Many philosophers and scientists have been tormented by this question for centuries: “What happens after we die?”
And no one has been able to come up with a concrete answer.
The ways humans have tried to answer it – through fear, legacy and religion – says as much about us as they do about death itself
Read more: Why do we care what happens after death?Terror management theory – the idea that awareness of our own mortality is so terrifying that most of human behaviour is an unconscious attempt to manage that terror.
Greenberg, Solomon and Pyszczynski tested this in 1986 — when people were reminded of their own death, they immediately clung harder to their worldview and became more hostile to those who challenged it.
The brain plays a role too – studies have shown that when death is mentioned to people, their worldview subtly changes: they cling harder to their cultural beliefs, become more hostile to people who threaten those beliefs and seek more meaning in their lives.
There’s also the unknown element, humans are uniquely bad at tolerating uncertainty, and death is the ultimate uncertainty, so we try to construct a reality where we know exactly whats going to happen.
Finally, we are the only species who know we’re going to die, this awareness is a byproduct of our advanced consciousness, with some seeing it as a reward, some cursing it.
Legacy: Becker and the denial of death
Philosopher Becker wrote a book on how humans are fuelled by their fear of death, not so much physically, but in a mental sense.
It’s what he called: symbolic immortality, everything humans build, create or leave behind is an attempt to transcend death symbolically
Humans desperately try to protect their legacy and be remembered, by having kids, putting their names on plaques, even painting a piece of art.
However Becker’s point is that we don’t do this consciously, thinking ‘having a kid will help me cope with death’. Rather, our fear of dying subconsciously acts as a driving factor for so much of human ambition.
Religion does the same job – nearly every culture in human history has developed some kind of belief in the afterlife. The specific answer varies but they are all there for one psychological reason, we just can’t stand not knowing.
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