{"id":62229,"date":"2023-08-20T01:00:56","date_gmt":"2023-08-20T05:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=62229"},"modified":"2023-08-19T09:14:42","modified_gmt":"2023-08-19T13:14:42","slug":"qotd-fear-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/08\/20\/qotd-fear-of-death\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Fear of death"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>The two basic drivers of social change are <strong>fear of death<\/strong> and <strong>caloric surplus<\/strong>. They exist, as Marxists would say if they cared about actual human behavior, dialectically \u2014 the fear of death prompts a frantic search for caloric surplus; once attained, caloric surplus makes the once-adaptive fear of death neurotic and dysfunctional, literally <a href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/morbid\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">morbid<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>As pretty much every Victorian anthropologist remarked, &#8220;savages&#8221; all seem deliriously happy \u2014 when life is a constant struggle, your every moment is filled with deep meaning, high purpose. So, too, with men at war \u2014 Robert Graves or someone like that once said that his time in the trenches were the greatest moments of his life, because everything other than the <em>now<\/em> disappeared. I can&#8217;t speak from personal experience, but I&#8217;d lay good money that no combat veteran completely re-enters the civilian world, largely for this reason.<\/p>\n<p>Those are <em>reasonable<\/em> fears of death. We all accept, intellectually, that we could go at any time, and we will inevitably go eventually, but unless you&#8217;ve had a brush with death \u2014 a moment where you know, with perfect clarity, that there&#8217;s a significant chance you&#8217;re going <em>now<\/em> \u2014 you can&#8217;t really appreciate it, emotionally.<\/p>\n<p>Severian, <!--<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rottenchestnuts.com\/communal-salvation\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">-->&#8220;Communal Salvation&#8221;, <em>Rotten Chestnuts<\/em>, 2020-11-19.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The two basic drivers of social change are fear of death and caloric surplus. They exist, as Marxists would say if they cared about actual human behavior, dialectically \u2014 the fear of death prompts a frantic search for caloric surplus; once attained, caloric surplus makes the once-adaptive fear of death neurotic and dysfunctional, literally morbid. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,7,5,41],"tags":[262,1103,139,1462],"class_list":["post-62229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-history","category-military","category-quotations","tag-culture","tag-infantry","tag-psychology","tag-severian"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-gbH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62229"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84318,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62229\/revisions\/84318"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}