Mortality and Meaning
Imagine someone who experiences a serious health scare, leading them to see life differently. They move beyond trivial concerns to find something more important. But do they find coherence or escape? That is, does mortality help them to make their life more coherent – to tell their story in a more integrated way? Or does it drive them toward a narrow story, one that merely avoids the things they fear? Either way, mortality salience (the nearness of reminders about death) can reshape priorities. It may strengthen relationships, lead to reflection – or motivate fanaticism.
Mortality salience is the feeling that death is near or possible. Sometimes, this happens because of the occurrence of actual deaths; other times, it’s due to a symbolic reminder of death. I suggest that people reach out to each other when they experience mortality salience, and when the nearness of death motivates them to find a shared answer to the question: “what is most important?” or “who are we? This is the topic of Terror Management Theory – the idea that our culture is built around managing our fear of death. For example, the Old Testament addresses death via its depiction of war, while the New Testament does so via its discussion of the afterlife. By reminding us of mortality, perhaps, these ideologies hope to encourage us to care about what’s most important – including social cohesion. A whole range of psychological states – including conformity, connection, and cooperation – could be activated by mortality salience.
Many religions involve ancestor worship (the salience of dead ancestors) or funerals (the salience of recent deaths). The cross represents death, and the Passover seder reminds us of the ten plagues. These religions do not just reduce our fear of death; they also remind us of death (make it salient) on a regular basis. This reminder is a memento mori, which literally means “remember that you will die.”
War, myths about war, animal sacrifice, and even human sacrifice could trigger mortality salience and hence activate our escapist or cohesive instincts. This could promote social cohesion – either through shifting emotions (toward conformity or courage) or through storytelling that connects society’s activities together. My point is not that mortality salience is the sole purpose of these institutions, but given the importance of mortality in the human psyche, it must be one purpose among others (a partial truth.)
In our own society, warfare plays a role in social cohesion as well. After 9/11, Americans rallied around George W. Bush’s agenda, and about 75% of Congress voted to give Bush the ability to attack Iraq. This dynamic is partly caused via the terror management mechanism: in war, people are reminded of death, and they seek positive feelings in the form of conformity and group support to counteract this fear. They may willingly serve in the military in order to get a feeling of esteem and belonging. This conformity potentially has good aspects – providing cohesion (assuming one thinks that is positive) – but it can also motivate people toward further violence, which in turn supplies further cohesion.
One of the most common organizing principles of society, historically, has been kinship. We can see this in the lives of European royalty, who organized alliances by marriage and valued their heredity greatly. But in the more distant past, kinship would have been just as important for everyone. In many cases, social ties were maintained by exchanging marriage partners – not for kings (since there weren’t any at that time) but for the average person.
However, as societies grew and formed into larger, more impersonal chiefdoms, it became harder to maintain social solidarity through kinship ties. These societies may have contained many thousands of members, and at some point it no longer works to say “you’re my cousin’s cousin’s cousin.” What will keep people excited about the group – if kinship ties are no longer quite as central? At this point, modern nationalism had yet to be invented, perhaps because nationalism relies on a modern education system that can make everyone feel that they are part of the same country’s history by having them read the same texts about their country’s values.
When kinship ties weaken (as societies grow), mortality salience often replaces kinship as a source of unity. Chiefdoms were among the most warlike societies – as we can see in the Iliad. The earliest large-scale societies often used human sacrifice as a social glue. We can see this in the Greek myths, where human sacrifice is mentioned as forbidden (perhaps recently) by the gods. But even more important was warfare, which results in mortality and therefore drives people toward values, and often toward value addiction. In war-torn societies, people are likely to find the corresponding values – collective strength, courage, conformity, and the state.
The State Addiction Problem
Through escapism, humans often treat psychological states (e.g., courage, power, conformity) as unconditional when they are actually conditional and limited in value. Even concern for group survival is not an unconditionally valuable psychological state, since unlimited reflection on group survival can lead to belligerence – which, in turn, threatens group survival by starting conflicts. This is a classic paradox – common for humans, I think – where pursuing something to an unlimited degree can be to the detriment of the very thing that is sought.
