On a personal level, I'm also coping with the horrific news of one of my oldest friends being stricken with a catastrophic disease. So my mind has turned lately to heavy, sobering topics of life and death.
We can't live our lives perpetually thinking of potential losses; this would make our time on earth feel unbearable. However, there are reminders of mortality that startle, such as visiting a website and finding that families, both the Goldbergs and the L Dot family, are grieving. And then there are the personal tragedies that we must face in this all-too-human existence.
A while back, a reader wrote and asked me a question, and my response shocked him. He asked, "On the deepest level, what draws people to progressivism?" I answered this way, "There are so many reasons, but if you're asking me the very deepest one, I think it's the fear of death."
A bit unnerved by my response, the reader said he'd need to think about it. A few months later, though, he wrote back and said he was finding much truth in my unsettling words.
Ernest Becker devoted an entire book to the subject, a Pulitzer Prize winning tome called, The Denial of Death. Becker wrote that while we all know we will die some day, most people live their daily lives in a state of denial. Becker concluded that fear of death shapes every aspect of a person's life.
One might think that my field of psychotherapy is a rare exception, that psychotherapists can speak easily about death. Not true, though most therapists are adept at helping others with their loss and grief. We therapists, like most people, rarely broach the topic of our eventual demise.
I had a fascinating conversation once with a mortuary director, whom I contacted a few years ago after my parents died. Their passing, three weeks apart, blew the curtain off of my own personal denial. I decided I wanted to make my own funeral arrangements in advance in order to spare my loved ones -- and also to exert some control over the inevitable.
I mentioned to the funeral director that my friends were all aghast at the prospect of pre-planning their own burial. She responded that morticians were no different. Few, including herself, had internment plans, preferring not to think about it. What an astonishing example of denial, given that a funeral director is in the business of death and dying!
I mentioned earlier my email exchange with a reader, and how I explained progressivism as denial of death. Let me say more. While most people experience some level of denial, we all know that we will someday die. People may be drawn to the left to create meaning in their lives while they are still alive.
They have no other way to organize this overwhelming existence, to create order out of apparent chaos. By espousing leftist ideals and worshiping false idols, many progressives have discovered their own unique way to conquer death. Even if leftists profess to be staunch atheists, doubt may lurk; therefore, their activism offers the prospect of redemption.
Many of these progressives would never engage in vicious actions against conservatives, since this would be bad for their karma; I was one of those types, as are all my friends. (Of course, there are also the nihilistic progressives, another breed entirely. Believing that life is inherently meaningless, nihilists may act out, and then take no responsibility for their cruelty.)
It's true that people flock to the left because of misinformation from the MSM. And many progressives follow along, sheep-like, because of brainwashing by schools and the media.
But I think that the attraction to radicalism may go much deeper; being an activist offers a balm for some fearsome existential issues. For many, progressivism meets a basic, human longing to matter, to make a difference in this world before it all passes away.
While conservatives and progressives disagree about pretty much everything, there is one common denominator: everyone who is alive this very moment will one day no longer walk this earth.
Human beings -- Left, Right, and in the Middle -- all understand this truth, at least on some level. The knowledge of our finiteness lurks right under the surface, until, one day, tragedy shatters our illusions.
But the difference is that most conservatives have a well-worn path to liberation, with an ancient blueprint and a Savior to guide them. No so with those leftists who have rejected ultimate truth.
It's no wonder then that they embrace the Gospel of Liberalism. What other means do they have to still the voice of disquietude and to shine a faint light onto the darkness?
Robin of Berkeley
Robin is a recovering liberal, and a licensed psychotherapist who lives in Berkeley, California. The above information is intended for entertainment and educational purposes, rather than to offer any kind of definitive diagnoses.Visit Robin’s blog.
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