To explain how the ‘primordial fear of mortality’ is the proximate cause and most critical underlying factor that leads human to theism, supernatural beliefs, religion, and spirituality. It is also the drive that tyranize religionists to kill in the name of their religion.
To resolve negative and violent religious issues, human must understand the structure, systems, and mechanism of this fear of mortality and how it motivate them towards theism-religion, and in some cases why it breeds negativity that impedes the progress of humanity. The focus of this article is on the spiritual aspects.
Survival At All Costs
All living entities and human beings are programmed to live and avoid death at all costs. This is to ensure the individual human survive especially during his/her potential reproductive life to bring forth the next generation that will facilitate the preservation of the human specie.
The fundamental neural programs of survival are pleasure and pain. Actions that align toward survival promote pleasure/comfort/assurance via the reward system, and actions that are a threat to survival invoke the pain circuitry to move humans away from the source of danger.
Self-Awareness of Self and Death
As humanity progress, humans were endowed with self-awareness and conscious self-reflection. This is necessary to ensure humans are aware of the greater dangers that are a threat to the suvival of the human specie. Unfortunately, self-awareness also make humans aware of their eventual unavoidable mortality. The awareness of one eventual death invokes the death anxiety and fears at the conscious and subconscious level to avoid death.
This instinctive death anxiety, is embedded in the human genes. The death anxiety in humans can range from an indifference attitude to morbid fears (thanatophobia) depending on one psychological make-up. This death anxiety (5) at the extreme can bring a sense of fear and terror to the individual. For the majority, the death anxiety is programmed to cause unbearable uneasiness, terrific, horrifying painful feelings of fears and anxieties.
Existential Crisis
The awareness of eventual death and it's inherent associated psychological pains caused an existential crisis that needed to be resolved.
Resolving the Existential Crisis
To resolve and soothe the psychological pains associated with the unbearable death anxieties, humans natural adopted various psychological defense mechanisms (3).
These defense mechanisms are;
1. Having faith in religion and belief systems that promise eternal life in heaven or continuation of existence in other forms. Since the follower is assured of everlasting life, he is consoled and the death anxiety is alleviated.
2. Invoking executive function of the prefrontal cortex to modulate and inhibit the neural programs of death anxiety by rationalization and self-psychotherapy. Like, no point crying over spilled milk, thus to concentrate on the now and make the best of the present situation.
3. Drugs that inhibit anxieties and promote calmness
4. Drugs to distort reality of death. Hallucinogens; psychedelics, dissociatives, and deliriants.
5. Various secular approaches. Psychotherapy. etc.
Each of the above method has its advantages and disadvantages.
Faith and Cognitive Dissonance
One problem associated with faith is that, it is irrational. Thus the promise of eternal life and continuation of existence as stated in the supposedly infallible holy texts are subject to the question of irrationality. As it is, a holy text written thousands of years ago will inevitably show doubts and questionable truths when subject to modern thoughts and rationality. E.g. Earth was flat or centre of the universe. Whatever, believers must acknowledge the infallibility of their holy texts.
Since the promise of eternal life hinges on the infallibility of the holy book, accepting any doubts in it could mean the reappearance of the death anxiety and its associated painful feelings. This dilemma is called cognitive dissonance which prevent many religionist not to question their beliefs.
Avoiding Cognitive Dissonance and Violence
Humans are by nature multi-variate and the world comprised of other believers and non-theists ther than one's own beliefs. Some believers will claim that theirs in the only way, while non-theists would claim that there is no way. When believers beliefs are questioned by others, cognitive dissonance arises together with its associated pains and anxieties.
Some believers will resort to all sort of arguments and insistence that their beliefs are 100% true to avoid cognitive dissonance.
At the extreme, some believers resort to violence to silence others from questioning the veracity of their holy books. The reason for this is, allowing any doubts of fallibility would destroy the assurance of eternal life and bring forth pains.These believers are like cults members who do not have the capacity to rationalize or has lost/surrender their ability to do so.
Margaret Singer (1979) writes about the problems faced by people coming out of cults. Among them is a severe inability to make decisions. This is not surprising. Cult members are not in the habit of making their own decisions: what to eat, when to eat, where to go, what to do, what to believe. All these and other decisions are made for them. Decision making involves the neocortex. Perhaps it is like a muscle that is weakened after disuse and needs exercise to get back into shape.
Many former members commented that they stayed in the cult out of fear. Cult doctrine teaches that the only path to salvation is through the cult. To leave is to risk eternal damnation. They were afraid of what would happen to them if they left. They were afraid of what would happen to their soul. Fear is a powerful emotion based in the R-complex. So, cults hook you and hold you by using the lower brain centers. (Ref)
Many (not all) religionists has similar mindsets of cult memebers as above.
