Roland Barthes: Studium & Punctum

A year or two ago, I had a YouTube show where I talked about Roland Barthes’ book, "Camera Lucida: Thoughts on Photography." It was published in 1980. In the book, Barthes questions the nature of photography and comes to some interesting conclusions and thoughts about it. I want to talk a little bit about what he calls "studium" and "punctum" in photography.

He thinks a lot about the relationship between photography and death. That interests me a great deal. As I work on my project (In the Shadow of Sun Mountain), I find myself connecting the photographs and death quite often. I have a lot of medicinal and ceremonial plants that I’ve photographed for my work. A lot of them made very nice images; they are beautiful and interesting to look at and think about. However, they’re all dead now; only the photograph remains. If you read Susan Sontag’s book “On Photography,” you'll find that she had some of the same (or at least similar) positions as Roland Barthes on this topic. It’s not a stretch to make these connections. Death and photography are twins. As Sontag said, “Photography is momento mori.”

The photograph captures a moment when the person photographed is neither subject nor object. He perceives himself as an object; he has "a micro-experience of death." The person in the photo no longer belongs to himself; he becomes a photo object that society is free to read, interpret, and place according to its will. This is a great way to explain what photography does: it objectifies. This makes it both interesting and dangerous, and I don’t think many “photographers” think about this, especially when photographing certain groups of people.

The target of the photograph is necessarily real. The subject existed in front of the camera, but only for a brief moment, which was recorded by the lens. The object was therefore present, but it immediately becomes different, dissimilar from itself. Barthes concludes from this that the noema (the essence) of photography is "it-has-been." The photograph captures the moment, immobilizes its subject, testifies that he "was" alive, and therefore suggests (but does not necessarily say) that he is already dead. The direct correlation to memento mori can be found here; if he isn’t dead now, he will be.

Photography brings a certainty of the existence of an object. This certainty prevents any interpretation or transformation of the object. The death given by photography is therefore "flat," because nothing can be added to it. In photography, the concrete object is transformed into an abstract object, the real object into an unreal object. The subject of a photograph is no longer alive, but it is immortalized by the physical medium of photography. However, this support is also sensitive to degradation. Something to think about as we pursue our illusions and “immortality projects.” Nothing, and I mean nothing, lasts forever. What’s the difference between 500 years and 10,000 years? Not much. It will all go away eventually. We will all die and everyone will be forgotten,

Studium
What is studium? Studium is a Latin word meaning "study," "zeal," "dedication," etc. Studium indicates the factor that initially draws the viewer to a photograph. It refers to the intention of the photographer; the viewer can determine the studium of a photograph with their logical, intellectual mind. Studium describes elements of an image rather than the sum of the image's information and meaning. The studium indicates historical, social, or cultural meanings extracted via semiotic analysis. In other words, you can see references to culture and time in the image. Sometimes they are juxtaposed ideas that conflict with one another or make a cultural or political statement, and sometimes not. This can be an abstract reference or an implied reference as well. Whatever the context, it draws the viewer in.

Punctum
What is punctum? It’s defined as “a small, distinct point.” Barthes uses it to refer to an incidental but personally poignant detail in a photograph that “pierces” or “pricks” a particular viewer, constituting a private meaning unrelated to any cultural code. The punctum points to those features of a photograph that seem to produce or convey a meaning without invoking any recognizable symbolic system. This kind of meaning is unique to the response of the individual viewer of the image.

