The Slavery of Death

by Richard Beck

Basically, for a hero system to “work,” for it to give us a sense of security and permanence in the face of death, we need to experience it as absolute, unassailable, true, eternal, transcendent, and ultimate. This belief is threatened when we come into contact with cultural outsiders who espouse different values. The existence of other ways of life, other values, and other paths by which to pursue significance threaten to relativize our culture’s unique values. That is, we find in our encounter with cultural outsiders that our “way of life” is just one among many in the marketplace of worldviews. This discovery shakes our confidence that our particular worldview is both true and eternal. If there are many hero systems, how can we be sure that our culture’s specific system is durable and eternal in the face of death? If our cultural lifeways are revealed to be arbitrary and relative, then their function as existential lifeboats—as cultural containers of immortality that we can pour our lives into—is radically compromised. In short, alternative hero systems—other values, worldviews, and ways of life—threaten to undo everything that has made our lives feel significant, meaningful, and secure in the face of death. The ideological Other—usually some out-group member who has different values and beliefs from our own—presents us with an implicit critique of our personal hero system. This threatens us to the core, attacks the very source of our self-esteem. This means that the id...