Chapter 2 explores the uniquely human burden of knowing that we will die. While every living creature faces death, only human beings possess the capacity to anticipate it, creating a profound psychological dilemma. Drawing on Ernest Becker, Terror Management Theory, and evolutionary perspectives (Varkiu & Brower), the chapter argues that culture, identity, and meaning function as protective structures that keep mortality awareness at a tolerable distance. Rather than treating death anxiety as a pathological exception, the chapter presents it as the hidden force shaping much of human behavior, setting the foundation for understanding both our defenses and the possibility of a more conscious creative response.
“Koko and Buddhist Beads,” workshop portrait, 2019. Denver, Colorado.
What Art Knows About Death That We Don’t Say Out Loud
Reflections on Oscar M. Maina’s “Exploring the Motifs of Death and Immortality” (download it here)
There’s something art knows that most of us don’t say out loud—something that sits just beneath the surface of brush strokes, plates, metaphors, burial songs, and myths. It’s this: we’re terrified of death, and we make things to outlive us.
Oscar Maina’s essay, Exploring the Motifs of Death and Immortality, is a thoughtful dive into how human beings wrestle with mortality through the creative act. It echoes the very heart of what Ernest Becker wrote in The Denial of Death—that the human animal is the only creature conscious of its inevitable end, and that this awareness generates a kind of terror we spend our lives trying to manage. Art becomes one of our most powerful buffers. A symbolic immortality project.
Maina moves across cultures—African myths, biblical stories, Egyptian rituals, and metaphysical poetry—all circling the same truth: death is the great interruption. And art is how we respond. It’s how we push back. It’s how we say, “Not yet.”
Otto Rank called it the artist’s neurosis—this compulsive need to create something lasting in the face of impermanence. For Rank, the artist doesn’t deny death through passive illusion like the rest of society. The artist confronts it head-on, wrestles with it, transforms it. Creation becomes an act of rebellion against disappearance.
Maina gives us examples: the Egyptian pharaoh buried with engraved scrolls, the Igbo requiring a second burial to grant the dead spiritual legitimacy, Donne and Thomas pushing back against the quiet acceptance of death, and African names passed to children as reincarnations of those lost. Whether through myth, poetry, ritual, or narrative, we’re always reaching for permanence.
And underneath it all is this longing—to be remembered, to mean something. We preserve stories, carve stone, paint skin, and etch memory onto glass and paper. Not because we’re vain. Because we’re aware. We know we’re here for a moment, and the work becomes a lifeline.
Maina suggests that art and mortality are in a symbiotic relationship: we give art our fear, and it gives us back meaning. We mourn through it, remember through it, rage and reflect through it. And in return, it carries something of us forward. I connect with these ideas deeply.
Becker believed that human civilization itself is a structure of death denial. But in that denial, especially in the creative act, there’s also courage. Rank saw the artist as someone who stands between two worlds: fully aware of death, and still choosing to create. Not to escape reality, but to engage with it more deeply.
Maybe that’s what art knows. That we’re dying. And that creation—real creation—isn’t about avoiding that truth. It’s about transforming it. About staring into the void and answering back.
So if you’ve ever felt that need to make something—something lasting—it’s not self-indulgence. It’s survival. It’s legacy. It’s your own quiet defiance.
And maybe, that’s enough. What do you think?
“Friedhof Käfertal” Whole plate Albumen print from a wet collodion negative. 2009
When Death Isn’t Just Biology
What are humans afraid of? Death, meaninglessness, loneliness (isolation), and freedom. Ernest Becker and Jean-Paul Sartre made that abundantly clear.
We prefer to act as though death is easy. Vital signs, brain scans, organ failure—we turn it over to the biologists. We say, "This is where life ends," and draw a clear line. In actuality, however, human death does not exist in the sterile realm of checklists and charts. It inhabits the world of stories and symbols.
We are frightened by more than just the body shutting down. It is the breakdown of a life dominated by others. We are held to our flimsy promises of immortality by the cutting of ties. Few people knew this better than Ernest Becker. He observed that we create our morals, our art, and our cultures as defenses against the inevitable death. We try our hardest to hide that terrible reality and to act as though our existence is more than a passing biological fad.
It is possible to declare a body on a ventilator brain-dead. It's done biologically. However, to the living, it can still be a person, a narrative, or a strand in the web we weave to keep the abyss at bay. This is painfully evident from the paper I just read: human death is always relational, moral, legal, and practical. It is more than a simple off/on switch. It marks the end of a "life-form," a life molded by ritual, language, memory, and the vows we make to one another.
There is more than just flesh left over after a death. The tangle of obligations, relationships, and rights that keeps the deceased in our world a little while longer is all that is left. Even if they only endure as long as the memory does, they continue to firmly ground us in our denial and our attempt at symbolic immortality.
The moment when our symbolic world finally breaks and we realize that all of our illusions and buffers can only last so long may be the true threshold that we fear, rather than the boundary between flatline and heartbeat.
“The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.”
— Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
What do you see holding your fear of death at bay? Do you lean on something? Or are you in a free-fall state of neuroticism? Afraid of both life and death?
“Automatic Fantastic,” 30” x 40” (72 x 102cm), acrylic and mixed media on canvas. April 25, 2025 Quinn Jacobson Las Cruces, New Mexico
I really like how the cadmium red dripping down from the left “eye” follows the texture in the painting. This iPhone snap doesn’t do it justice. I hope you get the idea, though.
UPDATE: As I've lived with "Automatic Fantastic" in my living room these past days, I find myself constantly drawn to it, discovering layers I hadn't initially perceived. Perhaps the most significant revelation has been the two cadmium red drips that now unmistakably appear as figures to me - facing each other in what seems like a dance. But not just any dance - they're leaning back from one another, creating this wonderful tension in their posture. I see them now as contemplative beings, suspended in motion while engaged in some weightier communion. They dance, yes, but they also philosophize - their backward arcs suggesting a simultaneous physical and mental reaching. There's something profoundly existential in how they hold space together, as if their movement is both an acknowledgment of mortality and a defiance of it.
Thinking About Doctoral Studies and V.2 Automatic Fantastic
THINKING ABOUT THE DOCTORAL STUDIES PROGRAM
Starting a doctoral program is a strange thing—part intellectual pursuit, part personal reckoning. You don’t just show up to study something interesting; you’re expected to bring something new into the world. The whole premise of a PhD is to explore uncharted terrain—to contribute original thought to a field that matters to you.
That’s not as simple as it sounds. Academia doesn’t reward echo chambers. You need a question that hasn't been fully asked yet, or at least not asked in your way. For me, that means going deeper into what I’ve already spent years wrestling with: mortality, creativity, and the human need to matter in the face of death.
As I write this today, my thesis is rooted in the importance of creativity—not as a luxury, but as a lifeline. Specifically, I’m exploring how artists navigate the awareness of death and the existential tension it creates. What does it mean to make something—anything—while knowing you're impermanent? Does that act of creation actually change anything? Does it soothe, disrupt, clarify? And if it does… how?
These are the questions that pull at me. They’re not abstract. I’ve lived them. I’ve applied these ideas to my own creative process for years, using photography and painting as a way to wrestle with grief, memory, and the inevitability of death. What I’m after now is a deeper understanding—not just for myself, but for others who feel the same pull toward making meaning in a world that guarantees our disappearance.
The doctoral program I’ve joined refers to this early vision as a “vision seed.” I like that. Seeds hold potential. They require care, patience, and the right conditions to grow. My vision seed is simple: I want to ask new questions at the intersection of art, psychology, and philosophy. I want to know what happens when creatives become fully conscious of the existential work their art is doing—when they no longer sublimate unconsciously but engage directly with mortality through the act of making.
If I can shape this into something useful, I hope to produce a thesis that not only contributes to the academic conversation but also encourages a more vital, creative, and psychologically honest way of living. Ideally, this research becomes the foundation for a university course—something like Creativity and Mortality: Confronting the Void Through Art. A course for artists, therapists, and seekers. For anyone brave enough to stop looking away.
Maybe it’s a workshop. Maybe it’s a lecture series. Maybe it's something entirely new—a space where art becomes both expression and inquiry, where mortality isn’t denied but invited into the room. Either way, this is the path I’m on. And for the first time in a long while, it feels like the right one.
AUTOMATIC FANTASTIC V.2
I wasn’t finished with this painting yesterday - I kind of knew that but wanted to think about it. I think this piece perfectly embodies what Becker would call our "immortality project"—the desperate creative act against the void. The black textured background creates this sense of cosmic darkness, the kind we all fear when contemplating non-existence. The twin red-orange circles with their dripping streaks remind me of weeping eyes, like the piece itself is crying out against its own mortality.
The scratched and chaotic surface texture feels like my own anxious mind trying to make order from disorder. Isn't that what we're all doing? Creating meaning through art to ward off death anxiety? The stark contrast between the vibrant orange-red and the textured black background creates this visceral tension - life against death, consciousness against oblivion.
There's something primal here that connects to what Terror Management Theory suggests about our symbolic defenses against mortality. The almost face-like quality emerging from the blackness speaks to me of the self trying to assert itself against nothingness. The dripping paint suggests impermanence, yet the work itself stands as a defiant act of creation.
This piece doesn't just represent death anxiety - it performs it through its very existence. As an artist, I'm not just depicting mortality; I'm actively negotiating with it, creating something that might outlast my physical self. Isn't that what separates artistic creation from other forms of death denial? We don't just distract ourselves from death - we transform our relationship with it.
“Stumped,” Whole Plate Calotype (paper negative) - 2023.
The Creative Mind & Mortality (Artists & Anxiety): Show and Tell
Greetings,
This week we’re going to have an hour of “show and tell.” Tim Layton, from Tim Layton Photography, is going to join us and share some of his work with calotypes (paper negatives) and the projects he’s working on in service of his existential struggles. (https://timlaytonfineart.com)
In what ways do the ephemeral qualities of calotypes (paper negatives) symbolize the human confrontation with mortality and the passage of time?