These are really important ideas to me. As I study my photographs for this work, I find myself employing them as much as I can. Especially punctum. This unspeakable “something personal” that can’t be defined with words is really the essence of any good photograph. If you try to describe it with words, it goes away. I know it may seem antithetical to my position on the importance of narrative, but it’s really not. In fact, it supports the narrative idea fully and wholeheartedly. If the image is well-made and reinforces the story, the punctum will fully support it, even taking it to a new level. Bathes said. “However lightning-like it may be, the punctum has, more or less potentially, a power of expansion.” This is exactly what I’m after. The expansion. This idea transcends photography in a way,

The ultimate effect of punctum is the intimation of death. This is something Barthes realizes in the personal context of his bereavement over the still recent death of his mother. Looking at a portrait of her as a young girl (a picture called “The Winter Garden" that he declined to reproduce in “Camera Lucida”), he sees that her death implies his own. This is death awareness, or consciousness of death. Photography has the power to remind human beings that they will not be alive forever. In fact, you never know when your time is up. It could be today or in 50 years. We never know, but we should bring it from the unconscious to the conscious. If we did that, our world would be a much better place for everyone.

Chapter By Chapter-Chapter 3 Death Anxiety

Chapter 3: Death Anxiety—This chapter is based on Ernest Becker’s book, "The Denial of Death." The book is quite dense and academically written, but it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. It literally changed my life.

It’s my burden to unpack the ideas that Becker puts forth and present them to the reader in a way that makes sense and is applicable to their lives. I’ll also show the direct connection between the photographic work and the psychology behind these theories.

I’m writing and organizing, and then rewriting and reorganizing. There are two chapters detailing how these theories work and the underlying psychology. They are: death anxiety and terror management theory.

What is death anxiety? In a few words, it's the desire to stay alive that is in direct conflict, psychologically speaking, with the reality and knowledge that we will die. This causes a sort of cognitive dissonance; it creates unbearable anxiety, terror, and dread. We do everything we can to deny and avoid thinking about our death.

The human animal isn’t terrified of dying—not of the actual moment of death—but of being impermanent (mortal) and dying without significance. Impermanence and insignificance are what create existential terror. That’s what’s unbearable. And this comes from consciousness—the knowledge that we're here. Soren Kierkegaard (1833–1855), a 19th-century Danish philosopher, said that humans can "render themselves the object of their own subjective inquiry." Think about that! That's our big forebrain in action. And psychoanalyst Otto Rank said humans have the capacity "to make the unreal real." This intelligence is a big part of the problem we face. Some think that consciousness is an evolutionary mistake and that we, like all other animals, shouldn’t be aware of our impending deaths.

However, we’ve evolved to cope with this burden by suppressing that death awareness knowledge through self-esteem and using culture. We create “immortality projects.” According to Becker, fear—or denial—of death is a fundamental motivator behind why we do what we do.

Becker said that the real world is simply too terrible to admit. If we didn't have ways of buffering the fear, anxiety, and helplessness over our death and meaninglessness, it would paralyze us and keep us from getting out of bed in the morning. So there is a need to repress it. We use what Becker and all anthropologists call "culture" or "cultural worldview." This "cultural worldview" is a shared reality that we all believe in or subscribe to—a value and belief system that comes from our culture. We find self-esteem through this cultural worldview.

For example, our culture tells us that having a job and getting promotions is a good thing, as is earning more money, driving a certain type of car, or dressing a certain way. If we do these things, our self-esteem is strengthened, and we have a defense or coping mechanism to repress the anxiety that comes from knowing we are going to die. These buffers can be good or bad. That’s why it’s important to be conscious of these ideas and the psychology behind them. Like Freud said, "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate." We can get ourselves out of it by being explicitly aware that we’re in it. Albert Camus said, “…come to terms with death; thereafter, anything is possible." This is the crux of why I'm writing this book and doing this work.

Culture, or cultural worldviews, are defense mechanisms against the knowledge that we will die. Becker argues that humans live in both a physical world of objects and a symbolic world of meaning. The symbolic part of human life engages in what Becker calls an "immortality project." People try to create or become part of something they believe will last forever—art, music, literature, religion, nation-states, social and political movements, etc. Such connections, they believe, give their lives meaning.

Kierkegaard talked about this dread-evoking mystery. He believed that anxiety comes from our knowledge of finitude and meaninglessness. Becker concurs with this point and expounds on it. Kierkegaard said that humans focus their attention on small tasks and diversions that have the illusion of significance—activities that keep people going. If they dwell on the situation too long, they'll bog down and be at risk of releasing their neurotic fear that they are impotent in the world.

