Sunday, October 20, 2019

The science of death denying attitudes

It turns out that death denial is in our makeup. According to a study from the Bar Ilan University in Israel, as described by this article in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/oct/19/doubting-death-how-our-brains-shield-us-from-mortal-truth), it is almost encoded in our brains like some form of wonky self preservation method.

So it's no wonder we have such a difficult time with proximity to grief. From the article: "(the research) tells us that we shield ourselves from existential threats, or consciously thinking about the idea that we are going to die, by shutting down predictions about the self, or categorizing the information as being about other people rather than ourselves." Our brain is actually telling us this is a condition of the 'other' so we are unable to empathize authentically.

Is it possible to train ourselves out of this "primal mechanism"? What would the world look like if we could?

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