Is your novel more than just a creative endeavor? Is it an immortality project?
In other words, is it your legacy, something you hope will flourish and live on long after you die? Is having an immortality project a good or a bad thing? And what do you do if the novel that was supposed to be your crowning glory and lasting legacy ends up as a total, dismal, utter failure?
American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker talks about immortality projects in his famous non-fiction book, ‘The Denial of Death’, published in 1973. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1974, just months after his death from cancer.
The book makes two main points:
1. Humans are able to imagine themselves in different scenarios. We’re able to reflect on both the past and the future and to see ourselves in other realities.
As we’re able to imagine a reality without ourselves in it, we can grasp that our death is inevitable. This causes death anxiety, with the fear of death underlying everything we do.
2. Becker says that we have two selves. The first self is our physical self – the one that eats, drinks, poos, pees, and sleeps. The second self is our conceptual self – our identity.
Becker claims that the prospect of death haunts and terrifies us on an unconscious level, so in order to compensate for the loss of our physical self, we construct a conceptual self that we hope will live on forever.
The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else.
– Ernest Becker
Becker called our efforts to live forever ‘immortality projects’.
When I think of that term I’m immediately reminded not only of myself, but of several others.
I’m immediately reminded of my mum, who had many children, and my dad, who built many houses. I’m reminded of myself, working hard to get the best novel out that I could, and my brother and sister, who also wrote books (but non-fiction).
Were these actions the result of our unconscious immortality projects?
Historically, I’m also reminded of the actions of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, a French novelist who wrote Dangerous Liaisons in 1782. He was a former military officer with a plan to write a work which departed from the ordinary, which made a noise, and which would remain on earth after his death.
He managed to achieve his aims, as he was considered for a time to be a scandalous writer and the novel he wrote was made into a movie starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich hundreds of years later in l988.
Becker says that most human action is taken to either avoid or ignore the reality of death.
Weird word of the day: ENTOMOPHAGY. Meaning to consume bugs.
The fear of death shapes everything, and civilization is a defense mechanism against this fear.
All of human civilization is a result of immortality projects – cities, governments, structures, authorities, technological innovations, sports, religion, politics, and great art.
He says immortality projects can be a terrible thing, for example when wars arise as a result of one group’s immortality projects clashing with another’s.
So, in light of everything, are immortality projects more of a good thing or more of a bad thing?
I think the most important question to ask is, what’s the motive?
If your underlying motive doesn’t hurt anyone and aligns with your life purpose, I think an immortality project can be a good thing, a good result of fearing death. Maybe it’s nature’s way of motivating us?
What, after all, is more motivating to get going than having a limited amount of time to do what you want to do?
YOU SHOULD READ BEFORE YOU DIE: Animal Farm by George Orwell. Two pigs named Snowball and Napoleon take over leadership when a boar named Old Major dies on Manor Farm. This book is supposed to mirror events leading up to the Russian Revolution and then onto the Stalinist Soviet Union. Orwell was a critic of Stalin. He believed that the Soviet Union had become a brutal dictatorship and, in his essay, “Why I Write” (1946) he wrote that he had tried to fuse political and artistic purpose into one whole with Animal Farm.
Okay, you’re off the couch and all motivated and roll up your sleeves and get working. But what if, after all that work, your immortality project ends up being a dismal failure?
Well, several points of opinion to throw out there:
You can always strive to do better next time/learn and grow from your mistakes/try another way/try something else.
Don’t take it all too seriously. There’s more to life than achievements. There’s experiences to be had – places to go, things to do and see and people to meet. A good life needs balance.
Achievements have nothing to do with your worth as a person. You have inherent value just by existing as a human being.
Becker argues against immortality projects. He says people should question their conceptual selves, and rather than trying to implement their immortality projects across the world, they should face up to the reality of their own death.
Being unrestrained by a quest for immortality then frees an individual up to choose their own values and live life in their own way.
So what is your novel really? A money-making exercise? A bit of fun? A creative outlet?
Or an immortality project?
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