DanL
@dliecht.bsky.social
Husband (Naomi) and father (Hana), recently retired Professor, Ernest Becker specialist, musician leader for Dances of Universal Peace, member of Fiddle in a Haystack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqiYSNdQMCY&list=PL_kQvu21g-zvVW0bKp15sl3sbWhrQCxRs
Thesis #18 - Future human well-being, even simple human survival, depends on learning to substitute more nonviolent and creative (less destructive) habitual manifestations of the individual and social defense mechanisms against the anxiety provoked by the religiously/culturally Dissimilar Other.
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July 10, 2025 at 12:53 PM
Thesis #18 - Future human well-being, even simple human survival, depends on learning to substitute more nonviolent and creative (less destructive) habitual manifestations of the individual and social defense mechanisms against the anxiety provoked by the religiously/culturally Dissimilar Other.
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Thesis #17b - This is further aggravated because improvements in travel and communications technology force modern humans to confront the reality of the culturally/religiously Dissimilar Other on a regular, even daily basis.
July 10, 2025 at 12:49 PM
Thesis #17b - This is further aggravated because improvements in travel and communications technology force modern humans to confront the reality of the culturally/religiously Dissimilar Other on a regular, even daily basis.
Thesis #17a - Modern human beings, because more consciously aware of the processes of socialization, and psychological functioning, are more likely to suspicion the fictional character of their cultural/religious narratives – it is harder for us to believe than for those of previous generations.
July 10, 2025 at 12:48 PM
Thesis #17a - Modern human beings, because more consciously aware of the processes of socialization, and psychological functioning, are more likely to suspicion the fictional character of their cultural/religious narratives – it is harder for us to believe than for those of previous generations.
Thesis #16 - Hence, exposure to culturally/religiously Dissimilar Others may be a creative source for helping us to broaden, widen, deepen and enhance our own vision of reality; or, they may be encountered, in the most literal sense, as threatening mortal enemies.
July 9, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Thesis #16 - Hence, exposure to culturally/religiously Dissimilar Others may be a creative source for helping us to broaden, widen, deepen and enhance our own vision of reality; or, they may be encountered, in the most literal sense, as threatening mortal enemies.
15b - By their very existence they cast doubt on the transcending certainty of our truth (revealing it as essentially fictional) exposing us to the repressed anxiety our fictions function to allay in the first place. (cf. defense mechanisms above, on how we reflexively react to Dissimilar Others.)
July 9, 2025 at 1:34 PM
15b - By their very existence they cast doubt on the transcending certainty of our truth (revealing it as essentially fictional) exposing us to the repressed anxiety our fictions function to allay in the first place. (cf. defense mechanisms above, on how we reflexively react to Dissimilar Others.)
Thesis #14 - There is power in numbers for sustaining the transcending plausibility and viability of any particular dominant cultural narrative. The more you rub shoulders only with people who believe the same cultural narrative you do, the more plausible that narrative becomes.
July 7, 2025 at 1:57 PM
Thesis #14 - There is power in numbers for sustaining the transcending plausibility and viability of any particular dominant cultural narrative. The more you rub shoulders only with people who believe the same cultural narrative you do, the more plausible that narrative becomes.
Thesis 13b: But even the rebel or the criminal (sinner) must assume the essential transcendent power of the dominant cultural/religious myth in order for his/her deviance to itself have any meaning - the rebel's rebellion assumes the transcendent values of the system to give the rebellion meaning.
July 7, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Thesis 13b: But even the rebel or the criminal (sinner) must assume the essential transcendent power of the dominant cultural/religious myth in order for his/her deviance to itself have any meaning - the rebel's rebellion assumes the transcendent values of the system to give the rebellion meaning.
Thesis #13a - Broadly socialized allegiance to the dominant cultural narrative is a strong force for sanctioning social conformity (this why all religions essentially equate "good citizenship" with God's Will, etc.)
July 7, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Thesis #13a - Broadly socialized allegiance to the dominant cultural narrative is a strong force for sanctioning social conformity (this why all religions essentially equate "good citizenship" with God's Will, etc.)
Thesis 12b: This answers our strong desire for life to have eternal meaning and purpose (and so to symbolically assert that "death is conquered, death is not the final word." This is to assert participation in symbolic immortality.
July 7, 2025 at 1:52 PM
Thesis 12b: This answers our strong desire for life to have eternal meaning and purpose (and so to symbolically assert that "death is conquered, death is not the final word." This is to assert participation in symbolic immortality.
Thesis 12a: All cultural narratives (mythologies) serve in some way to assure us that, individually and collectively, we are valuable actors in a worthy pageant of transcending and cosmic significance.
July 7, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Thesis 12a: All cultural narratives (mythologies) serve in some way to assure us that, individually and collectively, we are valuable actors in a worthy pageant of transcending and cosmic significance.
Thesis 11b: However, when taken on faith, they are also potentially true in that each provides some functional easing of anxiety in the face of actual and symbolic threats. Human individual and social life without such cultural narratives would be unbearable and impossible.
July 3, 2025 at 11:33 PM
Thesis 11b: However, when taken on faith, they are also potentially true in that each provides some functional easing of anxiety in the face of actual and symbolic threats. Human individual and social life without such cultural narratives would be unbearable and impossible.
Thesis #11a: Generally speaking, cultural narratives (narrative mythologies) are on one level fictional, since they promise something (immortality) which they cannot demonstrably deliver.
