TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY (TMT) AND OUR GREATEST TERROR

The prospect of our inevitable death might be the major life-controlling terror. Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski, psychologists at the University of Kansas, put together TMT in 1989 based upon the insights of Ernest Becker. According to them, death is the primary terror that requires our management. In an interview by The Atlantic magazine in 2012, Greenberg explained TMT:

·       …part of the human condition is living with a desire to continue to live and an inherent fear of death on the one hand, and, on the other, the knowledge that this desire will inevitably be thwarted and that what is feared will inevitably occur.

In light of this threat, Greenburg claims that our cultures have historically provided ways to cope with the terror of death:

·       These cultural worldviews portrayed the world as a meaningful, purposeful place in which death is not the ultimate end. Until very recently, these worldviews virtually always included the idea of a literal afterlife for some aspect of oneself -- a soul -- but also included modes of transcending death via permanent symbolic marks of the self, such as heroic deeds, great achievements, memorials, and heirs.

According to Greenburg, if we think that we will leave a positive mark upon the world, this understanding will help us cope with the impending threat. Meanwhile, we adopt a worldview of protective beliefs, a way to assure ourselves of our worthiness. However, according to Greenburg, when our worldview matrix is threatened by other beliefs, our terror management defenses are threatened and we become defensive:

·       Many subsequent studies have shown that reminders of death arouse negative responses to others who violate or challenge our own worldview, supporting one basic implication of TMT: that our need for terror management plays a substantial role in prejudice and intergroup conflict.

This defensive response can also be triggered by thoughts of our impending demise:

·       Studies revealed that when people consciously think about death, they just want to get it out of their minds, largely by convincing themselves, as my colleague Steve Chaplin puts it, "Not me, not now." They say, "I'm young, I'm healthy, I'm going to start eating right." But when death is on the fringes of consciousness, threatening to pop up, we keep it at bay by leaning on the defenses we learned as children. We try to comfort ourselves: "I'm good, so I'm protected; I'm special, I'm part of something great; I last, I'm above the fray, an eternal soul, not a mere material thing."

Many things can trigger the panic of the threat of death, and these have to be managed:

·       …when death is close to mind -- after watching an action flick, hearing about a celebrity death, reading about an act of terrorism online, noting a weird spot or new wrinkle, driving past a cemetery -- people become more adamant in their beliefs and get extra-motivated to distance themselves from their physicality and to assert their symbolic value -- their intellect, achievements, and so forth. They increase prejudice and aggression against others who are different. They reject the physical aspects of sex, avoid bodily activities, and use euphemisms for them. They show off their skills, smarts, fitness, and generosity. And indeed research has shown all of these things. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/05/how-the-unrelenting-threat-of-death-shapes-our-behavior/256728/

However, it seems that the threat of death includes other related elements, including the fear of judgment. Why include this element in what is already a major threat – physical death and the eradication of everything we have ever been? Let me try to answer this question with another question:

·       Why do rehearsals of our achievements and moral worthiness provide any kind of defense against the finality of death? What difference do these things make once our existence has been terminated?

They don’t make any difference, unless they address another closely issue associated with our death – our feelings of unworthiness and our fears of judgment. Ordinarily, we should regard death as the ultimate freedom from feelings of moral unworthiness. Why then the need to continue to recite our accomplishments and moral worthiness when faced with the prospect of death! Isn’t death the end of our story and the consciousness of it?

Evidently, we believe otherwise, despite our many denials, another form of terror management. Although many atheists claim that they have signed a comfortable peace with the claims of death, Greenburg and associates have found otherwise. NYU Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Thomas Nagel, had argued that no one can be impartial about God:

·       I am talking of...the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true...It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God. I don't want the universe to be like that...I am curious whether there is anyone who is genuinely indifferent as to whether there is a God. (The Last Word, Oxford University Press, 1997, 130)

I find it strange that Greenburg and company have left out this factor from their consideration of death. Perhaps it is because the prospect of our exposure is the greatest terror and judgment of all. This had been Jesus’ teaching:

·       “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” (John 3:19-20)