570 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2023
    1. accepting our animal  nature, and end this human exceptionalism,   which blinds us to our animal nature, just  for starters. If we have a meeting about   climate or biodiversity, in our minds we need  to invite all other creatures to those meetings.   And I'm not just trying to be foolish or silly  here. I'm serious, I'm dead serious about it. We   01:24:09 need to be sitting at the table with the elephants  and the jaguars and the wolves and the algae and   the apple trees and the bees and allowing  those voices somehow into our conversation.
      • for: symbiocene, human exceptionalism
      • question
        • how do we invite them in? if they cannot represent themselves, how do we represent them?
          • does anyone know what' it's like to be a bat?
      • remind ourselves of our animal nature
        • mortality salience counters human exceptionalism
    1. “Pandemic or not, I will still lie awake each night with the persistent and unpleasant thoughts of my certain death, but I will choose not to smother this existential dread or anxiety. Instead, I want to explore it, befriend it. I have learned that the only way to conquer the darkness is to venture through it,”
      • quote
        • "“Pandemic or not, I will still lie awake each night with the persistent and unpleasant thoughts of my certain death, but I will choose not to smother this existential dread or anxiety. Instead, I want to explore it, befriend it. I have learned that the only way to conquer the darkness is to venture through it,”
      • Author
        • Jenna Lasky
    2. For many, Covid-19 was the rude awakening that death was not a long-distance relationship so much as a close neighbor.
      • quote
        • "For many, Covid-19 was the rude awakening that death was not a long-distance relationship so much as a close neighbor."
      • Author
        • Allison Hope
    3. But since Covid-19, I’ve watched people around me – friends, family and perfect strangers my own age whose stories are told in obituaries – drop dead from this contagion. A sharp sense of existential dread has taken up residence in my psyche. That vague inevitability that I assumed would happen in the distant future smashed me over the head like an anvil in an old cartoon. I could easily die sooner than later. My mortality was, for the first time, in center focus.
      • due to death of so many young people, covid has shifted mortality salience into center focus for many young people
    1. three components of EOL doula training
      • Three components of End of Life Doula Training

        • Imagine you have three months left to live
        • Practice deep, active listening -Legacy projects in the here and now
      • Comment

        • these could be used as Mortality Salience BEing Journeys
  2. Jun 2023
    1. How has your life been blessed by living the Gospel and how has it sanctified you?

      Hey Naomi! I must say your insights and reminders here are powerful!

      To address your question, I really do believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ is a message of good news. While we learn from the scriptures that the gospel is the gospel of repentance ("teach nothing but repentance" - Doctrine and Covenants 6:9, 11:9) , it essentially just means that we focus on preaching the gospel "which is the gospel of repentance and salvation through the mercy, grace and merits of the Lord Jesus Christ." That is good news: that there is salvation, mercy and grace for all mankind!

      • Lately, I feel that I've been surrounded by numerous deaths and illnesses in past two years. Grief has really taught me the impermanence of everything in our fallen world. But the more prominent feeling I've been getting is how lovely it is that I possess the knowledge of the plan of salvation. It brings me great comfort our parting in this life is not the end. This mortality is only a fleeting moment in our eternal lives.

      This is Elder Hugo Montoya in his talk, The Eternal Principle of Love:

      On the third day He was resurrected. The tomb is empty; He stands at the right hand of His Father. They hope we will choose to keep our covenants and return to Their presence. This second estate is not our final estate; we do not belong to this earthly home, but rather we are eternal beings living temporary experiences.

