Tag Archives: Ernest Becker

Death Panels and our Fear of Death

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Bill Keller in the New York Times wrote an article on October 7 entitled, “How to Die.” He was explaining the Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying, a protocol that some British physicians are using to help terminally ill patients address their imminent demise. Yes, this brings to mind the infamous “death panels” of our dear friend Sarah Palin. But it is nothing of the sort. It is merely a protocol that physicians can gently and professionally use, if deemed appropriate, for patients who have no treatment options remaining and are in great pain. “It is not hastening death. It is giving choices,” declared Keller.

This approach seems so much more humane than does out hysteria-driven, death-denying obfuscation. Our culture needs to grow up and realize that death is an essential part of life and that it is simply going to happen; and that living in fierce denial of it only makes the parting more difficult. And, this denial system that we have created about death only makes it more difficult to live life fully in the first place while we are young and healthy. It was decades ago that Irvin Yalom declared that as long as we live in fear of death we are fearful of life also. You can’t live until you die! Hmm. Sounds a lot like something Jesus once said, doesn’t it?

Ernest Becker wrote a stunning book about this subject about three decades ago, The Denial of Death. He gave a brilliant portrayal of history as mankind’s efforts to deny his mortality, to pretend that he was going to live forever, and to interpret spiritual teachings and mythology to mean that he would live after death in some corporeal fashion.

The core issue is the ego. It is the ego who cannot fathom that it is such a contrivance, a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” Some therapists and spiritual teachers have made a career out of this death issue, announcing in so many words, “Come to me and let me help you die.” Their belief is that once the individual is freed from the clutches of the ego…Karl Jung called this a “death”… he/she will no longer be ravaged by the fear of death.

“We’re not getting out of this thing alive”

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Lewis Thomas, in Lives of a Cell, discoursed on death from the viewpoint of a biologist. He noted, “At the very center of the problem is the naked cold deadness of one’s own self, the only reality in nature of which we can have absolute certainty, and it is unmentionable, unthinkable.  We like to think…we can avoid the problem if we just become, next year, say, a bit smarter.”

We have the notion that, “Oh, well. We can figure this out and get beyond it. It just won’t happen to me.”  We are guilty of what Ernest Becker called the Denial of Death. In his book with that title, he argued that that civilization was organized for the purpose of denying our mortality, that it is a complicated contrivance designed merely for burying our head in the sand regarding our eventual demise, our eventual return to the dust from which we are created.  (I like Hamlet’s bemused observations about us being merely worm food.)

So, what do we do with this problem?  Well, we wrestle with it as best as we can.  Here, in my daily perambulations, you get some glimpse of one person’s doubt and insecurities…and hope…regarding this issue.  A key source of hope for me has been to realize that death is merely part of life and that death is an issue that can be addressed before the actual physical death.  By that I mean that we can die before we die, that the real issue in our fear of death is the fear of the ego’s death, and that we can let the ego die long before our physical death.   Irvin Yalom argued decades ago that those who fear death fear life and only through the death of their ego can they embrace life and live life to the fullest.

James Hillman had a relevant belief re suicide. He was a Jungian therapist and he shared in Suicide and the Soul re one client who was suicidal. He told the client…and I paraphrase…”So you want to die.  You come to me and I will help you die. But, you have to promise me that in the meantime you will not physically harm yourself.”  Hillman believed that the suicidal impulse was often a misguided impulse from the heart, that the wish to die, if handled delicately and with spiritual guidance, could be the doorway to eternal life.