maandag 27 april 2020

Sheer Existential Dread


The secret to Trump’s success? It’s sheer existential dread

 This article is more than 5 months old
Trump speaks at the White House in May, 2019
 Studies confirm that mortal terror amplifies support for Trump Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images










In a recent experiment, American participants were asked: “Please describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you” and “Write down as specifically as you can what you think will happen to you physically as you die and once you are dead.” Moments later, those who had been asked to contemplate their mortality reported more negative attitudes towards immigrants, greater opposition to a mosque being built in their neighbourhood, and a greater likelihood of voting for Donald Trump for president.
What could possibly explain these findings?


In The Denial of Death (1973), cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker argued that while humans share a basic biological predisposition towards self-preservation with all life forms, we are unique in our capacity for symbolic thought, including self-awareness. This gives rise to the unsettling realisation that death is inevitable, can occur at any time, and that we are ultimately no more significant or enduring than turtles or turnips.
The unvarnished awareness of death engenders potentially debilitating existential terror, which humans manage by embracing cultural worldviews – for example, a religious identity such as Christianity, or a national identity such as “Englishness”. These worldviews confer a sense that one is a person of value in a world of meaning, and hence eligible for immortality (either literally, through the heavens, afterlives and souls central to most religions; or symbolically, by being a member of a great and enduring tribe or nation, having children, amassing great fortunes or producing noteworthy works of art or science). People are therefore highly motivated to maintain faith in their cultural worldviews as a psychological bulwark against existential dread.

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