DanL

Thesis #18 - Future human well-being, even simple human survival, depends on learning to substitute more nonviolent and creative (less destructive) habitual manifestations of the individual and social defense mechanisms against the anxiety provoked by the religiously/culturally Dissimilar Other.
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Thesis #17b - This is further aggravated because improvements in travel and communications technology force modern humans to confront the reality of the culturally/religiously Dissimilar Other on a regular, even daily basis.

Thesis #17a - Modern human beings, because more consciously aware of the processes of socialization, and psychological functioning, are more likely to suspicion the fictional character of their cultural/religious narratives – it is harder for us to believe than for those of previous generations.

Thesis #16 - Hence, exposure to culturally/religiously Dissimilar Others may be a creative source for helping us to broaden, widen, deepen and enhance our own vision of reality; or, they may be encountered, in the most literal sense, as threatening mortal enemies.

15b - By their very existence they cast doubt on the transcending certainty of our truth (revealing it as essentially fictional) exposing us to the repressed anxiety our fictions function to allay in the first place. (cf. defense mechanisms above, on how we reflexively react to Dissimilar Others.)

Thesis #15a - People who do not share in the basic assumptions of our cultural/religious narrative are a potentially enormous problem.

Thesis #14 - There is power in numbers for sustaining the transcending plausibility and viability of any particular dominant cultural narrative. The more you rub shoulders only with people who believe the same cultural narrative you do, the more plausible that narrative becomes.

Thesis 13b: But even the rebel or the criminal (sinner) must assume the essential transcendent power of the dominant cultural/religious myth in order for his/her deviance to itself have any meaning - the rebel's rebellion assumes the transcendent values of the system to give the rebellion meaning.

Thesis #13a - Broadly socialized allegiance to the dominant cultural narrative is a strong force for sanctioning social conformity (this why all religions essentially equate "good citizenship" with God's Will, etc.)

Thesis 12b: This answers our strong desire for life to have eternal meaning and purpose (and so to symbolically assert that "death is conquered, death is not the final word." This is to assert participation in symbolic immortality.

Thesis 12a: All cultural narratives (mythologies) serve in some way to assure us that, individually and collectively, we are valuable actors in a worthy pageant of transcending and cosmic significance.

Thesis 11b: However, when taken on faith, they are also potentially true in that each provides some functional easing of anxiety in the face of actual and symbolic threats. Human individual and social life without such cultural narratives would be unbearable and impossible.

Thesis #11a: Generally speaking, cultural narratives (narrative mythologies) are on one level fictional, since they promise something (immortality) which they cannot demonstrably deliver.

Thesis #10 – This urge for symbolic immortality is a key source of human creativity and life-affirming energies; it is the underlying function of human cultures, and especially religions, to serve as venues through which people achieve and maintain a sense of participation in symbolic immortality.

Yes. In my day 'straight' meant socially conforming, suit and tie type, whereas 'freak' meant anything but that. Over the decades, I have learned that while self-definition is important, mostly who we are comes, as sociological studies also show, from the outside in as much as from the inside out.

Somewhat different issue. You call yourself queer. Is that kind of like when I was young (probably about your age) many of us referred to ourselves proudly as 'freaks'? I like it!! Sounds like a very unusual background yielding very unusual insights into what gets 'taken for granted' in society.

Sounds a lot like Wm James's "Moral Equivalent of War" - something socially constructive that will, like war, foster a collective sense of solidarity, heroism, sacrifice and transcending sense of 'conquering.' James suggested conscripted fire-fighting. Does seem to be onto something important.

Thesis #9 – Perhaps the most ubiquitous anxiety-compensatory move is to transfer the urge for continued living from the physical realm to the symbolic realm; the organismic urge for continued living becomes channeled into the urge for immortality/significance in the symbolic realm.

I hope you are correct that more collective consciousness can be cultivated by education and spiritual practices - I am banking my life on it, in fact. But realistically speaking, I think it will come more as what is left over following a major civilizational collapse of current individualist ethos.

...but still with tribal violence aplenty, even in the precolonial era (though harder to document because no documents). This is one reason northern invaders found it easy to colonize. People were already at each other's throats, thus easily used by the invading Euros.Same as in India and elsewhere.

JDR, I hope I am replying correctly - I am not adept at short spurt messages,,, Asian civilizations also developed as hierarchical empires, driven by building magnificent tomes for their leaders - plenty of death denial going on there as in Western civilization. African civ less so...

I'm now more interested in solutions than strictly analysis. Becker is light on solutions, but he died very young (49) - I want to explore where he might have gone had he lived longer and absorbed and responded to more of the criticism of Denial of Death.

Thesis 8b: Such defense mechanisms originated in and were strategically contoured by needs for anxiety control in the face of mortality awareness. Our highly developed intelligence caused the anxiety problem in the first place, and supplies at least the provisional solution to the anxiety problem.

Thesis #8a: The array of individual and collective defense mechanisms are employed to maintain individual and social/cultural equanimity in reaction to actual threats of injury, death, and annihilation, and also in reaction to imaginative or symbolic threats of injury, death, and annihilation.

Thesis 7b: Each of these collective rituals may manifest itself in both creative and destructive forms. The most important are scapegoating, denigration, segregation (including self-segregation), assimilation, and annihilation.

Thesis #7a: As with individual defense mechanisms, there are collective defense mechanisms, habitual patterns of collective behavior aimed at defending against threats to established social formations.

Ala Becker, death fear is endemic to any self-aware mortal being. Collectivist cultures allow symbolic embeddedness in community, ancestors, etc. but this is only symbolic. All people remain mortal, and therefore subject to DF if they ever think about it. Individualism FORCES one to think about it.

Very interesting JD! Becker's analysis would be that 'collectivist' cultures are less impaired by death anxiety exactly because DA is aggravated by individualism. The big question is, once individualist, can culture ever regain the collectivist ethos? And, what accounts for violence in Africa? etc.

Thanks for the like. I am posting on BlueSky a series of "theses" summarizing my understanding of the work of Ernest Becker. I am very new to social media and hope I am pushing the right keys to get this all done right!

Thank you Michael! The voice isn't quite what it one was but we are having fun with the music anyway.