Humans deflect death anxiety onto cultural symbols, and defending those symbols produces real-world evil

Evidence

What men have done is shift the fear of death onto the higher level of cultural perpetuity; and this very triumph ushers in an ominous new problem. Since men must now hold for dear life onto the self-transcending meanings of the society in which they live, onto the immortality symbols which guarantee them indefinite duration of some kind, a new kind of instability and anxiety are created. And this anxiety is precisely what spills over into the affairs of men. In seeking to avoid evil, man is responsible for bringing more evil into the world than organisms could ever do merely by exercising their digestive tracts. — Jeff Greenberg and Spee Kosloff, Terror Management Theory, 25

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Becker’s framing that humanity’s triumph over literal death fear spawns a worse, symbolic-instability anxiety is a dense causal claim about civilization itself.
• ADDENDUM: Links directly to the ‘On Sacrifice’ piece: Becker’s immortality-symbols logic undergirds the sacral-kingship function of costly ritual violence.
• XREF: connects to: Humans construct cultural identities to deny mortality. — Jeff Greenberg and Spee Kosloff, Terror Management Theory: Implications…, 5; 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; Character and culture are built to shield us from death-terror — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 18 (+17 more)

Broader Connections

• Awareness of mortality drives people to defend cultural worldviews that give life meaning. #corroborates (0.95) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1488
• Cultural worldviews evolved to buffer humans against death terror. #corroborates (0.93) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 61
• Death-awareness drives humans to cling to cultural worldviews and self-esteem #corroborates (0.92) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 476
• Culture cannot fully repress death terror, driving people to localize threats in fetishized evil. #expands (0.90) — Jeff Greenberg and Spee Kosloff, Terror Management Theory, 54
• Death concerns strengthen appeals to kill culturally designated evil groups. #corroborates (0.89) — Jeff Greenberg and Spee Kosloff, Terror Management Theory, 68
• Character and culture are built to shield us from death-terror #corroborates (0.88) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 18
• Mortality salience increases support for lethal violence against cultural enemies. #corroborates (0.88) — Jeff Greenberg and Spee Kosloff, Terror Management Theory, 67
• People curb death anxiety by identifying evil with out-groups via scapegoating. #expands (0.85) — Jeff Greenberg and Spee Kosloff, Terror Management Theory, 55
• Symbolic threats drive dehumanization and the most vicious cruelty #corroborates (0.83) — Walter G. Stephan, Oscar Ybarra, Kimberly Rios Morrison, Intergroup Threat Theory, 22
• Scapegoating rituals transferred communal death-anxiety onto a sacrificial other #expands (0.82) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 508
• Satanic Panic cultural cues like heavy metal framed innocent people as killers #exemplifies (0.82) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 278
• Character-conditioned hatred invents victims rather than responding to real threats #expands (0.82) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2246
• Being attacked for a religious symbol makes victims cling to it harder #exemplifies (0.80) — Irene Zempi and Imran Awan, Islamophobia, 257
• Death reminders inflame xenophobia unless compassionate religious values are primed #qualifies (0.78) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 550
• Muslim monsters change across eras as symbols of particular anxieties #exemplifies (0.76) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 63