That’s a small portion that I’m working on now. You’ll see, in the end, how this all connects to every war, every act of genocide, and every act of evil in the world. Why it happened and why it continues to happen—again, this is the energy of the book, to help people become conscious of this predicament.

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.

Psychology, Philosophy, History, Art, and Death Anxiety

Pretty Pictures, The Technical Versus The Conceptual, and the Masses: Try Something New
We lean so heavily on "pretty" (aka "chocolate box") pictures or "process photography" pictures that we forget about narrative, meaning, and intent—all of the things that really make photographs and storytelling interesting and meaningful. This is not a new topic. I've been preaching this message for years on my YouTube channel, in my books and workshops, and anywhere else I can engage in conversation about making art and photography.

Let’s be honest; most photography is easy to forget. We see so much of it that it becomes less interesting or engaging. And it’s not anchored to anything meaningful that people can connect to. I define meaningful as something weighty in life—work that contains life lessons that we can use to become better people in some way—to be an asset to the world, not a liability.

I’m not talking about technical prowess either. A lot of times, this is conflated with meaning or importance. People love to see big photographs or rare processes. The content of the photograph seems irrelevant, and most of the time, the process and size have little or nothing to do with the subject matter.

The technical work is easy to talk about. It’s safe and universally appealing. This demographic always wants to know about the equipment you're using—what camera, what lens, etc. I always offer the Ernest Hemingway analogy. I've never heard anyone ask what kind of typewriter he used to write "The Old Man and the Sea." Why is that? It's very similar to this obsession with gear and equipment, processes, and size.

They connect technically, but in no other meaningful way. The emphasis appears to be solely on the technical, with no regard for the conceptual or narrative content. I believe they connect to these images because they want to replicate what they see and appeal to the masses to get "likes" and "views" on social media. They want the attention and adulation simply for carrying out a technical process or for owning expensive or rare equipment, period. This seems trivial and mechanical. Do you see why this type of photography is everywhere and why you see it so often? It's a feedback loop, and it’s derivative.

There’s a logical fallacy called Argumentum ad Populum (an appeal to popularity, public opinion, or the majority). It’s an argument, often emotionally laden, for the acceptance of an unproven conclusion by adducing irrelevant evidence based on the feelings, prejudices, or beliefs of a large group of people—the masses. Based on social media, this is how I see most photography today. It’s rare that we get a body of work that’s connected to a narrative or has substance, meaning, or any of the other attributes that I’ve mentioned. The pull of social media is too strong—the desire or need to be accepted and “liked” is powerful (see Becker and self-esteem). The one-off, cliched images are what the masses want. I believe we can do better. We can raise the bar. I know we can. I’m going to try my best to model this behavior with this project.

"The immediate man - the modern inauthentic or insincere man - is someone who blindly follows the trends of society to the dot. Someone who unthinkingly implements what society says is ‘right.’ He recognizes himself only by his dress,...he recognizes that he has a self only by externals. He converts frivolous patterns to make them his identity. He often distorts his own personality in order to 'fit into the group.' His opinion means nothing even to himself, hence he imitates others to superficially look "normal." - Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

Having said that, I will tell you that I’m going all in on this work (In the Shadow of Sun Mountain: The Psychology of “Othering”). I’m going to push the boundaries as much as possible. I even want to try to transcend photography in some ways. I want the viewer to remember the message in the story—the "meat," if you will. I want them to connect in a real way to the narrative and ideas and to put that proverbial pebble in their shoe.

Trying To Do Something Different
Most of you who read my posts regularly know that this is a unique project. I might even assert that it hasn’t been done before. I’m combing art, psychology, philosophy, theology, history, and existential anxiety to talk about human behavior. This is a distinctive combination of the humanities and art. I haven’t seen anything like it in my research.

