Arundel Camera Club (Maryland) Talk

Christine and John invited me to give a talk for their camera club. I gave an overview of my new book and shared a few images from it.

Blurb and Cover for My New Book

Through four years of living in the shadow of Sun Mountain (Tava-Kavvi) on ancestral Nuuchiu (Ute) lands in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, artist Quinn Jacobson confronts humanity's deepest psychological armor: our denial of death.

Using historical photographic processes and contemporary painting, he excavates the hidden forces behind cultural violence, erasure, and our desperate attempts at immortality.

Internationally renowned for reviving 19th-century wet plate collodion techniques, Jacobson merges this haunting medium with terror management theory and the writings of Ernest Becker to explore how death anxiety shapes human behavior.

Through his intimate collaboration with the mountain's landscapes, sacred plants, and symbols, he reveals both the wounds of colonization and possibilities for healing through artistic creation.

In the Shadow of Sun Mountain is a raw meditation on mortality, creativity, and the stories we tell ourselves to keep darkness at bay.

More than an artist's memoir, it is an invitation to confront the universal truth that shapes every human life: our shared impermanence.

Writing My Book and Telling My Stories

“In the Shadow of Sun Mountain: The Psychology of Othering and the Origins of Evil”

I wanted to share an update about my book. I’m excited about it!

I devote daily time to writing, reading, researching, making art, and most of all, thinking.

So far, my book breaks down something like this:

1
Introduction and Artist Statement
This chapter sets the stage for the book, explaining its purpose and relevance. It addresses some key questions. What is the book about, and why should a person read it? I introduce the themes, goals, and personal motivations driving this work. I also include my artist statement. It lays the foundation for the art itself, both technically and conceptually.

2
A Phenomenological Autobiography
Through personal stories, I explore how my life experiences have shaped my creative journey. This chapter demonstrates the deep connection between my artistic drive and the existential questions addressed by Becker's theories and Terror Management Theory (TMT). By connecting my own narrative to these frameworks, I provide insight into how creativity becomes a response to death anxiety or existential anxiety.

3
Ernest Becker
In this chapter, I delve into Becker’s groundbreaking theories, the denial of death and death anxiety. I supplement these with insights from anthropology, psychology, philosophy, theology, and art. I explain Becker's concept of the origins of evil, examining its definition and mechanisms, and scrutinizing the frequent attempts by humanity to eradicate perceived evil through acts of evil, using violence and dehumanization (oh, the irony!).

4
Terror Management Theory (TMT)
This chapter focuses on TMT and its relationship to Becker’s ideas, with a specific case study: the Tabeguache Ute Indians. I analyze how European colonizers used othering (Manifest Destiny) to justify acts of genocide and ethnocide against Native Americans, demonstrating the devastating consequences of existential anxiety, or death anxiety, on human behavior.

5
Artwork
Here, I present the artistic creations inspired by the concepts discussed in the previous chapters. This section ties theory and practice together, showing how my work embodies these existential and psychological themes. This chapter includes over a hundred photographic prints, paintings, and other visual media.

6
Essays
This chapter is a collection of essays I’ve written over the years, covering a range of topics from art and photography to philosophy and psychology. Along the way, you’ll find reviews and reflections on obscure ideas and peculiar subjects. The essays vary in length—some are just a few hundred words, while others span a couple of thousand. Their styles differ as well; some are explanatory, while others read more like personal journal entries.

Working It Out

It’s been a little over three years since I began writing this book and making art for it. In that time I’ve made considerable progress.

I’ve created a significant body of artwork, including the photographic prints for the book and several paintings. It has been an exciting journey, and I want to share it with those who have an interest in these theories and my work.

Drawing from the theories of Ernest Becker, Otto Rank, Terror Management Theory (TMT), and many others, I’ve used my personal experiences as a lens to investigate these existential questions. The work explores the psychology of othering, particularly through the historical lens of the Tabeguache Ute in Colorado, and delves into the roots of human evil—specifically, why people often mistreat those whose beliefs differ from their own.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed the writing process. It’s offered me profound insights into my identity and life experiences in ways I didn’t expect. Unlike photography, which captures a moment instantly, writing feels more akin to painting—it’s a slower, layered process. It generates ideas gradually, piece by piece, over time. This slower rhythm has been deeply rewarding, allowing ideas to mature and take shape in ways that feel both deliberate and organic.

