Not “To Be” E-Prime and Mortality Salience
By Kevin Holbeche | April 27, 2023
I failed applied calculus in 1989, and took an intro sociology course that summer to make up the credit. The syllabus included Ernest Becker’s ‘Escape from Evil’. I knew nothing of him at the time, and returned to it only much later.
In the meantime, I heard about E-Prime, aka, English Prime. It conjugates the English language without the verb “to be” – for example, without the words “is”, “am”, “are”, “was”, and “were”. Some believe that these words possess certain dogmatic and infallible aspects, where only uncertainty and the unknowable should truly hold sway. That, using these words is a so-called “deity mode” of communication. And that, we might better recognize uncertainty, impart more logical consistency / accuracy, and help resolve conflict by trying to do away with them.
For my part, I’ve only somewhat adopted E-Prime, and only sometimes, in practice. (I’ll let others opine on whether I mostly succeeded, or not, in writing this blog post in it.) Suffice it to say, people can find it hard to write in E-Prime. And, even harder to speak in it. We can often see it creep back in, in unexpected places, as a bit of a crutch.
Anyway, only within the last several years have I located ‘Escape From Evil’ on my shelf and acquainted myself with some of Becker’s ideas. I believe, as a result, I’ve come to better understand the place of existential dread (and awe) in society. And, how our identity structures – and, writ large, our cultures – can often offer some thin respite from mortality salience, proximal and distal.
All the foregoing, a prelude… Recently, on social media, I stumbled across the following passage written (circa 1910) by Henry Scott Holland:
“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, some where very near, just round the corner. All is well.” [Emphasis added.]
The above passage set off my E-Prime radar. For some reason, I bristled at its use of the verb “to be” throughout. For me, perhaps further primed by mortality salience, this passage’s subject matter threw the crutch of “is” into a stark light.
I imagine Holland, a priest, made some intentional use of what we now call “deity mode” (E-Deity?) in writing his passage above. Perhaps each of us intends to use it, to some extent, more or less. Since, it can compel us in ways that E-Prime does not.
On the other hand, E-Prime can challenge us. Sometimes, trying to implement E-Prime can make us confront inaccuracies in our words, and cause us to recognize our perspectives as fallible and not the only way of seeing things. So, it can challenge what meaning we find from our respective existences and otherwise assert as fact.
Perhaps, a dedicated review of different types of writings – with varying proximities to mortality salience – to locate occurrences and determine frequencies of the verb “to be” (versus E-Prime) might yield fruitful results for some interested in Becker’s ideas. Such a review could consider, for example, obituaries, biographies, social media posts, and/or academic papers. I don’t know if a skilled researcher could simply count differing use rates of more and less dogmatic styles of language, and deity modes of speech, when mortality seems more or less at the fore.
Yet, any such lofty goals aside, it could also just bring (some of us) some peace of mind to see passages otherwise rife with “to be” simply recast in E-Prime. I, for one, might like to see the Holland passage above recast. For example, as follows:
Death, nothing at all, does not count. I only slipped away into the next room. Nothing happened. Everything remains exactly the same. You, me, and the old life we lived so fondly together remains untouched, unchanged. Whatever relation we had to each other remains. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name remain a household word as always. Speak and hear it without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It remains the same as ever. There remains an absolute and unbroken continuity. What of this death but a negligible accident? Why put me out of mind when out of sight? I await you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All remains well.
Perhaps, it loses some of its beauty and some of its compelling nature this way. But, I’ll take it.
Kevin Edward Holbeche holds degrees in biology, sociology, and law. He lives in Canada and works as an intellectual property lawyer and registered patent and trademark agent. Kevin has an abiding interest in Becker’s ideas and in Terror Management Theory. He also has some nascent ideas revolving around an existential awe which he mostly avoids. If desired, you can contact him c/o kevin@holbechelaw.com.