Death denial

Death denial (denial)
The desire to extend human life is perhaps as old as human life itself. It has great -- if usually hidden -- relevance to deep politics, since death anxiety is a psychological factor which is both potent and often hidden.

Death denial is the refusal to acknowledge the necessity of corporeal death. Children learn that the topic of aging and death is a sensitive one. Cultures exist as a bulwark against the inevitable reality of death, offering endless distractions as if by refusing to contemplate the possibility it can be obviated.

History

Elaborate burial rituals and procedures (for example the pyramids) testify to the importance afforded certain people even in death. Legends and other snatches of record support the claim that death denial has been a human preoccupation since time immemorial. When they weren't busy try to turn lead into gold, alchemists have often been busy seeking for elixirs of eternal youth.

Psychology

Full article: Psychology

Even children know that they will die one day, and as they grow up they -- usually -- witness a lot of death to confirm the fact. This may be less true nowadays that the elderly are often warehoused out of sight of their descendants. commercially-controlled media delivers a lot of news about death, but this is controllable by the flick of a switch.

Enemy and hero images

Enemy images (such as "Muslim terrorists" or "domestic extremists") have the power to galvanize people into action, which in part stems from their death anxiety. Extreme cases may suffer from permanent war mentality, a form of paranoia. In the UK, the Integrity Initiative/Institute for Statecraft shows how institutions can be infused with an ideology (in this case Russophobia).

Culture

Full article: Culture

Death denial is central to culture as Ernest Becker explained in The Denial Of Death.

Religion

Full article: Religion

Most if not all established religions seek to minimize human death, for example by detailing ways in which it is not as terminal on a spiritual level as it is corporeally. Many promise immortality for dutiful adherents.

Technology

Full article: Technology

In the 19^th and particularly 20^th century, techno-utopian philosophy has given a new form to death denial. AI-created avatars of the already dead, especially after the advent of LLMs have boosted the idea that some form of immortality might be possible by "uploading oneself to the cloud". This is seldom referred to as a religion, but fits the description quite well.

Terrorisation

The "war on terror" was a covert project of terrorisation that exploited death anxiety to abridge existing social constraints and change society. Initially well received (after decades of planning), this was wearing very thin in the late 2010s, with increasingly many commentators noting the continual failure to actually define what "terrorism" is -- or why such definitions as were advanced almost all explicitly exclude and activities done by governments.

In early 2020, a decision was taken to wind down "terrorism" as an enemy du jour and replace it with "novel viruses". The 2020 WEF AGM and 2020 MSC were important events to disseminate the new policy.

Continued relevance

In 2025, a hot mic overheard a conversation between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin (both aged 72) "chatting about the possibility of achieving immortality with organ transplants and advanced medical procedures, alongside Kim Jong Un". Xi told Putin via a translator: "Earlier, people rarely lived to 70, but these days at 70 you are still a child".

Exposure

Ernest Becker devoted his life to the study of death denial, publishing The Denial Of Death just before he died and Escape From Evil (posthumously). Both remain of great relevance to a deep understanding of deep politics and statecraft.

Students of Becker's developed Terror management theory, an academic field devoted to studying the human fear of death. This has provided scientific evidence that backs up Becker's intuition.

 

An example

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Cannibalism

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