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Writer's pictureAndrew Scott

On Ernest Becker and Existentialism

Updated: Sep 28, 2022

On Ernest Becker and Existentialism [1] explores matters of life and death experiences leads more often than not to positive outcomes among young people and how it relates to mental health conditions.


Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i Faith, in a letter He wrote to a chief persecutor of Baha’is in the late 19th century, challenged us all to uncover the knowledge that would remove ‘fear’, and to apply this knowledge in education for greater effectiveness. We are going to see together in this article how understanding and then tackling existential fears at their roots will do much to relieve anxiety and despair in young people.


In the treasuries of the knowledge of God there lieth concealed a knowledge which, when applied, will largely, though not wholly, eliminate fear. This knowledge, however, should be taught from childhood, as it will greatly aid in its elimination... [2]

Living in the world of today is presenting quite a challenge for young people. Not only are they being bombarded with news and information from all over the world through their phones and other devices, they are also being expected - by their peers, as well as by wider society – to make up their own minds about who we are and what our purpose is. A spotlight has been thrown onto local and global issues, right before their faces, and they feel under pressure to process this information.

mental health

It is hardly surprising then that mental health issues among young people are on the rise[3] Existential (Merriam-Webster: of, related to or affirming a state of being) questions, linked to psychological symptoms and identity issues, are also increasing[4]. These increases were made considerably worse by the recent COVID-19 epidemic; but they were already getting worse before. These issues are matters of life and death for young people[5]. Work by professionals however shows that ‘existential therapy’ leads more often than not to positive outcomes among young people[6]


Of course, these negative feelings about self, purpose and society are not new. Previous examples are plentiful and have laid the foundation for the harmful and self-destructive stereotypes common place in contemporary culture. From Bertrand Russell’s “A Free Man’s Worship”[7], in which “all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system”. Through the ‘wild man of poetry’, Dylan Thomas, who in “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”[8] wanted us to ‘blaze like meteors’, to ‘burn and rave at the close of day’, to avoid the fate that their words and ‘frail deeds’ had ‘forked no lightning’ before the ‘dying of the light’. To the musician and entertainer Prince, who sang in “Party like it’s 1999”[9] “We could all die any day / But before I'll let that happen / I'll dance my life away”.


A turning point in our understanding of existentialism and mental health was reached with the publication of the enormously influential “The Denial of Death”[10] by cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker in 1973, just a year before his own passing.


Professor Becker sums up existential fear in these words: “This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression – and with all this yet to die.”


The development of human character from early childhood is in itself an attempt to shield us from the unfolding of the true horror. To see the world as it really is is devastating and terrifying. It achieves the very result that we have painfully built our characters over the years in order to avoid: it makes every-day, automatic, secure self-confident activity impossible.


Removed of the defences one has built up since childhood, and reminded of death, we are left only with the realisation that we are a miserable animal whose body decays, who will die, who will pass into dust and oblivion, disappear forever; whose life serves no conceivable purpose, who may as well not have been born.


Professor Ernest Becker
Professor Ernest Becker

The efforts we go to avoid, or deny, this death anxiety are enormous. These defences comprise of distractions. We disguise our struggle by piling up figures in bank accounts to reflect privately our sense of great achievement. Or by living in a better home, driving a bigger car, having brighter children. Unfortunately, the result of building such defences is destructive, both for ourselves, and for those around us. As Professor Becker says, “All through history it is the ‘normal, average men’ who, like locusts, have laid waste to the world in order to forget themselves.”


There are times though when these defences are no longer easily available. When the awareness dawns that has always been blotted out by frenetic, ready-made activity, the fear of death emerges in pure essence. This is why people have mental breakdowns when repression of the fear of death no longer works, when the forward momentum of activity is no longer possible. Few better examples exist than widespread social isolation among young people, and the enforced isolation and cessation of usual activities during pandemic public health measures.


We can easily see therefore from Professor Becker’s work that mitigating the fear of death will lead to dramatically improved mental health outcomes among young people.


Initially popularised through Professor Raymond Moody’s works “Life After Life”[11] and “Reflections On Life After Life”[12], the accounts of Near-Death Experiencers (NDErs) are now subject to very careful study by experts[13]. Thousands of anonymised accounts have been collected for analysis[14], and have been written about in academic journals[15].These accounts describing ‘ineffable’ (Merriam-Webster: incapable of being expressed in words) experiences whose meaning is often personal to the NDEer; the NDEer themselves face many internal and external barriers to sharing their accounts. Their accounts may contain information that can show what they experienced was genuine[16], but it is the themes they address that are most interesting.


Taken as a whole, these accounts show how NDErs discover their actions and intentions have affected others; how their lives have been transformed by unconditional love; and how everyone and everything is intimately connected. They give meaning and purpose to life, and help us understand the source of intuition or inspiration. But most of all, NDEers have reported that their fear of death was completely eliminated. Merely learning about the accounts of NDEers conveys many of the same benefits as having had the NDE[17].


Although death is often seen as a taboo subject in educational contexts[18], even primary age children have more awareness of death than we would often suppose[19]. Further, parents are supportive of educating their children about death[20]. Recent and ongoing research[21] show that there are links between death anxiety and a bewildering array of mental health conditions in young people.


Providing children and young people of all ages with material on NDEer accounts, in a supportive and guided environment that encourages them to investigate and make up their own minds, has the clear potential to change educational outcomes and mental health for the better.


As Baha’u’llah has said, showing children and young people that we carry on after death will largely eliminate their fear of death.

 

  1. Written using in part material from the unpublished manuscript “Re-Discovering Who We Are”, by the present author

  2. Baha’u’llah, “Epistle to the Son of the Wolf”, p32

  3. https://www.elevate.community/blog/musings-on-existential-approaches-for-young-people

  4. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-006-9032-y

  5. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/health/mental-health-crisis-teens.html

  6. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022167819846284

  7. “A Free Man’s Worship”, in “Mysticism and Logic”, Bertrand Russell, Routledge, 1976; see also Bertrand Russell's Crisis of Faith.Nicholas Griffin - 1984 - Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies 4 (1):101.

  8. https://literarydevices.net/do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/

  9. https://www.newframe.com/political-songs-1999-by-prince/

  10. "The Denial of Death”, Ernest Becker, The Free Press, 1973, later republished by Souvenir Press, 2011, 2020

  11. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/345782/life-after-life-by-moody-ray/9781846046988

  12. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88130.Reflections_On_Life_After_Life

  13. https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/01/NDE41LCI-R-JNDS.pdf

  14. https://www.nderf.org/Archives/NDERF_NDEs.html

  15. https://iands.org/research/publications/journal-of-near-death-studies.html

  16. https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Self-Does-Not-Die/9780997560800

  17. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/190207.Lessons_from_the_Light

  18. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042815021965

  19. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2017.0267

  20. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32915690/

  21. https://psychology.org.au/for-members/publications/inpsych/2018/december-issue-6/death-anxiety-the-worm-at-the-core-of-mental-heal






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