      • Another thing the gospel of Jesus Christ has taught me is that our time here on Earth is to become the person who we will become for eternity. When we meet Jesus Christ in His second coming and face the final judgment, the essence of who we are in that moment will shape our eternal existence. This understanding holds immense power in that each day the Lord gives me another chance to live and be with my family, I choose to improve upon myself, to surpass the person I was yesterday, so that one day, I may reach a state of self-acceptance, forgiveness for my flaws, love for all my cherished ones in the manner that Jesus loves them, and a deep sense of peace and comfort in the presence of my Heavenly Father.
    1. But what are we to remember? We are to remember that through his Resurrection, we too may be resurrected. We should acknowledge his Resurrection and give thanks to our Father in Heaven for this blessing of his son. Furthermore, we might remember that the Lord has given us certain commandments to make our bodies fit tabernacles for the Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16–17; 6:13–20; D&C 89). As we live in this mortal state of probation, we are preparing ourselves for our endless resurrected state (Alma 12:24). The type of resurrection we receive is commensurate with the degree of glory that we have prepared ourselves to receive (D&C 88:14–24). A reflection of our past week’s activities in relation to the commandments given to keep our bodies as fit temples of God and to be worthy of his Spirit would be most appropriate as we partake of the bread. We should also make personal commitments to do better in our areas of weakness and thank our Father for the blessings of the past week. Through partaking of the bread, we have an opportunity to periodically evaluate our progress toward immortality.

      i love the emphasis on our corporeal temples in this context. each week that we get to partake of the symbolic representation of christ's blood and body, we are granted a recurring reminder that we are spiritual beings destined for eternity. this serves as a poignant testament that mortality is but a fleeting fragment of our existence.

  3. Mar 2023
    1. For Becker this is literally true: what we regard as normality is our collective, protective madness, in which we repress the grim truth about the human condition.

      Quote - normality is our collective, protective madness in which we repress the grim truth of the human condition.

    1. // - This article provides an intersectional study of: - climate change, - collective action research - terror management theory / mortality salience - it explains the beneficial impacts of non-rational relational ontology and recommends the use of ritual practices based on this as a way to promote pro-environmental behavior

      //

    2. we also share an overarching and dominant individualized ontology that operates primarily in a logic of economization and consumerism. Economic metaphors and language dominate, and keep shifting our frame of reference back to economy. It is consumerism that is most often and consistently enacted in worldview defense when confronted with mortality salience in modern society.
      • key observation
      • key insight
    3. Talking about climate change makes us aware of the fact that we are going to die, and social psychological research in the area known as “terror management theory” finds that this mortality salience prompts psychologically defensive strategies that are significantly counterproductive to environmentalism. However, rituals of giving thanks and the felt experience of gratitude they engender through tacit learning may be effective in generating pro-environmental behaviour.

      // in other words - mortality salience alone is counter-productive - it triggers psychological defense strategies. - it must be accompanied by expressions of gratitude to be effective and transformative

  4. Sep 2022
    1. On this road we encounter the psychological obstacles to adoptingnew thinking as recognizable staging posts along the road: denial, anger,bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance.

      !- similiar to : Mortality Salience - grieving of the loss of a loved one - grieving the future loss of one's own life - Ernest Becker is relevant - Denial of Death, Death Terror !- aligned : Deep Humanity

  5. Aug 2022
  6. Jul 2022
    1. it will be worthwhile to develop his idea of a courageous breaking away from culturally-supported immortality systems by looking back in history to a character who many people have thought of as an epitome of a self-realized person, someone who neither accepts his culture’s standardized hero-systems, nor fears death: the philosopher Socrates. When Socrates was brought to trial in 399 BC before a jury of 501 Athenian citizens on charges that included impiety and corrupting the youth, he disappointed most of the jurors (and irritated many of them) by not petitioning for leniency, or appearing intimidated by the penalties he might face if found guilty. And when the jury condemned him to death, he remained composed, and spoke carefully about the consequences of the judgment first for himself, and then for Athens. Through Plato we understand that Socrates’s typical tranquility and self-control never left him throughout his month in prison and up through the final minutes of drinking the hemlock. The eyewitness report has it that he drank the cup of hemlock “calmly and easily,” and had to chastise his friends for their weeping. Combined with other testimony about Socrates’s bravery as a soldier–and the record of his dangerous refusal to obey what he considered to be immoral orders from the leaders of a temporary govemment-all this adds up to the portrait of someone very much at ease with his mortality. What accounts for it? Did Socrates’ courage come from a psychological denial of mortality through embrace of some “immortality system?” Let us look at what he had to say about death to the jurors at his trial immediately after his condemnation. “Death,” he said to them, “is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or … it is really a change: a migration of the soul from this place to another (Plato, Apology, 40c-d).” Those are in fact the only alternatives: maybe its nothingness; maybe it isn’t. Socrates shows himself prepared for either eventuality. Note well: there is no dogmatic assertion of an immortal afterlife here. An assertion like that would, after all, contradict Socrates’ first principle of conduct, which is to never assume that one knows what one doesn’t know. Earlier in his defense speech Socrates had stated the matter about death carefully: “To be afraid of death is only another form of thinking that one is wise when one is not; it is to think that one knows what one does not know …. [Not] possessing any real knowledge of what comes after death, I am also conscious that I do not possess it (29a-b).”

