Lauren Witty

Honors 392
8 December 2021

Accountability through Connectivity:

How Inner Work Can Promote Climate Action

Death is inevitable. As a mysterious new stage of the life cycle that no living being has

been able to experience, death often brings anxiety and stress to individuals that constantly dwell

on it. Compounding the inevitably of death with the current climate crisis, many individuals feel

an increasing amount of anxiety. To bring comfort through knowledge, the Good Grief Network

(GGN), a non-profit organized to mitigate climate grief, wanted students to create a project that

highlighted youth voices and their emotions towards the climate crisis. Through limited

communication with the GGN, we decided to expand this idea to include how views of mortality

and terror management influence our peers’ views on sustainable behaviors. This question,

identifying the link between mortality and accountability to sustainability, also unveiled the idea

of terror management theory. Terror management theory (TMT) is the idea that humans must

mitigate their emotions towards death, as constantly fearing death can immobilize and

incapacitate them. Common forms of terror management generally fall into two categories:

cultural worldview and self-esteem. Cultural worldview often includes religion, which is known

to be “associated with emotional well-being and low death anxiety,” (Solomon, 87-88).

Self-esteem and the promotion of one’s identity through fame can hold similar effects, as

“self-esteem protects us from deeply rooted physical and existential fears” (Solomon, 45).

Through this project, we hoped to survey our peers to discover the most prevalent forms of TMT

within our community and identify the potential implications of these beliefs.
 To survey how our peers found relief from their terror of death, our group decided to

create a video that summarized the responses of 25 individuals to 7 different questions that

prompted thought about death, sustainability, climate change, and their intersection. From our

results, it was clear that not many respondents considered the connection between their mortality

and climate change, highlighting a level of privilege and ignorance that inhibits their ability to

make change.

To fully understand how others manage their terror of death, I had to first identify my

own coping mechanisms. Therefore, before I even began work on this project, I took some time

to sit with my own emotions surrounding my mortality. This was something that I had previously

never considered, always pushing the thought of death to the back of my mind. But, through

contemplative practices during class, and additional ones at home, I began to realize the

relevance of my death and how it can be used as motivation to create systemic change. This

realization was rooted in the idea that I am one part of an ever-changing system, but that this one

part can still make a difference. This contextualized my understanding of my positionality and

prepared me to take on both the interview process and the final presentation construction of our

project. Additionally, our group as a whole was also able to grasp the idea of our own mortality,

as we had an intensive brainstorm session to identify what questions could gather our desired

data. Devising questions about mortality reflected our collective mindset, as we each had to

delve into our personal connections with death. Having an understanding of the importance of

our own mortality allowed us to create questions that were understandable, but also inquisitive of

our respondent’s individual perceptions and experiences surrounding death. After brainstorming,

we each conducted our own interviews. Each respondent was forced to think about the world in a
new light, and many walked away saying that they had just then drawn the connection between

their mortality and the world system. Seeing this change in participants was inspiring, as our

group had prompted them to adopt a new view of the world that will hopefully motivate them to

create sustainable change.

Through analysis of our interviews, we realized that most individuals subscribed to the

self-esteem form of TMT. Most shared the wish to extend their lives through immortality

projects, such as having offspring. Others found solace in the idea that they could be remembered

through the positions that they had held throughout their life, as symbols of status and fame.

These self-esteem based forms of TMT can be dangerous to the prognosis of the climate crisis,

as when death is individualized, it allows people to pursue selfish projects that may promote

climate and habitat destruction.

However, changing how one manages their terror of death is not an easy task. Humans

are biologically programmed to fear death and “experience this terror in the absence of looming

danger,” (Solomon, 7). Therefore, our ability to consistently acknowledge, yet try to ignore, our

own death causes humans to cling to the closest source of mental relief. In our society, this tends

to be values perpetuated by capitalism. Capitalism promotes individualism, and causes people to

largely find their worth through material goods, individual accomplishments, or accumulated

wealth. The values perpetuated by capitalism have resulted in the age of the Anthropocene, as

humans continue to exploit the Earth for individual and monetary gain. This was reflected in our

project, as all of our respondents were currently living in the United States, a capitalistic giant,

and almost all shared that their main forms of terror management were through methods of

promoting self-esteem. However, it is likely that the constant bombardment of individualistic

values within the capitalist society led to the high prevalence of self-esteem as a form of terror
management within our sample. Perhaps, with more systems thinking, people can realize the

deep impacts of capitalism, and redefine how they manage their terror of death.

