Trump's Second Presidency: How Our Deepest Fears Can Shape Political Outcomes

(MENAFN- The Conversation) Why do social injustices and ecological harms persist despite the powerful social movements that have arisen throughout history to counter them?

In my new book, Radical Mindfulness: Why Transforming the Fear of Death Is Politically Vital , I argue that social movements have been mostly missing a main target - the fear of death that regularly shapes bad human behaviour.

Birth and death - the two bookends to our lives - are largely beyond our control. It is easy to feel small in the face of an existence that doesn't answer to us.

It is equally easy to compensate for feelings of powerlessness by imposing ourselves on others as a way of gaining feelings of strength.

In Mary Trump's memoir Too Much and Never Enough , she argues that her uncle Donald Trump's thirst for power and recognition is rooted in“pathological weaknesses and insecurities.” While many of those insecurities originate from a difficult father, according to Mary Trump, they are also shaped by existential fears that are common in our death-denying culture.

As he begins his second term, Trump is an admitted germaphobe who is obsessed with physical weakness, including hair loss, which he associates with diminished strength. Likewise, he has an ugly record of mocking people with physical disabilities .

Arguably, Trump's own fears of physical vulnerability help compel his dangerous projections of power.

Most of us are probably not like Trump. And yet, it is likely that our own existential fears are at play when we behave selfishly.

Read more: Joe Biden's refusal to step aside illustrates the political dangers of 'death denial'

You're probably thinking that you don't think much about death. That's because existential fears tend to remain buried in our unconscious until they're triggered by a reminder of vulnerability, such as turbulence during air travel or the death of a loved one.

Our more immediate fear is social death - the fear that we don't belong, that we're not good enough, that we might be removed from our peer groups.

Human beings are social and need belonging to thrive. The fear of not being included in desired groups, or losing existing access, is a constant hum in the background of our lives.

That fear can have beneficial effects. It can increase our motivation to succeed by the terms of the groups we identify with. But the fear of social death can also result in compensatory and aggrandizing behaviour as people compete for status and power that they hope can reduce the risk of exclusion.

Trump, for example, ruthlessly belittled his siblings as a child in bids for paternal acceptance, a habit he continues today with his perceived competitors. Since the possibility of exclusion will never be eradicated, fear of social death can persist even for those like Trump who achieve recognition and success.

So what does social death have to do with actual death and social injustice? Anthropologist Ernest Becker argues in his Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Denial of Death that human culture offers us opportunities for Earthly heroism. In contemporary society, hero status can be achieved in many ways, from becoming a doctor, excelling at a sport or making lots of money.

For Becker, our heroism in the eyes of others offers hits of symbolic immortality. The inverse, of course, is that if we fail, our identities are weighed down by symbolic mortality and the prospect of social death.

I sometimes get gripped by panic while speaking in front of large groups. In those moments, my bids for symbolic immortality - giving a memorable lecture - are imperilled by the prospect of public shame. The stakes can feel existential (a racing heart, hyper-ventilation, disassociation). The armour that eases my fears of actual death is starting to break down, leaving me feeling socially naked and vulnerable - a professor with no clothes.

For Becker, culture is the primary way humans manage unmanageable fears about death. Beneath more conscious fears of social death are deeper unconscious fears of actual death.

Social death can be interpreted as painful insignificance in the eyes of others, but actual death can look a lot like complete nothingness. That deep existential rejection can be too much to take. So we establish systems of social value and pathways to symbolic immortality to relieve our feelings of smallness and vulnerability in the face of death.

The problem is this: most systems of social value only allow a small minority to drink from the grail of symbolic immortality. The majority - the“others” - are weighed down by heightened vulnerability to social death.

Becker was impressed by Indigenous governance systems such as the Potlatch , practised by Pacific Northwest First Nations, that bestow esteem on those who give wealth away. Capitalism, on the other hand, lionizes those who amass the most wealth for themselves (think Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos). Billionaires generate wealth in many ways, including addictive social media technologies, climate-wrecking fossil fuels and keeping wages low to maximize profit.

Read more: Billionaires and loyalists will provide Trump with muscle during his second term

In fact, the capitalist quest for wealth and the symbolic immortality it bestows are driving ecological destruction , rising levels of inequality and their attendant deaths of despair . Efforts to escape the reality of death tend to bring forth more death and destruction.

Social psychologists have run hundreds of experiments that support Becker's account of how death denial shapes human behaviour. Their framework - terror management theory - offers insights into how we can manage existential fear without restricting feelings of heroism to a select few.

In one study, for example, researchers found that Buddhist meditation interrupted the terror management response . Meditation, they found, allows the reality of death to dwell in the conscious mind, where we can process it without using unconscious and damaging coping mechanisms.

These findings help explain why many Indigenous nations have historically enjoyed higher levels of equity and ecological health . Like Buddhist meditation, many Indigenous cultures include stories, rituals and ceremonies that help their members face the reality of death.

Read more: As a death doula and professor who teaches about dying, I see a need for more conversations about death

Ritual has similar effects. Arikara scholar Michael Yellow Bird, for example, has written about rituals his community once used to “rehearse for death.” For him, facing the reality of death“inspired greater generosity, acts of kindness and compassion, less attachment to material possessions, and wiser use of one's limited time.”

This is why I argue in Radical Mindfulness that transforming fear of death is politically vital. If we can face our existential fears through stories, rituals, meditation, psychedelics and other mind-body interventions, then we are less likely to collectively devise and subscribe to value systems that limit social worth to a select few.

Moving from a culture of death denial to one that accepts the reality of death will make compensatory bids for power and control less likely - including from politicians like Trump who project power to conceal insecurities. That in turn will help us build societies that better honour all of our different gifts.

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