In a war-torn society, state addiction is quite likely, since belligerent psychological states seem to be the solution to the problems of the moment. But valuing collective strength or conformity without limit leads to excessive violence. Clearly, not all human societies have viewed this as a problem! Indeed, so long as death rates do not get out of control, war can be used as a social glue in a sustainable way. This requires some care on leaders’ part to ensure that wars are mostly performative or “for show” – they are meant to get people excited about their society. It seems likely to me that at some periods in history, leaders of rival societies were essentially in collusion – they were like theatrical directors putting on a play for their people – a play in which (unfortunately, but of necessity) there were going to occasionally have to be some deaths.
As we will see, this arrangement could not last. Eventually, geopolitical forces created a new order of things in which wars were deadly and serious. In this context, State Addiction to conformity, courage, and concern for group survival was a major problem. This was the Axial Age, which has been variously identified as 800 BCE – 200 BCE or (by the Seshat group) to a much longer period spanning multiple millennia.
Myth has multiple functions: one integrative, another escapist. In its integrative function, myth ties together the various functions of society. This is the usual purpose of narrative that we have discussed – now at the societal level rather than the individual level. But in its escapist function, it pushes us toward particular states. Star Wars, for instance, values combat with lightsabers to a higher degree than we might experience in real life. Myths that postdate the period of the Iliad and Odyessy often value war, adventure, or violence more highly than what “really” happens in any society. This, I would argue, works as a “solution” to death anxiety – to escape violence via more violence. But there is an obvious problem with this pattern, and so we may need metanarrative to critique or reinterpret mythic narrative.
When discussing the Axial Age, I will draw on the following sources, among others:
- Robert Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age.
- Karen Armstrong, the Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions
- Mark W. Muesse, Religions of the Axial Age: An Approach to the World’s Religions, The Great Courses.
- Seshat History of the Axial Age.
- David Graeber: Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
At this point, philosophy arose in a variety of societies as a tool to further integrate society. Whereas myths tend to discuss adventure, philosophers like Plato and Confucius also discussed more ordinary situations involving interpersonal relationships, commerce, and government. They also used metanarrative to critique myths. Philosophers often identify unlimited values, such as “the good,” happiness, or reason; but these values do not cause the same problems as do unlimited psychological states such as conformity and courage. Why not?
Part of it is the sheer abstraction of “the good” and the necessity to integrate it with life, generally, in order to derive any course of action from it. If pages of integrative, reasoned analysis are required to ascertain what is good, then people are less likely to treat it as an escapist value – to kill in its name and to get overly excited about their “good” society dominating everyone else. This reduces the State Addiction Problem. However, crucially, “the good” still functions as a collective value – it motivates people to work together and cooperate, not by valuing raw conformity but by integrating it (slowly and calmly) with the rest of life.
Still, a risk (as I have argued) is that “the good” will become a “universality” that it itself escapist – that is, that we will treat arguing about philosophy as an end in itself; one that provides us with comfort and helps us to get away from the messiness of life. The more complex the argument about “the good” becomes, with more and more involved theories, the greater this risk will become.
In ny case, I am arguing that it is because of the need for more integration and less escapism (due to the increased severity of violence) that the Axial Age presented a new motivation for Plato to clarify conditions for justice rather than glorifying power unconditionally.
Warfare, Social Cohesion, and the Axial Age
Before the Axial Age, my story suggests that war was controlled cohesion. Small societies used rituals, myths, and even “courtly” warfare to generate cohesion with limited destruction.
Karen Armstrong notes that before the Axial Age in China, warfare was “courtly.” Warriors might send pots of wine to the enemy, and would allow each other to escape if a ransom were paid. Killing too many opponents was frowned upon. Armstrong describes a story about an archer who shot an arrow at an opponent, then waited without retreating so that the opponent could get a chance to shoot an arrow at him. In this era, one could reasonably use warfare as a tool of social cohesion – without worrying too much about the consequences. This makes perfect sense, if you think about it – why would elites, who had things pretty good, risk it all by leading their societies into dangerous total warfare? By using violence to escape violence, society could move toward courageous and conformist psychological states – without any great risk.
