Glass Bones, Chapter 7: The Fragile Architecture of Meaning

This week's reading from Glass Bones is Chapter 7, The Fragile Architecture of Meaning.

I've been building toward this chapter through Becker, mortality awareness, denial, culture, worldviews, and Terror Management Theory. Chapter 7 brings those ideas together around something I've become increasingly interested in: how stable meaning feels from inside it and how fragile it actually is.

Culture looks solid. We have institutions, religions, political systems, traditions, identities, rituals, laws, flags, and all the stories we inherit about who we are and what matters.

But psychologically, these structures may be far less permanent than they appear.

Ernest Becker understood culture as a symbolic system constructed partly in response to mortality awareness. It gives us significance, continuity, and a place inside a world that will eventually continue without us. Terror Management Theory extended Becker's argument experimentally, showing how strongly people can defend these worldviews when mortality becomes psychologically salient.

That helps explain something about human conflict that has always fascinated and disturbed me.

When someone challenges a deeply held worldview, we may experience more than disagreement. Something underneath the argument is being disturbed. The structure that organizes reality itself begins to tremble.

This is why political disagreements can become questions of identity. Religious differences can become existential threats. National symbols acquire enormous emotional power. People may become more certain precisely when the ground beneath that certainty has become less secure.

We defend the very structures that protect us.

The problem is that no symbolic structure can completely solve mortality. Every worldview eventually encounters something it cannot explain, absorb, or protect us from. Death remains. Loss remains, chance remains, and the body fails. History interrupts us, and the world refuses to behave according to the stories we've constructed around it. The architecture cracks.

For me, this moment is also where art becomes interesting.

Artists spend a remarkable amount of time working with things that refuse complete control. Materials fail, images disappear, and paintings go somewhere you didn't intend. A glass plate that seemed perfect suddenly lifts in the wash or is damaged. Sometimes the failure becomes more compelling than the thing you were trying to make.

Glass Bones: Chapter 2 - When We Knew We Would Die

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.

Preface and Introduction - First Reading: Glass Bones

Greetings,

I hope this finds you well.

Thank you for the tremendous response to Glass Bones. I truly appreciate it. I’ve been deeply immersed in my new project, Rupture: The Creative Response to Death Anxiety.

I also posted the first part of a reading from Glass Bones. I plan to continue the series over the coming weeks, reading sections from the book and talking a little about the ideas behind the work.

The Worm at the Core: A Public Reading

I had an idea and thought I would throw it out there to see if there’s any interest. I read as much as I can and often reread books. Over the winter, I’ve read a lot and written a lot for my project.

I’ve studied Ernest Becker’s ideas for a few years now. There’s always more to learn. It seems I’ll be able to read and reread his books for the rest of my life. “The Denial of Death” is what my project is centered on—the theories in that book. My project requires more understanding than simply expressing my personal thoughts and ideas about what causes evil in the world—it requires knowledge of how death anxiety and the denial of death affect human behavior. For that, I turn to Dr. Sheldon Solomon and his coauthors, who wrote “The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life.” This is a great companion book to Becker’s book. It’s a wonderful read. It lays out an empirical framework for Becker’s theories.

So I wanted to offer a reading of “The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life.” I would do this on my YouTube channel. One chapter at a time—there are eleven chapters. This would be a great way to understand what I’m doing with my project; moreover, it would give you a chance to learn about these ideas in a very straightforward, non-academic way. I would read a chapter a week. Every Saturday at 1000 MST on my YouTube channel After the reading, we can discuss the ideas, ask questions, and really dive deep into this paradoxical condition we all suffer from. If there are questions I can’t answer or something we want clarity on, I can ask Sheldon (one of the authors).

Let me know if you’d be interested in doing this. You can send me an email or leave a comment below. I think both you and I would be able to get a lot out of this!

Winter Activities: Reading, Writing, and Research

It’s really exciting for me to be able to find connections between psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and my work. I dig deep for them, but when I find them, it’s like a big, bright light illuminating my way. To blend the social sciences and art seems like a stretch, but you’d be surprised how related and relevant it is. It fits well together in the right context.

Reading, writing, and research are what I’m mostly doing over the winter. I will make a few images, but I live in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and at almost 9,000 feet above sea level, it gets cold and snowy here. However, we do have some really nice sunny days in between the storms. I’ll try to take advantage of those when I can.

Most of my day is spent writing the text for my book and laying out the chapters for it. I can see it’s going to be a big job organizing the writing. Right now, I have a rough draft of what the direction will be, and I have most of the introduction written. I continue to edit and rewrite my artist’s statement, too. As the project evolves and becomes clearer, I can articulate the main points better. I have a lot of the psychology and philosophical anthropology written. The organization of that will be the big challenge. I don’t want the book to be a non-pharmacological intervention for insomnia. I want it to be easily consumed and understood. A big challenge for sure, but I’m up to it and very excited to do it.

The book, right now, looks like this:
Foreword
Chapter 1: Artist’s Statement
Chapter 2: Introduction
Chapter 3: Death Anxiety
Chapter 4: Terror Management Theory
Chapter 5: The Photographs
Chapter 6: Essays
Afterword

I’m reading and re-reading these books over the winter. These books have taught me so much about psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. They make up the vast majority of references for my book. I highly recommend reading them if you haven’t.