If there is one thing that we as humans tend to desire more than anything else and yet go to such extreme lengths to avoid, it is intimacy. Nothing nourishes the soul like sharing something deeply personal with another or sitting still and listening as another unburdens their own deepest thoughts and fears. Why then, when such interactions are the ultimate win-win for those involved, are these moments so rare? What, if anything, can Thanatism teach us to make these moments as common as they ought to be?
We’ll discuss this paradox a great deal in the coming posts, but fundamentally, the reason we lack intimacy with each other is because we each make the decision to hide ourselves. We each have a private conversation going on in our heads throughout our day that we keep inside. This conversation is our most precious secret and we guard it intensely.
Not only do we choose throughout our lives to keep this conversation private from the world at large, but most often, we also hide ourselves from those we are closest to. Children hide their private conversation from their parents. Parents hide their private conversation from their children. Spouses again and again hide their internal dialog from each other. And most interestingly, we often, to some degree, even hide our deepest and most intimate thoughts from ourselves.
On some level, this is adorable, of course. Nearly 7 billion little monkey people sneaking around the earth, telling themselves stories about their world, others, and themselves, each fully intent on never letting their secret conversation be discovered. What makes this especially cute is that we’re all so bad at hiding and so expert at perceiving. We’re like toddlers who cleverly sneak into the kitchen to steal a cookie, only to leave the cookie jar open, make a trail of crumbs to our bedroom, and fall asleep clenching our half-eaten prize.
This picture of humanity, all of us playing a childish game of hide and seek would be entirely charming if it weren’t so utterly tragic. The tragedy lies in the consequences of our hiding. We understand these consequences on those rare moments in life when we stop playing. Every once in a while, perhaps even just a few times in a lifetime, either because we learn to trust another fully or just as often, because we just simply can’t keep it inside anymore, we let it all out. Like a dam, overwhelmed by a storm, our secret person, that person who has been held back for so long, gushes forth, often literally, as the tears stream down our faces.
And what most often in these moments of vulnerability is the reaction of the other? Are they horrified? Do they mock us for our pain? Perhaps, but not often. What we most often encounter is love. What we most often feel is a vast opening up on their part as well. The breaking down of the walls that keep us locked inside unleash our personhood so violently that the flood of who we are destroys the walls of the other, and for a brief moment in time, the waters of our secret lives commune with each other freely.
And that’s the word isn’t it? Free. In these moments of intimacy, in these moments where we stop holding ourselves in, we feel free. As we cry, the tears turn from tears of grief into tears of laughter. A lightness takes over our being and we wonder to ourselves why we’ve worked so hard to keep ourselves hidden. For a brief moment, we feel viscerally the foolishness of keeping ourselves locked away. Why, we ask ourselves, have I been living in a prison of my own creation for so long?
Obviously, once we’ve experienced this freedom and the absurdity of the game of hide and seek, we stop playing it forever. Once experienced, we run from our self-imposed cage, never to experience captivity again. If only. What happens, of course, is that our freedom lasts only a moment. Almost as quickly as the flood came, so do the waters of our being recede back into their hidden place. Like a diligent colony of ants whose passage is covered over by a curious child, we quickly rebuild our private world so thoroughly, it’s as if the walls were never breached.
This is our secret dilemma as the people of earth. We spend incalculable mental resources to hide ourselves from each other, in spite of the fact that we clearly see the futility of others’ attempts to hide and have experienced the joy of freedom when we have stepped outside of our own walls. What great force must keep this paradox alive? What could be so psychologically powerful that we would willingly imprison ourselves throughout our lives?
Fear is what holds us captive. We hide because we are afraid. We build walls because we are afraid. We turn inward into our private worlds because we are afraid. And what is it, ultimately that we fear? The answer is rejection. We hide from others because we’re afraid they’ll reject us. We’re afraid that if others see us for what we are, they’ll reject us. And yet we’re still left with the question of why. Why do we believe others will reject us?
The answer to this, and the key to rebuilding our intimacy with others, is that we fear that others will reject us, because we’ve already rejected ourselves. We’re ashamed of ourselves. Our ever-me wants us to be eternal, but that’s not what we are. Our ever-me wants us to believe that we are in charge, but we are not. Our ever-me wants us to believe we put others first, but it categorically does not.
Because of this, the ever-me tries to convince others we are something more than what we are because it knows it is a lie, and it needs the affirmation of others to prop up its existence. It knows on some level that it’s an illusion, so it projects the lie of itself unto others, so that they might mirror back a reflection of ourselves it desperately wants to be true. It is this projecting of false selves and rejecting of the person we are, that destroys human intimacy. The good news, however, and what we shall explore in what follows, is that when we escape the self-centered illusion of original sin, when we destroy the ever-me we love so dearly, much of what divides us as humans crumbles along with the walls of our former selves.