In the Axial Age, war became serious, large-scale, and destructive. David Graeber (“Debt”) writes about a military-coinage-slavery complex during the Axial Age, whereby kings would mint coins and use them to pay their army; the army would loot gold and silver which could be melted into new coins. Moreover, the army could capture people to be enslaved; the slaves could work in the mines to acquire more silver and gold (p. 229-230). The logic of the situation meant that if one opted not to wage war upon one’s neighbors, one would have fewer slaves and less coins, rendering oneself unable to construct even a defensive army.
Around the same time, the technology for making iron weapons was becoming more widely accessible; this too made violence more serious. Iron weapons allowed empires to arm a greater number of people, as they could be mass-produced more easily than bronze weapons as early as the beginning of the Axial Age in various regions. When more people were armed, wars could be more serious.
Another factor is that the nomads of the Eurasian steppe had bred better horses and developed cavalry warfare. They tended to take warfare seriously and could have spread these norms to the agricultural empires – or, on the other hand, they could have learned these norms from the empires, and taught them back to the empires, in a vicious cycle.
One last factor is that empires create other empires by imitation, or to defend against the other empires. As Sangaralingam Ramesh writes in “The Political Economy of India’s Development: 5000 BC to 2022 AD”, Persia and (in India) Magadha may have imitated one another. It seems even more likely that empires such as Persia, Babylon, and Assyria – all located in similar regions – engaged in mutual imitation.
All of these factors and more may have led to wars of larger scope and higher stakes. We can see the growth of empires by examining the sizes of their land areas, showing that states were “gobbling each other up.” This suggests that there were significant consequences to picking a fight with the wrong enemy – violence was no longer performative or theatrical. We can see this by estimating the size (in Megameters squared) of empires before and after the Axial Age. A square Megameter equals one million square kilometers. Here are some sizes:
Archaic Age:
Akkadian Empire, 2250 BCE: 0.8 Mm^2
Sumer, 2000 BCE: 0.1 Mm^2
Babylon, 1690 BCE: 0.25 Mm^2
Egypt, 1300 BCE: 1.0 Mm^2
Hittites, 1220 BCE: 0.25 Mm^2
Shang dynasty, China, 1122 BCE, 1.25 Mm^2
Axial Age:
Assyria, 625 BCE, 0.8 Mm^2
Alexander’s Empire, 520 BCE, 5.2 Mm^2
Achaemenid Persia, 500 BCE, 5.5 Mm^2
Seleucid, 301 BCE, 3.9 Mm^2
Mauryan Empire, 250 BCE, 5.0 Mm^2
Post-Axial Age:
Early Han, 50 BCE, 6.0 Mm^2
See:
Rein Taagepera: Size and Duration of Empires Growth-Decline Curves, 3000 to 600 B.C
Turchin, Adams, and Hall: East-West Orientation of Historical Empires and Modern States.
As you can see, the sizes of the empires grew dramatically during the Axial Age – from about 0.6 Mm^2 to about 4.4 Mm^2 on average – a factor of 7. The Middle East is roughly 7.2 Mm^2, and modern-day India is 3.3 Mm^2, so an empire of anywhere near this size would have tremendous power and influence over an entire region. Starting a war without taking account of the wishes of Persia, the Mauryas, etc. would be foolish. Yet war was the very thing that enabled a state’s cohesion. This put these states in a seemingly impossible situation. If they gave up war, they might lose the force that brought people together. If they made war in a way that threatened the local empire, they would be conquered. This would have been particularly threatening to elites, who – whether they lost their lives or not – would at least have lost their position of control over their society. In this context, my story says that it was imperative to find a manner of social cohesion that avoided unnecessary conflict.
But because narrative tended to oversimplify in the direction of war and adventure, metanarrative (philosophy) was needed to critique narrative. And indeed, philosophers tended to critique or reinterpret past narratives and rituals. Plato critiqued the myths of Homer; the Buddha critiqued the Vedas; the Old Testament critiqued past myths that were polytheistic; and Confucius (perhaps the least critical of these) reinterpreted old rituals rather than attacking them.
