Владислав Педдер – The Experience of the Tragic (страница 11)

In contrast to symbolic heroism, genuine heroism requires an acknowledgment of existential limits and a willingness to live in full awareness of them (Becker, 2019). Genuine heroism involves the courage to accept one’s mortality and to act in spite of fear. It means rejecting illusory comforts and self-deception and instead choosing to live consciously in the face of finitude.

Genuine heroism entails the continual renewal of mental models and adaptation to uncertainty. It is a process that demands the bravery to confront chaos and unpredictability, while recognizing that no model can provide a definitive answer to the questions of existence.

Conclusion

Thus, Becker’s ideas about mental models of immortality and symbolic heroism represent a form of adaptation to existential limits. Human beings create cultural, religious, and social systems in an attempt to overcome the fear of death and maintain a sense of control and meaning. However, genuine heroism demands that we abandon self-deception and confront existential limits head-on – accepting our finitude and choosing to act in full awareness of it.

Critique of Heroism

In his work The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker posits that “the problem of heroism is central to human life.” Heroism, in his view, is a cultural construct and a necessary illusion that helps preserve sanity in the face of the awareness of death. Through heroic striving, people create their own projects of immortality. One might be tempted to stop there in explaining the human condition – to reduce all striving, culture, religion, and ideology to existential fear of death, which we are unable to overcome physically. This would indeed seem sufficient. However, we know that alongside the fight against death through heroism or transhumanism, there is another possibility – acceptance of death. And as will become evident further on, death is not the only thing the mind fears and cannot overcome.

The Kübler-Ross model, commonly known as the five stages of death acceptance, appeared four years before the publication of Becker’s book and proposes its own framework for coming to terms with mortality. At present, we are not concerned with whether each of these stages actually occurs or whether alternative stages might be identified; what matters is the fact that the model, as an idea, produces tangible results.

Contemporary research in psychology and neuroscience has gone further. In addition to Terror Management Theory (TMT), new approaches have emerged that reveal the multidimensional nature of human perception of mortality. One such concept is Existential Well-Being Theory, which emphasizes that awareness of finitude can actually foster personal growth, provided it is properly integrated into a person’s life. This theory highlights how acceptance of death can stimulate the search for meaning, improve interpersonal relationships, and contribute to the development of an authentic sense of self.

Another promising direction involves research at the intersection of psychology and neuroscience, exploring how awareness of mortality affects the brain. Techniques related to neuroplasticity, for example, show that consciously working with thoughts about death can reshape neural structures involved in anxiety regulation. This opens new therapeutic horizons, including treatment for PTSD and other psychological conditions.

Yet another area of recent inquiry focuses on the therapeutic use of psychedelics, such as psilocybin, in treating terminal illness. Though controversial, these methods have shown encouraging results: patients who have undergone psychedelic-assisted therapy report reduced fear of death, improved quality of life, and enhanced emotional well-being. Studies suggest that such experiences may produce a sense of unity with the world, helping individuals perceive death not as a tragedy but as a natural process.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of death acceptance, I will share my own story. I did not need to be diagnosed with a terminal illness or suffer a tragic loss to confront the awareness of life’s finitude. From an early age, I witnessed the deaths of close relatives, most of whom passed away from natural causes. I attended funerals conducted according to Orthodox Christian traditions, even though my family was non-religious. At that time, death seemed like something routine: a person disappears, their body is returned to the earth – and that is the end of it.

However, at the age of fifteen, something changed. Thoughts of my own mortality began to intrude into my consciousness, especially during the silence of night or moments of solitude. They felt like a sudden stab – cold and merciless – evoking a visceral terror. My awareness seemed to plunge into an abyss. I later learned that this state could be classified as panic attacks. In those moments, the world would collapse into a single thought: I will disappear, and nothing will be able to save me.

At first, these episodes were rare, and my only strategy for coping was distraction. But the fear was more than just an emotion – it was an instinct, poisoning the mind. It lurked like a predator, waiting for the right moment. The older I became, the more clearly I sensed it.

By the time I turned twenty-one, this state had returned – this time consuming my entire consciousness. Thoughts of death became obsessive, crowding out everything else. Upon waking, I would immediately remember my mortality, and the horror would seize me. In search of comfort or answers, I turned to texts, read about near-death experiences, and explored philosophical theories. But the answers either seemed naive or proved useless. Any attempt to escape the thought of my demise crashed against the brutal clarity of its inevitability.

Two concepts are typically offered: either absolute nothingness after death, or traditional religious notions of an afterlife. Neither idea was acceptable to me. I lacked magical thinking, so religious beliefs offered no consolidation. And the prospect of complete annihilation inspired unspeakable dread. Eventually, I realized that the root of this horror was not fear of physical death or pain, but the fear of losing my self, the disappearance of consciousness.

I came to understand that my fear was not merely a fear of pain or the unknown. It was the terror of losing the I. The self-awareness I had taken as the essence of who I was turned out to be a shadow, doomed to vanish. I tried distracting myself with thoughts of the cosmos, but the grandeur of the stars only underscored my insignificance.

Comparing this experience to the Kübler-Ross model, I can confidently say that I went through the stages of denial, bargaining, and depression (Kübler-Ross, 2020). However, I did not experience the stage of anger. The final outcome of this inner order was acceptance. In that moment, I felt a sudden improvement in mood, bordering on euphoria.

One day, while walking home from work, reflecting on recent changes in my thinking, I passed a funeral supply store as I always did. Outside the shop stood a display of headstones visible to everyone passing by. And then I felt something strange. The sensation was unfamiliar – almost as if I were not the one walking, but merely an observer, watching myself from the outside, as though I were playing back a video in my mind. The world around me had subtly changed – the colors didn’t disappear entirely, but they seemed noticeably duller, as if reality had lost some of its saturation.

This state didn’t frighten me, even though I had never experienced anything like it before. I still felt everything around me, although my perception was somewhat distorted. Physically, I maintained full control over my body, but it felt different – almost automatic, as if my movements were being directed without conscious involvement.

It was depersonalization-derealization syndrome – as though I were viewing everything through glass or a screen. My body continued performing all necessary physiological functions, going to work, but my mind had fully turned inward, analyzing its surroundings. Looking at crowds of people, I thought about how brief their time was here, and how much attention they devoted to this world. I imagined skeletons with brains inside each of them, and how the outer shell to which they paid so much attention was utterly irrelevant. I remained in this state for more than a week. It didn’t particularly hinder me – though it unsettled me a bit – but I didn’t feel the same desperation to escape it as I had previously when trying to come to terms with death. Nor did I have the strength.

During those days, I persistently pondered the nature of reality. I was haunted by questions: Does only my consciousness exist? Can I be sure that others see and feel the same as I do? Or is this entire panorama nothing more than a façade woven by my perception? Like Sextus Empiricus, I grew skeptical of anything I could not verify. In the course of my reflections, science became a more reliable guide for me than philosophy. Philosophy offered abstract constructs, building castles of paradoxes in the air, but it gave me no solid ground to stand on. Science, by contrast, offered clarity and testability, transforming the fog of existential questions into more comprehensive patterns.