As an entrepreneur I’ve built a number of companies. One thing I always tell prospective employees and investors is that I can’t ensure the success of the business we’re building, but I can assure them that we will build a place where everyone will be fully empowered to develop and express their individual gifts as they work together toward a common cause. The reason I focus first on building a great team is because no matter what we do in life, a huge part of what ultimately matters is the people we do it with.
In life, most of us tend to underappreciate the people around us. Often we put things and our personal goals before the people we spend our days with. Thanatism obliterates these warped values. Things are nice, but they will die with us. Our personal goals are hugely important, but everything we build will one day be destroyed. Thanatism is ultimately a bleak faith. Nothing we do has any ultimate value. Nothing we do will ultimately survive. These are hard truths to live with. So what’s left? If your most inspired creations last only for the blink of an eye, where is the meaning in life?
I remember reading Rollo May’s Love and Will in the late nineties. I was in my 20s, and struggling with the realization of my own mortality. I’d checked out a number of books on death and dying from the library and was blown away by Love and Will. I’d always listed five thinkers as my biggest influences: Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. Rollo May was a practicing psychoanalyst who was strongly influenced by exactly those same guys. Reading his book was like having a conversation about death with an older, wiser me. I’d never felt such kinship with an author before.
I don’t remember much of the book, but throughout it he was referring to conversations he had with a patient who was talented, but unable to create. At the very end of the book, after countless years of therapy, when talking about the meaning of life, the patient said, “I guess all that really matters in life is that we do it together.”. If Thanatism has any defined answer to the meaning of life, it is exactly that–being with one another.
After finishing the book, I did something I had never done before. I went to my computer, found out where Rollo May lived, and wrote him an actual physical letter. In it I described how much his book had meant to me. Most importantly, I wrote that I wanted him to know that no matter how his writings were currently perceived, that I understood him. I wanted him to know that there was at least one other person in the world who really got what he was trying to say. I finished my letter with the line, “I just want you to know that there is someone else out there who will carry on this message.”
I got a reply in a few weeks. It was my letter, unopened, with the words “DECEASED” stamped across the front of it. The point being, nothing will ever “get” you more than another human being. There is nothing that will ever understand what it means to be a human besides the other humans whom we meet every day. Being with each other, even just sitting together in quiet understanding, is the only way to know and be known, and that mutual understanding is the closest thing to “meaning” we will ever know.
I’m writing this on a beautiful Easter morning. It wasn’t my intention, but the significance isn’t lost on me. As you may have noticed, I often reference the Christian tradition. At one point, it was my truth, and I still carry with me much of what it taught. Easter was particularly meaningful for me. It was, and is, the celebration of one of the greatest stories ever told–a man who refused to believe that in life we’d become all we could, and who in death showed that the faithful shall rise again.
On this morning, we’re here once again to affirm that what we are is not all we can become. I don’t believe that humanity is destined to fight our petty fights for as long as we all shall remain. If we continue to give into our fears and continue to flee from that which we already know, I have no doubt that we have just begun to tap the cruelty and self-interest we seem sometimes so wired to perpetuate, but the good news of Thanatism, and that of all faiths, is that we are more than our biology. Thanatism teaches us that each of us can become more than what we currently are.
That change will not come from some outside authority rescuing us though. It will not come because we have been deemed worthy of everlasting life. Just the opposite, in fact.
If you want to become all that you can be as a human, it must start with accepting what you are. You must accept your body. You must accept your limitations. You must accept that you’re importance resides in you alone. And you must accept that at some point, you will be no more.
Through this acceptance, you will kill the ever-me–that “you” who you’ve nurtured and built up throughout your life. As with any death, this will hurt. It’s hard to let go of ourselves. Once done, however, you will find that the real you shall arise–a new you, one that has always been there but covered over by your fears. It may not have the majesty or privilege of the ever-me, but it will have a power that you’ve never experienced before–the power of the real.
You will know that you are living in the truth. You will know that there is no trial that life can bring that you haven’t already accepted. You won’t have to run anymore. You’ll be able to look into yourself and see that which is beautiful and that which is not. You will learn to live and work in the real.
In so doing, you will have taken the first step toward creating a new and better world. It’s foolish to think a new world can arise without the death of the old. It is foolish to believe that a new world can arise while its human inhabitants remain the same. Before we can begin to build a new and better world, we will each need to “die” again, and that death begins now and with you.
It is a great privilege as a human being to have a chance to start over. It is a great privilege to be able to see this world anew for the first time. It requires courage. It will cause pain. It may break you beyond repair. Do you have a choice though? When you look deep inside, when you put aside what you want, and look rather at what is, can you ever see yourself as the all-important, everlasting being you’ve struggled for so long to maintain?