      Socrates confrontation of death without fear is an example of how to live authentically with death, without the need for immortality projects.

    2. as members of society, we tend to identify with one or another “immortality system” (as Becker calls it). That is, we identify with a religious group, or a political group, or engage in some kind of cultural activity, or adopt a certain culturally sanctioned viewpoint, that we invest with ultimate meaning, and to which we ascribe absolute and permanent truth. This inflates us with a sense of invulnerable righteousness. And then, we have to protect ourselves against the exposure of our absolute truth being just one more mortality-denying system among others, which we can only do by insisting that all other absolute truths are false. So we attack and degrade–preferably kill–the adherents of different mortality- denying-absolute-truth systems. So the Protestants kill the Catholics; the Muslims vilify the Christians and vice versa; upholders of the American way of life denounce Communists; the Communist Khmer Rouge slaughters all the intellectuals in Cambodia; the Spanish Inquisition tortures heretics; and all good students of the Enlightenment demonize religion as the source of all evil. The list could go on and on.

      Once we give ourselves over absolutely to a cultural immortality belief system, that is when our complete identification can emerge a self-righteousness so powerful that any other mortality-denying system that claims to be the truth and therefore threatens ours, must be eliminated.

  7. Jun 2022
    1. Maybe it’s time we talk about it?

      Yes, long overdue!

      Coming to terms with potential near term extinction of our species, and many others along with it, is a macro-level reflection of the personal and inescapable, existential crisis that all human, and other living beings have to contend with, our own personal, individual mortality. Our personal death can also be interpreted as an extinction event - all appearances are extinguished.

      The self-created eco-crisis, with accelerating degradation of nature cannot help but touch a nerve because it is now becoming a daily reminder of our collective vulnerability, Mortality salience of this scale can create enormous amounts of anxiety. We can no longer hide from our mortality when the news is blaring large scale changes every few weeks. It leaves us feeling helpless...just like we are at the time of our own personal death.

      In a world that is in denial of death, as pointed out by Ernest Becker in his 1973 Pulitzer-prize winning book of the same title, the signs of a climate system and biosphere in collapse is a frightening reminder of our own death.

      Straying from the natural wonderment each human being is born with, we already condition ourselves to live with an existential dread as Becker pointed out:

      "Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever."

      Beckerian writer Glenn Hughes explores a way to authentically confront this dread, citing Socrates as an example. Three paragraphs from Hughes article point this out, citing Socrates as exemplary:

      "Now Becker doesn’t always emphasize this second possibility of authentic faith. One can get the impression from much of his work that any affirmation of enduring meaning is simply a denial of death and the embrace of a lie. But I believe the view expressed in the fifth chapter of The Denial of Death is his more nuanced and genuine position. And I think it will be worthwhile to develop his idea of a courageous breaking away from culturally-supported immortality systems by looking back in history to a character who many people have thought of as an epitome of a self-realized person, someone who neither accepts his culture’s standardized hero-systems, nor fears death: the philosopher Socrates."

      "Death is a mystery. Maybe it is annihilation. One simply can’t know otherwise. Socrates is psychologically open to his physical death and possible utter annihilation. But still this does not unnerve him. And if we pursue the question: why not?–we do not have to look far in Plato’s portrait of Socrates for some answers. Plato understood, and captured in his Dialogues, a crucial element in the shaping of Socrates’ character: his willingness to let the fact of death fully penetrate his consciousness. This experience of being fully open to death is so important to Socrates that he makes a point of using it to define his way of life, the life of a philosophos–a “lover of wisdom.” " "So we have come to the crucial point. The Socratic catharsis is a matter of letting death penetrate the self. It is the acceptance of the perishing of everything that will perish. In this acceptance a person imaginatively experiences the death of the body and the possibility of complete annihilation. This is “to ‘taste” death with the lips of your living body [so] that you … know emotionally that you are a creature who will die; “it is the passage into nothing” in which “a corner is turned within one.” And it is this very experience, and no other, that enables a person to act with genuine moral freedom and autonomy, guided by morals and not just attraction and impulses."

      https://ernestbecker.org/lecture-6-denial/

  8. May 2022
    1. Second, acknowledging increased affective insecurity and that heightened vulnerability and fear will be a factor, great efforts must be made to bolster the care, support and protection provided to people.      

