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@Enrico_sw

The first part of the book is on youtube- however I wouldn't casually recommend listening to the whole audiobook (almost 12 hours). (I didn't like about half of the book- the other half was brilliant).  The goodreads quotes summarize the best material.  

I do recommend the film from the Ernst Becker foundation (Flight from Death, posted in the previous page) which is an introduction to Terror management theory.  "The Worm at the Core" is  an essential book on the subject so far as it in-cooperates the most insightful aspects of 500 studies.

^ Yeah, I usually don't listen to audiobooks, I prefer to read. It's harder to concentrate with audiobooks imho.

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Polish women are great!

On 8/8/2019 at 6:02 PM, Enrico_sw said:

I've read French philosophers on this subject (who were essentially bulding up on past philosophers' work like Becker, though they would base it on the likes of Voltaire and Nietzsche). One of them defined philosophies as a "doctrines of salvation" (ways to transcend death). I believe that's what Becker says (from what I've read in your links). Communism, Scientism (and lany "...isms") etc. are doctrines of salvation.

I like Becker's explanation on human beings: " the essence of man is really his paradoxical nature, the fact that he is half animal and half symbolic".

I listen to as many audiobooks as possible because I can "read" a book in a much shorter amount of time while doing something else.  I walk about 10 hours a week and always put them on so I finish audiobooks every week.  I put them on when I'm doing chores as well.

The core of these books is about studying how death anxiety effects many aspects of human life (individual and cultural).  I found this material to be very illuminating.  Like all people, I have a certain amount of death anxiety of myself and I understand the complex meaning of it better now.  In a way these materials fulfill a gap that evolutionary psychology places: EP talks a lot about "survival" instincts and these materials break it down in its myriad practical and real life dynamics.

Terror management theory would say that human religions and political systems are a function of death anxiety- they are immortality vehicles to provide meaning to man's life.  It would say that desire to make babies is also influenced in part by death anxiety- it is way to pass part of yourself on after your physical death. Same for creatives/builders dedicating their lives to make enduring art, culture, structures, etc.

The catchphrase "worm at the core" is aimed at saying that death anxiety is actually always there, hidden in our subconscious and influencing our behavior.  

Related to these books is "Staring at the Sun" by the famous existential psychologist Yalom.  This book is entirely in agreement with terror management theory and is about how to reduce death anxiety.  I have already begun reading it.

16 hours ago, Enrico_sw said:

 

 

Polish women are great!

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Constance Jablonski is half-polish, half french.  does she look like that to you?

I find her one of the most sexually attractive and beautiful models.

I want to have kids with her genes:❤️

Game of Thrones also tackles and lampoons death anxiety quite a lot:

Cersei/Tywinn's beloved legacy, Dany's birthright, and Arya and the death cult:

"Each of us has a taste of death when slipping into sleep every night or when losing consciousness under anesthesia. Death and sleep, Thanatos and Hypnos in the Greek vocabulary, were twins. The Czech existential novelist Milan Kundera suggests that we also have a foretaste of death through the act of forgetting: “What terrifies most about death is not the loss of the future but the loss of the past. In fact, the act of forgetting is a form of death always present within life.”"

"In many people, death anxiety is overt and easily recognizable, however distressing. In others, it is subtle, covert, and hidden behind other symptoms, and it is identified only by exploration, even excavation."

"She was especially haunted by the thought expressed in her last two lines: Death is everything / And it is nothing. She explained that the thought of becoming nothing consumed her and became everything. But the poem contains two important comforting thoughts: that by leaving traces of herself, her life will gain in meaning, and that the best she can do is to embrace the present moment."

"For me a reunion is like the conclusion to stories that I began reading thirty, forty, even fifty years before. Classmates have a shared history, a sense of deep intimacy with one another. They knew you when you were young and fresh and before you had developed a grown-up persona. Perhaps this is the reason that reunions give rise to an astonishing number of new marriages. Old classmates feel trustworthy, old loves are rekindled, all are members of a drama begun long ago against a backdrop of limitless hope. I encourage my patients to attend their reunions and to keep a journal of their reactions when they do."

