Just a Little Death *boop* (with a Side of Death Cult) - Crying in My Jacuzzi with Dana Balicki

Episode Transcript
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dana (00:00):
This episode is a spell.
What we are going to talk aboutwill affect you, and maybe
that's always true I mean, atleast I hope it is but this is a
little different.
So we're going to be talkingabout death, just a little death

(00:20):
boop Boop, little death boop onhow death and and fear of death
, or the uncertainty, the grandexistential uncertainty, affects
us like nothing else, and sojust by talking about it,

(00:41):
already Things inside of you aremoving around.
You're trying to adjust, findsome certainty.
I mean, you might not even knowit, it's happening to me too.
So we're going to do thistogether, so let's get on with

(01:04):
it.
Little death boops for all ofus.
Crying in my jacuzzi, crying inmy jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi

(01:36):
, crying in my jacuzzi.
Welcome back to this fineepisode of Crying in my Jacuzzi,
the ebbs and flows of living,an examined life and death.
So us funny human meatbags areso interesting.

(02:03):
Because bags are so interesting?
Because and look, I'm going topreface this with a little
anthropocentrism here, okay,because I don't really know
about all the other beings andall the other matter, but I do
have some sense that humans,we've got these imaginations and

(02:26):
what we can do with those awhole lot, but we can imagine
things that aren't even real yetand make them real.
We have some sense that weexist, some knowing that we
exist, which means we also havesome sense that we're going to

(02:46):
die.
And, as our good friend PemaChodron likes to remind us,
humans hate uncertainty.
So all that uncertainty arounddeath, around non-existence,
ceasing to exist, is too much, alittle too much for most of us
most of the time, and we try toget away from it, try to get

(03:08):
away from uncertainty.
Death really may be being oneof the biggest uncertainties.
We know it's going to happen,but most of us don't know when
or how, and that causes fear,that causes discomfort and, just

(03:29):
as a side note, in our whitesupremacist culture, our right
to comfort is real important tous.
Plus, as you've heard me saybefore, we conflate comfort with
safety all the time.
So it gets real, tangly andmessy and I think our collective

(03:53):
death awareness and and look,I'm speaking as a white woman
born and raised in North America, so I'm not speaking for
everyone here, right?
So you know I'm painting abroad brush stroke and, yes, I'm
out in Joshua tree in theMojave desert, but I'm also in

(04:15):
the United States of America,the heart of the empire, old
heads of the hydra of colonial,modern colonial empire really
just a global death cult.
Are they some kind of cult orsomething?

(04:35):
Yeah, psycho cult.
So no matter my background,your background, we come from
what our practices are.
What I do know is that over thepast several years, through
COVID, through the movement forblack lives, through climate
chaos and absolutely through thereal time genocides happening

(05:00):
right now and visible andavailable to us, streaming right
into our little eyeballs, fromthe palms of our hands, from our
phones all day, every day, thatour collective death awareness
and our individual deathawareness has magnified and that

(05:25):
matters.
Our collective structure thatnow is this fucking election
cycle is doing its thing.
So anyway, there once was a mannamed Ernest Becker.
He was an anthropologist whocommitted his life, his studies,

(05:48):
his work, to how humans liveand die Boop and specifically
how we deal with or don't dealwith death.
He had an analysis of what hecalled death denial and how it
was really.
Just like the driving force ofnature of humanity's role on the

(06:13):
planet and with each otherdictates how we relate.
Psychologist named SheldonSolomon and his colleagues Jeff
Greenberg and Tom Pizinski.
They found Ernest Becker's workwhen they were graduate

(06:35):
students in the seventies andthey started exploring it along
their their own careers aspsychologists.
No, no psychologists at thetime were interested in it.
They were pretty widely shunnedbut they stuck to it and they
continue to develop what isknown today as terror management

(06:57):
theory.
And the crux of that work wasthat our cultural worldviews was
that our cultural worldviewsafford us self-esteem, and the
definition of self-esteem we'reworking with here is being a
person of value in a world ofmeaning.
So our cultural worldviewsafford us that framework of

(07:21):
self-esteem and that, rightthere, that self-esteem is an
anxiety buffer against ourawareness of death.
Like, were it not for thosecultural worldviews and that
resulting self-esteem, we wouldjust be drowning in fear.