The paper in paper negatives is like the human body—fragile and temporary, yet it holds the impression of a moment in time, much like our lives carry fleeting memories before they fade, degrade, and decay with age.
Stream Yard: https://streamyard.com/h8xk5frc74
Background image: SPC 4 Quinn Jacobson (aka Jake) locks in on a target 175 meters downrange with an M203 grenade launcher mounted on an M16 rifle.
The Studio Q Show LIVE! September 21, 2024 at 1000 MST
Greetings!
I hope you can join me on Saturday for a conversation about war and violence in our culture. This is episode six of Conversations with Solomon.
Some questions to ponder after watching the video:
What aspects of the video did you find the most engaging or thought-provoking?
Do you believe that war and violence are inevitable aspects of human existence?
If you agree, what reasons support this belief?
How might the themes of violence and war in our culture be expressed or transformed into artistic creations?
Can you give any examples of artists using war and violence as a topic in their art?
I wanted to have this conversation a couple of weeks ago. It's so timely; I think we should look at the idea of war and violence as a jumping-off point for creating art. This is a topic that hits close to home for me. For those that have served in the military, these ideas can alleviate some of the trauma and stress from serving. I'll share some personal insight (my military time) and how Becker had a similar experience in the Army after WW2 liberating the death camps of Europe. Ernest Becker served in the infantry as well.
If you can, spend some time with this; take some notes and wrestle with the questions I asked (above) or your own. It's 40 minutes long, but worth every minute.
Conversations With Solomon: War and Violence
The links to the show on Saturday:
Stream Yard: https://streamyard.com/tvn88jifd2
You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/live/AG2mKG-VrP0?si=Rar2IUvz-shViVLW
I hope you have a wonderful week, and I hope to see you Saturday!
The Creative Mind and Mortality (Artists & Anxiety): Writing An Artist's Statement
Join Quinn on Saturday, September 14, 2024, at 1000 MST for a talk about writing an artist statement. We'll address questions like:
What's the purpose of a statement?
Do I need one?
What should it contain?
What should I NEVER talk about in a statement?
Bring yours to share!
Stream Yard: https://streamyard.com/m83k3a75aq
You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/live/2I7TOJozYuY?si=lMtnK83V7qX0JK3Z
The Studio Q Show LIVE! September 7, 2024 at 1000 MST
Join Quinn on Saturday for a talk about the Ernest Becker Foundation's paper called, "Death Anxiety and Social Change." This paper explains how to approach these ideas both in your work and talking with other people about how death anxiety influences our day-to-day lives.
Stream Yard: https://streamyard.com/qw7aq7725j
You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/live/xrrVChZd-Nc?si=CedDtlW_xp8tdgw3
The Studio Q Show LIVE! August 17, 2024 at 1000 MST
Greetings!
I hope you can join me this Saturday for a discussion with Jeff Greenberg, PhD, co-author of The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life.
Jeff will spend the hour with us talking about how our knowledge of death influences our day-to-day living and behavior. We'll tackle what it means to be a creative person in light of our finitude (or impending death). What does creating art do for artists viewed through the lens of terror management? How does it differ from a non-creative person? Are there any advantages or disadvantages to being a creative type when it comes to death anxiety or existential terror? And what's the best way for people to understand and grasp these theories and their implications?
Saturday, August 17, 2024 at 0900 PST, 1000 MST, 1100 CST, 1200 EST, and 1800 CET
Stream Yard (LIVE): https://streamyard.com/pemntyfpd6
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/DmRTUrC8kFY?si=ZJa3lrGAraBwUDCx
“Big Changes,” 3.75” x 5” acrylic, charcoal, newsprint (mixed media).
Radical Mindfulness Why Transforming Fear of Death is Politically Vital
This is a book by Dr. James Rowe that I would recommend reading if you want to understand what I’m trying to address through my artwork and my life in general (my interests). He is addressing Ernest Becker’s theories and terror management directly. I’ve never seen anyone write about the results of death anxiety applied to politics and modern and historical problems directly. My book will address these theories in detail, but I’ve made it personal. I’ve explained how the theories have driven me both creatively and psychologically.
Radical Mindfulness examines the root causes of injustice, asking why inequalities along the lines of race, class, gender, and species continue to exist. Specifically, Dr. James K. Rowe examines fear of death as a root cause of systemic inequalities and proposes a more embodied approach to social change as a solution.
Collecting insights from powerful thinkers across multiple traditions—including black radicals, Indigenous resurgence theorists, terror management theorists, and Buddhist feminists—Rowe argues for the political importance of seemingly apolitical practices such as meditation and ritual. These tactics are insufficient on their own, but when included in social movements fighting structural injustices, mind-body practices can start to transform the embodied fears that give supremacist ideologies endless fuel while remaining unaffected by most political actors.
Radical Mindfulness is for academics, activists, and individuals who want to overcome supremacy of all kinds but are struggling to understand and develop methods for attacking it at its roots.