Does Fear Keep Us From Living Full Lives?

Democracy Newsletter: April 2024

By Steve Zolno

​Our discussion for March 11 was on Ernest Becker’s book The Denial of Death, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974, just after Becker died from cancer. It was extremely popular in its day. I was reminded about it by a documentary at a film festival I attended.
 
The author’s main theme is that the fear of death is what keeps people from living full lives, but he actually discusses how fear generally affects us. What does that have to do with democracy? Stay tuned.
 
The book starts by exploring the theme of heroism. We identify with our heroes because they defy death. But the author doesn’t seem to have a positive view of the role of heroism in society: “One of the key concepts for understanding man’s urge to heroism is the idea of narcissism. Narcissism is what keeps men marching point blank into wars: at heart one doesn’t feel he will die … Freud’s explanation for this was that the unconscious does not know death or time: in man’s inner organic recesses we feel immortal” (Page 2).
 
Another way he states we deny death is by accumulation: ‘We disguise our struggle by piling up figures in a bank book to reflect privately our sense of heroic worth. Or by having only a little better home in the neighborhood, or a bigger car” (Page 4).
 
Animals have a survival instinct, but humans are aware of themselves as individuals which leads to fear of death and a whole different level of self-preservation: “Animals in order to survive have had to be protected by fear-responses, in relationship not only to other animals but to nature itself … .Reality and fear go together naturally. Man’s fears are fashioned out of the ways he sees the world” (Pages 13–14).
 
Our idea of ourselves as separate from nature adds to our fear of death, but in reality all ends in anonymity: “Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature. He is a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity … .This self-consciousness gives man the status of a small god … at the same time man is food for worms” (Page 26).
 
Like many writers, Becker considers childhood a state where life is lived fully until we learn to restrict ourselves with rules that crimp our emotions and full participation in activities: “Children feel hounded by … verbal demands … rules and codes … that call them away from their pleasure in the straightforward expression of their natural energies” (Page 28).
 
But as adults, we are able to maintain our full participation in life to the extent we can bring love into it: “Love … allows the collapse of the individual into the animal dimension (of sexuality and his beast-like nature) without fear and guilt” (Page 42).
 
As does Kierkegaard, the author states that full participation in life brings uncertainty: “Full humanness means full fear and trembling … The world as it really is is devastating and terrifying” (Pages 59–60).
 
Parents should do all they can to avoid instilling a fear of living fully into their children: “Just as Rousseau and Dewey, Kierkegaard is warning the parent to let the child do his own exploration of the world and develop his own sure experimental powers” (Page 71). But parents still need to provide some guidance: “On the other hand, children are best not left totally free if they are to develop a confident sense of how to navigate life” (Page 75).
 
The author considers depression to be a condition created by denial of death. But here he begins to reveal that what he also means is fear of being — and expressing — oneself: “The depressed person is so afraid of being himself, of exerting his own individuality … that he seems stupid. … One can hardly breathe or move” (Page 79).
 
Which leads to his model for how we can live when not continually affected by fear (which is much like his idea of how children express themselves when not inhibited): “The ‘healthy’ person … is the one who has transcended himself … by realizing the truth of his situation, by dispelling the lie of his character, by breaking his spirit out of its conditioned prison. The prison of one’s character is built … to deny one’s creatureliness [a word the author made up]” (Pages 86-87). This is not an easy existence: “It means that one lives unprotected by armor, exposed to his aloneness and helplessness” (Page 90).
 
The main theme comes through when he challenges Freud: “Consciousness of death is the primary repression, not sexuality [Page 96]. … He was haunted by death anxiety all his life and admitted that not a day went by that he did not think about it” (Page 102).
 
Now we get into the relevance of his views to history, and to democracy: “We know that all through history the masses have followed leaders because of the magic aura they projected, because they seemed larger than life … .Men don’t become slaves out of mere calculating self-interest; the slavishness is in the soul” (Page 127). He is telling us that fear of death causes people to seek immortality by joining movements that tie them to history and the greatness that outlives the lives of individuals.
 