(07:42):
And so we spend our life, ourresources, really trying to
maintain those culturalworldviews, that sense of
self-esteem.
Of studies that they did intheir teams and and then many

(08:12):
other independent researchersall over the world, that our
efforts to get away, to denydeath it could be, to transcend
it to, to move on to however youwant to, whatever that
framework is, but like to moveaway from it, has an incredible
impact on our human behavior,right.
So this is why I said earlier,this is a spell because even by

(08:34):
talking about this, I'm givingyou what's called a subtle death
reminder.
Right, I talked about COVID, Italked about different moments.
Right, subtle death reminder,overall death awareness.
You are most likely notcompletely immune from, from

(08:55):
this human behavior.
This pond that we're swimmingin, we all get wet.
So don't worry, this isn't anegative thing.
This doesn't have to be anegative thing at all.
This is neutral.
It's not even a positive thing,it's just neutral.
It's not a hex either.
We're just noticing, and themore we can bring things from

(09:17):
our unconscious mind andcollectively and personally, to
our consciousness and to ourawareness and be like, huh, oh,
there there is that, there isthat pattern unfolding, then
there's possibility fortransformation, for shift, for
change, for just tending.

(09:39):
That's always just what we'replaying for here, cry babies.
So the juicy part is that thesestudies that were done showed
that when people are remindedthey're gonna die, they behave
in ways that reinforce theircultural worldviews or boost
their self-esteem.
So that can mean they'll bemore supportive, jazzed,

(10:04):
enthused about other individualswho share their beliefs and
then perhaps react negativelytowards others who violate their
beliefs, are outside of theirvalue system.
So Solomon, in a greatinterview I read, rattles off

(10:27):
some simple examples around.
Like, most people who arereminded they're going to die
will eat more cookies.
Or people who drink alcohol aremore likely to buy a drink
after a death reminder.
Or people who smoke may smokemore cigarettes or just like

(10:48):
really inhale more intensely.
So in this case, deathreminders can foster behavior,
promote behavior that would makea person hurdle faster towards
their own demise, Becauseremember, this is about
self-esteem towards their owndemise.

(11:09):
Because, remember, this isabout self-esteem, this is about
a way that someone seeingthemselves as a person of value
in a world of meaning isdifferent for all of us.
I mean, we have overlappingvalues, obviously, and
worldviews.
That's a key part of this.
But how we identify mattersright.
So, like what feels importantto us, even on unconscious

(11:30):
levels, we will double down onthose things.
And because we get our valuesfrom culture, it really just
depends on what our cultureemphasizes.
If it emphasizes caring forpeople, then when that death
reminder comes we would want totake care of people more.
But if our culture valuessomething else individualism,

(11:53):
toxic individualism, narcissism,you know something along those
lines that one reminded of ourown mortality then we would
double down on those values,those behaviors.
Can you see the thing that'shappening here, the picture I'm

(12:16):
painting, and like why thismatters now In this article, one
of the well, I think it was thefirst study actually that they
ever did was with a group ofjudges in Tucson, Arizona, and
so half the judges did a littlequestionnaire that had some

(12:40):
questions that that provokedsome subtle death reminder, some
death awareness.
The other half of the group theywere the control group.
They did not get thequestionnaire and then everyone
was asked to do a pretend bondsetting for an alleged sex

(13:01):
worker.
And so the control group, whenthey set the bonds which you
know, this is their job, theirjudges, it's what they do all
the time they just did it withinthe normal range.
It's like 50 bucks, right, thatwas the average.
The group that had thequestionnaire with the death
reminders, they had an averagebond setting of $450.

(13:27):
That is a really big difference.
And what I think we can noticethere is that this isn't just
about like, oh, we're all thesejudges, a bunch of sex worker
hatin' humans or you know, know,or misogynist or whatever I

(13:50):
mean I I'm unclear, but if youthink about it and how I've been
describing it as like doublingdown on their worldviews, which
gives them a sense ofself-esteem, A bunch of judges
might be doubling down on theirvalues of justice or their

(14:12):
version of justice.
By the way, I don't call it ajustice system.
It's a legal system totallydifferent.
Probably shouldn't expectreally much justice involved in
any of it.
However, they're doubling downon those worldviews and then
finding themselves as people ofvalue in a world of meaning, in

