AMARANTHUS RETROFLEXUS (PIGWEED)—a Kallitype print from a wet collodion negative.

THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF MEANING
Ernest Becker was a cultural anthropologist. He's best known for his death-centric perspective on human psychology. He’s also known for eliciting the creation of the Terror Management Theory (TMT). He died in 1974.

He wrote several books in his lifetime. “The Denial of Death” was the first book of his I read. In this book, Becker builds on the works of Søren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, Norman O. Brown, and Otto Rank to discuss the psychological and philosophical implications of how people and cultures have reacted to the concept of death.

The three most potent books for me are “The Denial of Death” (Pulitzer Prize 1974), “The Birth and Death of Meaning,” and “Escape from Evil.” Together, they provide insight into human behavior that changed my view of what it means to live and the meaning of, and in, life. These theories have also answered profound questions about my pursuit of making art. I always tell people that these books are life-altering. And that’s not an exaggeration. As they say, once you leave the cave, you can never go back in.

MEANING. SIGNIFICANCE. TRANSCENDENCE.
In chapter nine of his book, “The Birth and Death of Meaning,” Becker talks about self-esteem. I’m willing to bet that your definition of self-esteem is not how Becker defines it.

THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF SELF-ESTEEM
William James wrote about self-esteem in the late 19th century. He said that self-esteem is based on two elements: our actual achievements and our aspirations. Becker was well aware of his theories and took them a step further. Why is it that human beings need to feel good about themselves? According to Becker, self-esteem is a death anxiety buffer. What are the sources of self-esteem? Primarily, we get our self-esteem from our culture. Becker calls it our “cultural worldview.” A good culture will have many different ways that a person can find their self-esteem. Cultures that don’t provide opportunities for self-esteem have major problems. People will suffer from depression, anxiety, and all kinds of mental health problems.

WHY HAVE PEOPLE HISTORICALLY BEEN UNABLE TO GET ALONG WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE DIFFERENT FROM THEM?
This is the second question Becker seemed preoccupied with. He talks about colonizers using methods to strip culture from native or indigenous people. Once they lose their self-esteem, they are easy to dominate. These are methods used by all colonizers. Everyone needs culture to provide them with self-esteem or ways to acquire self-esteem. If that is removed, the people will have a hard time not assimilating to the colonizers’ ways.

I’ll do an essay on the book. “The Worm at the Core: The Role of Death in Life,” but wanted to share this excerpt about self-esteem. “If there were any doubt that self-esteem is the dominant [human] motive... there would be one sure way to dispel it,” Ernest Becker wrote, “and that would be by showing that when people do not have self-esteem they cannot act, they break down.” What makes it difficult to acquire and maintain self-esteem? And what happens when self-esteem is lacking?

There are two main ways self-esteem can break down. First, individuals, or groups of people, can lose faith in their cultural worldviews. Such disillusionment can be precipitated by economic upheaval, technological and scientific innovations, environmental catastrophes, wars, plagues, or unwelcome intrusions by other cultures. For example, before the arrival of the first Europeans, the Yup’ik people of Alaska belonged to a thriving culture ruled by deep customs, traditions, and spiritual beliefs. Their tribal and individual codes of conduct were defined by what they called the Yuuyaraq (“the way of being a human being”), which told each member how to behave in any situation. When the Europeans—carrying guns, germs, and steel that killed a majority of the population—imposed their Christian worldviews on the Yup’ik, the aboriginal people lost their identity. The medicine men grew ill and died, and with them the ancient spirit of the Eskimo and the code of Yuuyaraq. Everything the Yup’ik had believed in failed, and their whole world collapsed.

Such catastrophes occurred all over the world where indigenous cultures were subject to colonization. But other circumstances can erode faith in a cultural belief system as well. Even the United States may be in the midst of such erosion in the wake of economic uncertainty, church and sports scandals, and political polarization. As of this writing, seven in ten Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track; eight in ten don’t agree with the way the nation is being governed. Church attendance, even in as strongly religious a country as the United States, has steadily declined. Public schools, particularly in urban areas, are in disarray. “We have lost our gods,” Laura Hansen, a sociologist at Western New England University, told reporters for The Atlantic. “We lost [faith] in the media: Remember Walter Cronkite? We lost it in our culture: You can’t point to a movie star who might inspire us, because we know too much about them. We lost it in politics because we know too much about their lives. We’ve lost it—that basic sense of trust and confidence—in everything.”

When people lose confidence in their core beliefs, they become literally “dis-illusioned” because they lack a functional blueprint of reality. Without such a map, there is no basis for determining what behaviors are appropriate or desirable, leaving no way to plot a course to self-esteem. (The Worm at the Core: The Role of Death in Life: Page 44-45)

The Birth and Death of Meaning & Photogenic Drawings

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