Posted 16 April 2003 - 11:44 AM
John,
Wow.. very interesting project. I hope you find someone with the background to help you.
By the way, I've become quite attracted to the aspect of objections to immortality as a derivative of evolutionary psychology. It seems humans have evolved defensive responses to new ideas, change, and perceived strange ideas. Why would this be so? Well, we wouldn't want to go chasing after every deer in the woods.. or divide valuable time on wasteful projects... Time and Resources have always been directly correlated to successful reproduction and survival…. They still are actually… but to a lesser degree as we experience greater and greater benefits from more efficiency and more abundance…. But we still have brains adapted to our paleo roots.
Anyway.. just a few thoughts. Good luck.
I've downloaded and posted your above 'excerpt' for easy reading:
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this is a key excerpt from my upcoming article "evolution and its implications for aging, death and the extension of the human life span". Please do not distribute or publish in this incomplete form. If you have any questions, please contact me at: ZAUBERKUGEL@YAHOO.COM
The management of Terror:
Fear of death is as old as mankind itself. Since we evolved the mental capabilities to understand that we will die some day, we fear it. To fully realize mortality always meant to realize that nothing could be done about it and that people were helplessly subject to their fate. Our lives would always be overshadowed by the knowledge that all personality development, social relations and simply all personal activities would ultimately be in vain.
This is not a productive mental state for a stone-age mammoth-hunter. He should pursue his daily jobs with vigor and devotion, not with the thought of futility looming at the horizon. So we should expect evolution to have created some kind of mechanism for the management of terror [59].
What kind of behavior would be suitable to manage our existential fears? It might be associated to positive emotions, such as the ‘genetically correct’ behaviors of eating or sex. It might also be rewarding to require much mental resources, so that little power remains to ponder over mortality. Finally it would be ideal if a kind of behavior could be used that is already common in humans, so that no major new brain modifications have to be made.
All three properties are ideally met by imitation. The peacock tail interpretation of imitation would predict that it is associated to positive emotions because it is a mating behavior. Evidence that it requires much mental resources has already been considered and its abundance in human culture is obvious.
If that guess is correct then genes that created a strong ability and eagerness to imitate not only gained peacock-style attractivity, but also proliferated because their carriers approached their daily jobs with motivation and confidence instead of anxiety and indifference, which leads to more success.
Shall we then call all of human culture and personality an unlikely hybrid of mating behavior and terror management? Evidence for the former has been considered and so will be evidence for the latter.
Experimental support:
Psychologists have conducted many experiments that strongly support terror management theory [62]. To my knowledge their results have been formulated only in classical terms. In the following, the meme’s point of view shall also be kept in mind, so that an understanding of the evolutionary role of terror management can be gained.
The experiments evaluated in some way or another how strong test subjects would cling to their personal beliefs and cultural norms (that is apply imitation to bolster the selfplex respectively other culturally established memeplexes), for example by having them propose a bond for a moral transgressor or by having them evaluate a person that particularly held up some cultural standard.
It was found that people much more cling to both kinds of advanced memeplexes when their mortality was made salient first by a death-related dummy questionnaire [60], [61], [62].
Furthermore, when subjects were given the opportunity talk about and defend their selfplexes, measured emotional stress was reduced in comparison to control groups that were talking about some other topic [63].
The two major modes in that people compensate their death-related anxiety were explicitly identified as “Going to extremes” (in values or views) and “Being oneself” [63]. These are precisely the two major kinds of advanced memeplexes. The understanding, built-up and bolstering of both cultural views between persons and the selfplex inside one person is imitation in its highest form.
All this strongly suggests that the very clinging to some advanced memeplex, its bolstering and defense is a central mechanism for the management of existential terror in humans.
With the peacock-tail interpretation of imitation this comes not so surprising. It a vital part of reproductive behavior that compensates for individual terror. This is perfectly the distribution of priorities that we would expect evolution to create.
It might be expected that certain memeplexes may be better suited for terror management than others. This should create a genetic disposition in humans towards such well-terror-managing memeplexes, granting them much human resources and strong selective advantages. This should make them far-spread and attractive to other memes. Because of their attractivity, they should be selected for strong immune systems.
Memeplexes that fare especially well at terror management might include religions with their explicit claims about immortality of the soul. As predicted, these are highly developed, abundant and have shown particularly merciless immune responses towards competing heretic memes and their carriers.
The power of terror management:
We are used to see the interests of memes and genes contradict each other, producing structures that seem ineffective for genetic proliferation such as celibacy, birth control or civilization.
However, in the case of terror management, the replication of memes directly furthers the replication of genes by maintaining individuals’ motivation and productivity. No compromises had to be made in the design of the terror management mechanism. We must expect that such a genetic-memetic alliance produces highly effective results.
This is strongly supported by the figures in the above experiments. For example in one impressive study a random selection of professional municipal court judges was asked to assign a bond to a prostitute (as a transgressor of established moral rules or memeplexes). The group to that mortality was made salient first chose on the average nine times higher bonds than the control group [60].
Triple trouble:
Unfortunately, when we are trying to spread the longevity meme, terror management is a dire opponent to face. It is no surprise that the young and underdeveloped longevity meme is helplessly subject to terror management’s long grown brute evolutionary force. To be specific, I propose that terror management acts on the longevity meme in three sequential mechanisms:
Firstly, terror management works. That is, our established worldviews and frames of references draw us away from perceiving mortality as a problem [59]. And there is no need to listen to those who seek to solve this no-problem.
