SPEAKERS

Nippin Anand

Nippin Anand  00:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of embracing differences with me. Nippin Anand, in less than 12 hours, the president of United States appears on the press and turns an ambiguous situation into a simple narrative. Is the incompetence of people who were hired for their skin color, sex, caste, creed and physiology, dei as in diversity, equality and inclusion caused the Washington mid year collision. How did Trump connect so many dots at the speed of light and establish what went wrong with such conviction, and why do so many buy into this ideology as the cause of the accident?

Nippin Anand  00:47

Understanding all of this requires an appreciation of how human beings behave when confronted with death. In this podcast, based on the work of Ernest Bucha, I suggest that the President is using fear of death to heighten public anxiety, create a divide and spread hatred in the society. This death driven anxiety is the foundation of all human cultures. It has historically been exploited in many accidents, catastrophes and terror acts to avoid outbreak of violence and maintain social order. In this specific instance, this ideology is being exploited for political gains. In this podcast, we will discuss, why do humans fear death? How do we react, and how do we relate with others when we are confronted with death, and how does this explain President Trump’s reaction to Washington mid air collision. Let’s take a look the paradox of imagination from time immemorial, human consciousness has been gifted with the unlimited capacity to dream, envision and imagine possibilities like no other species on our planet, we can think symbolically linking one thing with another, associating cause with effect, reducing complicated situations into abstract images and signs, recalling memories from distant past, imagining a future light years ahead in time, And turning feelings into language when we are overwhelmed by fear and desires. Animals too have a conscious mind, but human consciousness is extraordinarily gifted with a sense of autobiography, making every single individual unique in their own world. I is the shortest possible word with the most significant meaning in the English language. I matter shout all 8 billion people on our planet each day, and even more, on social media platforms. But the flip side to being the masters of our own autobiographies is the prophecy to foresee the last page of our self authored books, just like an onion or a dog, we are going to perish one day, children as young as seven years old, come to realize that all of us have a limited shelf life. We dare to question gravity, the speed of light, the density of water, and all the laws of universe, but we never doubt the certainty of death. Death is perhaps the only absolute truth of our lives, and it is not very helpful that despite all the human progress, we still haven’t worked out what really happens to us when we die. But we do know that death is painful. What precedes death is unpleasant, and there is not so much we can do to avoid the suffering of death. Consciousness puts us into a dilemma. We have infinite potential, but we don’t have a lot of time the anxiety of death. Ernest Becker, an American cultural anthropologist and the author of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Denial of Death, devoted a lifetime to explore the thesis of death as the basis of regulating all human behavior. A loyalist to true sciences, Becker always believed that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and so his work was never confined to any one discipline or theory. His lifetime contributions pointed to a powerful thesis that the anxiety of death is the basis of all human culture. Since death remains an unavoidable mystery, every culture has found its way to deal with the anxiety of death. Early religion gave human beings a prescription of how to live good life and an unquestioned belief in afterlife and an eternal soul. Some believe that although the body decays, the soul remains immortal. In the ancient Greek myth, their god Thanatos, carried the dead to the underworld, where he handed the mortals to another powerful God hades in their afterlife, the Egyptians too believed in afterlife, but the dead had to negotiate. Yet a dangerous journey in the underworld, following the final judgment and to elaborate funeral rituals. In the Buddhist faith, there is no concept of afterlife. Death follows rebirth, and a soul merely transfers from one body to another. For a very long time, humans across cultures have remained settled with their rituals and symbols to cope with the anxiety of death. Essentially, as Becker, very rightly, points out, we have always been a dead denying species. The power hungry kings of ancient China and the Pharaohs of Egypt took a literal meaning in the afterlife and the eternal soul, even though the early theologians and scientists were always aware of the symbolic meaning in afterlife. The literal meaning of resurrection resonated with the uncritical the reassurance that the dead will rise from their graves. Stories of immortality and superheroism have remained at the heart of all human culture, and they continue to attract the masses throughout human history, humans have never really come to accept death as the end of life. But then came Darwin, and he busted the myths and symbols of religion, material, philosophies and intelligent design, made it quite explicit that death is real and there is neither an afterlife nor the eternal soul, we will die and decay just like a snail or a cockroach, and eventually we will all become fossil fuels. Darwin and the laws of nature spoke to the myth of enlightenment, capitalists, progressives, atheists and those frustrated by the corruption of church, although Darwin could never really explain the force behind the intelligent design in the last century or so, the spread of material sciences took his evolutionary theories to the next level, both literally and symbolically, without doubt, science started to exploit on Death, denying anxiety, by replacing inner meaning with evidence based truth. In the Western philosophies, for instance, avoidance of physical harm became the basis for all moral decision making. I once traveled British Airways, where during the last minute of landing, the stewardess asked me to swap my wine glass for a plastic one. Why I asked it’s not safe for you. Today, we have arrived at a stage where you can bring any intelligent conversation to an end by just saying those six words, this is not safe for you. Look around you and you will see how much of our death, denying anxiety regulates our behavior, insurance, healthcare, automobiles, baby products, maternity items, sport equipment, age defying, cosmetics, gymnasiums, Arabic studio, yoga, healthy eating, sleep aid devices and luxury homes, we will buy all that we can to keep safe. We may think religion is a thing of past because we have become scientific, but just like the primitive man fell for the shamans and the priest, we see a proliferation of safety gurus, experts, professors and podcasts that exploit our death, denying superstitions. Becker saw in all religion an immortality system, come to my immortality system, follow my way, and thou shalt be saved in risk and safety. We have a raft of immortality systems. Hop safety to new view, safety, differently, psychological safety, traditional safety and BBs, each one promising what it cannot give, just like the shamans and the priests, they offer us a path to salvation, safety saves. As with religion, people associate with one group over another, demonize those who don’t align with their immortality system. But most importantly, like all religions, neither makes space for dissent, critical thinking and questioning, and none declares their moral philosophy, but beyond any literal sense in the illusion of being saved. We humans think symbolically and imagine possibilities that can amplify our fear each day we participate collectively in death, denying symbols, myths and rituals to overcome our anxiety of mortality. Am I really going to die one day? The thought itself scares us to death. We crave to be remembered forever, so we capture photographs and make memories. We want to leave a mark, and so we conquer a new destination every time we go on a holiday, the thought of being alone is so frightening, so we distract ourselves through entertainment, cinema, leisure and indulgence. Faced with boredom, we get into mindless eating or drinking, or we throw away parties to. Celebrate life. Once our basic needs are met, we want to leave a legacy for those who we really love. What would life even mean if the thought of death did not concern us? One critique of Becker’s theories is that not everyone lives in the fear of death. So how does this apply to me? From the time that you get up to when you go to bed. News outlets, advertisement agencies, marketing campaigns and artifacts of history are subliminally reminding us of our mortal being. It is so hard to escape the fear of death, our dead denying tendencies is what defines our species at large when we face an accident, even on a day to day basis. If you consider yourself an atheist, a progressive, a heterosexual or a rational, logical person, there is not much motivation in engaging with someone who believes in an elephant headed God prays five times a day or simply acknowledges homosexual beings as equal, but our tensions with competing beliefs increases many fold when the symbols and myths of our own culture fail. Safe systems, ultra safe technologies, predictive analysis and robust risk controls come down, crumbling like a castle in the sand, faced with failure in our own face, the knowledge of alternative cultures, their symbols, their rituals and their notion of risk and safety can shake up our entire physiological and emotional makeup. It can destroy our worldview. What good is all the science research, expert advice, barriers, regulations, leading indicators, audits, inspection and training. When two airplanes collide in the air and leave so many of us dead, we are not only proven wrong, but our existence is also threatened. The civilized way to deal with fear and anxiety is to accept human fallibility with grace. We tried, we tried hard, but we are not perfect. What more can we do? We learn and we try to make the world a better place to live. Humble, compassionate and intelligent beings rise to the challenge. But then there are those who will exploit such situations for their personal benefits, by channeling death, denying anxiety, towards members of another culture. If the move to channel this anger comes at a time when the fear of death is at its peak and the message is kept simple, pointing at a singular cause, it is bound to resonate with meaning hungry masses. If the move points at a culture that contradicts the belief of the ruling classes. It is a double gain. It glorifies the Savior and it reinforces the belief of the cult. I find it somewhat over simplistic when people think that Trump is jumping too quickly to conclusions, let’s wait for the formal investigation to conclude. What assumptions are we making? Will science reveal the truth? Accident investigations are meant to find out what went wrong and how it went wrong. Why it went wrong is a matter of what soothes our anxiety.