These self-esteem related forms of terror management and capitalistic actions are the

result of a denial of death. As discussed by Oelschlaeger, “the denial of death is a cultural

pathology impelling humankind along a self-defeating path,” and has encouraged humans to

believe that we “somehow exist above or beyond biophysical process,” (Oelschlaeger). By

ignoring the inevitability of their own mortality, many humans act selfishly to enjoy their life,

often at the expense of other organisms. This ignorance of connectivity has often led to activities

that promote climate change, but also a misunderstanding of climate impacts on other areas of

the world. When humans subscribe to capitalistic values, they tend to forget how others perceive

and live within the Anthropocene. Being able to deny death and climate change is a privilege that

not all people hold, as some face these issues daily. But, our respondents were unable to identify

this privilege, showing a lack of awareness of the interconnectivity within our shared world

system. This privilege of ignorance has validated inaction within our society. As discussed in The

God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans, “admitting that we hold the levers of

power over the Earth’s major cycles would mean having to make conscious decisions about how

the planet should be managed” (Lynas, 7). Therefore, we retreat to ignorance as the truth of our

lifestyle is too much to bear. We then live with the privilege of ignorance as long as we can, until

we are faced with the consequences of our own inaction.

In order to shift how people manage their terror of death, and therefore change their

sustainable behaviors, inner work must be encouraged. Participating in contemplative practices

are useful, as contemplation can be defined as the “cessation of the normal cycle of activity and

consumption,” (Schley). Forcing people to break their normal routines will allow them to free
themselves from the constant grab of capitalism. Through this contemplation, consumerism may

decrease, as a realization of interconnectivity may emerge for some people. Schley also argues

that “awareness of the underlying interconnectedness of life…may well lead you to feel a greater

sense of responsibility for the whole.” This realization of interconnectedness comes from

participating in contemplative practices. Therefore, by encouraging inner work among

community members, there may be an increased movement to change consumer habits and

mitigate the effects of climate change, as people may experience a newfound feeling of

responsibility for the state of the world.

In order to make actionable change in the midst of this climate crisis, inner work is

important, but must be utilized in conjunction with policy change. These can be combined by

encouraging inner work among community activists who work within grassroots organizations.

Once these organizers gain a deeper understanding of their mortality and their connectivity to the

world, they may be able to extrapolate their experiences to political activism. By promoting inner

work among activists, and working from the bottom to the top, a stronger sense of unity and

urgency may emerge in addressing the climate crisis. This power among the people has the

ability to spur systemic change, as they can encourage those in power to partake in contemplative

practices and feel that same sense of unity. Only then will sustainable, actionable and efficient

climate change policies be implemented and lessen the environmental destruction characteristic

of the Anthropocene.

Throughout this course, I struggled to draw the connections between my own mortality

and climate change. This required an understanding of systems thinking that I had never

experienced before. Additionally, I came into this class not even knowing what “Political

Ecology of Death in the Anthropocene” meant. I could identify the words in that title, but had no
idea how they fit together. I do believe that I have come a long way from that. I can now utilize

systems thinking to understand how inner work through contemplative practices can have

interdisciplinary effects, and can eventually lead to systemic political change and the

improvement of the environment.

As I progress through the rest of my education and into my future career, I will continue

to utilize some key ideas and actions from this course. First, I need to sit with the thoughts of my

own mortality in order to actually understand my role in this world. I entered this class with the

assumption that I knew my place in our system. However, after discussing course material and

participating in contemplative places, I was able to draw the connections between my life and the

state of the world. This kind of broad thinking, that comes from considering one’s own mortality,

has allowed me to expand my learning in other classrooms and to search for meaning in each of

my actions. Through this course, I also realized that people deal with thoughts of mortality in

vastly different ways. However, to generate a more connected world and to effectively work with

others, we need to talk about death and share our common experiences and emotions. Once we

move past the “cultural pathology” that is the denial of death, we will have more productive

conversations and can potentially move towards a cleaner Earth. Finally, I discovered that inner

work is essential to creating change. I have found burnout in my life, and inner work has helped

to reignite that flame for justice. Through these contemplative practices, I have been able to

recognize my role on this Earth and find new ways to create change.

Applying the key learnings from this course to our action project allowed us to create a

meaningful deliverable that can make positive change within our community. Talking about

death with young voices is important, as it battles the denial of death that many find safety in.

Our video may inspire others to answer those same questions and think deeply about their
connection with the world. Engaging the youth and encouraging them to consider their own

mortality is essential to mitigating the climate change crisis, as this is the generation that is likely

to feel the greatest effects but also have the most motivation to create change. When more

individuals start considering their death, a new sense of urgency and belonging will emerge, and

hopefully lead to greater political change regarding climate change policy.

 WORKS CITED

Lynas, Mark. The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans. National Geographic,

2011.

Oelschlaeger, Max. “History, Ecology, and the Denial of Death: A Re-Reading of Conservation,

Sexual Personae, and the Good Society.” Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 24, no. 3,

1993, pp. 19–39., https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9833.1993.tb00522.x.

Schley, Sara. “Sustainability: The Inner and Outer Work.” The Systems Thinker, vol. 20, no. 8,

2009.

Solomon, Sheldon, et al. The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. Penguin Books,

2016.