I say that with the caveat of Otto Rank’s book, “Art and Artist.” This book is a difficult and dense read. Rank’s ideas would relate most closely to what I’m trying to do, at least the ideas and execution, or simply dealing with the creative life as a psychological defense against the knowledge of death. But even this is in a different context. In his book, he contemplated the creative type of man, who is the one whose "experience makes him take in the world as a problem... but when you no longer accept the collective solution to the problem of existence, then you must fashion your own... The work of art is... the ideal answer...”

All of this motivates me, and it makes it exciting to do the work.

The impetus behind this work is psychology. The theories of Ernest Becker are at the core of it. There are a lot of other people who have influenced the work, but as far as the main component goes, it’s Becker. The terror management theory is just as important. TMT gives evidence for Becker’s theories, so I’m leaning heavily on TMT too. I will include all of the references and resources in the book. You’ll see how vast and rich they are.

I believe these are very important ideas, maybe the most important I've ever heard. They explain so much and answer so many questions, questions that I’ve carried for 50 years. My hope is that the reader or viewer will take away positive ideas for making the world a better place. This is not about being negative or pessimistic. These ideas should nudge you toward celebrating every day we are above ground and being humble and grateful to be alive. The most valuable things are finite and have a relatively short lifespan. That describes humanity very well.

“In the Shadow of Sun Mountain: The Psychology of ‘Othering’”
My intention is to create a psychological connection between my photographs of the land, plants, and symbols of the Tabeguache-Ute and the historical event of colonization. I'm providing psychological evidence as to why atrocities like these and so many others happen. It’s based on human awareness of death, or death anxiety.

While I’m using a specific historical event, the ethnocide and genocide of Native Americans, specifically the Tabeguache-Ute, this could be any number of similar events in history. I’m using psychology, philosophy, theology, history, and art (19th-century photography) to tell the story of "othering" or the psychology of "othering."

It’s not just telling a story of historical atrocities. It’s describing in detail the psychological underpinnings of "othering." I'm answering the questions about why these kinds of things happen, and I’m backing my claims and assertions with empirical evidence. I’m asking and answering the “big questions:” Why do we marginalize certain groups of people? Why are we threatened by people who are different from us? Why do we start wars? Why do we commit genocide? Why are we ignoring climate change? Etcetera, etcetera. I'm attempting to answer those questions with this body of work and book.

I’m addressing this subject somewhat academically. In other words, I’m drawing on the writing and research of social psychologists, scientists, philosophers, theologians, and anthropologists. I’m also referencing a lot of writers who would be considered artists—playwrights, novelists, and poets. My approach to this work is interdisciplinary because this topic requires a wide range of information to be understood.

I live on this land now. In a lot of ways, I struggle with it. I understand what happened here and why. I can't change the past. I wish I could. What I can do is offer or extend the notion of self-examination. These events, and many others like them, should not be viewed as "in the past," but as something that can happen to anyone at any time. Consider your own psychological pathology of existential terror. Consider what psychological defenses, or buffers, you are using to repress the anxiety. Are they positive? Are they an asset or a liability to the world? It's a lot more difficult to create a great work of art than to post insults and argue on social media. They're both defenses, or buffers; one is an asset, and the other is a liability.

Consciousness is the Parent of All Horror: It’s the Worm at the Core
A more detailed definition would be that my work is about human consciousness. The knowledge that we exist and the consequences of that knowledge—knowing that we’re going to die—are too much for us to psychologically handle. It truly is the worm at the core. Sheldon Solomon said, “The thing that renders us unique as human beings is that we’re smart enough to know that like all living things, we too will die. The fear or anxiety that is engendered by that unwelcome realization, when we try to distance ourselves from it or deny it, that’s when we bury it under the psychological bushes as it were, it comes back to bear bitter and malignant fruit, on the other hand folks who have the good fortune by virtue of circumstance or their character or disposition to really be able to explicitly ponder what it means to be alive in light of the fact that we are transient creatures here for a relatively inconsequential amount of time; I buy the argument theologically, philosophically, as well as psychologically and empirically, that can bring out the best in us, and that our most noble and heroic aspirations are the result of the rare individual, who’s able to live life to the fullest, by understanding as Heidegger put it, that we can be summarily obliterated not in some vaguely unspecified future moment but at any second in our lives.”