      Mortality salience for the masses - operationalizing terror management theory (TMT) and Deep Humanity BEing Journeys that take individuals to explore the depths of their humanity to make sense of the times we are in will play a critical role in contextualizing fear of death triggered by unstable circumstances and ameliorating these fears with the wisdom that comes from a living comprehension of the sacredness of our life and eventual death.

  9. Apr 2022
  10. Mar 2022
    1. Unwin, H. J. T., Hillis, S., Cluver, L., Flaxman, S., Goldman, P. S., Butchart, A., Bachman, G., Rawlings, L., Donnelly, C. A., Ratmann, O., Green, P., Nelson, C. A., Blenkinsop, A., Bhatt, S., Desmond, C., Villaveces, A., & Sherr, L. (2022). Global, regional, and national minimum estimates of children affected by COVID-19-associated orphanhood and caregiver death, by age and family circumstance up to Oct 31, 2021: An updated modelling study. The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 6(4), 249–259. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2352-4642(22)00005-0

    1. Eric Topol. (2022, February 28). A multimodal #AI study of ~54 million blood cells from Covid patients @YaleMedicine for predicting mortality risk highlights protective T cell role (not TH17), poor outcomes of granulocytes, monocytes, and has 83% accuracy https://nature.com/articles/s41587-021-01186-x @NatureBiotech @KrishnaswamyLab https://t.co/V32Kq0Q5ez [Tweet]. @EricTopol. https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1498373229097799680

  11. Feb 2022
    1. Altarawneh, H. N., Chemaitelly, H., Hasan, M. R., Ayoub, H. H., Qassim, S., AlMukdad, S., Coyle, P., Yassine, H. M., Al-Khatib, H. A., Benslimane, F. M., Al-Kanaani, Z., Al-Kuwari, E., Jeremijenko, A., Kaleeckal, A. H., Latif, A. N., Shaik, R. M., Abdul-Rahim, H. F., Nasrallah, G. K., Al-Kuwari, M. G., … Abu-Raddad, L. J. (2022). Protection against the Omicron Variant from Previous SARS-CoV-2 Infection. New England Journal of Medicine, 0(0), null. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMc2200133

    1. Eric Feigl-Ding. (2022, January 17). Pandemic leadership matters. #COVID19 mortality per capita by state. 📍Public health is policy, policy is politics. 📍Human behavior is often driven by misinformation. 📍Misinformation is often driven by politics. 📍Politics can be changed by voting—Unless voters can’t. Https://t.co/pFkndQZrfr [Tweet]. @DrEricDing. https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1483181226815012867

    1. Ana Mardoll. (2022, February 12). I used to be a history major, with a focus on social history. And I remember reading about WW2 in a very fascinating book about the evolution of courtship and dating dynamics in America. (I’m going somewhere with this, bear with me.) [Tweet]. @AnaMardoll. https://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/status/1492398681303261184

    1. Nick Mark MD. (2022, January 21). This FLCCC COVID protocol gets nuttier with each version. Now hydroxychloroquine is “preferred for omicron”? What?!🤯 Stuff that actually works (monoclonals & fluvoxamine) are 2nd line And steroids, which increased mortality in people NOT on O2 in RECOVERY, are recommended?😱 https://t.co/XXfn1eMTJt [Tweet]. @nickmmark. https://twitter.com/nickmmark/status/1484382662517137410

    1. Tyler Black, MD. (2022, January 4). /1 =-=-=-=-=-=-=- Thread: Mortality in 2020 and myths =-=-=-=-=-=-=- 2020, unsurprisingly, came with excess death. There was an 18% increase in overall mortality, year on year. But let’s dive in a little bit deeper. The @CDCgov has updated WONDER, its mortality database. Https://t.co/DbbvvbTAZQ [Tweet]. @tylerblack32. https://twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1478501508132048901

