The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. – VLADIMIR NABOKOV, Speak, Memory: A Memoir.
We are, from a purely biological perspective, simply breathing pieces of defecating meat, no more significant or enduring than a lizard or a potato.
Although we typically take our cultural worldview for granted, it is actually a fragile human construction that people spend great energy creating, maintaining, and defending. Since we’re constantly on the brink of realizing that our existence is precarious, we cling to our culture’s governmental, educational, and religious institutions and rituals to buttress our view of human life as uniquely significant and eternal.
We know, if only vaguely and inchoately, that our finest and most memorable experiences may never, and indeed, ultimately will never, happen again. That is why we cherish them so.
Our longing to transcend death inflames violence toward each other.
This realization threatens to put us in a persistent state of existential fear.
We can reflect on the fact that each of us is, in Otto Rank’s lovely words, a “temporal representative.
If you can afford the finer things in life, people pay attention to you. You feel special. Your self-esteem, that critical bulwark against the fear of death, rises.
Living up to cultural roles and values – whether we are called “doctor,” “lawyer,” “architect,” “artist,” or “beloved mother” – embeds us safely in a symbolic reality in which our identity helps us transcend the limits of our fleeting biological existence. Self-esteem is thus the foundation of psychological fortitude for us all.
A complementary death-denying strategy is the belief in a personal and personified savior. From a child’s perspective, parents are gigantic and seemingly all-powerful beings with a knack for showing up whenever bodily or emotional needs arise. It’s natural, therefore, for a young mind to also believe in stories about omnipotent beings interceding in matters of life and death.
From the child of five to myself is but a step,” Leo Tolstoy observed, “but from the new-born baby to the child of five is an appalling distance.