I can’t. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. And having lived here in the real as long as I have, I don’t want to either. If you feel the same. If you would like to live in the real. And most importantly, if you would like to find others who no longer can or want to be something that they are not, I invite you to join us.
I’ve spoken of conversion as the path to personal change, but why conversion? What’s the magic of this particular path? To understand this, I want to briefly explain a common mistake materialists make and how, although we know of nothing in this universe outside of the simple and elegant material interactions described by our physics, it is actually spirit that currently dictates much of our lives on planet earth.
When we speak of conversion, what’s actually happening on the physical plane? I’m working to convey meaning through my words, and you’re working to understand them. When we connect, and if what I mean is meaningful and right for you, your brain begins to change. Certain neural pathways that used to connect deeply get obliterated, and new pathways are born. What makes Thanatism particularly impactful is that the neural pathways it targets form the base of a tree from which the branches and leaves of your thoughts mostly grow.
What determines how those new neural pathways will form though? A simple and naive materialism would say that your eyes transmit certain lightwaves to your retina, those light waves are converted to chemical and electrical signals in your brain, and it’s those chemical and electrical signals that form the new pathways. This is entirely accurate, but when it comes to an adaptive, information processing system like your brain, the physics are simply the medium of change, not the cause.
If rather than reading these words, you heard them spoken, although the physics would be entirely other, the neural transformation would be largely the same. In other words, it’s not the deterministic bouncing of particles that determines what you think, but rather the logic or meaning of what is being conveyed that shapes the ultimate physical outcome. Just as it is the logic of the code in a video game that determines what’s eventually displayed on your screen rather than the physics of your particular gaming platform which that logic utilizes, so too is it the logic or meaning of what is said that determines the restructuring of your brain.
This conversation or logic or meaning is where spirit resides and this is the true focus of power in our human world. We can’t change the laws of physics. Our social institutions are so rigidly manifested that they are largely beyond our control. Our minds however, can change in a millisecond. These words, their meaning, as they are being processed by you right now are having their effect. They are pushing against well-established neural pathways, and if your brain is ready, they will rewrite you at your core.
You are spirit incarnate. You are the history of biological competition on this earth. You are the history of the birth of sexuality. You are the history of the first meaningful grunts our ancestors ever shared. You are the history of countless dialogs between people. You are the history of a million words written down. You are nothing but your history and your biology, but that doesn’t mean that’s all you can ever be.
You can’t understand anything except through what you are, but through words, I can convey a different spiritual history conferred upon me by my biology, my culture, my family, countless teachers and peers. I can channel their collective voice and share that voice with you. You may reject this voice, and that may be as it should be. You may, however, let this be a moment where you let a new voice wipe away the defenses that hide from you what you already know and fear. You might allow yourself to be reprogrammed at the lowest level, and if you do so, that new you can speak, and through your voice, there shall emerge a new us, and that new us is how we will change the world.
Before we get into how you might convert to Thantatism, I want to first discuss more generally what “conversion” means. First and foremost, conversion is the most magical and powerful thing a human being can experience. Let me repeat that–conversion is the most magical and powerful thing a human being can experience! Although it can happen in a myriad of ways, fundamentally, when a person converts, they replace a long-held core belief with another that is so alien to their previously held core belief, that often instantaneously, it changes how they perceive themselves, others, and their entire world.
Given its power and magic, it may seem somewhat surprising and confusing that it is also one of the rarest human experiences. To understand why conversion is so rare, it helps to understand why most of us believe what we do. First, we don’t choose what we believe. By the time we even understand what a belief is, we’ve already had most of our beliefs laid out for us by our parents and society. Further, unless we encounter another society or something else in the world that fundamentally and radically challenges our originally held beliefs, we’ll never change them.
Additionally, our original beliefs are incredibly powerful. The reason for this, is that these beliefs are so fundamental that they actually affect how we see things. What may appear to be an ordinary act of nature to someone with one set of beliefs, will appear to be nothing short of an act of God to another person with a different set of beliefs. In other words, we don’t understand the world in a vacuum. Rather, we tend to use what we already believe to even understand what we experience, so experience itself is in some ways subservient to those beliefs.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, building a reality that is survivable, nonetheless one that is meaningful and enjoyable, is incredibly hard. Once we achieve this, it’s terrifying to even consider giving up a long-standing and comfortable worldview for one that has yet to be experienced. Worse, since our original beliefs are often shaped by and shared with our families and society, changing a core belief often feels like a betrayal of those people and institutions that define our identity as humans.
