terror management theory

Memento mori photo: "Long exposures when taking photographs meant that the dead were often seen more sharply than the slightly-blurred living, because of their lack of movement."

Fear of death. Is that what we feel when we see Victorian photos like the one above? Does it bring the reality of death closer? And does that fear lurk behind many or most of our waking thoughts and behaviors? This is the fundamental position of terror management theory.

It's been a while since I explored terror management theory (TMT), but it arose again when I was writing about the overturning of worldviews. (Here's a short video that I found a useful summary of TMT.) Why? The premise of TMT is that because humans are uniquely able to cognize our own deaths, we are subject to terror that arises from that knowledge. A secure worldview (including religious and spiritual systems) offers guardrails around the inevitable fact of physical death. (Think eternal life in Christianity, rebirth in Buddhism, reincarnation in Hinduism, the prospect of heaven in Islam, etc..)

How has/have your worldview(s) affected your perspective on death? Consider your religious or spiritual background (or lack thereof), the prevailing attitudes in your culture, your own direct experiences with death (e.g., the death of a loved one or a near-death experience).

Numerous studies have shown that when our awareness of the inevitability of our own death is in the foreground, we are more likely to act to defend our worldview and to vilify (and worse) others who do not share that worldview. (There's a funny but chilling experiment with hot sauce--the hot sauce paradigm--that demonstrates this.) Saying that humans will defend to the death their own worldview takes on new meaning.

All this is to say that having a worldview overturned can disrupt our most firmly held beliefs, including beliefs around death.