Not So Silly Love Songs

I had a fascinating conversation with a philosophy professor friend recently whose contention it was that the decline of our American culture could be observed by noting the acute lack of good love songs being written. I would have forgotten the conversation if it were not for my wife. She was watching a “chick movie” on the “Chick Channel” and the music at the end was Michael Bublé singing “Save the Last Dance for Me”.
She asked me, from the other room, “Do you remember who first sang that?” I didn’t, so I Googled it and learned that it was first recorded in 1960 by Ben E. King with The Drifters. Now, that’s not to say that Michael, with the funny last name, doesn’t do a beautiful job with it and I strongly suggest that the reader listen to the words on YouTube , especially if you are not of a generation who knows them by heart. They are beautiful.

Michael Bublé – Save the Last Dance for Me
The point of me telling you this, besides offering an example of how things have changed for the worse, is this. It was written by a man who had polio and used crutches to get around and could not dance. He wrote it for his wife who was a Broadway actress and dancer.

Now, I don’t know what that makes you think, but, every time I listen to what’s playing on the radio today it makes me think that, somehow, people have gotten the idea in their heads that the words sex and love are synonymous. Especially young people.

That is, I think, a clear sign of two things.
1.  A culture past its peak.
2.  In spite of every effort on my part, I must have grown up.

Terror Management Theory

Terror management theory is based heavily on the writings of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, and in particular his book The Denial of Death, for which he won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize.  According to TMT, humans, having evolved a unique capacity for complex thought, can think in terms of time, in terms of symbols, and can hold themselves as the object of their attention and most importantly, meaningfully, contemplate our own life and mortality.  We know that we exist and that, one day, we will not exist.

According to the theory (TMT), this knowledge is highly problematic to the extent that humans also possess a basic animal-based desire for self-preservation.  To resolve this conflict and manage the intense fear associated with knowledge of death, individuals participate in and defend  complex belief systems that define socially valued behaviors.

Terror Management Theory (TMT) was proposed in 1986 by social psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, and Sheldon Solomon.  It was initiated by two relatively simple questions:

1. Why do people have such a great need to feel good about themselves?

2. Why do people have so much trouble getting along with those different from themselves?

The theory proposes that humans are motivated to quell the potential for terror inherent in the human awareness of vulnerability and mortality by investing in cultural belief systems (or world views) that imbue life with meaning, and the individuals who subscribe to them with significance (or self-esteem).

Given the cultural relativity of our beliefs and values and the fact that we live in multicultural societies, it is inevitable that we encounter others with different belief systems and values.  According to TMT, individuals with different belief systems pose serious threats to the validity of our own worldview.   The mere existence of people who believe differently than we do undermines the importance of our own belief structure and increases our anxiety,  while it simultaneously decreases our own self-esteem. People are prone to respond to such threats with some form of psychological defense, often by ridiculing, derogating, attacking, or minimizing the worldview threat. By engaging in worldview defense in this manner, one can re-exert the superiority of his or her worldview.  To date, over 300 studies conducted in over a dozen countries have explored the ramifications of this phenomena.    http://www.tmt.missouri.edu/publications.html

Do you have that so far?  OK, here is where it really starts to get interesting.  The basic meat of TMT, known as the “mortality salience hypothesis,” states that reminders of mortality will cause an individual to invest in and defend their cultural belief system, leading that person to respond favorably to others who support his or her worldview and negatively to those who threaten it.  TMT posits that humans ingeniously, but quite unconsciously, solved this existential dilemma of death by developing cultural world views: humanly constructed beliefs about reality shared by individuals in a group that serve to “manage” the potentially paralyzing terror.

…”A large body of evidence shows that momentarily making death salient, typically by asking people to think about themselves dying, intensifies people’s strivings to protect and bolster aspects of their world views, and to bolster their self-esteem. The most common finding is that MS increases positive reactions to those who share cherished aspects of one’s cultural worldview, and negative reactions toward those who violate cherished cultural values or are merely different.”…

Now for Rodney King’s question:  “Can’t we just get along?”  The answer is essentially yes, BUT, not in a multicultural society and definitely not if we are continually exposed to media reminding us of death.  The constant anxiety increasing 24/7 cavalcade of human disaster and death served up by media must, according to TMT, serve to both strengthen “our” view of reality and, as a psychological means of defense, cause us to ridicule and attack competing world views with an intensity and ferocity directly proportional to the level of mortality salience we are exposed to.  In point of fact, the level of mortality salience we are exposed to is unprecedented.

Now, you may never have heard of TMT and you may be asking yourself, “OK Mrs. N, so what, what’s the big deal?” Well, Mrs. N is going to tell you.  Politicians and others seeking power and control over populations of humans have employed TMT since it was first discovered.  A case can certainly be made that the handlers of George Bush the Younger managed his re-election (much to the shock of the rest of the world) by scientifically clever, subconscious, anxiety enhancement through the use of concepts and phrases like “The War on Terror”, “mushroom clouds” and daily reminders of the color our levels of alert (anxiety) were declared to be.  Divide and conquer is both an old and highly effective concept.

Understanding TMT and the fact that it doesn’t deal in logic, facts or truths, but subconscious anxiety reduction or enhancement, the American political scene today comes into clearer focus.  Quite simply, when it comes to motivating humans, truth takes a back seat to anxiety manipulation.  A bold faced and blatant lie that is generally recognized to be a lie will, according to TMT, be more effective than the truth if it increases mortality salience.

Muslims are terrorists… terrorists kill people…  Barrack Obama is a Muslim.

Foreigners are dangerous…  Barrack Obama isn’t an American

I assume you can see where I am going and it is my hope that a better understanding of TMT will enhance your enjoyment of the avalanche of bull-shit and balderdash that the upcoming political season will offer us all.  When you hear an obvious untruth, understand how subconsciously it succeeds.  When you are tempted to defend your “reality view” and ridicule and attack people who do not share it…. Understand your subconscious need to do so.

Understand that NO ONE really “knows” reality, but, being sentient creatures adrift in an incomprehensible universe and incapable of contemplating a universe without “us” in it… we are condemned to at least attempt to reduce our existential anxiety.  Unfortunately, hate of the “other” does that and we are subconsciously HIGHLY prone to manipulation.

All we can do is….. Be aware of it.