The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker Explained
"Sheldon Solomon video used by permission from Contemporary Heroism Initiative, LLC. All rights reserved."
Starts out with a presentation of Terror Management Theory and some of its evidence, using excerpts from various talks & documentaries. Followed by a perspective on world history derived from Ernest Becker's Escape From Evil, The Denial of Death and the University of Amsterdam's study Things Will Get Better: The Anxiety-Buffering Qualities of Progressive Hope http://www.academia.edu/534931/Things...
The video is also informed by historical evidence about ecological degradation and the unpredictability of technological developments.
From the perspective of Ernest Becker & TMT, self-esteem is primarily a reflex of an unconscious fear of death; and human culture an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our mortality - which in turn acts as the emotional and intellectual response to our basic survival mechanism.
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Interestingly, the other competing (or complementary) major theory of self-esteem comes from CP - coalitional psychology (also known as Sociometer Theory”) basically saying that what others think of us has survival & reproductive benefits, so that a sense of self-esteem would help us improve or maintain this fitness by self-monitoring - gauging others’ opinion and modifying our behavior accordingly. This would largely entail a view of history as an evolutionary adaptive set of behaviors.
The problem with CP as a sole explanation is that
1) Our status or “what others think of us” is substantially mediated by invented, largely arbitrary cultural activities and beliefs (abstract meaning systems) that have virtually nothing to do with the specific adaptive threats we encountered (or that could even be logically postulated) in the course of evolution. Work on primates shows that coalitions and alliances in primate groups serve very specific adaptive goals.
2) terror management theory has shown that reminders of death increase allegiance to these abstract meaning systems, and that, conversely, challenges to these meaning systems increase death-thought accessibility. These abstract meaning systems may or may not facilitate the formation and maintenance of coalitions, but TMT evidence shows that this is largely on the basis of a suppression of unconscious death-anxiety (an unfortunate byproduct of our adaptive intelligence), not as a specific adaptation for survival.
3) Every major culture we know of features religious or supernatural beliefs which have at least as much to do with what gods or spirits think of us (or imply about us), than what others think of us. And religious beliefs are definitely proven to diminish death anxiety.