Humans construct cultural identities to deny mortality.
Evidence
Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. — Jeff Greenberg and Spee Kosloff, Terror Management Theory, 5
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s other reading on sacrifice as a stabilizing structure and to terror management groundwork generally. — connects to: Humans reframe their animal biology as culture to deny mortal embodiment — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 611; Awareness of mortality drives people to defend cultural worldviews that give life meaning. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1488; Cultural worldviews evolved to buffer humans against death terror. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 61 (+9 more)
Broader Connections
- Cultural worldviews evolved to buffer humans against death terror.
#corroborates(0.96) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 61 - Awareness of mortality drives people to defend cultural worldviews that give life meaning.
#expands(0.95) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1488 - Death-awareness drives humans to cling to cultural worldviews and self-esteem
#corroborates(0.95) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 476 - Character and culture are built to shield us from death-terror
#corroborates(0.94) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 18 - Humans reframe their animal biology as culture to deny mortal embodiment
#expands(0.93) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 611 - Cultural worldviews structure conscious experience to mask death’s inevitability
#corroborates(0.92) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 184 - Death awareness would have been lethal without simultaneous cultural adaptations to deny it
#corroborates(0.90) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 279 - Humans deflect death anxiety onto cultural symbols, and defending those symbols produces real-world evil
#expands(0.88) — Jeff Greenberg and Spee Kosloff, Terror Management Theory, 25 - Mortality salience increases support for lethal violence against cultural enemies.
#expands(0.87) — Jeff Greenberg and Spee Kosloff, Terror Management Theory, 67 - Cultivating ancestry functions as a buffer against death
#exemplifies(0.85) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 407 - Mortality threats drive group identification through perceived loss of control, not symbolic immortality.
#qualifies(0.83) — Immo Fritsche, Agency Through the We, 41