In the Shadow of Sun Mountain (Tava Kaavi): The Psychology of Othering and the Origins of Evil

“By taking this land for granted, we’ve anesthetized ourselves to history…we live in a state of blunted feeling, capable of cheerful indifference when we visit land once steeped in human agony. Contemplating this indifference can be, at first, infuriating. Americans ought to know what acts of violence brought them their right to own land, build homes, use resources, and travel freely in North America. Americans ought to know what happened on the ground they stand on; they surely have some obligation to know where they are”.
From the book “Sweet Medicine” by Drex Brooks, 1995.

These photographs and paintings represent an esoteric conflict that’s rooted in our unconscious denial of death. That conflict is the psychological underpinning of the atrocities that happened on this land. I’ve connected these ideas through the content of the images and the materials and processes that I used to make the photographs. These ideas are represented both symbolically and literally.

I live in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, just west of Sun Mountain (Tava). I live on the land where the Utes (Tabeguache band) spent their summer months for hundreds of years before the white man came to this continent and dispossessed them of their land, culture, and lives.

This body of work addresses how human beings deal with their own sense of mortality. Cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, experimental social psychologist Sheldon Solomon, and many others had a significant influence on the project. The foundation of this work is mortality salience. Individuals' awareness of their impending death is referred to as "mortality salience." The phrase comes from the terror management theory, which contends that mortality salience causes existential anxiety that a person's cultural worldview and sense of self-worth may be able to buffer.

“The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity – designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man.”

— Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

When individuals are reminded of their own mortality, they may experience increased levels of anxiety and be more likely to cling to cultural worldviews, such as religious beliefs, political ideologies, or cultural norms, that offer a sense of security and meaning. This, in turn, can lead to an increase in behaviors that defend these worldviews, such as prejudice against people who hold different beliefs, increased aggression towards others who challenge their beliefs, or a heightened sense of nationalism or patriotism.

Terror management theory has been supported by a large body of empirical research, including studies that have found that reminders of mortality can increase the likelihood of people holding onto their cultural beliefs and values, engaging in pro-social behavior, and supporting individuals or groups who share their beliefs. Additionally, research has found that people are more likely to seek out others who share their cultural beliefs and values when they are reminded of their own mortality, and that this can lead to increased feelings of comfort and security.

I was aware of my own death anxiety while making these photographs, my “immortality project,” as Becker would say. The history of this place weighs on me. I’ve made these images to address that anxiety. I’ve found, to some extent, a kind of therapy or catharsis through the process. For me, the photographs embody Ernest Becker’s theory of death anxiety in a powerful, subtle way. They bring to our consciousness our antagonism with "the other." Becker said we need "the other," or the "designated inferior," as a lightning rod to siphon off residual death anxiety in order to psychologically survive.

This existential dread can manifest itself in terrible ways: genocide, war, xenophobia, racism, bigotry, etcetra. Lashing out at “the other” is in direct response to your worldview being challenged; the thought that someone has a different belief or point of view could mean that yours is wrong. This brings the angst or anxiety and all the baggage that it carries to try to “correct” the person: either convert them or kill them.

We want to have psychological equilibrium—balance and security, in other words. We achieve that by feeling that we have value in a meaningful world that’s provided by our cultural constructs or cultural worldviews.

“Even evil is just the fear of death. Our heroic projects that are aimed at destroying evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the world. Human conflicts are life and death struggles—my gods against your gods, my immortality project against your immortality project. The root of humanly caused evil is not man’s animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst. We want to clean up the world, make it perfect, keep it safe for democracy or communism, purify it of the enemies of god, eliminate evil, establish an alabaster city undimmed by human tears, or a thousand year Reich.”

— Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death