The Call For Heroism In The 21st Century
The modern against the mythological man
I. Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has called our belief systems into question. Previous seemingly stable social, religious, and economic systems appeared to be fragmented to their core. There’s a rising necessity for the reconstruction of our fundamental belief systems and moral landscape.
This necessity was produced by the inevitability of man’s condition. This pandemic reminded mankind as a whole of its finitude and fragility. But after this terrifying psychological reminder, we found ourselves helpless and exposed.
In this article, I would like to introduce the philosophy behind Ernest Becker’s book ‘The Denial Of Death’ as well as present a brief image of the 21st-century modern man and the call for heroism. The call resulted from what the pandemic left behind.
II. The Denial Of Death
Ernest Becker was an American cultural anthropologist who belonged in the existential wave of thinking, as did Otto Rank and Viktor Frankl.
Ernest Becker in ‘The Denial Of Death’ wrote:
‘Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being.’
What is presented to us here is the Terror Management Theory (TMT), which attempts to explain a type of defensive human thinking and behavior that stems from an awareness of the transcience of being and fear of death. According to Becker, the conscious human-animal is called to face the inevitable dichotomy of its symbolic versus physical self, from the moment it comes into being. The symbolic self refers to an individual’s meaning, inner fantasy, infinite possibility, and vision while the physical self refers to the world of objects, the physical body, and the material reality. The real paradox is that the symbolic self can be eternal while the body is impermanent.
Becker argues that humans can transcend the dilemma of mortality through heroism, shifting the attention to their symbolic selves and creating their own ‘immortality project’ (causa-sui project). This shift is an everlasting journey that is made possible with the process of ‘transference’. Transference is a form of creative fetishism, the establishment of a locus from which our lives can draw the powers they need and want. According to TMT, this function is imperative and the locus can take many forms such as parents in early childhood, cultural morality, religion, a work of art, and aesthetics for the poetic individual, lover, God, one’s character.
(It is important to note, that the process of transference is often used in literature as a function to be avoided. Yes, transference may lead to obedience and passive behavior as we will see in the picture of modern man but it can also take the form of a creative process)
As Eric Fromm wrote in the ‘Beyond The Chains Of Illusion’ :
‘In order to overcome his sense of inner emptiness and impotence, man chooses an object onto whom he projects all his own human qualities: his love, intelligence, courage, etc. By submitting to this object, he is in touch with his own qualities, he feels strong, wise, courageous, and secure. To lose the object means the danger of losing himself.’
In a way, some people manage death anxiety by creating immortality projects while others are ‘tranquilizing themselves with the trivial’ to achieve the same purpose, as Søren Kierkegaard wrote two centuries ago. On the most elemental level, the organism actively works against its own fragility by seeking to expand and perpetuate itself in living experience. Instead of shrinking, it moves towards more life. In this vantage point, we should introduce the term ‘safe heroism’.
What is the most suitable causa-sui project for the heroic individual? What is safe heroism? Again, we must dive even deeper into the book. There are two conspicuous ontological motives: Agape and Eros. Agape refers to natural dependency, the duty to a larger creation, the feelings of connection, oneness, humility, and gratitude while Eros refers to the urge for more life, for active contribution of the individual to the holistic experience and the development of self-powers.
If one gives in too much in Agape, he risks failing the path of individuation. If one gives in too much in Eros, he risks excluding himself from the feeling of unity and gratitude. We can observe the paradox here. Man can’t stand his separateness yet he can’t allow the complete suffocating of his vitality. Man can’t stand his unworthiness and finitude and the anxiety that is produced by these characteristics, yet he has to dive into himself to capitalize on his identity.
In my opinion, the balance between expansion and internalization is the urge to safe heroism. The quality of one’s transference is the quality of one’s life. While according to TMT the terror of death is inevitable, one can cope with it by creating a meaningful immortality project. If an illusion against death is inevitable, why not choose the most meaningful, humble, and peaceful ‘illusion’ for the symbolic self?
III. Modern man
What is the state of the man of the 21st century regarding his capacity to create meaningful immortality projects? How is he coping with his death anxiety and his unconscious repressions? Has modern culture created a solid ground for the heroic individual after one century of frenetic scientific development?
This brings me to my point and the main case of this article: the state of modern man. As Ernest Becker stated :
‘It begins to look as though modern man cannot find his heroism in everyday life anymore, as men did in traditional societies just by doing their daily duty of raising children, working, and worshiping. He needs revolutions and wars and “continuing” revolutions to last when the revolutions and wars end. That is the price modern man pays for the eclipse of the sacred dimension. When he dethroned the ideas of soul and God he was thrown back hopelessly on his own resources, on himself and those few around him. Even lovers and families trap and disillusion us because they are not substitutes for absolute transcendence.’
