Even tiny intimations of mortality drive humans to prove their worth
Evidence
Like bats and worms, we fight like hell when faced with physical death. But we humans go much further. Even the slightest intimation of our mortality prods us to work harder to leave our mark on the world. We fight to prove our worth, even in the smallest of ways. Approval from our boss, a compliment from a friend, even an approving nod from a passing stranger can bolster our feelings of worthiness, while disapproval, criticism, and being ignored can send us reeling with a rush of anxiety. This unrelenting struggle to prove our value is one of the many ways we, in the words of poet Dylan Thomas, “rage against the dying of the light.” — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 229
Categorization
- QUESTION: This suggests everyday micro-anxieties — a boss’s disapproval, being ignored — are downstream of mortality awareness at the deepest level. Worth chasing: is all social anxiety ultimately death anxiety?
- XREF: connects to: Capitalism calibrates incentives to make workers risk death for subsistence — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 194; People’s caring practices exceed and outlast anything capital offers — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2018