"

The frightening thought of inevitable death, Epicurus insisted, interferes with our enjoyment of life and leaves no pleasure undisturbed. Because no activity can satisfy our craving for eternal life, all activities are intrinsically unrewarding. He wrote that many individuals develop a hatred of life—even, ironically, to the point of suicide; others engage in frenetic and aimless activity that has no point other than the avoidance of the pain inherent in the human condition.

Epicurus addressed the unending and unsatisfying search for novel activities by urging that we store and recall deeply etched memories of pleasant experiences. If we can learn to draw on such memories again and again, he suggested, we will have no need for endless hedonistic pursuit.

Legend has it that he followed his own advice, and on his deathbed (of complications following kidney stones) Epicurus retained equanimity despite searing pain by recalling pleasurable conversations with his circle of friends and students.

It is part of Epicurus’s genius to have anticipated the contemporary view of the unconscious: he emphasized that death concerns are not conscious to most individuals but must be inferred by disguised manifestations: for example, excessive religiosity, an all-consuming accumulation of wealth, and blind grasping for power and honors, all of which offer a counterfeit version of immortality.

While reflecting on the plane home about the reunion, Barbara had an epiphany that permitted her a new perspective on death. Perhaps death was not quite the annihilation she had thought. Perhaps it was not so essential that her person or even memories of her person survived. Perhaps the important thing was that her ripples persist, ripples of some act or idea that would help others attain joy and virtue in life, ripples that would fill her with pride and act to counter the immorality, horror, and violence monopolizing the mass media and the outside world."

"As she delivered the talk and scanned the funeral assemblage, she could physically feel aspects of her mother that had rippled into her friends, who in turn would pass the ripples on to their children and children’s children."

"But the idea of rippling—of continued existence through the acts of caring and help and love she passed on to others—greatly attenuated her fear."

"Good Deeds accompany one to death and will ripple on to succeeding generations."

"

Rippling is cousin to many strategies that share the heart-wrenching longing to project oneself into the future. Most apparent is the desire to project oneself biologically through children transmitting our genes, or through organ donation, in which our heart beats for another and our corneas permit vision."

"

Perhaps I’ve focused particularly on rippling because my vantage point as a therapist gives me an unusually privileged view of the silent, gentle, intangible transmission that occurs from one individual to another."

"The phenomenon of rippling, of creating something that will be passed on and that will enlarge the life of others, transforms his terror into deep satisfaction. The film emphasizes, too, that it is the park, not the transmission of his identity, that is paramount. In fact, at his wake, the drunken municipal bureaucrats enter into a lengthy ironic discussion of whether Watanabe should be given any credit whatsoever for the creation of the park.

Freud disputed the poet’s gloomy conclusion and vigorously denied that transiency negates value or meaning.

“On the contrary,” he exclaimed. “An increase! Limitation in the possibility of an enjoyment raises the value of the enjoyment.” Then he offered a powerful counterargument to the idea that meaninglessness is inherent in transiency:

“Everything fades: alternatives exclude.”

As I’ve already had much to say about “everything fades,” let me turn to the implications of the second proposition. “Alternatives exclude” is the underlying reason many people are driven to distraction by the necessity to make a decision. For every yes there must be a no, and every positive choice means you have to relinquish others. Many of us shrink from fully apprehending the limits, diminishment, and loss that are riveted to existence.

For example, relinquishment was an enormous problem for Les"

"In therapy we focused on his resistance to saying no to other alternatives. As I pressed him on what it would mean to say no—that is, close his office and end his affairs—he gradually became aware of his grandiose self-image. He had been the family’s multitalented golden boy—a musician, athlete, national honors winner in science. He knew he could have succeeded at any profession he chose, and he viewed himself as someone exempt from the limitations of others, someone who should not have to give up anything. “Alternatives exclude” might apply to others, but not to him. His personal myth was that life was an eternal spiral upward, into a bigger and better future, and he resisted anything that threatened that myth."

