Social injustices and environmental harms persist despite the rise of powerful social movements to counter them. Is it possible they persist because we’ve yet to target the root drivers of injustice?
Powerful thinkers from James Baldwin and Simone de Beauvoir to the historical Buddha himself have encouraged us to examine how our existential fears—particularly fear of death—fuel our desire to dominate. According to Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa, because we often see death as “a defeat and an insult,” we concoct fantasies of supremacy that give us hits of feeling powerful and in control. These fantasies can aggregate into ugly and deadly social formations such as white and male supremacy. They can show up in less destructive but still damaging personal habits such as thinking our perspectives and choices—from our favorite restaurant to the variant of Buddhism we practice—are the best.
There is a growing body of psychological research, terror management theory (TMT), that offers robust experimental evidence of the link between fear of death and compensatory fantasies of supremacy that can wreak havoc politically and personally. Experiments have involved asking research participants to write a short essay about their own death. Then, with mortality fresh in their minds, the participants have been asked to react to different prompts. These experiments have confirmed that death reminders intensify competitive behavior in general and cause individuals to cling to their preferred worldviews, including white supremacy, male supremacy, national supremacy, and human supremacy.
“Finding ways to collectively face and metabolize the reality of death is not only paramount for our personal well-being, it’s politically vital.”
In other words, we unconsciously soothe our fears of annihilation by clinging to fantasies of supremacy. This is not rational. But death can be terrifying. As Pema Chödrön has said, it’s the “most fundamental of our fears,” and so it makes sense that we stop making sense in the face of impermanence.
Because death is inescapable, are we destined to soothe ourselves with fantasies of supremacy? No. Death may be unavoidable, but our view of it as “a defeat and an insult” can be transformed. It was while meditating under the Bodhi Tree, for example, that the Buddha befriended the fact of impermanence and transformed his defensive ego attachments into open-hearted generosity and compassion.
In their study “Reducing Defensive Responses to Thoughts of Death: Meditation, Mindfulness, and Buddhism,” published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2019, researchers Young Chin Park and Tom Pyszczynski, one of the founders of TMT, ran experiments in both South Korea and the United States to see if meditation interrupted the terror management response. It did. Further experiments revealed that experienced meditators could avoid defensive worldview attachment even without meditating beforehand, a finding that pointed to the enduring effects of practice. Meditation, they hypothesized, reduces defensive reactions because it makes us more tolerant of unpleasant thoughts and emotions.
According to Park and Pyszczynski, meditation interrupts thought suppression and allows the reality of death to dwell in the conscious mind, where we have a better chance of processing it without using unconscious and damaging coping mechanisms.
I recently sat down with Young Chin Park and Tom Pyszczynski to discuss their study. During our conversation, Pyszczynski told me about an experience early in his career that inspired the research.
When he was in his early thirties, he was hyper-focused on publishing new research. He was concerned about job security—the “publish or perish” imperative. But his focus was also fueled by ego, by a desire to become a “super psychologist.” During this period, Pyszczynski developed a large lump on his neck. When his doctor’s treatments didn’t work, they did a biopsy. This ordeal forced him to viscerally reckon with death, and he noticed with some surprise that his egoic strivings relaxed. All Pyszczynski cared about was being with his family and getting healthy. When he learned he was cancer-free, he was profoundly relieved. But as the crisis receded, his ego reignited.
This period in Pyszczynski’s life inspired him to explore a paradox in his research: When we spend more time with the reality of impermanence (hopefully, without being sidelined by a medical emergency), our terror diminishes, along with our unconscious efforts to avenge the defeat and insult of death.
From billionaires hunting for the holy grail of immortality in new high-tech forms, to invasive medical interventions in the final stages of life, we live in a death-denying culture. It’s no surprise that fantasies of supremacy remain as potent as ever, often with devastating effects.
Finding ways to collectively face and metabolize the reality of death—whether through meditation, ritual, psychedelics, or other mind-body practices—is not only paramount for our personal well-being, it’s politically vital.
We can’t change the world with mind-body practices alone, as the sad abuses of power that have happened in Buddhist communities attest. But political interventions that overlook and fail to address our existential fears are also incomplete. Realizing a more just and ecologically sane future will hinge on our capacity to combine outward movements for change with inward practices that teach us how to love a life that ends.