    1. Adele Groyer. (2022, January 8). Friday report is now out. Https://covidactuaries.org/2022/01/07/the-friday-report-issue-58/ I am struck that perception of a “mild” Covid situation is relative. In SA natural deaths were >30% higher than predicted in Dec. The last time weekly death rates in E&W were more than 30% above 2015-19 levels was in Jan 2021. Https://t.co/S9fkn2WFVk [Tweet]. @AdeleGroyer. https://twitter.com/AdeleGroyer/status/1479760460589191170

    1. Craig Spencer MD MPH. (2022, January 22). In the U.S. more people died of Covid in the past week than died of Ebola during the whole 2014-2016 West Africa epidemic. Maybe it’s me, but the slew of ‘the pandemic is essentially over’ articles seem a bit premature. [Tweet]. @Craig_A_Spencer. https://twitter.com/Craig_A_Spencer/status/1484739130055696387

    1. (((Howard Forman))). (2022, January 21). NYC update (GREAT news heading into weekend) Cases down 43% with positive rate 7.3% (Manhattan 6.2%). Lowest rate since December 15. Hospital census down 13% back to levels of January 2. All trends (except deaths) favorable. Thanks to everyone who has helped get us here. Https://t.co/MLmptWLxKv [Tweet]. @thehowie. https://twitter.com/thehowie/status/1484608013885480962

    1. BNO Newsroom. (2022, January 28). U.S. COVID update: Daily cases drop 13 days in a row, deaths still rising—New cases: 546,598—Average: 600,789 (-29,966)—States reporting: 46/50—In hospital: 143,574 (-2,881)—In ICU: 25,099 (-254)—New deaths: 3,061—Average: 2,525 (+88) Data: Https://newsnodes.com/us [Tweet]. @BNODesk. https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1486860664291446787

    1. Timothy Caulfield. (2022, January 31). How Do You Respond When an #AntiVaxxer Dies of Covid? Https://nytimes.com/2022/01/30/opinion/culture/covid-death-mental-health.html?smid=tw-share by @JamesMartinSJ “Indulged in regularly, #schadenfreude ends up warping the soul.” “Don’t find another person’s misery the subject of mirth, glee or satisfaction.” Good reminder. One I needed. [Tweet]. @CaulfieldTim. https://twitter.com/CaulfieldTim/status/1488183630056755205

  12. Jan 2022
    1. Deanna Behrens, MD (she/her). (2022, January 30). One U.S. child loses a parent or caregiver for every four COVID-19-associated deaths I’m not discounting mental health effects of the pandemic on children. That is real. But the risks associated with #COVID19 for children and its affects on them aren’t always obvious [Tweet]. @DeannaMarie208. https://twitter.com/DeannaMarie208/status/1487607849664581634

    1. Dr. Melvin Sanicas, #GetVaccinated. (2022, January 24). Smart people change their minds. They reconsider things they thought they’d already figure out when offered compelling data contradicting their previous understanding. Last week we saw the Swiss data. This is from #USA. #scicomm #dataviz #VaccinesSaveLives (h/t @OurWorldInData) https://t.co/Z5ONLNXr2u [Tweet]. @Vaccinologist. https://twitter.com/Vaccinologist/status/1485704680550412303

    1. James 💙 Neill - 😷 🇪🇺🇮🇪🇬🇧🔶. (2022, January 23). Of 51,141 deaths due to ischaemic heart diseases 32,872 (64.3%) had pre-existing conditions.💔 Do those 33k heart disease deaths not count? Or is an absence of pre-existing conditions only required for Covid deaths...😡⁉️ Source: ONS England 2019 [Tweet]. @jneill. https://twitter.com/jneill/status/1485327886164844546

    1. Edouard Mathieu. (2022, January 17). Update: Switzerland now reports deaths by booster status. Compared to unvaccinated people, the COVID mortality rate is: • 9x lower after full vaccination • 48x lower after a booster [From our post with @maxcroser on death rates by vaccination status: Http://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination] https://t.co/ozWueyHO2k [Tweet]. @redouad. https://twitter.com/redouad/status/1482991873190936576