The Treatment of Religion and Spirituality in “The Denial of Death” by Ernest Becker
Introduction
The human being is the only creature with the knowledge and awareness of its own condition – of its eventual death. That nothing existing in nature is actually under his control. In this case, heroic systems facilitate people to live without having to constantly live with the paralyzing fear of dying and death (Becker, 1973). However, the modern development of psychology and science have since discredited spirituality and religions, which left people with no heroic system to adhere to or follow. For instance, people tend to see the flaws in every religion and, thus, cannot commit to them for long, at least. In this case, people still hold on to their faith that psychology will eventually solve this issue, and endless happiness will eventually arrive through complete self-knowledge (Schimel et al., 2008). According to Ernest Becker, however, people cannot live without repression, which means the man is ultimately unable to understand/perceive the whole of reality without having to go insane. Therefore, more self-knowledge concerning spirituality and religion brings less happiness rather than more.
Treatment of Religion and Spirituality in Ernest Becker's "The Denial Becker"
To begin with, the root of evil caused by man is not the animal nature of man, not innate selfishness, or territorial aggression, but our need to gain self-esteem and confidence, deny our inevitable mortality, and realize a heroic self-image. As a matter of fact, the society offers an option or the second line of defense against man's natural impotence by establishing a hero system (religion and spirituality) (Martin, 2013). This allows human beings to believe that they transcend death and mortality through the participation of ourselves to overcome and conquer an empire, for example, or write a book, accumulate a fortune, establish a family, further progress success and prosperity, and establish a global-free market and information-society. In this case, how religion and spirituality are perceived is attributed to living with the voluntary or inevitable consciousness of death. In Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death," for example, the heroic individual has the opportunity to choose whether to live in despair or to take a leap of faith in the "sacrosanct vitality of the cosmos" (Becker, 1973, p. 148), in the unknown life god whose questionable or mysterious purpose is expressed in the cosmic revolution overwhelming drama.
Treatment of Religion
In Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death," religion has been treated in various ways depending on the objectives of the present heroic systems, and these systems override man's fear of death (Becker, 1973). There are different heroic systems informing how religion is treated; although there are different heroic systems, they are still systems nonetheless. In this case, religion has been projected based on the activities of human beings, and they perceive and deny death. For instance, a "civilized" society implies a protest and hopeful belief that money, goods, and science make man count for a lot more compared to animals (Schimel et al., 2008). This means that everything done by man is considered to be religious and, at the same time, heroic (Jonas & Fritsche, 2013), but still are in danger of being fallible and fictitious.
Accordingly, religion in Becker's "The Denial of Death" is treated in different forms namely psychotherapy, psychology, and science (Becker, 1973). These forms of religion are considered as heroic systems of a man used to deny the inevitability of death. These "forms of religions" have been considered as heroic systems for a man to put faith on them as solutions to solve our problems (Liechty, 2013). In the book, Becker (1973) emphasizes that everything sobering and painful in what religious and psychoanalytic geniuses have identified or discovered about man associates with the terror to admit what one is doing to boost his or her self-esteem in denying or pushing forward the inevitability of death.
In Becker's book, religion has been constructed as a "vital lie" through such heroic systems as science and psychology, which acts like a man's refusal to accept the inevitability of mortality, as well as refusing to be honest about their refusal. According to Renz et al. (2018), the grim reality of the man's awareness of death is a lot to bear, which means religion in its many heroic forms acts as a buffer. One of Becker's successes is his synthesis of religion and spirituality, science, psychology, and theology (Becker, 1973). Although the author makes it clear that he is not a primary religious believer (trusting in the Supreme Being), he still takes great pains to uncover the limitations of science, especially as a professional psychoanalyst, including the psychoanalysis pretenses.
For Becker, religion assumes a person's insignificance and creaturely nature and makes it a hope condition. In the book, Christianity, as a major religion, has been treated as the most promising illusion compared to other religions. In this case, A lived, the compelling illusion that is Christianity does not lie about reality, life, and death (Renz et al., 2018). In its ideal state, Christianity is held highly based on its vital ways, more so for other people such as the Niebuhrs, Kierkegaard, and Chesterton, but for Becker, Christianity still remains an illusion (Becker, 1973). Accordingly, religious projects were considered in Becker's book as the cause of conflicts. For instance, the author believed that conflicts existing between contradictory projects of immortality, more so the religious ones, is the primary reason for genocide, wars, racism, bigotry, and nationalism.
In this case, religion has been considered a cause for something that potentially advances the inevitability of death such as genocide or war. Considering these immortality projects are significant, religion is treated as the ultimate cause of destabilizing people; for example, Becker emphasizes that people's religious beliefs are misguided (Renz et al., 2018). There is also the argument in "The Denial of Death" that religion no longer provides convincing views and arguments relating to immortality or the essence of life and, thus, people have turned to science and other heroic systems (Becker, 1973). At the same time, a suggestion was provided in the book of the need to have a comforting "illusion(s)" that will give meaning to human life although deep down man knows that he is mortal.