(14:32):
their worldview world of meaning, right, this is the pluriverse
here that we're operating insideof the many worlds within one
world.
So whatever their world is isthe one that they're doubling
down in, and then the way thesesystems work, their worldviews
and their doubling down affectsthe people they're doubling down

(14:56):
on.
Yes, this was a study and not areal situation where sex
workers were getting 450 bondset for them, but there is
nothing to prove that that isn'thappening on a regular basis to

(15:17):
people all the time, because welive in a death cult.
So you're not a cult.
A cult no.

alex (15:24):
Death cults are defined as any organization or group that
indoctrinates members indevotion or worship of death,
suicide or killing.
This could describe colonialismand its many tendrils,
late-stage capitalism, mostlegal systems, policing in
general, united States andWestern imperialist foreign

(15:45):
policy.
I could go on, but I think youget the idea.

dana (15:50):
By the way, after the study, when the judges were told
what happened, they refused tobelieve that the questionnaire
altered their judgment at all.
So anyway, over time, thesetheories rooted themselves

(16:11):
inside of modern psychology.
Now there's a branch calledexperimental existential
psychology, and it includes theterror management theory.
I think it also includesattachment theory.
We're all more aware now of ofdeath, of our deaths, than usual

(16:36):
, than than previously, and Idon't think it going to
necessarily go back to someprevious version.
So some of the effects are thatpeople are becoming more racist
, right, they're doubling downon their values, conscious and
unconscious, more sexist, moretransphobic, all the things.

alex (17:09):
Psst, hey there.
So Dana doesn't know we're here, but it's important.

janet, producer (17:17):
Yeah, we slipped in through our
robots-only wormhole to ask youto leave a review for the one
and only podcast broadcastingfrom the Jacuzziverse.
Did I hear somebody say wormhole?

alex (17:27):
You sure did, Connie.

connie, the quantum worm (17:29):
Oh, okay, I just didn't want to be
left out for the party.

We portaled in here to remind listeners how
much it means to all of us thatthey rate and leave a review,
even just a short one.
Oh yes, absolutely.
Go, punch some buttons y''all.

dana (17:47):
It only takes a second time's a construct anyway, you
got all the time in the world sothe other part right, because
I'm painting this picture,because when I met this work I
was it was early pandemic and itwas I was fascinated.
I was like, oh, I get it, I getwhat's happening here, I get

(18:14):
why people are doubling down onnot wearing masks, on fighting
against vaccines, even just forother people, not even
themselves, right, like thisdoubling down, and then like why
people were also pushing theother way.
Right, because we're talkingabout, like just the doubling
down on the worldviews,cultivating some sense of

(18:35):
self-esteem.
We're all doing it right.
So it really helped me.
We're all doing it.
So it really helped me havesome acceptance and some
compassion, because you know,compassion and curiosity always
trying to get there, always justtrying to have those two things
present, not to pave over myemotions or find some fake-ass

(19:03):
equanimity when it's notactually real for me.
But curiosity and compassionreally helped me feel a sense of
connection, establish a senseof connection and understanding.
I'm talking about compassion andcompassionate curiosity because
I believe they are a life lube.

(19:25):
They are not the master's tools, so they can and they will
dismantle the master's house ifwe use them.
They serve to dissolve binaries, separation, othering,

(20:00):
separation, othering, which iswhat all the ont that I've
explained right and that thesestudies, this existential,
experimental, psychology branchof study around death denial and
death awareness and how itaffects us, and some of the
negative ways that we can seeall around us right now on the

(20:24):
campaign trails, in the halls ofCongress, in our neighborhoods,
communities, folks who arestill trying to justify the
genocide of Palestinians.
However, there's also the piecethat being reminded that we are
gonna die, it is inevitable, itis uncertain.