A Tiny Preview of Some of My Stories

Jeanne and I spent the past week watching a Spanish series about a man who inherits the gift of premonitions from his mother. The story was intriguing and kept us engaged—it turned out to be a pretty enjoyable watch overall.

Watching it brought back memories of a trip I took to Mexico 36 years ago (see photo above). A group of friends traveled to Mazatlán, Mexico, to get out of the cold for a week—it was November 1988. One of our friends had a complete mental breakdown—he went into full-blown psychosis—at the end of the trip. It didn’t start until we were on the way home. The event lasted for several days. Like scenes from a horror film, I witnessed all of it firsthand. He ended up in a psychiatric hospital.

What happened? He went out one night with some locals—just two nights before the end of our trip. I tried to stop him but I couldn’t. He told me later that it involved methamphetamine, cocaine, and the Sinaloa Cartel (Cártel de Sinaloa).

What happened was surreal, a lot like the series we just watched. It prompted me to write about the experience in detail. I've come to understand that these kinds of experiences shaped both my creative life and my life in general. It’s like a long movie plot unfolding before me—the narrative arc—the more we observe, the more it reveals about who we are.

What I thought would never be relevant is central or key now to telling my story and the story of these theories I’m preoccupied with. In a lot of ways, it all fits together.

This story is in the second chapter of my book, which has about 15,000+ words so far and focuses on my family and friends. They are, in large part, the people who made me who I am.

From a young age, I was acutely aware of death—through tragic accidents, murder, suicide, drug addiction, war, and mental illness. These harsh realities seemed to loom around me. However, positive influences and uplifting experiences also surrounded me, shaping my early years.

The stories of my life begin around the age of eight and continue to the present day. I share memories of my mother, her deep love for humanity, and the lifelong battle she faced with mental illness. I also reflect on my grandmother’s fierce indignation whenever she heard racial slurs or witnessed people belittling those who were different. I’m so grateful for both of them.

I recount our family Thanksgiving dinners, where my mother would invite young men from the local Job Corps—African American, Native American, and Mexican American—making them welcome at our table every year. Our neighbors often didn’t know what to make of her; she was a profoundly progressive person, far ahead of her time.

One of the early stories recounts my heroin-addicted brother’s return from the Vietnam War. I write about the experience of traveling with my mother to the airport to pick him up. I’ve also written about my own experiences in the military, ten years after that, and the struggles I faced in its aftermath.

My writing delves into my time photographing dead bodies—gunshot wounds to the head, etc.—and the profound psychological impact it left on me.

I explore themes of drug use and overdoses, which have been a recurring presence in my life—friends and family dying from this kind of stuff. Most recently, my 61-year-old brother died in 2023 of methamphetamine toxcity. Alcohol and drug use was everywhere around me most of my life.

I witnessed a friend of mine shoot up Jack Daniels—yes, Jack Daniels, the whiskey. And yes, he put a needle in his arm and shot a syringe full of it into his vein. It was four o'clock in the morning—the party was still going, but there wasn’t any more cocaine available for him to shoot, snort, or smoke. I write about what he said, what he felt, etc. We gave him the nickname “Whiskey Pig” after that.

A few years later, his younger brother died of a drug overdose. During a lunch break from work, he bought some dope. He stopped at a red light in the middle of the city and injected the fentanyl-laced heroin he had just purchased. The dose was lethal—he died instantly, slumped over the steering wheel with the needle still in his arm.

These stories are my way of confronting those experiences and connecting them to the universal human search for meaning and the existential struggles that we all face. I explain how they have driven my creative life and the questions around existence.

My life is full of story after story about the struggles to exist—to cope with meaninglessness and insignificance. I’m sure I’m not the only one that could tell stories like these. However, they are uniquely mine and contrasted against the philosophical and psychological ideas around our existential struggles.

Isn't this the fundamental essence of existentialism? We are inherently searching for meaning in our lives when there is none. We crave significance and some kind of immortality that doesn’t exist. We lie and deny. We use our culture to provide meaning for us—we tranquilize ourselves with drugs, alcohol, shopping, fantasies, social media, fame, ideologies (religion, politics), or whatever can fill the void that faces us—mortality. It’s so clear to me.

Cultural constructs shape humanity, in my opinion. To me, most people are cuturally constructed meat puppets. Most people seem to be unaware of the importance of directly confronting and addressing the fundamental lie of existence—their mortality—and the consequences that ensue when they fail to do so.