When he says, "It comes back to bear bitter and malignant fruit," that sums up my central point about this work: answering the questions about the decimation of the Tabeguache-Ute and millions of other human beings. Why do these kinds of things happen? What are the solutions to preventing these kinds of things? These and other questions about human behavior are addressed by this psychology.

Thomas Ligotti’s book, “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,” says, "consciousness is the parent of all horror." He quotes quite a lot from Peter Zapffe's 1933 essay, "The Last Messiah," referring to anti-natalism and pollyannaism, or the Pollyanna Principle. His position, because of this knowledge, states that it would have been better to have never existed in the first place. He encourages humans to stop procreating. The end of Zapffe’s book also draws this conclusion. He posits that human consciousness was an evolutionary mistake. This sentiment is echoed throughout pessimistic philosophy; it’s not new. On one hand, it is difficult to argue against—the pain and suffering in the world can’t be fathomed. If you read Zapffe’s book, you’ll know what I mean.

"The life of the worlds is a roaring river, but Earth's is a pond and backwater.
The sign of doom is written on your brows—how long will ye kick against the pin-pricks?
But there is one conquest and one crown, one redemption and one solution.
Know yourselves—be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye."
Peter Zapffe, The Last Messiah

A Different Perspective
Richard Dawkins, in his book Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder, said, “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?“

You can have a different perspective on these ideas, but the bottom line returns to the knowledge of our impending deaths and the effects that has on our behavior. There is enough evidence to show that, while there are a lot of things to take into consideration, mortality salience drives most human behavior. Exploring that idea is what I’m most interested in for this body of work.

The Wounded and The Fallen

People wonder why terrible things happen in the world. I’ve had a preoccupation with this question for decades. It’s what made me pick up a camera all those years ago. Why do certain people or certain groups fall victim to horrible events? If you follow what's happening in Ukraine today and in many other parts of the world, you know what I mean. It’s heart-wrenching.

These events can be very personal, or they can be global. They usually deal with the same thing; genocide, ethnocide, loss, tragedy, and injustice. And most of the time, they are about "us" and "them." I would suggest that because we fear death, it is in our nature to always find "the other" to blame, use as a scapegoat, humiliate, demean, and ultimately kill.

And I would argue that “the other" challenges our psychological buffers against existential anxiety; we are left defenseless. This is why we can’t get along with people who are different from us. This is the definition of death anxiety. It’s our inability to psychologically deal with the instinct to stay alive and the knowledge that we’re going to die.

One of the biggest problems is a lack of self-awareness. For most people, death is a vague abstraction that doesn’t pertain to them. William James said, “There’s a panic rumbling beneath the surface of consciousness.” I can see that statement clearly when I look at the history of the world and even current events. I can see it in people and they don’t even recognize it.

Ernest Becker said in his book, Escape from Evil, "In this view, man is an energy-converting organism who must exert his manipulative powers, who must damage his world in some ways, who must make it uncomfortable for others, etc., by his own nature as an active being. He seeks self-expansion from a very uncertain power base. Even if man hurts others, it is because he is weak and afraid, not because he is confident and cruel. Rousseau summed up this point of view with the idea that only the strong person can be ethical, not the weak one."

My photographs are a way of communicating these ideas in more poetic and lyrical ways than words can. They are about ideas and emotions surrounding death anxiety and terror management theory—subtle visual cues that are difficult to describe in words.

This work is about the Tabeguache-Ute people and many other groups throughout history that have been victims of the paradoxical human condition. It’s about their land, their plants and animals, and some of the symbolism and objects they used here. At least, that’s what the images are about on the surface. In reality, they are about the "residue," or what’s left here, visually representing the psychology of the land and objects. Moreover, it's about why it happened. It attempts to answer the big questions surrounding human behavior and "the other." This work is as much about psychology as it is about photography.

