“ This denial of death is itself numbing – that is, psychic numbing further traumatizes the individual who engages in the denial of death through false witness”
The denial of death is more damaging than helpful. The longer a person is traumatized or anxious about a real or psychological death, the worse it will be. When someone accepts death and understands reality they can begin to live a calmer and stress-free life because they are no longer torturing themselves with the idea of death, which in most cases is worse than the death itself. Another concept mentioned is the idea of a false witness in which we use as a defense mechanism that places our own death anxieties onto others. Someone else becomes the victim of our anxiety. The article uses Jews and Black people as an example. It suggests that people are so traumatized that they will exploit onto another group or person what they are so afraid of, so, therefore, they become the victim and not themselves.
Something I think this can relate to this is the concept of “ hurt people hurt people”. A lot of the time victims of rape end up becoming the rapists themselves because they are using this concept discussed in the article that they cannot deal with the psychological pain, therefore, they place it onto another person. People may not even realize this and it is most of the time subconscious. Humans are very much afraid of life. They fear the unknown, danger, loneliness and more. Being a human is very vulnerable and it becomes a very hard task to balance all the questions, pain, and responsibilities. Through this, it seems impossible for people not to have these internal struggles. It makes sense we fear death, because its a fear of not being in control, the loss of power and not knowing what lies ahead of us. In a matter of just a few seconds, our brain has so many anxieties and thoughts running through it. There has to be an outlet for these anxieties. Therefore there are different ways people confront them. One way is what the article discusses: the false witness. Is this healthy? I don’t think so. Is it inevitable? Maybe. The real question is: does this cycle ever end? A person may not even realize this is going on in their head. How can they recognize it and then proceed to control and take care of it?
An example can be seen in The Universe of Things where it says ” The mechanic’s experience was his own concern, had been an internal matter from the start. The alien was not responsible for kinks of human psychology, nor for imaginary paranormal incidents.” ( pg.60) Throughout the story, the mechanic seems to be having his own experiences with the alien in his head that are not actually happening in real life. He is overthinking about things that shouldn’t be overthought about. This is because, as it says in the quote, he is clearly dealing with something from his past that allows for these thoughts to arise in his head.
People come into life with their own experiences, and when it is a traumatizing experience of anxiety they carry with them it can completely change the reality for that specific person. A person can be experiencing something through a completely different lens than another person because they have gone through something similar or something that triggers certain feelings.
Questions that are relevant to this topic are : who do you think peoples anxiety’s and past trauma’s effect more, themselves or others? Is this idea spoken about in society or do people try pretend that everything is fine? Why do you think that is?
