Facing the End: Heidegger, Modernity, and the Meaning We’ve Lost

We don’t really talk about death anymore—not in any meaningful way. We dress it up in ritual, drown it out with noise, and spin it into spectacle. Somewhere along the way, we stopped treating death as a mirror and started treating it like a mess to be cleaned up. But as Martin Heidegger once argued, our relationship to death isn’t just a philosophical curiosity—it’s the foundation of an authentic life.

In Being and Time, Heidegger introduced a concept that should hit all of us squarely in the gut: Being-towards-death. Unlike animals, humans are aware of their own mortality. We don’t just die—we know we’re going to die. And that knowledge, if we let it in, can radically change the way we live.

But we rarely do. Most of us live in what Heidegger calls “everydayness,” where death is something that happens to other people. We skim the obituary page. We attend the funeral. But we never fully absorb the fact that we’re next. Instead, we flee into distraction, comfort, and consumption.

This is what the author of a recent paper called the “loss of death-to-life reference.” In simpler terms: we’ve lost the thread. Death used to point us back to life, to meaning, to what matters. Now, it’s buried under carnival tents and beer stands at modern funerals, turned into an opportunity to sell trinkets, drown pain, and avoid reflection.

Heidegger believed that to live authentically, we must turn toward our own death—not in morbid fascination, but in honest acknowledgment. He said we should live with death as a “pure possibility,” always present but not yet actualized. It’s not about dwelling on death. It’s about letting it shape the urgency of our days.

And here’s the paradox: when we face death head-on, life sharpens. Viktor Frankl put it well—if we were immortal, nothing would matter. We could postpone everything forever. But because we’re finite, we’re called to act, to love, to create now.

This isn’t a plea for some stoic resignation or heroic denial of grief. Death hurts. The loss of someone we love breaks us. But the pain of death can also become a kind of teacher. It reminds us that life is not just a timeline—it’s a trembling, temporary flame. And the way we treat that flame—our own and others’—reveals everything about who we are.

There’s nothing inherently meaningful about death. But the awareness of it? That’s different. Death awareness can crack open the shell of ego and force us to ask the questions we spend our lives trying to avoid. What matters? What lasts? What have I been avoiding because I thought I had time?

Modern culture isn’t designed to help us answer those questions. It’s designed to numb them. That’s why reclaiming the existential weight of death is not just personal—it’s cultural. It’s spiritual. It’s ethical.

So here’s the real question: What would your life look like if you lived it with the constant awareness that it’s going to end?

Not someday.
Not in theory.
But for real.
Sooner than you think.

That’s not meant to depress you. It’s meant to wake you up.

Rocky Mountain Cotton Grass

Ernest Becker said, “The last thing a man can admit to himself is that his life-ways are arbitrary: This is one of the reasons that people often show derisive glee and scorn over the strange customs of other lands—it is a defense against the awareness that his own way of life may be just as fundamentally contrived as any other. One culture is always a potential menace to another because it is a living example that life can go on heroically with a value framework totally alien to one’s own.” (The Denial of Death)

What is Becker saying? I would sum it up like this: We have our own cultural worldviews, things we collectively believe in that sustain us and stave off death anxiety. When we see “the other"—other cultures or ways of being—it threatens our own. That threat creates doubt, and that doubt awakens death anxiety.

That’s why it’s so important to recognize the aggression you feel toward people who are different. This is the birthplace of those emotions. When I talk about these theories being critical, this is one that is at the top, or near the top, of the list. It’s vital to be conscious of our death anxiety and how we manage it.

Helenium Autumnale

I would like to recommend two books for you to read. The first one is called “Homo Aestheticus” by Ellen Dissanayake. And the second one is called “The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body,” by Steven Mithen.

Homo Aestheticus
“Dissanayake argues that art was central to human evolutionary adaptation and that the aesthetic faculty is a basic psychological component of every human being. In her view, art is intimately linked to the origins of religious practices and to ceremonies of birth, death, transition, and transcendence. Drawing on her years in Sri Lanka, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea, she gives examples of painting, song, dance, and drama as behaviors that enable participants to grasp and reinforce what is important to their cognitive world.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Homo Aestheticus offers a wealth of original and critical thinking. It will inform and irritate specialist, student, and lay reader alike.”—American AnthropologistA thoughtful, elegant, and provocative analysis of aesthetic behavior in the development of our species—one that acknowledges its roots in the work of prior thinkers while opening new vistas for those yet to come. If you’re reading just one book on art anthropology this year, make it hers.”
—Anthropology and Humanism

