety as we are headed towards the same fate?

Three separate images from left to right of a blue macaw in a tree, a dodo bird, and a western black rhino sitting down in a field.

Three recently extinct species: blue macaw, dodo bird, and western black rhino.

This brings us to an article written by the New York Times, The 8 Million Species We Don’t Know, that details the rapid rate of extinction of so many species at the hands of humans despite not knowing 80% of those species that exist on our planet. The piece details a plan created by conservation scientists called the Half-Earth Project that aims to protect large areas of land and water on the planet, keeping them in their most natural state to protect species and the biodiversity they bring as foundational elements.

The Worm at the Core showcases that fear is a common sentiment when people are reminded of their mortality through terror management theory, but how are people affected when people are reminded that we are a species that can go extinct just like those in the NYT article? If people change their actions for fear of their own death, shouldn’t they change their actions to help save the disappearing species around us so that we may avoid that being our fate?

A manatee floating under clear blue green water above the sandy bottom.

To quote the last line of Worm at the Core, “By asking and answering these questions, we can perhaps enhance our own enjoyment of life, enrich the lives of those around us, and have a beneficial impact beyond it” (Solomon et al., 225).

Anthropocene, capitalocene, plantationocene: human issues and their specific roots

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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.

Large, heavy machinery works in the middle of a vast, barren field. Humans look on in the foreground.

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!