/lit/ - Literature

Redpill me on Terror Management Theory (TMT)

>>23009143
Sex is a cope for death.

>When we are young we are often puzzled by the fact that each person we admire seems to have a different version of what life ought to be, what a good man is, how to live, and so on. If we are especially sensitive it seems more than puzzling, it is disheartening. What most people usually do is to follow one person's ideas and then another's depending on who looms largest on one's horizon at the time. The one with the deepest voice, the strongest appearance, the most authority and success, is usually the one who gets our momentary allegiance; and we try to pattern our ideals after him. But as life goes on we get a perspective on this and all these different versions of truth become a little pathetic. Each person thinks that he has the formula for triumphing over life's limitations and knows with authority what it means to be a man, and he usually tries to win a following for his particular patent. Today we know that people try so hard to win converts for their point of view because it is more than merely an outlook on life: it is an immortality formula.

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

What's /lit/s opinion on picrel? I'm reading it right now and really enjoying it, but I haven't seen it mentioned here.

Immortality projects are one way that people manage death anxiety. Some people, however, will engage in hedonic pursuits like drugs, alcohol, and entertainment to escape their death anxiety - often to compensate for a lack of “heroism” or culturally based self-esteem - resulting in a lack of contribution to the “immortality project”.

Others will try to manage the terror of death by “tranquilizing themselves with the trivial” i.e. strongly focusing on trivial matters and exaggerating their importance — often through busyness and frenetic activity. Becker describes the current prevalence of hedonism and triviality as a result of the downfall of religious worldviews such as Christianity that could take “slaves, cripples... imbeciles... the simple and the mighty” and allow them all to accept their animal nature in the context of a spiritual reality and an afterlife.

Humanity's traditional "hero-systems", such as religion, are no longer convincing in the age of reason. Becker argues that the loss of religion leaves humanity with impoverished resources for necessary illusions. Science attempts to serve as an immortality project, something that Becker believes it can never do because it is unable to provide agreeable, absolute meanings to human life. The book states that we need new convincing "illusions" that enable us to feel heroic in ways that are agreeable.

Becker, however, does not provide any definitive answer, mainly because he believes that there is no perfect solution. Instead, he hopes that gradual realization of humanity's innate motivations, namely death, can help to bring about a better world.

Becker argues that the conflict between contradictory immortality projects (particularly in religion) is a wellspring for the violence and misery in the world caused by wars, genocide, racism, nationalism and so forth since immortality projects that contradict one another threaten one’s core beliefs and sense of security.

This book is the best post hoc exegesis of Freud.

Everything is just cope isn't it?

>>19664913
Atheists who kill themselves have no copes. Pic related

Thoughts?

Is the denial of death any good?

>>15825939
>This won a pullitzer prize for nonfiction
>In the late 20th century casual philosophy and handwaving non-experimental guessing was considered medical science because the people practicing it were sufficiently rich.
>In the late 20th century people were being deprived of their rights as a human being because a "doctor" "interpreted" them to be mentally ill.
>Not only did the population at large not object, but this book LITERALLY WON A PULLITZER PRIZE FOR NONFICTION
>People still exist today who still consider the basic works of psychoanalysis to be sound as anything but casual pontification.

The first and only book that I could ever consider to be truly life-changing.

You need to read it.
Anon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death

Anyone else who wants to commit suicide not out of sadness but just because he sees it as the rational thing to do?

I've been thinking about it philosophically.

How do you decide when to stop reading something? I like to think I give the things I read a fair chance. I also don't like to waste time on things I really don't enjoy. What I'm finding is that my intellectual vanity usually wins out and I wind up spending a lot of time reading things I hate and they don't pay off. Sometimes they do, though.
Pic related is my current issue. I like the main thesis, and I'm interested in it as a reflection of its time and for its cultural impact, but I find it to be so poorly argued and so upsetting in its pseudo-scientism that I'm having trouble taking anything away from it.
I don't really want to discuss the book though. I'm just interested in other people's strategies for deciding when you've gotten all you're likely to get out of something you don't like.

Almost all human social behavior and neurosis can be explained by an unconscious or conscious fear of death.

This includes but is not limited to overeating, addiction, wealth hoarding, child rearing, legacy creation, political arguments, playing video games, watching tv, watching the news, and so on.

>>With anal play the child is already becoming a philosopher of the human condition. But like all philosophers he is still bound by it, and his main task in life becomes the denial of what the anus represents:

Do you recommend this book? Why?

What should I expect?