"he was attempting to evade the rule of “alternatives exclude,” and the clarification of this attempt sharpened our focus and accelerated our future work in therapy. Once he could accept relinquishment and turn his attention away from frantically holding on to everything he had ever had, we were able to work on his experiencing life and particularly his relationships with his wife and children in the immediate present."

One of Nietzsche’s favorite phrases is amor fati (love your fate): in other words, create the fate that you can love.

"the essays emphasize that it is only what an individual is that counts; neither wealth nor material goods nor social status nor a good reputation results in happiness. "

"What we represent in the eyes of others. Reputation is as evanescent as material wealth. Schopenhauer writes, “Half our worries and anxieties have arisen from our concern about the opinions of others … we must extract this thorn from our flesh.” So powerful is the urge to create a good appearance that some prisoners have gone to their execution with their clothing and final gestures foremost in their thoughts. The opinion of others is a phantasm that may alter at any moment. Opinions hang by a thread and make us slaves to what others think or, worse, to what they appear to think—for we can never know what they actually think.

3. What we are. It is only what we are that truly matters. A good conscience, Schopenhauer says, means more than a good reputation. Our greatest goal should be good health and intellectual wealth, which lead to an inexhaustible supply of ideas, independence, and a moral life. Inner equanimity stems from knowing that it is not things that disturb us, but our interpretations of things."

"Once, decades ago, as I was saying goodbye to a patient near death, she asked me to lie next to her on her bed for a while. I did as she requested and, I believe, offered her comfort. Sheer presence is the greatest gift you can offer anyone facing death (or a physically healthy person in a death panic)."

one fine day, a member opened our meeting with an announcement: “I have decided that there is, after all, something that I can still offer. I can offer an example of how to die. I can set a model for my children and my friends by facing death with courage and dignity.”

"It was a revelation that lifted her spirits, and mine, and those of the other members of the group. She had found a way to imbue her life, to its very end, with meaning."

"Julia’s instantaneous comment—“I’d say to her, you are living a life of absurdity!”—signaled that she needed only the slightest guidance to discover her own wisdom. Therapists have always operated under the assumption that the truth one discovers for oneself has far greater power than a truth delivered by others."

"

Now, at the age of sixty, he was firmly persuaded that he was too old and too isolated to leave his wife. He made it crystal clear to me that any discussion of ending, or threatening to end, his marriage was offlimits. Despite his wife’s addiction, he genuinely loved her, needed her, and took his marital vows seriously. He knew that she could not live without him.

I realized that his death anxiety was related to his having only partially lived and having stifled his own dreams for happiness and fulfillment. His terror and nightmares flowed from his sense that time was running out, his life slipping away.

I was particularly struck by his isolation. The need for secrecy had precluded any intimate relationship other than the troubled and ambivalent one with his wife."

In future sessions, he acknowledged that he had settled for an impaired relationship because he didn’t believe he deserved more, and acknowledged the far-reaching ramifications of his marriage. His shame and need for secrecy had eliminated any other social life.

My work with Jack demonstrates how a stifled life may express itself as death terror. Of course he was in terror: he had much to fear from death because he had not lived the life available to him. Legions of artists and writers have expressed this sentiment in a multiplicity of tongues, from Nietzsche’s “Die at the right time” to the American poet John Greenleaf Whittier’s “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’”

My work with Jack was also sprinkled with attempts to help him locate and revitalize neglected parts of himself, ranging from his poetic gifts to his thirst for an intimate social network.

I also tried to reduce Jack’s isolation, not by pointing out the social opportunities available to him, but instead by focusing on the major obstacles to intimate friendships: his shame and belief that others would regard him as a foolish man. And, of course, his leap into intimacy with me was a major step: isolation only exists in isolation; once shared, it evaporates.

On 8/11/2019 at 5:21 PM, Cult Icon said:

Constance Jablonski is half-polish, half french.  does she look like that to you?

