mulai 31 agustus 2021 abis 21 agustus 2022
not bad lol setaon
why do I read this book?
dee membahas ttg death sebagai pendorong e kita. dan aku setuju, aku kan pengen nyari suatu ide yang merupakan pendorong utama semua orang buat ngelakuin what they do, dan berusaha menghindari kematian itu kandidat yang sangat kuat.
ini didorong sama pandanganku kalo semuanya pengen hidup. in the end, semua kegiatan tujuannya ini. tapi kenapa kok ada yang bunuh diri? this seems like bener2 berlawanan sama pegangan tersebut. harapannya buku ini bisa ngetackle pertanyaan itu
notes and highlights
understand the fundamental motivation that direct human behaviour
ini tujuane
Becker explained how the fear of death guides human behavior
the answer Becker gives
We will do just about anything to stay alive. Yet we live with the knowledge that this desire will inevitable be thwarted
is human satu-satu e makhluk hidup yang tau nek dia inevitably bakal mati?
only we humans are, as far as anyone knows, aware of ourselves as existing in a particular time and place.
cultural worldviews—the beliefs we create to explain the nature of reality to ourselves—give us a sense of meaning, an account for the origin of the universe, a blueprint for valued conduct on earth, and the promise of immortality.
Our cultures also offer hope of symbolic immortality, the sense that we are part of something greater than ourselves that will continue long after we die.
a case for the necessity of self-esteem
a feeling of personal significance, commonly known as self-esteem.
definisi self-esteem
in the early days, simply existing is sufficient for you to be showered with love and comfort from all those wonderful people who look at you with their shining admiring eyes.
jesus :v
Long before youngsters are mature enough to be persuaded by reason to abstain from risky, unpleasant, or socially unacceptable behaviors, parents use approval to promote preferred action and disapproval to deter undesireable ones.
nicely put.
that’s what I write when I read it. now I don’t remember what he ‘put’ nicely there lol
in this fashion, over time, being a “good” girl or boy becomes associated with protection and well-being, while being a “bad” girl or boy become associated with anxiety and vulnerability. This is why we all need self-esteem—to feel that we are good and valued—and why self-esteem is essential for managing our terror of death.
I think this is his conclusion
inducing doubt about a central tenet of their wolrdviews brought the worm at the core closer to consciousness
pursuit of insight into the human condition and how it drives human behavior.
this is “my goal”
I don’t remember why do i put it in quotes
for Francisco and his friends, nourishing their self-image was more important than nourishing their own body.
wtf
willy imagine that both his self-worth and net worth to his family will increase if he commits suicide.
and many of us will fight to preserve our self-esteem in the same way that worms and bats will fight to stay alive, because for us humans self-esteem is our symbolic protection against death.
wtf
By placing our psychological eggs in many different baskets, we increase the odds that we’ll have durable ways to feel good about ourselves.
This capacity to strategize, to make decisions, to design and to plan based on an imagined future represented by words and symbols, is something no other creature on earth was then, or is now, able to do.
human species quirks
Our ancestors had become bipedal, self-reflective imaginative primated who could, as Otto Rank put it, “make the unreal real.” How awesome to be alive, and to know it. What was not to like?
death was not to like
The groups of early humans who fabricated the most compelling tales could best manage mortal terror.
Ritual: Wishful Thinking In Action
what a definition
Ritual, then, help manage existential terror by superseding natural processes and fostering the illusion that we control them.
the point of ritual
using it to address the questions that can only arise, and must inevitably arise, in self-conscious creatures: *******Who Am I? Where did I come from? What is the meaning of life? What should I do while I’m here? What happens after I die?*******
is this only can arise in self conscious creature?
Myth making, according to cognitive psychologist Merlin Donald, may have been the original function of elaborated language.
hem
The only reason religion originated and flourished was that it fostered social cohesion and coordination
religious behavior evolved for a single reason: to further the survival of human societies.
These products of human ingenuity and imagination were essential for early humans to cope with a uniquely human problem: the awareness of death
When it comes to efforts to transcend death, not much has change in the last forty thousand years. This project has preoccupied great and not-so-great minds of every generation
heavy shit
Chinese nobles, following the proverb “treat death as life,” had their servants, artisans, concubines, and soldiers buried alive with them when they died.
HOLISIET
strong faith in God is associated with emotional well-being and low death anxiety. Additionally, after a reminder of their mortality, people report being more religious and having a stronger belief in God
“the soul was created in the big bang of an irresistible psychological force—our will to live forever—colliding with the immutable biological fact of death”
an ok summary
Not just for Descartes. Soul beliefs are remarkably durable and persistent; almost three quarters of Americans in the twenty-first century are confident that they possess an indestructible soul of some sort.
uakeh. 3/4
(Hsein were believed to be able to travel at remarkable speed, control the weather, assume the appearance of assorted animals, or become invisible
cool
Descartes was preoccupied with longevity: he believed he could add a century to his days by studying medicine. He adopted a special vegetarian diet consisting of small but frequent low-calorie meals, believing that this could lengthen the life span by as much as five centuries. Descartes spent his last five months in Sweden, where he continued to speak hopefully of extending his life considerably, or, better yet, living forever. He died there at the ripe old age of fifty-four.
damn
“to say the names of the dead is to make them live again”
cool
far from family and friends, dying a slow, choking death of tuberculosis in Rome at the age of twenty-five.
