COVID-19

Living in the age of a pandemic, with all our heightened vulnerabilities, only intensifies the need to understand human response to mortality. 

For many of us, this is the first time we’re experiencing such regular reminders of our human fragility, or as Becker puts it, “the rumble of terror that underlies everything” (The Denial of Death, 1973). Not only are we reminded of mortality itself, but a break in our normal routines is also a break in our shared reality; it is a stark reminder of how, much of the time, we live under an illusion of safety. Our cultural safety nets provide a sense of security and protect us from our mortality; however, at any given time we are susceptible to their unraveling, and to the raw terror of human vulnerability that such unraveling will expose.

What impact might this have on an individual and societal level? Research has shown that reminders of our mortality have some very predictable outcomes; we are now seeing these play out everyday in real time thanks to COVID-19. In this issue we interview researchers who study the effects of mortality reminders on human behavior, to see what they had to say about our  behavior during this pandemic, as well as examine examples of these ideas in the news.

There is a pretense that one is important in nature and can do something about the world. But in back of [our minds] whispers the voice of possible truth: that human life may not be more than a meaningless interlude in a vicious drama of flesh and bones that we call evolution.

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death