Reddit reviews The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life
We found 3 Reddit comments about The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
It actually goes deeper than that. When you challenge someone's world view, it triggers mortality thoughts. We identify with things larger than ourselves partially because it means that part of us will survive on past death. That can be a religious group, a political movement, a nation, a company, a cult, etc. Someone challenging the legitimacy, or, worse, the future existence, of our larger-than-self structures results in dire existential doubt. This is experienced as a very deep anxiety.
There's a whole psychological framework that studies how we manage those existential anxieties both in the moment and then later on. Doubling down on (affirming) one's worldview is one of those ways. People in this state also get more xenophobic, more prejudiced, and less merciful to criminals, but, interestingly, not immediately. There's a delay of 2-5 minutes before that effect kicks in.
And, fun fact: The type of anxiety this produces is similar enough to other types of pain processed by the brain that Tylenol actually suppresses it (pdf).
Edit: Link to paper, details
Edit2: The Worm at the Core is the best book I've read on TMT. My favorite amateur theologian, psychologist Richard Beck, also wrote The Slavery of Death in which he attempts to incorporate TMT into Christian theology on sin, I think very successfully.
if you want to read deeper into it, including the various experiments they've done to test their theories, this is probably the best book
https://www.amazon.com/Worm-Core-Role-Death-Life-ebook/dp/B00N6PELWO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523156905&sr=8-1&keywords=worm+at+the+core
if you can't afford a copy or don't want to pay for one you can PM me and I can hook you up
These are normal thoughts to have, and it's healthy that you're confronting your own mortality. Check out some of these books. They might be useful in helping you deal with your existential dread/worries.
Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death
Beyond Death Anxiety: Achieving Life-Affirming Death Awareness
The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life
At some point, you'll have to accept that you and everyone you know will die, and given that fact, you'll have to come to terms with what that means and how you should live your life accordingly. It's not an easy task, but you have to be brave and really face what's in front of you right now, namely the terror of knowing that you will die one day. I promise you it's not a cosmic joke what you're going through, but rather a necessary process for living a more authentic life and becoming a more authentic being. Because we die, this life matters much more than you previously thought. It's a painful but important thing to realize, and I feel for what you're going through, maybe tantamount to how Neo must have felt when he woke up from the matrix.
Lastly, I think this video might be very relatable to what you're going through right now as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3tHo2rQ9Y4
Best of luck, and hopefully you find some of these resources helpful.