Given the difficulty of even seeing the world outside of the frame of our original beliefs and the perceived risks to both ourselves and our community, it’s no surprise how rare conversion is. Unfortunately, Thanatism also has perhaps the greatest barrier to acceptance that any belief can have–namely, we don’t want to believe it. Given how deeply our beliefs are affected by what we want to believe, it’s a miracle that anyone could ever convert to Thanatism.
[Are these two paragraphs too “evangelical”?] Because of Thanatism’s simplicity though, and I hope, perhaps, because of some of the power and benefits I’ve endeavored to convey through these writings, your core beliefs about death may be subtly changing already. There are a myriad of reasons why you might convert to a traditional faith–they offer community, support, and most importantly, the assurance that you matter and that what you build now will have everlasting consequences, but that can’t be why Thantism may be leaking into your life.
Thanatism makes no such promises–just the opposite–it requires us to accept that we are temporary and that ultimately, we are the only ones who care about our personal human project. There is in fact only one reason that anyone would ever convert to Thanatism–because it’s true. If you’re beginning to feel the tug of this truth and if you’re beginning to feel comfortable with living with the tragedy it insists we accept, it may already be too late for you.
At some point soon, you may wake up and realize that you’re no longer the person you used to be. You may find that what you used to care about no longer matters, that your previous fears have vanished, and that you’re seeing yourself, others, and this world with a clarity and consistency that you’ve never felt before. Should that be the case, I want to welcome you to Thanatism, for you are already here.
Before we discuss what it might mean to adopt Thanatism as your personal faith, I think we must first address a key question–why adopt a faith at all? I mean, traditional faiths have had a somewhat mixed record throughout history, and people are leaving them in droves. Perhaps the idea of any faith, even one grounded as firmly in reality as Thanatism, is but a quaint idea from a bygone era.
I’m actually hugely sympathetic to this line of thinking, and I suspect it’s probably the biggest reason someone would decline to join us. The biggest problem I see with this line of thought, however, is that without considering these matters deeply, you’ll end up participating in the default faith of your society. Those of us who have grown up in the increasingly secular societies of the world might challenge this notion, but I would argue that there is actually an incredibly strong, yet seldom discussed faith that has gained a massive foothold in societies both religious and secular. If we were to create a Greek labeling for this faith as I’ve done with Thanatism, I believe we might rightly call it “Ergonism” or in English, “Workism”.
Ergonism tells us that we must find our meaning as humans through our work. It is espoused by parents and governments of all faiths and dispositions and implicitly adopted (or at least attempted) by most all of us. Although there is no doubt that humans derive a great deal of meaning from work, I believe that we’ve developed a culture where we actually invent work that doesn’t really need to be done for the sake of perpetuating the faith of Ergonism. Given how valuable meaning is to us as humans, there is little doubt that this unreflective pursuit of meaningless work has resulted in a great deal of human unhappiness, and as such, might merit some reevaluation.
To begin to understand how Ergonism has developed, I’d like to look briefly at how work has changed throughout history. When we, as humans, lived in the fertile tropics of this world as hunter gatherers, depending on what you classify as work, we worked about 20-40 hours a week. As we settled down into agrarian societies, the resultant population explosion resulted in us working more and in more specialized ways. And during our rapid industrialization and colonization of the world, our population growth and insatiable love of property and material wealth led to near limitless work.
What about the 21st Century though? Populations throughout industrialized economies are actually shrinking. We have conquered and inhabited nearly every habitable place on earth. Advances in technology have radically increased our productivity and in fact increasingly render entire swaths of our economies functional with minimal human effort. In response to this, surely humans have learned to relax and enjoy our newly built technological paradise?
One would think so, but one would be wrong. Most humans work as much now, if not more, than they ever have. The question is why? Although there are no doubt many reasons, I believe one of the most important is that our social and personal values are still determined by our level of productivity. In other words, we’ve worked to create work, so that we may each justify our existence to others and ourselves.
This is Ergonism left unchecked, and although it may or may not be a good faith, I would argue that in general, we haven’t chosen it, but rather have inherited it unthinkingly. And that’s the point. No one is without the core beliefs that act as a faith in their lives. We don’t get the option to be faithless. The only question is whether we’ve ever stepped far enough outside ourselves to recognize our current faith for what it is and to weigh it against the alternatives.
So as you get up this morning, and you ship your children off to be raised by state-funded institutions, while you and your partner go on your separate ways for the majority of your day to accomplish tasks that are ever less relevant to our collective survival, I might ask you to consider what faith drives your life and whether you might want to consider an alternative. I certainly wouldn’t claim that Thanatism will free you from this somewhat inhuman existence, but I will tell you that it will create the spiritual space for you to consider what you’re doing and why. And perhaps in that space, you individually, and perhaps should enough of us look frankly at our own mortality, we collectively, will at least be able to consider our alternatives.
