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Existential Anxiety and the Human Experience
Rating: 4.6 out of 5(51 ratings)
913 students

Existential Anxiety and the Human Experience

How Ernest Becker and Terror Management Theory Can Improve Your Life
Created byErnest Becker Foundation
Last updated 6/2024
English
English [Auto],

What you'll learn

  • Gain a foundational understanding of Ernest Becker's ideas and how they are relevant today.
  • Gain a basic understanding of Terror Management Theory, the field of research derived from Ernest Becker's writings.
  • Apply the ideas covered in the course to examine the way death anxiety shows up in one's own life as well as society as large.
  • Feel empowered to reassess one's values, sources of meaning, and purpose in life, in light of this knowledge.

Course content

4 sections • 19 lectures • 1h 3m total length

  • Welcome!0:19
  • Welcome2:57

    Explore how mortality and death anxiety shape human life by examining subconscious coping through worldviews and cultural beliefs, and learn to make value-based, meaningful decisions.

  • Who Is Ernest Becker?1:55

    Explore how awareness of mortality shapes human meaning and behavior through Ernest Becker's work and the paradox that life both awakens death anxiety and guides meaning.

  • Course Objectives1:50

    Examine terror management theory through Becker-inspired research, review key studies, and apply insights to your decisions, then learn strategies to live in line with your values.

Requirements

  • Being human is the only requirement!

Description

Do you struggle with death anxiety? Have you ever wondered about how the awareness of our own mortality affects our society? It turns out that death awareness and death anxiety affect almost every element of the human experience! One might even argue that this awareness is the very thing that makes us human. This course is based on the ideas of Ernest Becker, a cultural anthropologist who wrote about the impact of existential terror (death-awareness) on society. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, The Denial of Death, in 1974, and sadly died that same year, but his work lives on today. Learning about the impact of our own death awareness can help us understand ourselves and our societies.

In this course, you will gain a foundational understanding of Ernest Becker's ideas, as well as an introductory understanding of Terror Management Theory, the field of research derived from Ernest Becker's writings. You will apply the ideas covered in the course to identify the way death anxiety shows up in your own life as well as identifying societal trends. Finally, we hope that you will feel empowered to reassess your own values and sources of meaning in light of this knowledge to evaluate the type of life you want to lead and the person you aim to become.

Who this course is for:

  • This course is for those who want to understand more about our relationship with mortality, for those who find themselves with a high amount of death anxiety, for those who like to look inward, who seek to dive deeper into existential questions, and who are seeking a more profound understanding of the human experience.

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