Maybe she has something Polish in her, but she sounds really like a Parisian woman (in the way she behaves or speaks).

"My sister, seven years older, was home at the time and remembers none of this, though she recalls much that I do not. Such is the power of repression, that exquisitely selective process that—in determining what one remembers, what one forgets—is instrumental in constructing the unique personal world of each of us."

"

Each of us has a powerful desire to revere the great man or great woman, to utter the thrilling words “Your Holiness.” Perhaps this is what Erich Fromm, in Escape from Freedom, meant by “lust for submission.” It is the stuff from which religion emerges.

In sum, I feel that in my life and profession I have fulfilled myself and realized my potential. Such realization is not only satisfying; it is a buttress against transiency and impending death. Indeed, to a great extent my work as a therapist has always been part of my coping. I feel blessed to be a therapist: watching others open up to life is extraordinarily satisfying. Therapy offers opportunities par excellence for rippling. In every hour of work, I am able to pass along parts of myself, parts of what I have learned about life."

"it’s only the human world, the world of human connections, that matters to me. I’d have no sadness, no grief at the thought of leaving an empty world, a world lacking another self-aware subjective mind. The idea of rippling, of passing along to others what has mattered to one life, implies connection with other self-aware essences; without that, rippling is impossible."

"I have let go of the wish, the hope, that I myself, my image, will persist in any tangible form. Certainly there will come a time when the last living person who has ever known me dies. "

"But are there no limits to the value of connections? After all, you might ask, if we are born alone and must die alone, then what lasting fundamental value can connection have? "

" I agree with her—rich connections temper the pain of transiency. "

"To me, transience is like background music: always playing, rarely noticed until some striking event brings it into full awareness."

"Isn’t the creative act in itself entwined with concern about finiteness? Such was the belief of Rollo May, a fine writer and painter, whose lovely cubistic painting of Mount St. Michel hangs in my office. Persuaded that the act of creation permits us to transcend our fear of death, he continued writing almost to the very end. Faulkner expressed the same belief: “The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again.” And Paul Theroux said that death was so painful to contemplate that it causes us to “to love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.”

"SEX AND DEATH In respect to the issue of sex and death, not only did love-merger assuage Mark’s existential anxiety, but another death-anxiety emollient—the power of sexuality—kicked in. Sex, the vital life force, often counters thoughts of death. I’ve encountered many instances of this mechanism"

"the patient with a severe coronary who was so sexually driven that in an ambulance carrying him to the emergency room, he attempted to grope an ambulance attendant; or the widow who felt overcome with sexual feelings while driving to her husband’s funeral; or the elderly widower, terrified by death, who became uncharacteristically sexually driven and had so many sexual affairs with women in his retirement community and created such divisiveness that the management demanded he seek psychiatric consultation. Still another elderly woman, after her twin sister had died from a stroke, became so overcome with multiple orgasms while using a vibrator that she feared she too would suffer a stroke. Worried lest her daughters discover the vibrator next to her body, she decided to dispose of it."

"he was anxious about how his daughter would cope without him. I addressed this fear by helping him see its irrationality and that he was projecting his own issues onto his daughter "

"This act was infinitely more supportive than any words of reassurance I might have uttered. The therapeutic act is far more effective than the therapeutic word."

Culture “is the ‘religion’ that assures in some way the perpetuation of its members.”  “[A]ll systematizations of culture have in the end the same goal: to raise men above nature, to assure them that in some ways their lives count in the universe more than merely physical things count” 

Primitive man recognizes and honors the most talented, esp. those adept in hunting and fighting (in wars).  Why esp. these latter activities?  “B/c in these activities certain individuals could single themselves out as adept at defying death…If you identified w/ these persons and followed them, then you got the same immunities they had.  This is the basic role and function of the hero in history: he is the one who gambles w/ his very life and successfully defies death, and men follow him and eventually worship his memory b/c he emboldens the triumph over what they fear most, extinction and death” 43.