It is safe to say that people fear death; not only the death that they all will one day face, but also the death of their loved ones. What is it that fuels this fear? Is it a rational fear? It is difficult to believe that so many people are plagued by this aversion to an event which so little is known about. Exploring the mindset towards the death of a loved one may seem like an exercise in simplicity, however, the rationale behind the fear of a loved one dying is not as simple as it may seem.
Since no one has successfully returned from a death that they maintained long enough to garner any insight into what happens, one can only presume that the real pain caused by the death of a loved one is a pain of personal loss. Not a soul on this earth can, on substantial authority; state that death is a negative experience for the participant. By comparison, the Harry Potter Bertie Bott's Jelly Beans come in an immensely diverse array of flavors. Some of the more abstract flavors include: Chocolate, Brussel Sprouts, Strawberry Jelly, Rotten Egg, Toe nails, Dirt, Biscuit, and the ever popular Vomit. One would think, as a result of people’s inclination to presume the worst, that these flavors would be sorted by flavor; this is not the case. People have spent millions of dollars on boxes where their next jellybean has as much a chance of tasting like earwax as it does buttered popcorn.
Why this presumption that death is going to be an earwax jellybean? There are numerous cultural influences that make death seem like something most of us would rather avoid for ourselves and our loved ones. A good place to start would be the personification of death itself, The Grim Reaper. The first psychopomp is believed to be Charon, the ferryman who conveyed the newly dead across the river Styx into Hades, the land of the dead. Interestingly, the idea of a psychopomp, (one who watches over the dead), would seem to say that humans want a greater understanding of death; after all, is that not the point of personifications? Where does the modern visage of death come from? According to William Bramley, author of Gods of Eden, in Brandenburg, Germany, there appeared fifteen men with “fearful faces and long scythes, with which they cut the oats, so that the swish could be heard at great distance, but the oats remained standing”. The visit of these men was followed immediately by a severe outbreak of plague in Brandenburg. It is all so clear now, people do not want a kinship with death, people want a scapegoat.
What is the reasoning behind humans needing a scapegoat to throw the burden of death upon? When addressing questions such as this, it is most prudent to consult the mechanics who study the moving parts of the mind, psychiatrists. Jeff Schimel covers the history of TMT or terror management theory in his article, “Is death really the worm at the core? Converging evidence that worldview threat increases death-thought accessibility.” This theory is quite elaborate, yet scientific in nature and rings true in the face of empirical study. Schimel writes that all living things share the lineage of evolution; that is to say, all life began as one thing and changed into another. Based upon this line of thinking, it can be stated that all life shares a common trait, the powerful drive to adapt to its surroundings and overcome any adversity that it faces. As a life form, human beings share this trait but there is an added complication in our evolution as a species. Human beings developed sentience or self-awareness. We not only have natural instincts which guide us towards survival, but we are also aware of the consequences of our failure to successfully perform these functions. Schimel elaborates on these ideas warning of the intrinsic flaw in our sentience; that even if we are successful in our endeavors for survival, we will eventually fall victim to the inevitable boogie man of death. This conflict between a need for survival and knowledge of the impending demise creates what is referred to as TMT. Schimel goes on to write that, “Humans mitigate this fear through the development and maintenance of a dual-component anxiety buffer consisting of a cultural worldview and self-esteem.” Translated into laymen’s terms this means that much of the desire for achievement that motivates us to do great things is based on a desire to defy that scythe wielding monster, who we all are painfully aware is waiting for us. Alleviation of TMT is achieved through adhering to popular worldviews set forth most commonly by major religions, which tell of a symbolic defiance via an afterlife or a more literal non-cooperation by means of having children or works of art which will survive long after the lights go out. According to TMT, death motivates the human race to achieve great things! By that rationale a fear of dying is not only inherent to us as a species, but it places us above other pattern based thinking life forms. This author believes that this level of acceptance is utterly reprehensible. Why should mankind’s major motivation be fear? The elimination of death as a negative event would eliminate an anxiety which plagues every single member of the species on a daily basis. Even the possibility of death being a good thing could create a less stress ridden existence. As any student of psychology can attest to, Skinner proved that a rat is more prone to preform positively when given a pellet rather than an electric shock.
To address the loss of a loved one through the lens of TMT, explains much of the apprehension behind human’s fears of such an event. Orson Scott Card writes of the thoughts of a dead man, Mark, viewing his own corpse in his short story, “Quietus”, “…he turned around to the coffin, which fascinated him, and he opened the lid again and looked inside. It was as if the poor man had no face at all, Mark realized. As if death stole faces from people and made them anonymous even to themselves.” The view of death as not only a loss of proximity but also existence is completely without supporting evidence., yet the mere possibility of this is enough to send an entire species into a sort of frenzied achievement mode; constantly ensuring that loved ones are aware of our love in case it is the last time that they get to hear it. Joseph Hayes alludes to the idea that according to TMT, our need for sexual conquest, procreation, marriage, sustained monogamy, anniversaries, and even tokens of affection are a result of our fear that that person may leave us uninformed as to our true feelings.
To summarize, for such a motivating force in the human race as a whole, there is absolutely no empirical evidence that death is a negative experience for the participant. This detail does nothing to dull even the idea of the inevitable blow which awaits us all. Based on how the scientific community views Freud’s works, which also cannot be proven by empirical testing, the default to negative death is completely absurd. The fact that a possibility exists, does not make it a fact or even likely to be a fact.
Works Cited
Bramley, William. The Gods of Eden. New York: Avon, 1993. Print.
Card, Orson Scott. "Quietus." Maps in a Mirror: the Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2004. 25-26. Print.
Hayes, Joseph, Jeff Schime, Jamie Ardnt, and Erik Faucher. "A Theoretical and Empirical Review of the Death-thought Accessibility Concept in Terror Management Research." Psychological Bulletin 136.5 (2010): 0033-2909. Web.
Schimel, Jeff, Joseph Hayes, Todd Williams, and Jesse Jahrig. "Is Death Really the Worm at the Core? Converging Evidence That Worldview Threat Increases Death-thought Accessibility." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92.5 (2007): 789-803. Print.
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