In my last columns, I explored the nature of our instinctual denial around rapidly approaching climate catastrophe and societal collapse. This has turned off my readers, causing some to complain: here’s the gist of their grievances as expressed in this anonymous letter I got in the mail:
“As much as I appreciate your wisdom and insight, I think that your columns have become dark and pessimistic. Any chance you could write something hopeful for a change?”
I don’t feel I have been gloomy, just adjusting my hope in a more realistic way to counteract the instinctual power of human denial. Ernest Becker, a renowned cultural anthropologist, tells us that most human actions are undertaken to ignore or avoid the inevitability of death.
According to Pulitzer Prize-winning Ernst Becker, our deep, instinctual terror of mortality is too overwhelming to bear. To function without constant panic, we construct cultural “hero systems” — such as religion, art and the pursuit of status — to convince ourselves that we are significant and symbolically immortal.
My belief is that if we could break through our denial, a great weight would be lifted from our sagging postmodern shoulders. Not only that, if we could accept what our future holds for us, we would be motivated to take real, concrete steps — starting today — to salvage what we can.
To me, the problem we face as a society is much like that of an individual with a painful condition that is getting worse, but who is afraid to confront the problem. If he had gone for an examination, he might have learned that it is, indeed, very serious.
The doctor might have found that the patient had cancer, which was treatable but required a major life change and extensive surgery. However, even if his condition had been diagnosed as terminal, the person could now freely move forward, taking the time left to smell the roses rather than keeping his head buried in the sand of magical thinking.
I can speak with some authority on this subject because I have survived five rounds of exhaustive treatment for four different cancers. As a result, although a slow learner, I think I am learning to accept death. Perhaps, because of that, I enjoy wandering around old cemeteries. Rather than being morbid, I find them strangely refreshing, lifting an unacknowledged weight from my shoulders, easing my instinctual dread of death.
I find it soothing, for example, to stroll through Old North Cemetery in Portsmouth, passing by the graves of old Yankee forebears and their children, too often only infants, seeing them resting in peace under stately shade trees, near the lapping of calm water, part of the natural cycle of life.
I read a similar sentiment expressed in a recent New York Times essay by Will McGraph about finding “strange solace” in cemeteries. Like me, graveyards help him grapple with the existential dread of dying. He has come to the opinion, like his friend Colter, “that it was a privilege to be able to confront your death honestly. Many people never get that chance, living lives partly asleep, distracted into oblivion, dying suddenly, robbed of consciousness by illness or accident.”
Becker — along with those of us who find solace in cemeteries — is not the only gloomy alarmist in the world. Mainstream social scientists are well aware of the absolute, unbending curse of society’s denial of death and the dangers it poses to human survival.
In the April 2026 edition of the journal, “Frontiers of Psychology,” the authors point out that our primitive, instinctual fear of death “leads to the loss of proportionate, sensible thinking … [obstructing the ability] of the human capacity to think, while the real aim” should be to reduce this fear “so that constructive thinking can go on.”
Viewed in this light, I believe I am promoting a positive message: Fostering constructive thinking by reducing our overwhelming, irrational terror of dying. That’s why I endorsed Sarah Wilson’s book, “I Eat the Stars,” which presents irrefutable evidence that we are facing systemic collapse, yet does so in an unthreatening manner, without succumbing to doom and gloom.
My intent is not to drag folks down but to offer what Wilson provides in her book: a space for my readers to confront their fears and anxieties about our uncertain future and to point them toward one rooted in truth, justice, creativity and community.
That being said, there’s no denying I’ve beaten what my readers consider a dead horse long enough. I intend to move forward to greener pastures in my next columns.
Jean Stimmell, retired stone mason and psychotherapist, lives in Northwood and blogs at jstim.substack.com.