X-Message-Number: 7049
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 22:31:08 +0200
From: David Stodolsky <>
Subject: Re: Terror Management

>Message #7048
>Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 10:06:00 -0700
>From: Tim Freeman <>
>Subject: Terror Management
>
>In cryomsg 6194 (written May 1996), David Stodolsky
>() said:

This address is now invalid, the node has been turned off.


This is a good summary, but a few points could be clarified:
>
>   Research has shown that mortality salience increases the tendency
>   to conform to culturally acceptable systems of thought. See:
>   Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (1991).
>   A terror management theory of social behavior:
>   The psychological functions of self-esteem and cultural worldviews.
>   In M. Zanna (Ed.) Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
>   (Vol. 24, pp. 93-159). New York: Academic Press.
>
>I recently acquired a copy of this, and I agree with David Stodolsky
>that terror management (TM) explains why so few people are interested
>in trying to use technology to postpone or prevent death.
>
>Briefly, this is the hypothesis: there is obvious survival value in
>trying to avoid death in the short term.  However, avoiding death in

Any animal is programmed by evolution for survival, the cultural "buffer"
arises because only humans know that they will die. This knowledge clashes
with the survival instinct, thus generating "existential terror".
Existential terror can occur without any physiological arousal, the person
may not be terrified at all in the normal sense of the word, that is,
frightened.


>the long term has historically been impossible, so survival has been
>promoted by any psychological means (a "buffer") that prevents the

The cultural world view may not promote survival (e.g., the Pope's stand
against condoms, when there is risk of HIV infection).


>the problem of long-term death avoidance.  In practice, the usual
>buffer has two parts:
>
>   1. A firmly-held belief about what makes life valuable.  A belief
>      can be more firmly held by a group than by an individual, since
>      the group consensus obscures the essential arbitraryness of the
>      belief.  This belief can reasonably be called "culture".
>   2. Behavior that conforms to the values of the culture.  Conformity
>      to the cultural value system is a major component of self-esteem.
>
>When people are reminded of death, they must strengthen the buffer, so
>they defend their culture.  Applying this to life extension,

They can also enhance self-esteem by conforming to a greater degree to the
world view, or by degrading those who do not conform (does this remind you
of some recent contributions to this list?)


>technological approaches to life extension remind people of death, and

The confrontation with death normally leads to immediate repression of the
thought and anything associated with it. The terror management effects are
seen later.


>
>There are also books out there like "Virus of the Mind" that are
>explicitly about meme engineering.

Best to stick with experimentally validated concepts.


>
>At the moment I am reluctant to participate directly in trying to
>engineer the optimal propaganda technique, since my past experiences
>where I have accidentally pushed people into TM mode leave me somewhat
>nauseous and disgusted.  Now that I understand why that happened, I

Arousal should be avoided until a new cultural buffer is ready. Then a
confrontation with death will cause increasing rejection of the
conventional view. However, cryonics by itself is not a world view and it
probably can never be distant enough from the confrontation with death to
be one, for most people. Venturism or some other immortalist world view,
which satisfies the needs usually handled by a religious system, most
likely needs to be developed. By this I mean a social organization which
can handle all rites of passage; birth, entry into adulthood, marriage, and
death.


dss




David S. Stodolsky, PhD    PGP KeyID: B830DF31   
     Tel.: +45 38 33 03 30          Fax: Call first 


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