Philosophical and Religious Responses
As violence escalated, old sources of cohesion (myth, kinship, and small-scale war) became less appealing, as they would lead to further conflict. Elites, threatened by conquest and instability, turned to reflection and ethical thought to create nonviolent forms of cohesion. During this time, ideas about nonviolent social cohesion were exchanged via writing, literacy, and long-distance communication. These forms of communication were likely invented for administrative purposes and for managing trade routes, but they could also play a role in disseminating philosophical ideas.
My sense is that three of the Axial cases are “obvious” examples of violent conflict and empires giving rise to philosophy: in Greece, the Peloponnesian War – in which Socrates and Plato were both soldiers – and the Persian Empire. One of the first hints at Axiality in Athens was the City Dionysia, a tradition where playwrights examined Athenian values and culture. An early play from this period is called The Persians – it tells the story, sympathetically, of the Persian king who had recently attacked Athens (and lost). This suggests that the relationship between the Athenian state and empire was important to Athenian culture, and that Athens felt the need to forgive Persia rather than demonizing it.
In China, the Warring States Period. Confucius belonged to the state of Lu, a place more known for culture and ritual than for military might – potentially threatened by its more powerful neighbors. The Warring States Period gave rise to many great philosophers.
And in Israel / Judah, the Babylonian Exile – where Judean elites were defeated and brought to Babylon. This directly illustrates how the stakes were much higher for elites in these times – conquest by an empire could potentially lead to their death or exile en masse.
The least obvious is India, since we do not have clear records of any named, great military conflict at the time of the Buddha. However, the Maurya Empire was to arise shortly thereafter, rivaling Persia in land area. It is hard to believe that this empire wasn’t preceded by a series of somewhat smaller mega-states, with their corresponding wars. (Could administrative techniques for managing a large empire have sprung up overnight?) It seems likely that the reason we don’t possess clear records is that we don’t have clear records of anything from that period – no writing has survived. (It may be that there wasn’t very much writing – but then again, it may have been written on perishable materials. I actually find it surprising that anyone, anywhere was writing on materials that would survive for thousands of years, given that they had no reason to want their writings to last that long.)
Sangaralingam Ramesh writes that there were many great states at the time, called Mahajanapadas. Of these, Magadha was the greatest – this was near the place where the Buddha taught, and was also (later) the core of the Mauryan Empire. The Mahajanapads gobbled up the smaller Janapadas. Ramesh writes that there may have been communication about imperial administration and military techniques between Persia and Magadha during the time that Persia controlled north-western India. This suggests that some part of the reason for the Axial Age’s simultaneity – between the four locations – may have been communication between the various empires.
See: Sangaralingam Ramesh, The Political Economy of India’s Economic Development: 5000BC to 2022 AD, Volume I Before the Indus Civilisation to Alexander the Great.”
Some Axial Sages valued peace explicitly. Mark Muesse writes that the first Axial prophet, Zoroaster, was troubled by violent “cattle rustlers” who represented evil in his philosophy. The Tao Te Ching notes that “Where the army marched grow thorns and thistles. After the war come the bad harvests” (Le Guin’s version.) Indian Jains were famously very peaceful. However, even Plato – who accepted war as a normal function of the state – wanted limited warfare:
“If either party devastates the land and burns the houses of the other such factional strife is thought to be an accursed thing and neither party to be true patriots. Otherwise, they would never have endured thus to outrage their nurse and mother. But the moderate and reasonable thing is thought to be that the victors shall take away the crops of the vanquished, but that their temper shall be that of men who expect to be reconciled and not always to wage war.” “ (The Republic, Book 5, 470d-470e).”
I’ll note that what’s happening with philosophy is not an “escape to peace” but rather a greater integration. Trying to achieve peace is a very different thing from outlawing war. The latter may sound naive or self-defeating, since any state that can’t pursue war is rendering itself defenseless. Thus, promoting peace is more complicated than mere nonviolence, and we should not expect all philosophers to oppose war overtly – even if that was a major concern for them. Moreover, my story says that the philosophers’ most important concern was less about outlawing war (that is really up to the kings) and more about finding an alternative way to integrate society – by using metanarrative to critique simplistic myths.