That’s the theory of my book.

Agreed Madness

It’s our “one month” anniversary today. We’ve been in New Mexico for 30 days, and man, time has whizzed by!!

Between unpacking boxes and running household errands, I’ve been slowly getting back on track to work on my book. I get excited about the thought of actually completing this work. It’s no longer a hope or dream; it’s close to becoming a reality.

“Man literally drives himself into a blind obliviousness with social games, psychological tricks, and personal preoccupations so far removed from the reality of his situation that they are forms of madness—agreed madness, shared madness, disguised and dignified madness, but madness all the same.”

— Ernest Becker, Denial of Death

These theories seem simple on the surface, but it takes some deep thinking and evaluation to really understand them and, moreover, to apply them to your life. My hope is that by sharing these ideas and concepts in a book, it will inspire people (especially artists) to engage with these theories and start to share them through their art.

I wrote a while ago about someone asking me if there was a movement in art around “death anxiety.” In other words, Becker’s and Solomon's (et al.) theories could form an entire art movement based on the theories dealing with death anxiety and terror management. This is what happened in existential psychology. There are people working on PhDs in terror management theory and have been for years; why not art? Not unlike impressionism, cubism, dada, etc.

In a lot of ways, all art does address these ideas, but rarely intentionally or consciously. It’s food for thought and a wonderful way to get people to engage with these ideas.

Importance of Creativity

"Both the artist and the neurotic bite off more than they can chew, but the artist spews it back out again and chews it over in an objectified way, as an external, active, work project. The neurotic can’t marshal this creative response embodied in a specific work, and so he chokes on his introversions.

The only way to work on perfection is in the form of an objective work that is fully under your control and is perfectible in some real ways. Either you eat up yourself and others around you, trying for perfection; or you objectify that imperfection in a work, on which you then unleash your creative powers. In this sense, some kind of objective creativity is the only answer man has to the problem of life.

The creative person becomes, in art, literature, and religion, the mediator of natural terror and the indicator of a new way to triumph over it. He reveals the darkness and the dread of the human condition and fabricates a new symbolic transcendence over it. This has been the function of the creative deviant from the shamans through Shakespeare.

Otto Rank asked why the artist so often avoids clinical neurosis when he is so much a candidate for it because of his vivid imagination, his openness to the finest and broadest aspects of experience, and his isolation from the cultural world-view that satisfies everyone else. The answer is that he takes in the world, but instead of being oppressed by it, he reworks it in his own personality and recreates it in the work of art. The neurotic is precisely the one who cannot create." Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

The Color Blue and the Number Three

In some Native American cultures, the color blue represents the sky, water, and the spirit world. It can also symbolize peace, serenity, and spiritual awareness. Blue is often used in ceremonies related to prayer, meditation, and vision quests. In Native American mythology, the number three represents the vertical picture of the world. It represents the space between the Heavens and the Earth.

The Iroquois tribe also expressed the significance of the number three by smoking from a pipe three times. Traditional Native American gardeners have planted the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) in many different regions of North America. Some versions of the Three Sisters legends involve the crops personified as three women who separate from each other only to find out that they are stronger together.

Something New: Mixed Media; Photography, Painting, and Sculpting

A while ago, I decided I needed to take this work to the next level. I needed to address questions surrounding something “missing” in the work. I wrote an essay a few weeks ago about searching for words like “tactile” and “tangible,” as well as enhancing color—all in the service of decay and impermanence. I wanted to engage the work in an interdisciplinary way—deeper and more involved than simply looking at a photograph. I want to create something that asks to be touched and experienced beyond photography. My goal is to transcend photography and create a “living” piece of art that represents this land, the people that were here, and the theories I’m addressing surrounding all of it.

Colors and Textures: I’ve mimicked the colors of fall as well as the colors found in the antlers. The surface of the canvas is a reminder (in the shapes) of the antlers as well as roots or veins reaching into the earth. The colors and textures in this piece worked very well together. It is tactile, physical, and contains real objects from the land. The antlers on the canvas are the antlers (some of them) in the photograph. It’s also a reference to the Ute’s skillful tanning of buckskin (deer hides). They were known for the quality and beauty of the leather they made.

Canvas Choice (18” x 18" - 45,75 x 45,75cm): It’s simple; the canvas represents the shape of the state of Colorado. I did the same thing when I made the Ghost Dance work: 6” x 6” wet collodion negatives and prints. I just carried that concept over to this project.