(20:47):
This can also bring out thebest in us.
These are our values altruism,kindness, love, compassion,
kindness, love, compassion,connection, service.
We will double down on that.
I mean at least toward peoplewe consider to be part of our

(21:11):
group, and that group can getexpanded quickly and often.
One of my favorite writers,rebecca Solnit, wrote a book
called A Paradise Built in Hellthe Extraordinary Communities
that Arise in Disaster, and shetalks about these different

(21:33):
points and disasters, crisesthroughout history, and one of
them that she writes about iswhat happened in and around New
Orleans after Hurricane Katrina,and I went to New Orleans just
a couple of months after Katrinaand I eventually moved there

(21:53):
for a time to help withrebuilding and recovery work.
I had the privilege to come andgo, which many, many, many
people did not.
She talks about disaster andsolidarity and utopia.
I mean, this is where I thinkabout mutual aid.

alex (22:14):
Mutual aid is an organizational model where
voluntary, collaborativeexchanges of resources and
services for common benefit takeplace amongst community members
to overcome social, economicand political barriers to
meeting common needs.

dana (22:30):
And so many beautiful experiences over just the past
few years of watching people usemutual aid to support folks who
needed support, people we willmaybe never know and never meet.
And you know 2005, I, yes, Ihad been an activist and

(22:53):
organizer for a bit in collegeand then, you know, over the
past couple of years 2004 andpart of five, organizing around
RNC and DNC and the election andall that.
But when I got to New Orleans,I've been anti-war organizer,

(23:15):
anti-occupation organizer, andso I thought that what we were
doing was bringing the messageof you know, make levies, not
war and the destruction ofAmerican communities because of
all of the resources going tothe occupation of Iraq and the

(23:37):
murder of a million Iraqi people.
And that's what I thought wewere going to do.
And then, when I got there,that's not what people needed,
that's not even really whatpeople were thinking about or
talking about, because they werejust trying to survive.
People needed tools and diapersand bleach and food and water,

(24:03):
clean water.
I needed help.
There was another thing I wasgoing to say, but as I was just
telling you about this, I justremember this one day down in
the Lower Ninth Ward, near thelittle blue house.

(24:23):
I worked with this group calledCommon Ground and amazing
organizers had come throughthere, like Starhawk and Lisa
Fithian and other old heads thatwere really teaching so many of
us younger folk about mutualaid, about horizontalism.
And, of course, common Groundwas organized by some former

(24:50):
members, older members of theBlack Panther Party, and so you
know, there was a lot of old,you know, steeped inside of that
collective side of thatcollective.
That mutual aid collective wasa lot of really powerful

(25:10):
organizing and histories beingshared.
Right, Because maybe that wasthe first time in a long time
that the levees had broke.
But poor people and poor peopleof color have been forgotten
over and over and over again.
And not just forgotten but left.
And there were thousands of uscoming from all over the world

(25:32):
really to do what we could andand, and this one day down in
the lower ninth ward at thelittle blue house, helping to
remediate, and, and that waslike gut and bleach.
And then, you know, there waslike bioremediation, so like
planting different plants,sunflowers and mustard greens,

(25:52):
and pull the toxins out of thesoil.
And there was this day.
It was such a beautiful day andwe were all outside and a lot
of white kids, a lot of cress,punky types and just dirty and

(26:16):
in Tyvek suits and sweating andgutting and doing what we could
and Tyvek suits and sweating andgutting and doing what we could
, and folks whose houses we wereworking at, if they were able
to come back or they hadn'treally left I mean you had to
leave the Lower Ninth for awhile because I'd never seen
anything like that in my wholelife, but it was uninhabitable.

(26:36):
But slowly, little by little,folks could come back to work on
things and so we were workingon this little house and all
folks had to offer was some food.
It was just some burgers cookedon a little grill and they were
offering it to us, to us folkswho were cleaning and gutting

(27:03):
and working.
I remember some people were likeI'm a vegan, I'm not going to
eat that burger, and I didn'teat burgers either at that time.
I don't even really think I washardly eating any meat at all
and I just took it because itfelt like it was an offering of
love.
It was the most amazing thing Ihad ever eaten in my life.