The pictures are not a romanticized version of indigenous people. There are no images of people at all in this work. I’ve made a conscious decision not to photograph people. I’m not interested in promoting the white, Eurocentric view of Native Americans. I’m not interested in trying to show their "Indianness." I see this as another way of keeping them victims of the colonial gaze. It’s almost a form of continued ethnic cleansing. There is so much baggage there to unpack, and most people don’t have the skills or knowledge to do it. These kinds of images carry that weight, whether the creator or viewer are aware of it or not.

“When the angel of death sounds his trumpet, the pretenses of civilization are blown from men’s heads into the mud like hats in a gust of wind.” – George Bernard Shaw

Death Reminders & Mortality Salience

“If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.” Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was a British novelist.

"We discovered that subtle, and even subliminal, reminders of death increase devotion to one’s cultural scheme of things, support for charismatic leaders, confidence in the existence of God, and belief in the efficacy of prayer. They amplify our disdain toward people who do not share our beliefs, even to the point of taking solace in their demise. They drive us to compulsively smoke, drink, eat, and shop. They make us uncomfortable with our bodies and our sexuality. They impel us to drive recklessly and fry ourselves in tanning booths to bolster our self-esteem. They magnify our phobias, obsessions, and social anxieties."
The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

Terror Management Theory (TMT) was developed in 1986 by social psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, and Sheldon Solomon based on Ernest Becker’s ideas. They wrote the book, “The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life.” William James wrote in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) that awareness of our inevitable, unavoidable deaths is the “worm at the core” of human existence and consciousness. Hence the desperate imperative to avoid that awareness – to deny it and to live as if somehow we might be immortal. (Ernest Becker Foundation)

The Terror Management Theory (TMT) is such good empirical evidence for Becker’s theories. It’s solid and repeatable. It answers so many questions about human behavior.

If you pay attention, especially this time of year, you’ll see droves of people with high death anxiety acting out, trying to quell their terror. Death reminders are everywhere. They’re all around us every day. The pandemic alone created daily death reminders. They happen when you see an ambulance or an accident when you're watching the news, or even when you're driving by a funeral home (usually subconsciously). These death reminders have consequences, and most people are unaware of what they’re even doing when they’re buffering their death anxiety. In Kirkegaard’s words, "they tranquilize with the trivial."

How do you communicate these ideas? It’s very difficult. Most people will shrug them off and justify what they’re doing in any way they can, or they’ll deny them completely. Moreover, most couldn’t care less about these theories. Sometimes, I feel like I’m the crazy religious guy standing on the street corner preaching doom and gloom. I’m hoping that my book will change some minds and at least open the door to being interested in what this is all about.

Psychology has persuaded me to think differently about human behavior and the reasons we do what we do. As I go through the process of deconstructing these theories, I find myself less inclined to follow the masses and less interested in activities that are blatantly in place to buffer the terror of death. The life illusions and all of the "vital lies."

As I learn more about human behavior and Becker’s theories, it makes me more compelled to offer these ideas to those who are curious about why they do what they do. These ideas are life-changing. They’ll engage your mind and, eventually, change your behavior. Moreover, you'll start to discover what's really meaningful and what you're truly grateful for.

Being conscious and fully aware of your own death anxiety and the buffers you use will give you a more authentic life. I'm not saying you'll be enlightened or reach Nirvana, but you will reveal your real self to yourself. Socrates said that the true philosopher does nothing but practice dying and being dead. “So, that’s what philosophy is: a practice for death." That brings peace, appreciation for life, gratitude, and humility—things we all need more of in these precarious times.

A Quiet Ego

As I write on the psychology of "othering," I can’t help but wonder if there are solutions to our dilemma (crisis may be a better word). Is there a way to fight existential terror besides keeping our self-esteem up by clinging to our cultural worldviews (illusions)? I believe there may be some hope in replacing our anxiety-repressing "immortality projects" with practicing humility and gratitude.