Fibonacci Sequences: Living on this mountain for the past three years, I’ve become closer to nature. I go to bed when the sun sets, and I get up when it rises. I’m aware of the seasons like never before. I see plants and animals in all stages of their lives. The flow and balance of nature are both awe-inspiring and beautiful. I’m beyond grateful to have experienced this. I’ve spent a lot of time photographing flora. I can see the patterns and the consistency in them. I studied the Fibonacci sequence and became very interested in it. I’ve posted about it before. I’ve designed these mixed media pieces based on the Goldaen Ratio and Fibonacci sequences. This is the only time I’m going to point out the details in a piece. The photograph has 10 antler tips and 3 bases—that’s 13. The antlers and antler buttons surrounding the image represent the number 8. The layout is on the Golden Ratio grid. You get it.

Symbolism of Circles: The Tabeguache Ute always set up a medicine wheel, or the circle of life, at each camp when they traveled in the spring and fall. For them, it represents the continuous pattern of life and death, the paths of the sun and moon, as well as the shape of the earth and moon, among many other things. I’ve used the idea of circles as a way to recognize that and to give a sense of peering into something eternal yet impermanent—a visual paradox. The Circle of Life is a central theme of Ute life. The Ute people have a unique relationship with the land, plants, and all things living. The Circle of Life represents the unique relationship in its shape, colors, and reference to the number four, which represents ideas and qualities for the existence of life.

I found this in a presentation to Colorado 4th graders. The People of the early Ute Tribes lived a life in harmony with nature, each other, and all of life. The Circle of Life symbolizes all aspects of life. The Circle represents the Cycle of Life from birth to death for people, animals, all creatures, and plants. The early Tabegucahe Utes understood this cycle. They saw its reflection in all things. This brought them great wisdom and comfort. The Eagle is the spiritual guide of the People and of all things. Traditionally, the Eagle appears in the middle of the Circle.

The Circle is divided into four sections. In the Circle of Life, each section represents a season: spring is red, summer is yellow, fall is white, and winter is black. The Circle of Life joins together the seasonal cycles and the life cycles. Spring represents Infancy, a time of birth and newness—the time of “Spring Moon, Bear Goes Out.” Summer is Youth. This is a time of curiosity, dancing, and singing. Fall represents Adulthood, the time of manhood and womanhood. This is the time of harvesting and of change: “When Trees Turn Yellow” and “Falling Leaf Time.” Winter begins with gaining wisdom and knowledge about “Cold Weather Here.” Winter represents old age, a time to prepare for passing into the spirit world.

The Circle also symbolizes the annual journey of the People. On this journey, the People moved from their winter camp to the mountains in the spring. They followed trails known to each family group for generations. The People journeyed to each family group for generations. The People journeyed as the animals did. Following the snowmelt, they traveled up to their summer camps. In the fall, as the weather changed, the People began their journey back to their winter camps. Once again, they followed the animal migrations into lower elevations. They camped near streams, rivers, springs, and lakes. These regions provided winter shelter and warmth.

The early People carried with them an intricate knowledge of nature. They understood how to receive the rich and abundant gifts that the Earth, Sky, and Spirit provided. They also understood how to sustain these gifts. They took only what was needed. The People used the plants, animals, and earth wisely. They gave gifts in return. This knowledge was the People’s wealth.

The Circle of Life is the rich cultural and spiritual heritage of the Tabegucahe Ute. This heritage is still alive in the life cycle and seasonal cycles of today. It still is alive within the harmony of nature. It is reflected in the acknowledgement and practice of honoring and respecting all things, people, and relationships. The Circle design can be found on the back of traditionally made hand drums. These drums are important ceremonial instruments for the People today.

The idea of impermanence and decay plays a big role in my approach to this work. I've tried to develop a deeper appreciation of impermanence, specifically of my own impermanence. It’s important for me to try to make the viewer aware of their mortality through these pieces and the theories they’re based on. Everything I’ve made images of is either dead or changing in some way (entropy). The way I’m building these pieces up—the textures and colors—refers to the idea of both death and decay (impermanence) and life and living. An elevated sense of gratitude for every fleeting moment of life is very important to have. It fosters a significant recognition of the invaluable essence of human existence by observing the natural endings in everyday life, like leaves falling from trees or the decay of organic matter. This helps people connect with the concepts of impermanence and death on a smaller scale. That’s the big connection between my work and these theories.

