If you trace back the ancestry of Solomon’s ideas, you find Camus and GB Shaw and all the other literary giants–but also, and more importantly from an academic perspective, you find Ernest Becker, author of 1973’s The Denial of Death.

This was a man who was kicked out of almost every university he taught at, despite his students at Berkeley offering to pay his salary when the university declined to renew his contract. —High Existence

So there’s hope for me yet. Not in the end, of course, but short-term.

A synopsis of the linked article’s synopsis, on The DoD, Part One

The function of society is to help us believe that we can transcend death by participating in something of lasting worth (Solomon places the emphasis on seeing ourselves as being of lasting worth).

Societies are cultural hero-systems created to fulfill each individual’s need for cosmic specialness (Within the culture of a society, everyone’s a snowflake. When the chips are down, cashiers at Safeway are first responders.)

We cling to our culture’s educational, governmental, and religious institutions to fortify our view that human life is uniquely significant and eternal (My Bernie vote makes me better than you, and my status as professor, for one more week, means I’m important and valuable).

One of the consequences of the defense mechanism is that recognizing the validity of other belief systems means unleashing the very terror and dread that our own beliefs serve to suppress. (The bad Mexicans/Jews/Gypsies/Homeless/Republicans are evil and must be eliminated or controlled. This also goes a long way toward explaining the people marching on state capitols with guns, screeching about their right to die of pneumonia and take everybody else down with them.)

We protect ourselves from our own subconscious fear of death by denigrating other cultures and their ideas, which strengthens our faith in our own. Violent conflict necessarily ensues. (Clinging to "our" institutions is the hallmark of The Establishment, as defined in the days of Vietnam. Patriotism is the last refuge not of scoundrels, but of the Afraid.)

The article asks: What better proof of the validity of our own view of the world than for others to come around to our way of thinking? (So we get proselytizing, whether it be some religionist knocking on the door, or a blogger bringing you the good news about Brother Bernie. See too what the Mormons and Catholics did regarding schooling the savages.)

The cultural value of wealth, and the humiliation of not having it, is a source of anxiety for most everyone. We use wealth, fame, and status (among other things–like creative reputation) as “proof” that we are not mere critters, destined to decay and die.

These things reinforce the idea, comforting and false, that we are eternal, and that we are objects of primary value in a universe of meaning.

The lie we need to sustain in order to live–dooms us to a life that is never really ours.

(Damn.)

Ripped quotes:

“If a person admitted this utter lack of control, that death lurks at every breath, and let it rise to consciousness, it would drive him to fear and trembling, to the brink of madness.”

— Ernest Becker

    “The great benefit of repression is that it allows us to live decisively in an overwhelmingly miraculous and incomprehensible world, a world so full of beauty, majesty, and terror that if animals perceived it all they would be paralyzed to act.”

— Ernest Becker

So we routinely choose repression and dogma (addictions too), over living in conscious fear.

When I say the goal of my life is to die free, this is what I’m talking about.

I wish I’d gone to India earlier in life like Leonard Cohen, for a head start.

But I didn’t. It’ll just have to get done the tough ugly western way.