The Ernest Becker Foundation

The People Paradox: Self-Esteem Striving, Immortality Ideologies, and Human Response to Climate Change

The following is the established format for referencing this article: 
Dickinson, J. L. 2009. The people paradox: self-esteem striving, immortality ideologies, and human response to climate change. Ecology and Society 14(1): 34. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss1/art34/

Abstract

In 1973, Ernest Becker, a cultural anthropologist cross-trained in philosophy, sociology, and psychiatry, invoked consciousness of self and the inevitability of death as the primary sources of human anxiety and repression. He proposed that the psychological basis of cooperation, competition, and emotional and mental health is a tendency to hold tightly to anxiety-buffering cultural world views or "immortality projects" that serve as the basis for self-esteem and meaning. Although he focused mainly on social and political outcomes like war, torture, and genocide, he was increasingly aware that materialism, denial of nature, and immortality-striving efforts to control, rather than sanctify, the natural world were problems whose severity was increasing. In this paper I review Becker's ideas and suggest ways in which they illuminate human response to global climate change. Because immortality projects range from belief in technology and materialism to reverence for nature or belief in a celestial god, they act both as barriers to and facilitators of sustainable practices. I propose that Becker’s cross-disciplinary "science of man," and the predictions it generates for proximate-level determinants of social behavior, add significantly to our understanding of and potential for managing the people paradox, i.e., that the very things that bring us symbolic immortality often conflict with our prospects for survival. Analysis of immortality projects as one of the proximate barriers to addressing climate change is both cautionary and hopeful, providing insights that should be included in the cross-disciplinary quest to uncover new pathways toward rational, social change.

Janis L. Dickinson, Associate Professor, Natural Resources,
Arthur A. Allen Director of Citizen Science
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Cornell University

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Dan Liechty (see ORI below) has covered Francis Ambrosio’s discovery of the depth-imparting parallax view of human significance made possible by seeing life from two perspectives: the way of the saint and the way of the hero. This brief review focuses on Ambrosio’s achievement in these lectures as an educator and creative synthesizer.

Recently, I was reminded that the inspiration we share with the world through our reflections and personal insights can resonate for a very long time. I was heading to Full Tilt, a new ice cream shop in Seattle’s University District. They have four vegan flavors on the menu. I have lived an entirely vegan (dairy free) lifestyle for the last twenty years, so this is definitely my kind of ice cream shop. I had tried their vegan chocolate milkshake, possibly the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted, and I wanted another.

As I walked in, the man behind the counter smiled at me. As he began to make my order, he turned and asked if I remembered that ten years ago, he had interviewed me for his college senior thesis about the intersection of life, death, ideas and art. It took me a second, but I did remember. He said to me "You have no idea how influential you were on me. You suggested at the end of the interview that I read three books: The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, Art and Artist by Otto Rank, and Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. That was two days before I finished college. I started reading those books and I never looked back. I have been reading nonstop ever since. All the classics and all the great thinkers." He proceeded to name some of the superstars of thought on his list, including Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Rollo May, and others. He was even reading while working in the ice cream shop, sometimes as much as three hundred pages a day.