I find myself contemplating compassion more while doing this work. Thinking about my own struggles with difference. I suppose the wonderful thing about learning about these theories (death anxiety and terror management theory) is that you have a lot of time to think about, or even meditate about, your own death and the deaths of loved ones. In turn, that allows you to come to terms, in some ways, with all of it. Moreover, I’ve found I have a heightened zest for life. A greater appreciation for the cycle of life, or, as the Tabeguache Ute would call it, the Circle of Life.

Currently working on monotypes: I’ve been working with acrylic paint and doing monotypes. I really like them; they have a lot of potential for this project. As time goes on, I’ll post some occasionally. I just wanted to share this mixed media idea I had and my thinking around it.

The Act of Creating Art is Terror Management

“Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with.

Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature, as the Renaissance thinkers knew.

The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one’s dreams and even the most sun-filled days—that’s something else.”

— Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS WE CAN ASK OURSELVES
What’s the most important question, or questions, that a human being can ask? Have you ever thought about that? I have. A lot. For me, and I believe for all humanity, the most important questions revolve around existence. Why am I here? What’s my purpose? Is there a meaning to life? If there is, what is it?

These are the questions that started me on my journey almost 40 years ago. For most of my life, I’ve used photography to explore these questions. Examining why some people are treated differently than others and pondering why the gulf between individuals exists. It was the beginning of my quest to understand what drives human behavior. There is the direct question of purpose, too. Religions were created to answer these questions, but they answer them based on faith, not empirical evidence. There’s evidence that the earliest homo sapiens invented and practiced some kind of religion. Humans have always depended on some kind of supernatural belief. Why is this? The answer is simple: to deal with the knowledge of death and quell the existential anxiety that arises from that knowledge. Death anxiety is a powerful driver in daily life, and most people never know that it is directing their lives. We do all kinds of things to distract ourselves from consciously thinking about our deaths. These distractions can be good or bad. Religions have been the main staple for staving off death anxiety for millennia. Things have changed in the last 300 years. The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution (technology) have given rise to people leaving religion and leaning on new constructs to quell their death anxiety. This is why Friedrich Nietzsche said, “God is dead.” He was referring to technology, money, fame, etc., freedom from religion, and personal growth. A form of terror management.

Human beings have an unconscious desire for immortality. We simply can’t face the fact of death or non-existence; it’s what we fear most, whether we know it or not, and most don’t. Ernest Becker wrote, “Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever”. This quote is from Becker's 1973 book, The Denial of Death.

Pessimistic philosophers would tell you that life is a mistake. The overabundance of consciousness (the knowledge of mortality) is an evolutionary misstep. Peter Zapfee talks about the “suffering of brotherhood,” saying that the true knowledge of how much pain and suffering there is in the world is unbearable. The "brotherhood of suffering" is a concept in The Last Messiah by Peter Wessel Zapffe. In the parable, a paralyzed hunter recognizes that the animal's fear and hunger are similar to his own. The hunter then feels a great psalm about the brotherhood of suffering among everything alive.

Zapffe believed that the human condition is tragically overdeveloped and that the world is beyond humanity's need for meaning. He viewed the world as unable to provide any answers to fundamental existential questions.

While I’m not a pessimist, I can see the value of arguments like Zapffe’s. There are no answers to these big questions. There are only distractions to keep us from thinking about them. That’s what terror management theory addresses. How we distract ourselves from the reality of living—that there is no meaning or purpose in life. And that we will die and be forgotten.

The illusions or cultural constructs (cultural worldviews) we lean on to quell our death anxiety are everywhere: religion, politics, having children, getting married, sports, money, fame, degrees, awards, jobs, social status, drugs, alcohol, shopping (tranquilizing with the trivial)—anything to bolster our self-esteem and keep the existential anxiety repressed—and it works, and it works well. If you spend any time on social media, you can easily spot what people rely on to buffer their anxiety. I’ve seen people deeply identify with their vehicles, photography achievements, how long they’ve been married, their new clothes and “look,” the celebrity they met or the concert they attended, and so many other (too much information) things that are meaningless and trivial. What they don’t understand is that no one really cares.