In a way, the modern man is trapped in a transference function towards a cultural superego that reflects materialism, capitalism, nihilism, industrial expansion to the detriment of nature. We have created a culture in a scarcity of symbolic and truthful meaning as well as in the absence of mythos. A culture that lacks symbolic meaning refers to a neurotic society.
As Aldous Huxley wrote in ‘Brave New World’:
‘The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. “Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.” They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.
What is the neurotic normality in which we have indulged since we were children? In what extreme, malicious, malevolent lengths can an unhealthy and trivial transference lead modern man? The horrors of the 20th century, as well as the bodies piled up from human greed and gluttony, are some grim reminders of the reality we have created.
Furthermore, the absence of a concrete connection between individuals as well as the bewilderment of our psyche are facts. Today, close to 800,000 people die to suicide every year, which is one person every 40 seconds. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15–29 years old.
Young people are refusing to embrace life, whether because they can’t find meaning or they find it too unbearable.
These statistics are absurd to the rational mind. Despite our sense of superiority and technological advances, we have created a culture that can’t provide meaning. We have created an environment that isn’t suitable for psychological flourishing. The data suggest so.
So why aren’t we changing? Why are we falling victims to triviality and automatic, raw, and superficial orientation in our lives?
IV. The Mythological versus Modern Man
We have already talked about symbols and mythos. But what is mythos? Mythos refers to a folklore genre consisting of narratives or stories that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. The main characters in myths are usually gods, demigods, or supernatural humans.
Mythology used to transcend the human experience to higher virtue since Ancient Greece and the days of Homer by presenting individuals like Achilles and Hercules. It was considered an essential element to the everyday lives of humans because it projected a symbolic nature to an impermanent reality. It provided a higher essence, above the mortal endless toil, to the realms of heroes.
Furthermore, according to Carl G. Jung, the archaic and primitive men lived in different frameworks that demanded unique presuppositions. Although we share some peculiar similarities with them, there’s a vast realm of differences that have to do with the interpretation of reality. The archaic man was utterly connected with nature which he interpreted as something prodigious and elemental.
He invested a great deal of time and energy in connecting the dots between circumstances, which he referred to as omens, curses, prophecy, or God.
Although indulging in superstition is pretty charming, my aim here is to make the point that archaic man believed in the interconnection of what took form outside his psyche, in the form of the sacred. External circumstances were not just mere chance and they couldn’t be explained with reason alone.
The same purpose was achieved through aesthetics like art and music across the arrow of the time. Aesthetics also can transcend reality to something unified, eternal, and meaningful while making the individual vulnerable and connected. Consequently, we can take a glimpse of the connection between the symbolic nature of the previous centuries and modern man’s inability to create meaningful immortality projects.
Friedrich Nietzsche in the ‘Birth Of Tragedy’ wrote:
‘Every culture that has lost myth has lost, by the same token, its natural healthy creativity. Only a horizon ringed about with myths can unify a culture.’
‘Only as an aesthetic phenomenon are existence and the world justified’
In a way, modern man has lost the symbolic meaning and the nobility of Greek mythology, Knighthood, Christianity, Eastern philosophy, Wagnerian music, Goethe’s romanticism, Michaelangelo’s aesthetics. We have dissected the mythological and poetic element of our lives and we have stopped searching for meaning in something eternal. Thus the modern individual cannot achieve ultimate and creative transcendence in a scarcity of the mythopoetic element.
What is the ultimate transcendence? I do not wish to sound absolute or introduce rather obscure terms for the reader. I can only state my perspective. The ultimate transcendence is the individual’s creation of a meaningful immortality project which is not suffocated from the materialistic and philistine restrictions of the 21st century. The ultimate transcendence is the transformation of the heroic individual.
V. Conclusion
These are the questions and insights that I wanted to share in this article while presenting the necessity of the symbolic element in the life of the individual. We should rise above the circumstances and create meaningful solutions. We should raise our consciousness and balance our need for expansion versus our fragility. We should also draw our powers from healthy and meaningful transference objects which help us achieve a higher purpose.
Mortality can be transcended through meaningful projects.
Or in the words of Ernest Becker, only in meaningful causa-sui projects can the individual reach heroic apotheosis, as projected symbolically in the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ, in the Christian religion.
Thank you for your time and attention
