Psychopomp

If Ernest Becker’s idea about the denial of death is true, then religion is a mechanism to avoid the angst that is knowing one will die. An explanation for why groups of people of different religions (culture, whatever) over the history get in conflict is this: I’m a self-conscious Christian aware of my mortality. My God tells me I’m more than that and I will live forever. My God must be true. You’re a brutal filthy Viking. Odin? You must be mad and will probably burn in hell. Your God can’t be true as it would mean mine is false and I burn in hell? Yeah, right. No, Sir. No, Lord. At the very least my God is better than yours and I will prove it by kicking your ass. Sheldon Solomon and 2 co-researchers had some interesting findings. They discovered that no matter what ethnicity or religious operating system people were into, when reminded of their own mortality they tended to hate more a different religious group, by either being more open towards bombing another country, or by preferring that particular group not to move to their neighborhood. And they were more convinced of their religious paradigm. Atheists reacted the same way to the stimulation of unconscious anxiety about death, just as much as fellow theists. Actually, it seems that Buddhists were the least affected by it. More research is needed, you can imagine. But if all this is true, there could be a way in which religion can “save” us, or help us, and I feel like it is not that farfetched from the realm of possibility, actually, it looks like we are heading towards it. I believe it is by coming up with a story that unites us globally, universally. And it is with the return to the individual, with looking inside and feel empowered by the knowledge that you are God, and everyone else, everything around you is also God.

~ Psychopomps (from the Greek word ψυχοπομπός, psuchopompos,
literally meaning the “guide of souls”) are creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife.