The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

by Sheldon Solomon

Ironically, then, a good deal of evil in the world results from efforts to rid the world of evil.

Although symbolization, self-consciousness, and the capacity to transform figments of our imagination into reality have been of tremendous service to us humans, they have also made us aware of our vulnerability, transience, and mortality. Confidence in a cultural scheme of things and our own self-worth banish the dread. But when someone “different” challenges our core beliefs or sense of significance, we want to derogate, dehumanize, assimilate, demonize, humiliate, and destroy them. Perhaps the only reason humans have survived to date is that until recently, we lacked the technological means to exterminate ourselves.

Our bodies and animality are threatening reminders that we are physical creatures who will die. To manage our terror of death we have to be much more than that; and a fundamental function of cultural worldviews is to prevent our bodies from undermining our pretentions of meaning and significance.

Death thoughts also prod people to avoid activities that remind them of their animality. After pondering their mortality, men and women spent less time having a foot massage, and women were more reluctant to conduct breast self-exams.

Disgust likely evolved to steer our ancestors away from spoiled meat and other organic materials that carried deadly pathogens that could literally kill them.

as the awareness of death emerged, disgust extended to a broader range of reminders of our animality, such as guts, bones, blood, and bodily emissions. Indeed, people find urine, mucus, feces, vomit, and blood more disgusting after thinking about death, and vice versa: thinking about bodily products like feces brings death thoughts more readily to mind. And after thinking about death, people tend to refer to bodily processes more euphemistically, for example, “number two” instead of “defecation.”

Some beautifications are obviously in the service of being more attractive and admired. It is no coincidence, however, that such efforts are almost always directed toward reducing our resemblance to other animals.

the youth within a culture often develop their own variants of beauty, perhaps in part to distance themselves from the elderly on the cusp of death.

Tattoos have been around as long, and are now as popular, as body piercing. Tattoos are symbols on our body that convey meaning and significance and thereby reinforce that we are more than mere animals.

we discovered that human beings use two distinct kinds of psychological defenses to cope with thoughts of death. When we are conscious of death, our proximal defenses are activated. These are rational (or rationalizing) efforts to get rid of such thoughts. We either repress these uncomfortable thoughts, try to distract ourselves, or push the problem of death into the distant future. In contrast, unconscious thoughts of death instigate our distal defenses. These defenses have no logical or semantic relation to the problem of death. Prescribing harsher punishment for criminals, derogating others who repudiate our cultural values, or attempting to boost our self-esteem has little or no direct bearing on the brute fact that we will someday die. Nevertheless, such reactions muffle mortal terror because they support the belief that we will endure in some literal or symbolic form beyond our death.

Proximal and distal defenses typically work in tandem. A reminder of death prompts a proximal defense as we try to get the unpleasant thought out of our mind. But once we do that, those thoughts linger on the fringes of our consciousness, and then our distal defenses kick in. This explains why most people believe they don’t think about death or that they’re not affected by such thoughts, despite being bombarded with intimations of mortality every day.

proximal defenses enable us to depose death thoughts from the forefront of our mind, and distal defenses keep unconscious dea...

The fact is, your brain gnaws anxiously on the bone of death more often than you think, but the ongoing operation of proximal and distal defenses keeps you from realizing it.

people are especially eager to avoid focusing on themselves after thinking about death. Overeating, excessive drinking, chain-smoking, and long stints in front of the television all reduce self-awareness.

When death thoughts are conscious, most people—fitness buffs and stamp collectors alike—say they will exercise more because the health and longevity benefits of exercise flush death thoughts from awareness. However, once death thoughts are unconscious, only those who base their self-esteem on fitness respond to unconscious death thoughts by saying they would work out more regularly.

reminders of death increase our tendency to cling to our worldviews and live up to their dictates. Consequently, if you believe that modern medicine is evil, the reminder of mortality that comes with getting sick leads you to deal with your illness in a way that comports with your worldview.

unconscious death thoughts tend to boost ideologically driven medical noncompliance.

Schizophrenics thus vacillate between feeling imminently imperiled by malevolent powers and feeling gloriously empowered to thwart them.

Clinical observations verify that schizophrenics suffer from an overriding fear of, or persistent ruminations about, death.

For those unable to physically escape, dissociation provides a psychological exodus from the horror of the traumatic event.

Dissociation makes the unbearable less unbearable, at least in the short run. But it also prevents people from coming to terms with their traumatic experiences. People who dissociate during a traumatic event are more prone to subsequently develop PTSD.

Clinical studies find suicidal children are more likely than nonsuicidal children to view death as a continuation of life in which long-standing wishes may be fulfilled.

Children everywhere enjoy spinning around and rolling down hills to make themselves dizzy, suggesting that humans have an innate fondness for alterations of consciousness.

A sense of meaninglessness often results from the client’s taking a galactic view of the world in which all culture-based meanings fall away, leaving only an absurd, indifferent universe in its wake. No self-respecting existential psychotherapist would argue that life has any inherent or ultimate meaning. Instead, she would try to bring the client down to a less grand perspective on life by encouraging the person to focus on what matters to him in his life.

If you go into a relationship wanting the other person to know you fully, you will inevitably be disappointed and frustrated. By trying to use another person to overcome existential isolation, people are seeking too much and therefore often end up getting too little.

Once the person understands what a relationship with another person cannot provide, the person can begin to focus on the positive things that they can provide. The key to forging good relationships that reduce feelings of existential isolation and loneliness is to have the goal of getting to know another person rather than the goal of meeting your own needs.

By getting to know someone as a whole person rather than a need fulfiller, you can come to realize that the other person as just as ultimately alone as you are. But you now have that in common.

Life is nobody’s private property, but is everyone’s to use.”

From Lucretius

According to Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, the fundamental problem with all “isms” is confusing their way with The Way: “It makes its myths and doctrines, its rites and laws into ultimates and persecutes those who do not subject themselves to it.”