The first time I heard the phrase “a quiet ego” was when I read Dr. Pelin Kesebir’s paper on humility and death anxiety. Kesebir, P. (2014). “A quiet ego quiets death anxiety: Humility as an existential anxiety buffer.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Five studies tested the hypothesis that a quiet ego, as exemplified by humility, would buffer death anxiety. Humility is characterized by a willingness to accept the self and life without comforting illusions, and by low levels of self-focus. As a consequence, it was expected to render mortality thoughts less threatening and less likely to evoke potentially destructive behavior patterns.

In line with this reasoning, Study 1 found that people high in humility do not engage in self-serving moral disengagement following mortality reminders, whereas people low in humility do.

Study 2 showed that only people low in humility respond to death reminders with increased fear of death and established that this effect was driven uniquely by humility and not by some other related personality trait.

In Study 3, a low sense of psychological entitlement decreased cultural worldview defense in response to death thoughts, whereas a high sense of entitlement tended to increase it.

Study 4 demonstrated that priming humility reduces self-reported death anxiety relative to both a baseline and a pride priming condition.

Finally, in Study 5, experimentally induced feelings of humility prevented mortality reminders from leading to depleted self-control. As a whole, these findings obtained from relatively diverse Internet samples illustrate that the dark side of death anxiety is brought about by a noisy ego only and not by a quiet ego, revealing self-transcendence as a sturdier, healthier anxiety buffer than self-enhancement. (APA PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2019 APA).

Sheldon Solomon addressed that just being conscious of these theories would help us a lot. He said, "If we can drop back as a species and consider collectively the extent to which maladaptive manifestations of death anxiety bring out the worst in us, that would give us the capacity to nudge our species in a slightly more productive direction. The only way to get out of it is a wholesale recognition of these ideas.

The thing that renders us unique as human beings is that we’re smart enough to know that like all living things, we too will die.

The fear or anxiety that is engendered by that unwelcome realization, when we try to distance ourselves from it or deny it, that’s when we bury it under the psychological bushes as it were, it comes back to bear bitter and malignant fruit. On the other hand, there are folks who have the good fortune, by virtue of circumstance or their character or disposition, to really be able to explicitly ponder what it means to be alive in light of the fact that we are transient creatures here for a relatively inconsequential amount of time.

I buy the argument theologically, philosophically, as well as psychologically and empirically, that can bring out the best in us, and that our most noble and heroic aspirations are the result of the rare individual, who’s able to live life to the fullest, by understanding as Heidegger put it, that we can be summarily obliterated not in some vaguely unspecified future moment but at any second in our lives."

The Last Messiah and Deer Antlers

"The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by over-evolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment. In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground.”

This is from Peter Zapffe's famous essay, "The Last Messiah." He argues, as do Becker and others, that the evolution of consciousness created a huge psychological problem for human beings: the knowledge that we're going to die.

In his essay, he argues that the Irish elk deer of the Pleistocene era evolved with antlers that were too big. He equates it to the human brain evolving consciousness and becoming aware that we exist and that we're going to die. He makes the point that these were evolutionary mistakes.

Zapffe was a Norwegian philosopher. He was born in 1899 and died in 1990. His doctoral dissertation was never translated into English but is said to be a great piece of writing on pessimistic philosophy. 

The species of deer that Zapffe is referring to is the Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus), which thrived throughout Eurasia during the ecological epoch known as the Pleistocene (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). The Irish elk had the largest antlers of any known deer, with a maximum span of 3.65 meters (12 feet). Historically, the explanation given for the extinction of the Irish elk was that its antlers grew too large: the animals could no longer hold up their heads or feed properly, and their antlers, according to this explanation, would also get entangled in trees when trying to flee human hunters through forests.