Humans have evolved to suppress or repress this knowledge—to distract ourselves and deny our mortality. We had to, or we wouldn’t have survived. I read a book a while ago called "Denial: Self-Deception, False Beliefs, and the Origins of the Human Mind" by Ajit Varki and Danny Brower. The book presents a theory on the origins of the human species. It explains why denial is a key to being human. The authors argue that humans separated themselves from other creatures because they became self-aware of their own and others' mortality. They then developed a way to deny that mortality. The book offers a warning about the dangers of our ability to ignore reality. It asks why other intelligent animals have not evolved like humans. The authors' answer is that humans have crossed a major psychological evolutionary barrier by developing the ability to deny reality. The theory of mind (TOM) plays a big role in this evolutionary step. I highly recommend reading the book.

Where does that leave us? Well, for some of us who don’t lean on some of the aforementioned illusions, there is art. Art is our distraction and our buffer. The coping mechanism we use to repress the knowledge of our deaths works well. It gives us meaning and significance and makes us feel like we are part of something bigger than ourselves—that maybe our art will live on after we are gone (symbolic immortality). Regardless of what we do, what we create, or where it ends up or not, the function of art is an important one.

WHY DO WE MAKE ART?
No one is going to save the world by making art. That’s not difficult to understand, and I think we can all agree on that. However, living a creative life can bring peace and satisfaction. And it can bolster your self-esteem. That’s really the function of art. It’s to allow creative people to transfer their existential anxiety onto an object (sublimation), into music, or onto a written page. I’ll talk more about this in a minute. So, we make art to keep our neurosis in check. To bring us meaning and significance and to quell our death anxiety. That’s the function of art. And if people like it after all of that, great! But that’s not the reason or function of art.

THE TWO THINGS THAT I HAVE GREAT CONFIDENCE IN SAYING ARE TRUE
I’ve studied the theories of Ernest Becker, Solomon, et al. (TMT) since 2018. And for the past two years, I’ve engaged with these ideas more deeply than I ever have before. Through these studies, I’m convinced of a couple of things.

CREATING ART IS TERROR MANAGEMENT
First, creating art is done in the service of terror management (TMT). One of the ubiquitous characteristics of human art throughout history and across cultures is the attempt to come to terms with mortality and achieve symbolic forms of immortality. In essence, saying, “I was here” or “remember me!” And the act itself buffers our existential dread. I’m convinced of that. There have been many philosophers, even beyond Becker, who have eluded to this. Peter Zapfee called in sublimation. He said it was the best form of terror management, but few people could do it. He wrote in his essay, The Last Messiah (1933), "Sublimation is the refocusing of energy away from negative outlets toward positive ones. Through stylistic or artistic gifts, the very pain of living can sometimes be converted into valuable experiences. Positive impulses engage the evil and put it to their own ends, fastening onto its pictorial, dramatic, heroic, lyric, or even comic aspects. To write a tragedy, one must to some extent free oneself from—betray—the very feeling of tragedy and regard it from an outer, e.g., aesthetic, point of view. Here is, by the way, an opportunity for the wildest round-dancing through ever higher ironic levels into a most embarrassing circulus vitiosus. Here one can chase one's ego across numerous habitats, enjoying the capacity of the various layers of consciousness to dispel one another. The present essay is a typical attempt at sublimation. The author does not suffer; he is filling pages and is going to be published in a journal."

Ernest Becker wrote, “Both the artist and the neurotic bite off more than they can chew, but the artist spews it back out again and chews it over in an objectified way, as an external, active work project. The neurotic can’t marshal this creative response embodied in a specific work, and so he chokes on his introversions.”

In essence, we’re all neurotic to some degree. It’s part and parcel of the dilemma of existing. The creative life offers something that no other form of terror management can: a literal outlet for existential terror.

Becker goes on to say, "The only way to work on perfection is in the form of an objective work that is fully under your control and is perfectible in some real ways. Either you eat up yourself and others around you, trying for perfection; or you objectify that imperfection in a work, on which you then unleash your creative powers. In this sense, some kind of objective creativity is the only answer man has to the problem of life.

The creative person becomes, in art, literature, and religion the mediator of natural terror and the indicator of a new way to triumph over it. He reveals the darkness and the dread of the human condition and fabricates a new symbolic transcendence over it. This has been the function of the creative deviant from the shamans through Shakespeare.