A believer who is able to understand the fundamental basis of his belief as arising from the defense mechanism necessary to cope with death anxiety may be able to rationalize his behavior and use other non-belief alternatives to alleviate the death anxiety.
Implications
The primordial fear of mortality causes humans to resort to faith and beliefs originating from various holy texts. These holy texts contain certain ambiguous verses that are relevant at the time and circumstance the texts were written. Problems arise when over-zealous religionists commit 'negative' acts based on the literal interpretations of those verses.
By understanding the root causes of the primordial fear of mortality and using alternative defense mechanisms, religionists will put less realiance on the infallibility of holy texts, culminating in lesser negative acts that impedes the progress of humanity.
The irony is, some believers who resort to religion to soothe their primal fear of mortality, end up shortening their life and expediting their own mortality. Note the case of suicide bombers and other violence.
It is critical for humans to know themselves, understand their own human nature and how the primordial fear of mortality underlies and drives most of human behaviors. Since this primordial fear of mortality is natural and unavoidable as a result of our human nature, we need to take necessary steps to modulate it and not let it run out of our control. It should be done through the generic spiritual process that is common to all human beings.
Related Posts in this Blog
Know Thyself
The Survival Instinct
The Common Spiritual Process
Cognitive Dissonance
Notes and Related References
1. Theories of Death Anxiety and Fear
2. Concept of death and adjustment
3. Defense Mechanism - ward off death anxiety
4. A morbid or abnormal and persistent fear of death or dying is known as Thanatophobia or Thantophobia.
5. Anxiety (also called solicitude) is a physiological state characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components[1]. These components combine to create the painful feelings that we typically recognize as anger, fear, apprehension, or worry. Anxiety is often accompanied by physical sensations such as heart palpitations, nausea, chest pain, shortness of breath, stomach aches, or headache.
6. Cognitive dissonance
7. Faith = beliefs that is not based on proofs or reasons.
8. Terror Management Theory - Fear of Death
1 comments:
Here are abstracts of two of my published papers you might find of interest. I’d be glad to send the full texts, which also can be found on the internet in COGPRINTS.
Look forward to more communication on this quintessential human concern.
cmontell@comcast.net
Speculations on a Privileged State of Cognitive Dissonance
by Conrad Montell
Abstract. This paper examines two commonly held and conflicting cognitions in the modern world, each based on a belief vital to the individual's sense of self, both maintained in what is here considered as a chronic state of dissonance. This psychological inconsistency consists of an inherent practical belief in the goodness of empirical knowledge and a culturally-developed transcendent belief denying, or at least mitigating, empirical evidence about the finite nature of individual life and affirming a counter-empirical belief in supernatural: supra-cause-and-effect forces that influence life. I argue that since both beliefs are highly resistant to change, they lead to an impasse that individuals in diverse cultures have borne and been motivated to maintain. They have borne it, as I hope to show, because the consonant “cure” has proved to be more discomforting than the dissonant condition.
ON EVOLUTION OF GOD-SEEKING MIND:
AN INQUIRY INTO WHY NATURAL SELECTION WOULD FAVOR IMAGINATION AND DISTORTION OF SENSORY EXPERIENCE
by Conrad Montell
Abstract. The earliest known products of human imagination appear to express a primordial struggle with thoughts of dying and death. I argue that the structures and processes of imagination evolved in that struggle, in response to debilitating anxieties and fearful states that would accompany an incipient awareness of mortality. Imagination evolved to find that which would make the nascent apprehension of death more bearable, to engage in a search for alternative perceptions of death: a search that was beyond the capability of the external senses. I argue that imagination evolved as flight and fight adaptations in response to debilitating fears that paralleled an emerging foreknowledge of death. Imagination, and symbolic language to express its perceptions, would eventually lead to religious behavior and the development of cultural supports. Although highly speculative, my argument draws on recent brain studies, and on anthropology, psychology, and linguistics.
SETTING THE STAGE FOR IMAGINATION AND RELIGIOUS BEHAVIOR
"It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear--that engendered religion" (Einstein, 1954, p. 11).
For early Homo sapiens, big-brained and naturally curious, the emergence of self-awareness and a nascent awareness of mortality (perhaps as spandrels: as unavoidable consequences of increased brain size and intelligence) surely would lead to that experience of mystery. It also would lead to a new kind of survival problem. In contrast with specific responses to specific threats, what could be an appropriate response to awareness of a pervasive threat, an unavoidable danger that was not salient in the natural environment? How could such awareness benefit survival? Feeling the presence of such a predator, where there is no possible flight or fight, might more likely incapacitate or frighten one to death. Such awareness could hardly be reproductively beneficial unless it led to some adaptation that reduced the perceived danger. But what? Swifter legs? Keener sight? Sharper teeth? Stronger arms? None of these would do. What then? Since that "predator" lurks somewhere in the brain, the adaptation would have to respond to it there. It would evolve to be something quite new in nature.
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