From this view we can learn the relevance of movements in which joiners avoid responsibility — in their own minds — for actions that they likely would not take on their own: “When people give in to the leader’s commands they can always reserve the feeling that … [their acts] are the leader’s responsibility [Page 137]. … [and] The leader projects onto his followers his own inability to stand alone” (Page 139). Whereas in democracy, when it functions best, it is the responsibility of individuals to combine forces to best serve the needs of everyone.
 
Then the author takes us into what some may call the spiritual realm: “The person reaches out naturally for a self beyond his own self in order to know who he is, in order to feel that he belongs in the universe … It seems that the life force reaches naturally even beyond the earth itself, which is one reason man has always placed God in the heavens” (Pages 152–153). This leads to a conflict between what we might consider the individual self and the transcendental self: “Man wants to expand by merging with the powerful beyond that transcends him yet he wants to remain individual and aloof” (Page 155).
 
Love is another way we attempt to transcend ourselves: “If the love object is divine perfection, then one’s own self is elevated by joining one’s destiny to it” (Page 161).
 
But in the reality of our everyday lives: “The individual has to protect himself against the world. He can only do this as any other animal would: by narrowing down the world, shutting off experience” (Page 177).
 
A primary consideration is not gaining more knowledge, but using what we know: “The great characteristic of our time is that we know everything important about human nature there is to know. Yet never has there been an age in which so little knowledge is securely possessed, so little a part of the common understanding” (Page 209).
 
Perhaps convincing others, and even ourselves, of the correctness of our views, ties us to ideas that transcend us, and provides a glimpse of immortality: “People try so hard to win converts for their point of view because it is more than merely an outlook on life: it is an immortality formula” (Page 255).
 
So we try to become immortal by tying ourselves to grand ideas or what we consider the wisdom of the gods: “There is no way to overcome creature anxiety unless one is god and not a creature” (Page 261). Which leads to the concept of transference that is an essential principle in psychoanalysis: “The prophets of unrepression simply have not understood human nature; they envision a utopia with perfect freedom from inner restraint and outer authority … .Men need transference because they need to see their morality embodied” (Page 266).
 
But all our efforts at immortality are for naught because in a few generations we will be forgotten: “Man feels agonizingly unique, and yet knows this doesn’t make any difference [because] he has to go the way of the grasshopper” (Page 269).
 
Nevertheless, the author holds that happiness is possible: “Mental illness is due to ‘problems of living,’ but we must remember that life itself is the insurmountable problem. … When a person becomes less fragmented, less blocked and bottled up, he does experience real joy” (Page 270).
He lived and taught at Berkeley in the age of Transcendental Psychology and Maslow.
 
But, according to the author, moving past our worst fears only lands us in the world of normal, everyday anxiety: “Freud said he cured the miseries of the neurotic only to open him to the normal misery of life” (Page 271). The evils of the world are not only in our minds, but on the outside, in the nature of our everyday lives: “Taking life seriously means something like this: whatever man does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of creation” (Page 283).
 
So we distract ourselves from the reality of everyday life: “Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing. … Society contrives to help him forget” (Page 284).
 
Perhaps the ultimate questions that Becker poses are: “Are our lives less full and satisfying because we live in constant fear of disappointment?” or “Do we deprive ourselves of the full enjoyment of life because we are afraid to live fully?” We will get into answers to these questions in further discussions.
 
On the second Monday in April, we will be discussing Freud’s classic Civilization and Its Discontents which deals with how society both serves and alienates us. And in May we will discuss a new book by someone you know that might suggest some answers to these questions.

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Steve Zolno graduated from Shimer College with a bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences and holds a master’s in Educational Psychology from Sonoma State University. Steve has founded and directed private schools and a health care agency in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the author of six books.

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