Survival adaptation to apparent death is the archaic root of human fear

Evidence

The motives to which idiosyncracy appeals recall the ultimate origins. They produce moments of biological prehistory: danger signs which make the hair stand on end and the heart stop beating. In idiosyncracy, individual organs escape from the control of the subject, and independently obey fundamental biological stimuli. The ego which experiences such reactions—for instance, cutaneous or muscular torpor, or stiffness of joints—is not wholly in control of itself. For a few moments these reactions effect an adaptation to circumambient, motionless nature. But as the animate approaches the inanimate, and the more highly-developed form of life comes closer to nature, it is alienated from it, since inanimate nature, which life in its most vigorous form aspires to become, is capable only of wholly external, spatial, relationships. Space is absolute alienation. When men try to become like nature they harden themselves against it. Protection as fear is a form of mimicry. The reflexes of stiffening and numbness in humans are archaic schemata of the urge to survive: by adaptation to death, life pays the toll of its continued existence. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 138

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘idiosyncracy’ as the ego’s momentary loss of self-control to biological reflexes — a central technical term for the chapter’s account of anti-Semitism.
• DEEPTHINKING: The core dialectic — self-preservation achieved by mimicking death — is foundational to the whole book’s thesis that enlightenment’s domination of nature turns back on the subject.
• XREF: connects to: Fear of death ultimately reduces to thwarted biological survival instinct. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 42; Mortality awareness collides with survival instincts to produce existential terror — Jeff Greenberg and Spee Kosloff, Terror Management Theory: Implications…, 12

Broader Connections

• Fear of death ultimately reduces to thwarted biological survival instinct. #corroborates (0.75) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 42