Nippin Anand  13:14

Let me share an African myth before we end this podcast. There lives a community in South Sudan called the azande. When a member of their family is sick or dead, the azande Don’t look for a natural cause. Instead, they turn towards a member in their community whom they don’t like. They hold this person responsible for their loss. Tie a rope around his neck and drag him through the fields. We laugh at the azandre. We call them savages in the civilized world. But how is the instinct of these savages any different from us? And how is it different from Donald Trump? If you are interested to read more about culture and learning, I have recently published a book. Are we learning from accidents? The book is available on Amazon, Kindle, Cobo and Apple books. Every now and then, we organize workshops around the world where we introduce the participants to the power of subjectivity, experiential learning, unconscious decision making, embodied learning, relational thinking, conversation mapping, mandala drawing and a wide range of practical and intuitive methods and tools in social psychology of risk. You can check out all our workshops by visiting our events, page, novellas, dot solutions, forward stroke events. Hi. I hope you are enjoying watching these videos, and they are making you think little bit. And if they are, please subscribe to our YouTube channel at Team novellas. My name is Nippin. I’m a former ship captain, a master mariner, and I work at the intersection between anthropology, social psychology and the neurosciences of how human beings learn, unlearn, relearn and make decisions, particularly in. Groups, which we call collective sense making. I work with organizations around the world, particularly in high risk areas, to help them diagnose, understand and improve their culture. If you want to know more about our work, please visit our website, novellus.solutions. Thank you for watching. You.