July 3, 2025 at 11:33 PM
Thesis #11a: Generally speaking, cultural narratives (narrative mythologies) are on one level fictional, since they promise something (immortality) which they cannot demonstrably deliver.
Thesis #10 – This urge for symbolic immortality is a key source of human creativity and life-affirming energies; it is the underlying function of human cultures, and especially religions, to serve as venues through which people achieve and maintain a sense of participation in symbolic immortality.
July 3, 2025 at 11:32 PM
Thesis #10 – This urge for symbolic immortality is a key source of human creativity and life-affirming energies; it is the underlying function of human cultures, and especially religions, to serve as venues through which people achieve and maintain a sense of participation in symbolic immortality.
Thesis #9 – Perhaps the most ubiquitous anxiety-compensatory move is to transfer the urge for continued living from the physical realm to the symbolic realm; the organismic urge for continued living becomes channeled into the urge for immortality/significance in the symbolic realm.
July 1, 2025 at 4:07 PM
Thesis #9 – Perhaps the most ubiquitous anxiety-compensatory move is to transfer the urge for continued living from the physical realm to the symbolic realm; the organismic urge for continued living becomes channeled into the urge for immortality/significance in the symbolic realm.
Thesis 8b: Such defense mechanisms originated in and were strategically contoured by needs for anxiety control in the face of mortality awareness. Our highly developed intelligence caused the anxiety problem in the first place, and supplies at least the provisional solution to the anxiety problem.
July 1, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Thesis 8b: Such defense mechanisms originated in and were strategically contoured by needs for anxiety control in the face of mortality awareness. Our highly developed intelligence caused the anxiety problem in the first place, and supplies at least the provisional solution to the anxiety problem.
Thesis #8a: The array of individual and collective defense mechanisms are employed to maintain individual and social/cultural equanimity in reaction to actual threats of injury, death, and annihilation, and also in reaction to imaginative or symbolic threats of injury, death, and annihilation.
July 1, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Thesis #8a: The array of individual and collective defense mechanisms are employed to maintain individual and social/cultural equanimity in reaction to actual threats of injury, death, and annihilation, and also in reaction to imaginative or symbolic threats of injury, death, and annihilation.
Thesis 7b: Each of these collective rituals may manifest itself in both creative and destructive forms. The most important are scapegoating, denigration, segregation (including self-segregation), assimilation, and annihilation.
July 1, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Thesis 7b: Each of these collective rituals may manifest itself in both creative and destructive forms. The most important are scapegoating, denigration, segregation (including self-segregation), assimilation, and annihilation.
Thesis #7a: As with individual defense mechanisms, there are collective defense mechanisms, habitual patterns of collective behavior aimed at defending against threats to established social formations.
July 1, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Thesis #7a: As with individual defense mechanisms, there are collective defense mechanisms, habitual patterns of collective behavior aimed at defending against threats to established social formations.
Thesis 6b. The principle of these are Displacement, Dissociation, Intellectualization, Projection, Rationalization, Reaction formation, Denial, Regression, Repression, Transference, Sublimation, Suppression, Intellectualization, Identification and Humor.
June 30, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Thesis 6b. The principle of these are Displacement, Dissociation, Intellectualization, Projection, Rationalization, Reaction formation, Denial, Regression, Repression, Transference, Sublimation, Suppression, Intellectualization, Identification and Humor.
Thesis #6a - There are defense mechanisms in individual psychology, habitual patterns of thought aimed at defending against potentially threatening, anxiety-provoking information. Each of these mechanisms may manifest itself in both creative and destructive forms.
June 30, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Thesis #6a - There are defense mechanisms in individual psychology, habitual patterns of thought aimed at defending against potentially threatening, anxiety-provoking information. Each of these mechanisms may manifest itself in both creative and destructive forms.
Thesis 5c. Death fear calls forth active response and the heightened physical state is quelled by action. Death anxiety is potentially ubiquitous and the heightened physical state is quelled only by the regular employment of psychological defense mechanisms.
June 30, 2025 at 11:46 AM
Thesis 5c. Death fear calls forth active response and the heightened physical state is quelled by action. Death anxiety is potentially ubiquitous and the heightened physical state is quelled only by the regular employment of psychological defense mechanisms.
Thesis 5b. The heightened physical state of freeze/fight/flight condition in response to actual threat corresponds to death fear, whereas that same state brought on by imagination corresponds to death anxiety.
June 30, 2025 at 11:45 AM
Thesis 5b. The heightened physical state of freeze/fight/flight condition in response to actual threat corresponds to death fear, whereas that same state brought on by imagination corresponds to death anxiety.
Thesis #5a - Death fear refers to a response to concrete, actual and relatively immediate threats to life. Death anxiety refers to a more prolonged, smoldering response to the cognitive awareness of our vulnerable mortal condition.
June 30, 2025 at 11:44 AM
Thesis #5a - Death fear refers to a response to concrete, actual and relatively immediate threats to life. Death anxiety refers to a more prolonged, smoldering response to the cognitive awareness of our vulnerable mortal condition.
Thesis #4b. Human psychology, emotional makeup and behavior emerge out of the clash between the overwhelming urge to continue living and the cognitive awareness of our mortal nature. Recognition of the inevitability of death creates a reservoir of potentially immobilizing, debilitating anxiety.
June 30, 2025 at 11:41 AM
Thesis #4b. Human psychology, emotional makeup and behavior emerge out of the clash between the overwhelming urge to continue living and the cognitive awareness of our mortal nature. Recognition of the inevitability of death creates a reservoir of potentially immobilizing, debilitating anxiety.