Danse Macabre. N. Thomas Johnson-Medland
of the things we now are able to know in an instant. We need to sit back and craft some words and tell some tales about the things we now are able to know. We need to process the immense world we have at our fingertips twenty four hours every day.
We have not always made the best choices in how to deal with this much omniscience in this short amount of time. It would be good to take this seriously. Maybe we can do some of that here.
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We need to make some words about death and our fears of death; and, we need to share them.
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It may be their first showing for some of us. The words about death and the fear of death, that is. Others will simply be seeing them again—yet anew. Whether we are able to remove those fears we have uttered above will be up to our tenacity—the tenacity of an engaged and steadily paced reader. My job will be to be faithful to giving up new and used words about death; words with ample space for the viewing and feeling. Words that will call you out into the open—for just a bit—to be exposed to potentially new and awkward ways of putting words together; and, along with that, new and awkward ways to put ideas and beliefs together as well.
If our words can help us to remove some of our fears, we will have climbed to the top of the mountain of what it means to be human. We will have summated a critical obstacle.
Many people will take shots at what I say. My aim is to lure you into the conversation; so I am ready for the dialogue that comes with that.
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“Memento mori” is Latin for remembering our death. Remembering that we will someday die—perhaps even today—can build will and passion into our lives. Remembering that we will die can cause us to live by reminding us that we will not always have the opportunity to live.
The desert ascetics were often quoted as saying “Remember your Death.” It became watchwords of the mystical desert experience. Do everything as if you were going to die today. Keep that reality before you as a guide for helping you to make choices. Be prepared to enter the final act, give a good performance. This was a way of talking about death.
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When I first heard this aphorism—“remember your death”—I thought it was the tragic mantra of under-sexed monks. I figured that their life without physical intimacy had caused them to go mad and that they moved ahead in life on the wings of their own fears, repressions, and bitterness. Physical abstinence had caused these folks a morbid depression—sort of sounding pious. I have come to know that that was not the case. Remembering our death is a valuable way to live.
Death is nothing but a transformation of the seed into the plant and the plant back into the seed. It is the leaf becoming the dirt and the dirt becoming leaf. It is the heart becoming spirit and the spirit becoming heart. It is man becoming anew in every possible way that he can.
We would do well to remember that this sort of change is coming for all of us. This change is coming; and, what it is that lies on the other side of this change is not something that we know about with exactitude or any certitude. It is just speculation; so, beware.
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When we look at the impact that knowledge of our own singular death has on our individual lives, we should recognize that it prompts responses. When we look at the impact knowledge of our death as a species has on our species, we should recognize that it prompts responses. These responses are our beliefs, stories, and actions that we build up to avoid the tragedy of our own mortality. Ernest Becker identified that “culture” is the development of our response to our death anxiety.
Becker has reported that when we develop cultural structures and paradigms (religious or social) they are all really getting at somehow building a layer between us and our fear of death. We are piling up all sorts of debris of belief to protect us from immediate contact with death itself. We are building a buffer zone.
In this view, we are always addressing the presence of our own death. We build it into everything we do. All of our movements in this life are to do some great thing that will preclude us from the common misery of death. In this instance, the Desert Fathers were not so much giving us a new commandment, but actually identifying a subconscious mechanism that exists in all of us. Everything we do is at some level a response to our death anxiety.
We remember our death so much that it drives us to do and be in different ways at every turn. Our living is nothing more than our preoccupation with our dying. Some of us are better at pretending this is not true or concealing the truth of this reality than others are.
What we may learn from Becker’s foray into the desert arena of thinking is that we should pay attention to what we are doing in life because this will identify what we believe about death and how we are coping with our ensuing demise. Everything we do or say or hold within us reveals and betrays our response to our fear of death or what we can call the death anxiety.
In a society or country that is genuinely multi-cultural we have some complications surrounding this individual and social mechanism. If we are just simply one tribe, we develop one culture. This one culture is our agreed upon responses to our death anxiety—as a collective unit. It may or may not include a god or divine being, dances, medicine, songs, stories, diets, art, and other strata of praxis and dogma. We build a tower against our dying. The stronger and the higher the tower against death, the better we feel about ourselves and our one culture. It is the best; therefore. Our culture and our tower of belief is the best.
Now, add to that one culture and tribe, hundreds of other cultures and tribes. They are all living side by side. Some of the praxis and dogma that the cultures develop are in direct conflict and opposition to the praxis and dogma installed by other tribes in that same country or region. They are all the best (at least in their own estimations). They have all built towers of belief that are the best. In our linear world; however, not every one can be the best. There must be a BEST of the best.
This conflict necessitates either a battle to determine which culture is correct, or an isolation that simply ignores everything outside of its own beliefs and structures. There is yet a third response, and it is the response I believe we have struck on in our post-modern American society. This third response is to develop an overarching culture that trumps the lesser cultures and beliefs. We build a secret culture that we all really hold to; while still giving allegiance to our own one true culture.
We build a different tower of belief. This one we build with all of the other surrounding cultures. Then we can call that tower the BEST and we will still all be right by proximity and connection.
Now you get a hint of why people do not talk about death in a digital age. It is connected to our whole worldview and the stability or collapse of that worldview.
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Out of Ernest Becker’s theories developed a following. One particular approach to the issues that Becker analyzed comes from TMT or Terror Management Theory. This theory holds that our death anxiety causes enough of a cognitive dissonance in us that—as societies and as individuals—we build up buffers to the fear. In society we call these buffers cultures: religions, beliefs, groupings, clubs and the like. In individuals we call this buffer a sense of self-esteem or self worth.
In either category (societal or individual) we interpret people and groups that are contrary to our culture and our self-esteem as a threat to our stability. We tend to believe things that are different from us are wrong so we can bolster our own belief. “This is good; that is bad,” is clearly one way we express this threat.
This theory is clearly worth looking into as the social scientists involved are highly credible individuals and have wonderful empirical findings to back up the theories. People fear death. Varying levels of that fear change who we are as individuals and as a people.
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This will not be a linear discussion about death. This will be an amble, a wander, and a dance through, in and around all of the transformations in our life that we have shied away from. We will dance with death, we will dance with changes. Don’t expect anything usual. Dance with me among the life that happens