Solving the Value Addiction Problem
In the Axial context, treating certain psychological states (e.g., conformity and courage) as unconditional leads to excess and self-destruction. For the common people, there may be fewer consequences to being absorbed by a large empire; but for elites, their loss of power is assured. Therefore, elites are expected to be very interested in solutions to the State Addiction Problem.
At this time, Militaristic societies addicted to power and expansion (e.g., Assyria, Sparta) relied on war for social cohesion, but could sustain this cohesion only if they could be the most powerful state in their region. This avenue was not open to most states, and it may not have been sustainable even for Assyria or Sparta. But empires clung to militaristic cohesion as long as they could. It was typically less hegemonic societies (Athens, Lu, Israel) that sought alternatives to war, power, and conformity through ethical reflection.
There’s a problem: for someone like Plato to write about social cohesion in a peaceful way, Plato would have to learn something about social cohesion. But at the time, my story says that the chief source of social cohesion was violence. This means that Plato’s only source of information about social cohesion was conflict – and indeed, Plato was a soldier in the Peloponnesian War.
Philosophy was doing something we might call “terror pruning”: keeping cohesion-building practices (ritual, ethics, justice) while discarding their violent excesses. This terror pruning was enabled by reflection as an alternative to the addictive cycle of war -> cohesion -> more war.
Alternative Explanations of the Axial Age
In the interest of naming several other partial truths, here are a few alternative explanations of Axial Age philosophy that don’t have to do with the State Addiction problem.
(1) The Seshat group argues that Axial patterns of equality emerged to prevent factionalism and palace coups in large states.
(2) David Graeber says that being in debt was terrible, and philosophies were needed to cope with this problem.
(3) Baumard argues that with wealth comes the need for long-term planning, and Axial ideas arose in wealthy societies, driven by elites.
My perspective on the issue of partial truths is similar to love and marriage. We marry one person, and we care about them deeply, but we also know that these feelings of care are, ultimately, determined by chemicals rather than by some kind of objective reality. We can know that our feelings are chemicals and still feel them – we can be in metanarrative mode and narrative mode at the same time. In the same way, my relationship with my partial truth – my Axial Age story – is one of preferring a particular partial truth over others, even if these others may also have truth to them. We can value our meaning and yet know that others find meaning in different ways. This perspective prevents us from becoming addicted to imposing our legacy on others.
Modern Parallels
One might speculate that high death rates from World War Two, combined with a social consensus about the meanings of the war, created Europe’s high social capital. Social capital refers to networks of trust and connection in a society. (In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam argues that World War Two created social capital, although he does not state that it was because of mortality rates alone – and I don’t believe that, either. Still, mortality as a cause of social capital is a partial truth. Different mortality events lead to different lessons or responses.) People who have experienced major earthquakes become more religious, according to Jeanet Bentzen in Acts of God? Religiosity and Natural Disasters Across Subnational World Districts.
Apart from philosophy, another solution is to experience vicarious mortality through fiction. This is a helpful solution, because it does not involve actual danger! As the philosopher Martin Buber learned, it is important not to glorify war and violence, even if these events can have positive effects on social capital. This is for a few reasons: (1) there are other solutions, such as philosophy as well as the memento mori or deaths in fiction or religious texts, (2) not all wars immediately lead to social capital, especially when there is no consensus on the meaning of the war (e.g. the U.S. Civil War or the Vietnam War) – wars which result in strong internal disagreements usually do not lead to social capital, (3) people who have actually lived through a modern war will likely feel that the cost of violence is greater than the gain in social consensus, even if there is a gain.
Today, philosophical reflection is a source of integration and cohesion, particularly in the law. A major reason that legislators and courts are able to manage society is that we share a reflective process for adjudicating legal issues. This, we might hope, can maintain social cohesion without requiring constant warfare. It is clear that the practice is not always as easy as the theory makes it sound, however.
Nexus State Theory 