However, according to some researchers, the large antlers of the Irish elk may have had little to do with the extinction of the species. The Irish elk’s antlers did indeed weigh these creatures down, and Zapffe’s analogy is still illuminating in its own right.

A surplus of consciousness and intellect is the default state of affairs for the human species. Unlike the case of the deer that Zapffe alludes to, we have been able to save ourselves from going extinct. Zapffe posits that humans have come to cope and survive by repressing this surplus of consciousness. Without restricting our consciousness, Zapffe believed the human being would fall into "a state of relentless panic" or a ‘feeling of cosmic panic’, as he puts it. This follows a person’s realization that "he is the universe’s helpless captive"; it comes from truly understanding the human predicament. In the 1990 documentary To Be a Human Being, he stated:

"Man is a tragic animal, not because of his smallness, but because he is too well endowed. Man has longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfill. We have expectations of a just and moral world. Man requires meaning in a meaningless world." (Sam Woolfe)

This surplus of consciousness is, in fact, a psychological kick in the groin, no doubt. However, like Becker’s theory shows, and Zapffe alludes to, we repress it; we bury it deep in our subconscious. And we use our illusions (cultural worldviews) to keep it there and make day-to-day life bearable.

My Book: In the Shadow of Sun Mountain: The Psychology of Othering

"What you're trying to create is a certain kind of an indispensable presence, where your position in the narrative is not contingent on whether somebody likes you, or somebody knows you, or somebody's a friend, or somebody's being generous to you." —Kerry James Marshall, NPR News 2017

MY BOOK
The cold weather has arrived in the Rocky Mountains. I’ve changed my routine a little bit. I’m up early every day to start a fire, make coffee, and get our cat, Moshe, fed.

I read a lot, and I’m writing a lot every day. I enjoy it immensely. I’m very excited about the content of this book. My goal is to have the text fully explain the theories that I go on about in these posts. However, I want to do it in a simple and straightforward way so that a layperson can understand and relate to it. I believe I can make that happen, I’ve been spending a lot of time synthesizing the material and translating it into simple English. I can’t emphasize how important these ideas are for every human being to understand—they are truly life-changing—and that’s not an overstatement.

In order for people to understand these ideas, I need to explain how I came to them through my art and photography work. That’s a long story with a lot of history. I’ve been struggling with articulating why I’ve done what I’ve done over the years, and now I have the answers. I’m excited to share all of it.

I’m digging up memories of my early photography days and going over past projects and work. I’m evaluating what I was trying to do and understanding what I learned from each body of work. It’s like putting a puzzle together.

I just wrote about an exhibition I had in undergraduate school. That was over 30 years ago. The ideas I was reaching for are so clear to me now. And they are more relevant to my work now than ever. The connections and insights I make doing this are really enlightening to me. They clarify my intentions and complete my journey toward understanding the psychology of "othering," which is the only issue I've ever felt motivated to address in my work. Because of that, this work is the most important I’ve ever done.

The writing has turned into a mini-biography, at least in the sense of my photography and art life. It’s going to be interesting to hear the feedback when people read these stories and see the connections I’ve made. In a lot of ways, this project is the culmination of my life’s work. It sums up everything I’ve done in my career as an artist and photographer. Not only that, but I clearly define the motivation for creating the work.

It feels really good to share the ideas, the work, the progress, and the insight gained from all of it. I think it will be valuable for people interested in the arc of a fine art career in photography. I'm grateful for my life in the arts, and I’m particularly grateful that I’ve spent my career in photography. It’s been very good for me. It’s given me insight and direction that I wouldn’t have been able to get from anything else.

I’m breaking the book into the following chapters and parts:

The Preface

Artist’s Statement

Chapter One: Introduction

Chapter Two: Landscapes

Chapter Three: Flora

Chapter Four: Symbols & Objects

Chapter Five: Essays On Mortality, Photography & Philosophy

Stay tuned!

A whole plate calotype (paper negative) in a window mat—a dwarf Ponderosa Pine tree.

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.