Fear of death creates the idea of beauty

WARNING!

Scientific experiments have proven that if you read the following story, you will likely be changed. Your ideas about religion, politics -- yes, even your appreciation of art and beauty will be changed... at least temporarily.

So if you like the way you feel about life right now, maybe you should skip this article.


"The all encompassing blackness..." --William James 1910
I'm going to describe the cutting-edge of psychological theories, called Terror Management Theory or TMT. It's been known for a while but has been kept off the radar by the media. And that's partially because TMT has been used against us (you will see how). It's a theory that explains human behavior and its most basic psychological motivator.


Most everyone can agree that a face of a certain proportion is beautiful, that a painting or certain place is beautiful. But in order to be beautiful, the object has to be observed and analysed by us. There is no inherent beauty in nature. It is we who give these things our "appreciation" as being beautiful.

What we are reacting to is pattern, organization and symbolism. We gravitate to these qualities because they represent the opposite of entropy. Entropy is death. Order is life.

This idea is so important that it deserves to be explored. It's a new-old idea called Terror Management Theory.

What is TMT?

Terror Management Theory (TMT) states that all human behavior is motivated by the fear of our own mortality. The fact that you and I will eventually die and be "no more" is a fact known and understood only by humans. Although animals have an avoidance of death, they live in the present. They don't comprehend their destiny. Only humans have the capacity to project reality in time and imagine the future. Only humans realize the significance of being "no more".

The theory originated with anthropologist Ernest Becker's 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning work of nonfiction, The Denial of Death, in which Becker argues all human action is taken to ignore or avoid the anxiety generated by the inevitability of death.

The terror associated with our unstoppable annihilation creates a subconscious conflict or anxiety called cognitive dissonance. We try to cope with having to accept two contrary ideas. On one hand, we want to become involved with life and think of ourselves as a meaningful part of the world. On the other hand, what does anything matter anyway if we ultimately become "no more" -- if all this wonderment of life is temporary?

According to Becker, people spend their entire lives trying to make sense of these conflicting thoughts. We are so afraid of death that we create alternate realities -- realities where we won't cease to be. We take comfort in the fact that others share this alternate reality. Often symbols are used to reinforce our confidence in what psychologists call our worldview.

Psychologists speak of an event which stimulates awareness of our own death as mortality salience. Mortality salience is usually achieved in experiments by inserting questions about such things as the subjects death plans or how old his grandfather was when he died. Half get the mortality salience and half get benign questions. Other times they flash the word DEATH at one twenty-forth of a second on a screen -- so fast that the subjects cannot see it even when they're told it is there. Yet it works.

TMT psychologists view human culture as a belief system constructed to explain and give meaning to life and resist confronting the horror of death. One of the requirements of a successful culture is to substitute the reality of existential death with an achievable afterlife. If not literally, then symbolically. Cemetery stones and burial monuments are examples of this. Cultures also reward enduring accomplishments to civilization with material awards, namesakes and inclusions in human history.