Otto Rank asked why the artist so often avoids clinical neurosis when he is so much a candidate for it because of his vivid imagination, his openness to the finest and broadest aspects of experience, his isolation from the cultural world-view that satisfies everyone else. The answer is that he takes in the world, but instead of being oppressed by it he reworks it in his own personality and recreates it in the work of art. The neurotic is precisely the one who cannot create.” Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death, 1973

TRIBALISM AND “OTHERING”
And secondly, the way we form tribes and go after the “other” whoever that may be to you. This is what my project (In the Shadow of Sun Mountain: The Psychology of Othering and the Origins of Evil) is about. I’m explaining the reasons for genocide, ethnocide, racism, xenophobia, hate, etc. through these theories. I’ve found that people often talk about these events but never give any solid reasons for why they happen. That’s one of my objectives in this work. I’ve also written quite an extensive section about my own journey. Starting with my own death awareness around the age of eight. I share life stories of death, othering, and the negative effects of in-groups and out-groups. In all of that, I revisited my interest in photography. How I started, what I’ve been interested in, and how this work is really the culmination of 35 plus years of thinking, wondering, and pursuing these ideas.

I recently read a great article on Alternet.org by Bobby Azarian. He is a cognitive neuroscientist and the author of the book The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity. He wrote, "Terror management theory is more relevant than ever because it provides an explanation for tribalism, which is really at the core of this mystery. The theory suggests that existential terror—which can be triggered by anything that is perceived to pose a threat to one’s existence—is the reason we adopt cultural worldviews, such as our religions, national identities, or political ideologies. In an attempt to mitigate our fears, we latch onto philosophies that give our lives meaning and direction in a chaotic world.

But how does this explain tribalism, exactly?

When we're fearful or threatened, we rally around those who share our worldviews. We become aggressive toward those who don't. More alarmingly, perceived threats or existential fears—immigrants, transgender people, gun grabbing, government conspiracies, humiliation at the hands of "liberal elites”—can stir up nationalism and sway voting habits toward presidential candidates with authoritarian personalities. For example, a study found that when primed to think about their deaths, American students who self-identified as conservatives showed increased support for drastic military interventions that could lead to mass civilian casualties overseas. Another study found that after the 9/11 terror attack, support for then-President George W. Bush spiked, ultimately resulting in his re-election."

My journey studying these theories has been life-altering. I find myself more understanding of human behavior and more tolerant and patient. I’m more open to people’s beliefs and what they lean on to quell their anxiety. As long as their beliefs aren’t hurting themselves or anyone else, I say go for it; we need to find meaning and significance in our lives to make this journey bearable.

I’m grateful and humble (or try to be) for each day I’m above ground. I’m in awe of life and the mystery of it all—my finitude and smallness are always present in my mind; I’m fully present to my cosmic insignificance. I understand that I really don’t know anything, and what I do know is very limited and only in a certain context. I have very little certainty about anything (save what I mentioned in this essay). Life is wonderful, but rarely, if ever, is it black and white. I walk in the world of the “hard place,” not the “rock place.” We are all trying our best to manage our existential terror, whether we know it or not, and most don’t.

Don't Worry About Other People's Opinion of Your Work

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a few conversations with people about making art. One topic seemed to always come up in these chats. In essence, they ask or imply, “What if people don’t like what I do or don’t understand it?” Or even, “People don’t like what I do, and they don't understand it. I don’t get very many likes or comments on social media.”

Addressing the issue of people not liking or responding to your work (social media “likes” and “comments") can be a big deterrent. And it can be a bit depressing and frustrating too. But that’s only if you give it credence or value. It’s your choice, whether you do or not. I can say with some certainty that it’s a waste of time to be concerned with what other people think about your creative endeavors, whether on social media or not; their feedback, for the most part, is meaningless. There’s an old quote attributed to a lot of different people that says, "When you’re 20, You care what everyone thinks. When you’re 40, You stop caring what everyone thinks. When you’re 60, You realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place." I’ll be 60 years old soon and can relate to the wisdom here. Apply it to your creative life. It will make you a better artist.

This is looking west-southwest from our house. We were walking back from the top of our property and saw this. The “circle” of clouds and the ray of light on Saddleback Mountain (the far peak) were magnificient.

My response to this dilemma has always been the same: Make your work for an audience of one: YOU. That’s all that matters. This only applies if you’re making personal, fine art work. Commercial work is a different story. With that, you are bound to please a much larger audience, and it’s in pursuit of money (that’s its purpose). It’s very easy for me to separate the two. Personal work has a strong, compelling narrative. Commercial work pays no mind to that. It’s pretty and popular. It’s a transaction for money, not an expression of an idea, concern, question, interest, etc. What the masses want is something familiar and safe. Something that takes no chances and is rarely ever different. It’s what sells. Money is the object, not expression. Period. Remember the difference; that’s an important piece of understanding what you’re trying to do.