The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body
“Mithen has many fascinating suggestions about how the circumstances of early hominid life on the African savanna may have provoked changes in anatomy and improved the range and precision of communication… By bringing music to the fore, Mithen remedies earlier neglect and offers his readers the most perspicacious portrait of the role of communication among our remote predecessors that I have ever encountered. That is a great accomplishment… Mithen’s book, in short, seems destined to become a landmark in the way experts and amateurs alike seek to understand the character and evolutionary importance of hominid and early human communication… [The Singing Neanderthals] offers a learned, imaginative overview of the most important and most elusive dimension of the real but unrecorded past: i.e., how communication among our predecessors changed their lives, sustained their communities, and promoted their survival. No one has previously undertaken that task so well.”
—William H. McNeill, The New York Review of Books

The Same Thing, Over And Over Again...

"Illuminated Sunflower" from my project, "In the Shadow of Sun Mountain". A whole plate, toned cyanotype print from a wet collodion negative.

I’m writing this in response to my image, “Illuminated Sunflower,” that I posted yesterday. Here are some of the comments/responses:
“It’s strange looking but familiar.”
“Is it real?”
“I’ve never seen a sunflower that looks like that.”
“How did you do that?”
”Is it manipulated?”

MY RANT
Have you noticed that, as photographers or artists, we tend to follow what’s “accepted” and recognizable in photography? In other words, we make the same images that we’ve seen a million times over and over again. It’s almost like we’re in a trance or robotic. We have a very difficult time doing anything else.

These images are everywhere out there. Go to any “fine art photography” group online and you’ll see that 90%+ of the pictures are easily recognizable—same content, just a different photographer.

You’ll see old barns in empty fields and abandoned places (usually a farm or an old warehouse). Autumn leaves in a bowl or just on the ground. Foggy, misty landscape scenes. And any kind of flower in a vase. How about an old piece of farm equipment (tractors, old trucks, etc.)? National parks are always in the mix—a large format photograph of any recognizable landscape, especially anything from Yosemite National Park. I call these images “sunset and driftwood pictures”. Most of the pictures are (manipulated) digital images, or in some groups, there will be a few large format black and white film pictures that are scanned and made into digital prints. And some even make silver gelatin prints. But the numbers are going down fast. Regardless of the process, the content will be the same.

Before you send me a nasty email, let me say that there’s nothing wrong with doing any of that type of work! Obviously, the masses love it. It sells pictures, no doubt, and if that’s your hustle, more power to you. But creatively, I feel like these types of photographs fall short—way short. I feel like I’m listening to a broken record, playing the same part over and over again. Nothing new. It feels like visual torture to me sometimes. And it’s derivative.

We are conditioned to respond to familiar things. I get it. It’s kind of like, “Oh! I recognize that and I know people think it’s important, so I like it too!”. Those kinds of feelings and responses are embedded in photographers’ minds—so they keep making pictures that people will recognize and like. Commercial photographers are bound by this obligation. They need to sell pictures. As fine artists, we’re not bound to this way of working or thinking. In fact, we should reject it completely.

How do we do that? In my mind, there are three ways to accomplish this. The first is unique content—what’s in the picture. This can also include the context of the image. Your narrative can support something that’s been seen before if it’s a meaningful part of the story. Second, is the way the image is made (what process). And third, how you produce the image/print (post-production printing).

I know that influence is incessant; we really can’t get away from it. We bring everything we know and have seen to the image we’re making. And it’s very difficult to “pass” on the obvious, recognizable image. I think this is where experimentation and exploration can pay big creative dividends. Get out of the habit of only making pictures in “good” light or only composing in the way that you’ve seen. Try new things and break the rules. Play with optics, processes, and even post-production stuff (again, I’m talking about printing here). Do your best to make images of scenes or objects that you would never normally photograph. Then, play with the way you make them. If you’re lucky, you’ll discover a new way to work that supports your story, and the pictures will be interesting to look at! You’ll discover ways to see things that you’ve never really seen before.

Otto Rank said, “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” I believe that. Art can be a powerful way for you to experience and understand life. It can give you a way to tackle the big questions in life and find meaning and purpose. E.O. Wilson came up with a word in the 1980s. “Biophilia” (it’s a book actually), which means “the love of life”. I do my best every day to be grateful, humble, and love life as much as I can.

“A River of Wood”—a cyanotype print on Canson Vellum (Tracing) paper.

“A River of Wood”—a Palladiotype print for reference—from the wet collodion negative posted here.

Three sheets of paper in an iodizing bath. These will become calotypes (paper negatives). This is the first step.

Three sheets of freshly iodized paper. These will become calotypes (paper negatives). I usually iodize six sheets at a time.