here's a sad idea what if everything you did driving to work buying new jordans playing games donating to charities getting married going to war having kids what if all of that is a distraction a distraction from the one guarantee that we all have our death [Music] this is the idea behind ernest becker's the denial of death a pulitzer prize winning anthropological work that places our fear and anxiety surrounding our finitude as the reason behind culture itself his main argument is woven in four strands firstly becker makes it clear that the world is terrifying animals in
their natural state regularly engage in tearing others apart with teeth of all types biting grinding flesh plant stalks bones between molars pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight incorporating its essence into one's own organization and then excreting with foul stench and gases the residue yes maybe becker wouldn't be the most fun dude to go camping with but his point still stands the wild a brutish state of death and survival isn't something humans really embrace if anything we have spent a great deal of our history avoiding the anarchic state of nature building laws institutions
and a supply chain so as to never have to really worry about our own needs nonetheless the threat of death can never be truly extinguished a small lump a reoccurring cough a car accident and even the simple thought that we are here merely to die all of these are unavoidable and outside of our control the state of being in this world appears to be one always on the verge of death here becker refers to william james the worm at the core the nagging intuition that we all carry in our hearts that all of this will
eventually end becker agrees believing that the terror of death is universal and present across all cultures this carries with it some evolutionary logic in primitive times those most scared of death were the most realistic about their precarious situation in nature and thus were more likely to survive the result would be a higher chance that their genes would be passed on and thanks to our hypochondriac ancestors we now have a hyper-anxious animal who constantly invents reasons for anxiety even where there is none this video is sponsored by polygents my most treasured experience at university has been
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off of your polygens program get paired with an expert mentor in your industry of choice to make your passion project a reality [Music] us as we know ourselves we are naturally helpless and unlike other animals we have the ability to imagine our deaths at any time of the day this anxiety becker continues stems from the existential paradox of the human condition man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature he is a symbolic self a creature with a name a life history this immense expansion this dexterity gives to man literally the status
of a small god in nature yet at the same time as the eastern sages also knew man is a worm and food for worms this is the paradox he is out of nature and hopelessly in it we are so complicated and yearned to grow and realize our potentials and yet we know it will all end to deal with this let's look at the third strand we deny death and keep it unconscious this is what becker defines as the vital lie of character we cannot accept the fact that we are helpless that all of this appears
for nothing a cruel joke this character our personality is a complex defense mechanism that allows us to feel safe and protected as written in the forward we repress our bodies to purchase a soul that time cannot destroy we sacrifice pleasure to buy immortality we encapsulate ourselves to avoid death and life escapes us while we huddle within the defended fortress of character society is an extension of this line of defense religions political ideologies sports teams all provide us with sturdy hero systems where participation ensures symbolic immortality religion may promise an afterlife allowing us to manage our
death anxiety and continue to deny it as long as we pray and do this or that we will transcend our biological limits the corporate success ladder tells us that financial success or career competence will symbolically protect us from death so we may live on in the history of the company on a biological level having kids can be seen as an attempt to transcend our biological mortality an attempt to extend our genetic lineage to keep a little bit of us still going man could strut and boast all he wanted but really drew his courage to be
from a god a string of sexual conquests a big brother a flag the proletariat and the fetish of money and the size of a bank balance this urge to heroism to be remembered as worthy can be considered as a form of narcissism naturally we care about ourselves above all else because we would like to see ourselves as heroes to prove that we count in the face of the void this is measured by our self-worth the motivating force behind narcissism which is constituted symbolically and so we attach ourselves so firmly to the world of symbols of
work religion social games and so forth for becker society has always been a symbolic action system a structure of statuses and roles customs and rules for behavior designed to serve as a vehicle for earthly heroism notably each culture has a different script for their heroes different gods different values different ideas of what is pure and what is sacrilegious as becker writes what the anthropologists call cultural relativity is thus really the relativity of hero systems and this is inevitably where we run into problems not everybody can be a hero and to deny my idea of what
will make me immortal is horrid either i'm right and you're wrong or i'm destined to become worm food and that's that everything that man does is religious and heroic and yet in danger of being fictitious and fallible the presence of other hero systems puts ours in danger and this is becker's main message that our denial of death and the hero systems that emerge as a defense allow us to justify great acts of evil it is one god against the other all in the name of a heroic self-image that supports our narcissism that keeps up the
grand illusion that we can surmount our death for becker human beings do not commit acts of evil out of wickedness but out of weakness this science of evil almost deserves a separate video but let's return to the vital live character how should one live are we all destined to be selfish death denying wannabe heroes there is a brutal irony to this defense against our anxiety in our desire to transcend death we rarely get a chance to actually live it is fateful and ironic how the why we need in order to live dooms us to a
life that is never really ours but to shed our character armor is to risk death and madness it makes sense as to why many choose the quote-unquote easier path but for those interested in seeing reality and experiencing life as is becker offers an answer ancient wisdom refers to the process of death and rebirth as the way in which one can see reality as it is to free oneself and come back unchained from the shackles of character to be born again means to actively confront the paradox of the human condition for the first time to see
us as a god worm or god who defecates becker asks what would the average man do with a full consciousness of absurdity he speaks of maslow's self-actualization and how it requires a sort of being cognition which is seen as an openness of perception to the truth of the world the good and the bad to engage in this is terrifying and potentially devastating it places a trembling animal at the mercy of the entire cosmos and the problem of the meaning of it in the face of such devastation man tends to resort to one of three of
kierkegaard's characters the immediate cultural individual reserves themselves to trivial matters goes to work drinks with friends spends their leisure away unquestionably the introvert feels confident and that they are in some way different from the world that they are special and can't simply express their specialness to others as they will not understand and so they hold themselves apart from the world and so he lives in a kind of incognito content to toy in his periodic solitudes with the idea of who he might really be content to insist on a little difference to pride himself on a
vaguely felt superiority and then there is the self-created man or wannabe god or hedonist who plunges into life in a demonic rage they may seek forgetfulness and temporal pleasures where one lives for the day alone with a defiance of tomorrow or they may engage in a sort of prometheanism a thoughtless immersion in the project of becoming god through engaging in war arms races capital accumulation a rage against our impotence a defiance of our animal condition are pathetic creature limitations okay so we're avoiding the question how to cope how to live truthfully well it's easier said
than done the healthy person the true individual the self-realized soul is the one who has transcended himself how does one transcend himself by realizing the truth of his situation by dispelling the lie of his character by breaking his spirit out of its conditioned prison isn't this impossible we transcend ourselves only to realize we are mortal animals doesn't this guarantee madness kierkegaard and becker want us to push through this madness the school of anxiety that will destroy our vital lie of character completely the self the defense mechanism against our existential dread must be entirely disposed of
only then can it see beyond death and what is beyond death kierkegaard answers to infinitude to absolute transcendence to the ultimate power of creation which made finite creatures you open yourself up to the world in all its beauty and ugliness despite one's true insignificance weakness death one's existence has meaning in some ultimate sense because it exists within an eternal and infinite scheme of things brought about and maintained to some kind of design by some creative force this isn't an appeal to a god it's an appeal to the fact that anything exists at all and that
it continues to exist and that you're a part of it the invisible mystery at the heart of every creature now attains cosmic significance by affirming its connection with the invisible mystery at the heart of creation this is the meaning of faith you aren't this isolated unit that needs to prove to the world that you're actually a god that you actually matter you already do and your uniqueness and potentialities and creative urges contribute to this crazy eternal world so take a deep breath get over yourself find true courage in the face of anxiety and yeah sure
maybe people will look at you weird but that's just your denial of death talking [Music] you