“When you’re 20, You care what everyone thinks, When you’re 40, You stop caring what everyone thinks, When you’re 60, You realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place.”

— Unknown

That brings me to my second point. If you make creative work with the intention of selling it, you’re probably off to a dubious start. Influence is incessant. Making money can really mess with accessing your own creative desires. You can see how easily you’d cross that line into commercial work. And once you cross over, you’re not making work for yourself; you’re making work for them. It kills your creative vibe (in a personal sense).

I’ve said it a million times: I have nothing against commercial work. Good on you if you do it and it fills your bank account. My concerns are about not conflating commercial work with personal expression, narrative, or personal fine art. I couldn’t care less for commercial work. I have absolutely no interest in it. I’m not in the least bit concerned about selling, showing, winning awards, or anything else with my work. I make it for personal reasons, reasons that I’ve explained many times in these essays.

Carry on doing work that motivates you. If others like it or can appreciate it, great! But never make that a priority. And I would recommend that you separate making money from your creative life. Keep your creative spirit free from the poison of commerce. It destroys your soul in that context. Earn your money some other way; keep your artmaking separate and special. Enjoy every day that you can create something, or even try to create something. Reveal the failures, learn from them, and be grateful. You will be amazed at where you find yourself mentally and creatively.

In the next few weeks, I’ll share what I’ve been working on in the studio. I guess you could call it an evolution of this work. I’m super excited about it. Stay tuned!!

The Human Flight from Death: The Driving Force of Civilization

In the Shadow of Sun Mountain: The Psychology of Othering and the Origins of Evil}

The people who follow my writing here know that the concept of my project and book is based on Ernest Becker’s theories of death anxiety and the denial of death. Additionally, Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski—the creators of terror management theory (TMT) and authors of "The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life"—have had a significant influence on it.

My objective is to describe or explain these theories in relation to the genocide, removal, and general marginalization of the Tabeguache-Ute (known today as Uncompahgre-Ute) indigenous people. I live on their land in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, U.S.A.

I'm using art to accompany the theories. And I'm also exploring my own dilemma of coming to terms with death. This work is multifaceted, but the main objective is to communicate WHY these kinds of things happen in the world, past and present. Moreover, there are reasons why they will never stop happening.

Death: It’s a difficult topic to talk about, and we’ve evolved to repress and deny it. We've had to psychologically repress this knowledge; if we weren't able to, we would be paralyzed with anxiety and dread. We use culture to do this. All kinds of pursuits help us distract ourselves from thinking about our impeding death, which could happen at any time for any reason, unknown to us. This has a lot more implications than we realize. I recently read an article by John Gray on Substack.com. He is clear, concise, and hits all of the points of both Becker and The Worm at the Core psychologists, Solomon et al.

He wrote:

“An idea of an afterlife emerged along with human beings.

Around 115,000 years ago, graves were being fashioned containing animal bones, flowers, medicinal herbs, and valuables such as ibex horns. By 35,000–40,000 years ago, complete survival kits—food, clothing, and tools—were being placed in graves throughout the world. Humankind is the death-defined animal.

As humans became more self-aware, the denial of death became more insistent. For the American cultural anthropologist and psychoanalytical theorist Ernest Becker (1924–74), the human flight from death has been the driving force of civilization. Fear of death is also the source of the ego, which humans build in order to shield themselves from helpless awareness of their passage through time to extinction.

More than most, Becker’s life was formed by encounters with death. At the age of eighteen, he joined the army and served in an infantry battalion that liberated a Nazi extermination camp.

When he was dying of cancer in hospital in December 1973, he told a visitor, the philosopher Sam Keen: ‘You are catching me in extremis. This is a test of everything I’ve written about death. And I’ve got a chance to show how one dies.’

Becker’s theories were set out in The Denial of Death (1973), for which he received a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1974, and developed further in Escape from Evil, which appeared two years after his death.” (John Gray)

“Granite & Quartz Rock, Dead Foxtail, and Purple Thistles,” 10” x 10” (25,4 x 25,4 cm) Reversal Direct Color Print August 12, 2023