25 dying slowly is …
I have no idea what I meant in that note
Like him, we all want to leave a mark: we want to feel that something of us will persist long beyond our physical death. Otherwise our names indeed have been written in water.
written in water sounds cool.
our families offer us the promise of living beyond our bodies through our offspring as well as through their memory of us.
alasan we reproduce
we don’t just want our children to move our genes forward in time; we want them to move our beliefs, values, and group identifications into the future as well
alasan punya anak
If this sounds superstitious, it is; but research has shown that in fact, people believe that a plane less likely to crash if a famous person is among the passengers, because proximity to a famous person confers upon you some magical sense of your own immortality.
holisiet. I do feel that way
but I don’t quite agree with that conclusion. just because it sounded right, doesn’t imply that it is right
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.
how having valued shit effects you.
again. just because it sounded right don’t imply that it is right. ‘people pay attention to you’. maybe lebih bener kalo dikasi ‘you might feel like people pay attention to you’. ato people generally pay more attention to you. kawatir kalo this mode of simplistic thinking affects me. apalgi inget kalo no one is more impress about your shit other than you
self-esteem-boosting Lexus or Rolex.
nice adjective. nice new adjective
“the human animal is a beast that dies and if he’s got money he buys and buys and buys and I think the reason he buys everything he can buy is that in the back of his mind, he has a crazy hope that one of his purchases will be life everlasting”
rangkuman sub topik ini
aku mulai kawatir kalo dia sampling something and assume it as a whole. trus nyari cases yang emang support his argument.
intimations of mortality amplify the allure of charismatic leaders
the dead-ier you are, smakin mungkin suka charismatic
I don’t quite understand what i write back then. mungkin maksudnya, ‘semakin someone aware about his own death, the more dia suka charismatic leader’. which is what the quote, and I’m just paraphrasing it
they refer to all outsiders as **tarsh al bahr**—”vomit from the sea”
Jesus that is harsh
“by living on after their death—either through their city, or through their glory, or in an afterlife—and by winning the gods’ favor through the vehement affirmation of their own nobility or piety, or justice.” People thus fight, and are willing or even eager to die, for a cause, to garner honor from their compatriots and curry favor with the gods in pursuit of symbolic and literal immortality.
ini itu inti beberapa bab sebelum hingga sekarang
Thinking about death had no effect on participants’ impressions of the romantic aspects of sex. However, they found the physical aspects of sex less appealing after a death reminder.
That was unexpected
Ernest Becker was right then when he proclaimed that “sex and death are twins.” Thinking about death makes the physical aspects of sex unappealing, and considering the physical aspects of sex nudges death thoughts closer to consciousness.
unexpected? or expected?
Proximal reactions to banish death thoughts from consciousness also serve to enhance physical well-being. But at other times, proximal defenses can have pernicious consequences
As long as people’s twin shield against the fear of extinction—a view of life as meaningful, and of themselves as valuable—are intact, they can live their lives with relatively minimal psychological turmoil.
But we do know that a strong sense of the meaningfulness of life and of one’s own value in society provides shields against such mortal terror.
Thats the role of meaning according to this idea
So far we’ve seen that schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, and PTSD are, at least in part, maladaptive responses to mortal terror.
Basicaly his view
But regardless of how depression arises, mortal musings and doubts about life’s meaning and one’s own significance clearly contribute to a downward spiral of anxiety and despair.
keknya ini hubungannya sama victor frankl. Disini dia bilang penyebab misal pangeran go to the castle because he wants to save the princess, with sword and shield as equipment. Analog same death as the driver and meaning as a shield.
many suicides, rather ironically, result from the horror of mortality itself. Why bother to go on living when death will get you anyway?
So in a variety of contexts, suicides provide a path to literal or symbolic immortality.
They don’t want ‘me’ to end. Ini salah satu care to pursue it
suicide is an extreme and irrevocable way to flee the terror and miseries of mortal life, alcohol and other drugs provide a much more common, albeit momentary, mode of escape.
Only then can they come to understand what can and cannot be obtained from their relationships with other human beings. If you go into a relationship wanting the other person to know you fully, you will inevitably be disappointed and frustrated.
They key to forging good relationships that reduce feelings of existential isolation and loneliness is to have the goal of getting to know another person rather than the goal of meeting your own needs.
********************************************************EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPISTS RECOGNIZE THAT************************************************************ although clients are sometimes consciously troubled by death, they are more often unaware that inadequate defenses against death anxiety are contributing to their difficulties. Therefore the therapeutic focus is typically on helping the client shore up her terror management resource, her sense that life is meaningful, her self-worth, and her sense of connectedness to other people.
Relationship between death and meaning
First, we must become aware of our fear of death; then, we must recognize that it is irrational to be afraid of death. After all, the Epicureans argued, bad things can only happen to those capable of sensation. Dead people are devoid of all sensations, just as we all were before we were conceived. Being dead is thus no different from never having existed. No one is terrified of the time before they were born, so why fret about death, since it is precisely the same insensate state that prevailed for eons before our time? Once we realize this, death anxiety will be eliminated and we will no longer yearn for immortality
easy enough for me to see at the time this book is red
Only by dying, can we continue living.
our death is life’s way to continue existing
The rock provides psychological security but takes a terrible toll on those victimized by angry and self-righteous crusades to rid the world of evil. The hard place yields perhaps a more compassionate view of the world but is less effective at buffering death anxiety. Somehow we need to fashion worldviews that yield psychological security, like the rock, but also promote tolerance and acceptance of ambiguity, like the hard place.
He know that death is not the center. He longs for something else here
We believe that the ideas in this book provide a powerful way to understand yourself and the world you live in. And we hope that knowing how conscious and unconscious death thoughts instigate a host of unfortunate psychological and behavioral defenses enables you to monitor and alter such reactions. In turn, you can be more self-determined in the choices you make and the actions you take.
His purpose in mind while writing this book.