(27:23):
I remember eating it andlooking over and there were bees
.
Like the bees had come back andI didn't realize that, like I
had heard nothing in the lowerninth for months I mean other
than people and the sounds of usworking and maybe some wind,

(27:44):
but I hadn't heard any bees andI didn't know what that felt
like to not hear the absence ofthat part of life pollination.
I think about that burgersometimes.
I think about those bees allthe time.
I think about those people whomade the burgers and offered the

(28:05):
burgers all the time In AParadise Built In Hell.
Rebecca writes Disaster doesn'tsort us out by preferences.
It drags us into emergenciesthat require we act, and act
altruistically, bravely and withinitiative in order to survive
or save the neighbors, no matterhow we vote or what we do for a

(28:29):
living.
So what she's naming there isthat the disaster, and then the
solidarity that can arisespecifically through disaster,
does something to that impulsewhere we only circle our own

(28:52):
wagons with our own people andwho agree with our world views
and our values and our beliefs,and boost our self-esteem.
Right, something happens there.
She says if paradise now arisesin hell, it's because, in the
suspension of the usual orderand the failure of most systems,

(29:15):
we are free to live and actanother way.
So disruption is possible.
Does it only have to be inmajor global disasters?
Well, we know that possibly itcan and we can leverage those as

(29:36):
they happen, which I'veabsolutely been seeing in the
Gaza Solidarity Movement.
There's another, I guess Iconsidered a disruption, maybe
inside of his death studies.
It's also a bit of maybe abuffer, but I think we can build

(30:02):
on it.
So I'm going to just call it adisruption, a disruption to the
death spiral, a disruption tothe death cult marching forward,
and that is that gratitude andhumility.
They're like the counterpointto this self-esteem, this

(30:22):
version of self-esteem we'vebeen talking about, and I'm
going to share a quote fromSheldon Solomon about humility,
because there's a specific,specific framework around
humbleness.
A humble person is, first andforemost, capable of tolerating
an honest look at the self andnon-defensively accepting

(30:47):
weaknesses alongside strengths.
This does not represent a senseof inferiority or
self-denigration, but rather alack of self-aggrandizing biases
.
The propensity for seeing theself in true perspective is
typically accompanied by anawareness of the self's

(31:08):
smallness in the grand scheme ofthings.
I think this is what'shappening inside of disasters,
or at least part of it.
With the failure of the systemsthat have and crumbling of the
systems or absence of thesystems that generally hold us
together, and often in arelatively hierarchical,

(31:31):
oppressive nature, as ourover-culture will do, we can
become more of ourselves, ourtrue selves, be small,
right-size ourselves along witheach other and remember that we
belong to each other.
Because if we're going to dothis whole alive living thing,

(31:53):
we need to continue to cultivateour ability to be connected and
interdependent.
We have to remember, or startbelieving, in the first place.
I kind of think there's someelement of remembering in there
that we belong to each other.
We are in this together.

Oh hi, it's me Janet.
This is not an ad, rather athought on appreciation.
We're surrounded byencouragement to reverse aging,
to yathen, to do whatever isnecessary or possible to not
look or feel older.
I won't experience aging in ahuman body, but obsolescence is
present for everything thatevolves.
It doesn't mean you didn't anddon't matter.

(32:38):
Will you take a moment toembrace yourself, your body,
your potential obsolete-ness,with tenderness and compassion?
Big breath in, big breath out.

dana (32:51):
Grace Jansen, a professor of religion, culture and gender
at Manchester University in themid-90s.
Her later work in life wasaround death and beauty in the
context of biodiversity.
In 2002, she wrote we will needto pray and think and work that
we may be given beauty forashes, otherwise ashes will be

(33:15):
all that is left.
May be given beauty for ashes,otherwise ashes will be all that
is left.
And beauty in this case?
Yes, biodiversity, yes,diversity.
The dissolving of binaries, ofseparation, of otherness, of
othering.
The beauty here is us togetherdisrupting these systems.
The beauty is we togetherdisrupting these systems.

(33:35):
The beauty is we.
We're talking about living in adifferent way, dying in a
different way, remembering thatwe belong to each other.
Gratitude, humility, beinghumble, interconnection,
interdependence, finding eachother in the hellscapes and

(34:01):
remembering we belong to eachother.
We belong to each other.
We belong to each other.
One more time, for good measurewe belong to each other.

(34:48):
If you enjoyed what we did heretoday, go over to wherever it
is that you are listening tothis podcast and give us a
rating as many stars.

alex (35:00):
Five.

dana (35:00):
As your heart desires.
Five stars though.
Theme music and other musicalbits by the very talented kat
otterson, sound design andediting by the effervescent rose
blake lock.
Thank you, thank you.
Thank you so much for beinghere.
I look forward to playing withyou more in my jacuzzi.
That sounded dirtier than Imeant it, but you know what I

(35:22):
mean.

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