However, secondly, a thorough encounter with the longevity meme (e.g. in a personal conversation) should still be able to make mortality salient and call its fearsome consequences into mind. As we saw, the compensatory reaction to mortality salience is to cling to some established memeplex or the selfplex [63]. The clinging to established memes, on the other hand, implies objecting to not so established, alternative memes such as life extension.
Thirdly, the life extension advertiser with his radically new ideas puts himself in the position of a transgressor of established memeplexes. As we saw, this can strongly discredit him among an audience to that mortality is salient [60].
In combination, these three effects make a spread of the longevity meme on major scales next to impossible.
To test the triple power of terror management, it may be instructive to go ahead on some social gathering and ask into the group: “Who of you would like to live forever?” Keep an eye open for the compensatory reaction of bolstering established belief systems. This simple test can achieve rather impressive results.
But please do so only on small scales, for such a direct and open advertisement attempt usually does the longevity meme more harm than good.
Two ways out:
We have found empirically that people’s reactions are strongly negative when confronted with the topic of death. Evolutionary considerations have explained why. Psychological data led to the formulation of a threefold mechanism by that terror management thoroughly compromises the replication of the longevity meme.
To make any substantial number of people support anti-aging research, an efficient way to circumvent these problems must be found.
The three main problems we encountered above are all rooted in people’s strongly negative reactions in a mortality salient condition. Can then anti-aging research be promoted in a non-mortality salient way?
In fact such a ways exists and is quite heavily pursued at this time.
The greatest achievements in anti-aging research have been achieved in government- or private company funded fundamental research. Such discoveries include the telomere theory of aging that was mentioned above [55], [57], the regenerative potential of embryonic stem cells [84], the life-extending effects of caloric restriction [69], [70], [71], the biochemistry of radical oxygen species [72], [73] and more [56]. Just glance at a contemporary journal on biological gerontology [66], [67], [68] to gain an impression of the huge amount of research that is going on.
This strategy in fact circumvents the main problem. A huge amount of aging and anti-aging research is conducted while mortality salience remains entirely absent. All work is not done because of some immortalist ambition, but because researchers simply do investigate things. There is not much philosophy about the why, except recognition of the advantages that science has brought so far. Aging is a biochemically describable process like any other, so biochemists set out to describe it.
Unlike dreaming of immortality, fundamental research in all accessible disciplines is a culturally established value and plenty of memes and their carriers are associated to it and strengthening it. Could belief in the value of science even act as terror managing conviction when mortality becomes salient during a gerontology research project, thereby strengthening faith in itself? I suggest that this mechanism may attract active gerontologists to the longevity meme, provided that they personally believe in the value of science.
It might even be workable to build a broader advertisement campaign on the same mechanism. The strategy would be first to demonstrate that science is unquestionably one of the central culturally established values that we have and then to call mortality into mind. Science should now act as compensatory value, calling for scientific investigation of the problem.
Psychological research is urgently required to explore this possibility. Perhaps reliable methods can be found to utilize the power of terror management for life extension projects. That is where it naturally seems to belong, isn't it?
Given our two possible strategies, the longevity meme and the fundamental research strategy, which is the one we should pick? The simple answer is both, every person according to her or his abilities. Luckily the two are not mutually exclusive.
The best case scenario would definitely be that we find a way to completely undermine the psychological barriers that currently hold the longevity meme at bay. But this is not going to be easy. Such a course will require sophisticated advertisement campaigns under the supervision of professional psychologists. Most of the current efforts appear to be far from such a high level of organization. Life extension activists exist since the 1960s [74] and their success has constantly been rather miserable. This essay has provided an elaborate argument, why.
If our failure to amend the condition of the longevity meme persists, we will need a non-catastrophic plan B. This could be provided by the fundamental research strategy. We might have no choice but to participate in the recent trends in mainstream research towards aging. We shall stimulate them where we can and calmly pick projects that seem especially beneficial to life extension. This way we can remain in a productive state until our time has come. Once enough fundamental knowledge is available, a group of relatively few determined researchers and financiers might be able to put the pieces together.
Selected references:
[59] Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., and Solomon, S. (1986) “The causes and consequences of the need for self-esteem: A terror management theory.” In R.F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189-212), New York: Springer-Verlag.
[60] Rosenblatt, A., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., et al. (1989) “Evidence for terror management theory: I. The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who violate or uphold cultural values.” Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 57, 681-690
[61] Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Rosenblatt, A., et al. (1990) “Evidence for terror management theory II: The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who threaten or bolster the cultural worldview.” Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 58, 308-318
[62] Arndt, J., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., et al. (1997) “Suppression, accessibility of death-related thoughts, and cultural worldview defense: Exploring the psychodynamics of terror management.” Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 73, 5-18.
[63] McGregor, I., Zanna, M. P., Holmes, J. G., Spencer, S. J. (2001) “Compensatory conviction in the face of personal uncertainty: Going to extremes and being oneself.”
Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 80, 472-488.
[64] Steele, C. M. (1988) “The psychology of self-affirmation: Sustaining the integrity of the self.” Advances in experimental social psychology, pp. 261-302 (L. Berkowitz, San Diego, CA: Academic Press).
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