Treatment of Spirituality
Similar to religion, spirituality was considered in Becker's "The Denial of Death" as there is a spiritual blend between what the author terms like "religious creatureliness" or "scientific creatureliness," which in some sense is capturing (Becker, 1973, p. 208). The author considers spirituality as a tool to navigate the potential tragedies of life in a quest for personal integrity. Spirituality, in Becker's book, is treated as the ultimate knight of faith that eventually results in the real tragedy – death.
In "The Denial of Death," Becker says:
"A person spends years coming into his own, developing his talent, his unique gifts, perfecting his discriminations about the world, broadening and sharpening his appetite, learning to bear the disappointments of life, becoming mature, seasoned – finally a unique creature in nature, standing with some dignity and nobility and transcending the animal condition; no longer driven, no longer a complete reflex, not stamped out of any mold. And then the real tragedy. That it takes sixty years of incredible suffering and effort to make such an individual, and then he is good only for dying" (p. 269).
Spirituality is also assumed as the ultimate tool to offer solace to individuals, as well as act as a buffer from the life's other tragedies. Again, spirituality is also used by man as a project similar to a variety of other projects to develop an "illusion of immortality" (Becker, 1973, p. 271). Drawing upon a range of philosophical and psychological sources, the author argues that anxious tension concerning man's mortal condition results in us undertaking a number of projects, including embracing spirituality, to establish an immortality illusion. Again, spirituality is also the reason for religious conflicts. The author believes that human spirituality has since resulted in polarizations with accompanying disastrous consequences. Therefore, Catholics attack Protestants, Muslims attack Christians, and the religious and humanists attack one another (Becker, 1973), while attempting to develop their unique spiritual versions of reality and, at the same time, suppress others.
Similarly, spirituality is considered as self in that it should be disregarded or "brought down to nothing" for purposes of moving the potentiality of "cosmic heroism" of man towards "a fundamental humility" (Becker, 1973, p. 49), which transcendent reality of death and mortality. In Becker's "The Denial of Death," spirituality is also used to provide a more believable meaning to life; the author pursued a more believable life of reasoning by providing a written attempt to understands how man, on a daily basis, combat death on a daily basis (Jonas & Fritsche, 2013). Spirituality was also used to demonstrate how man embraces it to avoid reality and the consciousness of the possibility of death. At the personal level, Becker, in his book, considered spirituality as the basis of religion to ignore their vulnerability and mortality (Martin, 2013). As Becker terms it, spirituality acts as immortality system, and is identified with religious groups, and is evidenced by various cultural activities, for seeking the ultimate meaning of death (Jonas & Fritsche, 2013), and the conscious ways of advancing other goals with the hope of extending life.
Becker, in his book, handles spirituality as a tool by man to inflate their "sense of invulnerable righteousness" (Becker, 1973, p. 282). In the process, man uses spirituality to protect themselves from exposing their absolute truth and the inevitable reality of death as one of the mortality denying systems. In this case, the spiritual basis for most of the religions namely the Catholic, Protestant, Communism, Islam, and Hindu, including Buddhism, is evidenced by conflicts since the author's argument that denying death pervades human culture (Schimel et al., 2008) demonstrates how the extent of spirituality has been used to show human evil, intolerance, and aggression.
Spirituality has also been treated as a diagnostic tool forming the immortality systems' notion. Through spirituality, it is easier to identify individuals, especially those clinging or aligning themselves with absolute truths. Becker (1973) observes that it is not simply because of anxiety surpassing physical vulnerability; in essence, the author goes deeper to demonstrate how spirituality has been used by man to make sense of their lives before the inevitability of death. For instance, if thought about it, people tend to find their identities on a thing whose essence and meaning appears permanent or lasting, the race, the religion, the revolutionary vision, the scientific truths, and cosmic energy, including the gods and rhythms of nature (Schimel et al., 2008). Therefore, from a spiritual perspective, the functioning of people as part of immortality systems is as a result of the promise to connect people's lives with something that endures, including with that meaning that does not perish. From Becker's viewpoint in "The Denial of Death," the fear of meaninglessness and death, including the denial of mortality that is self-deluding, results in a lot of people opting for "immortality systems" such as religion and spirituality (Renz et al., 2018) to act as a delusional buffer from imminent death.
Conclusion
The focus has been on Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death" with respect to the treatment of religion and spirituality. In the book, the author has projected religion in a manner that it is based on the activities of human beings, and they perceive and deny death. At the same time, religion has been considered as a promising illusion embraced by people, which also works as a diagnostic tool for man to distinguish between the right and wrong while buffering themselves from the inevitable death. Additionally, spirituality, on the other hand, has been treated in various forms, and the major one being a tool by man to inflate their sense of invulnerable righteousness, which means shielding from the inevitability of death by finding a purpose or succeeding in life.