TAKING OFF (2014)

Coordinator: Cristian Nae

Collaborators:

Camera and cut: Andrei Cozlac

Costume design: Daniela-Cristina Manole

10-28 February 2014

Istituto Romeno di Cultura e Ricerca Umanistica di Venezia

In 1986, inspired by the anthropologist Ernest Becker, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book, The Denial of Death, the psyschologists Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski and Sheldon Solomon enunciated the terror management theory, which justifies the way one can get over the terror and the angst caused by realizing the inevitability of death (result of the abstract and the symbolic thinking and the adaptive cognitive capacities) through the construction of cultural worldviews (a set of beliefs regarding reality, which offers the possibility of a certain form of immortality and the feeling that there is a certain meaning in the universe) and through maintaining self-esteem by respecting the values that the role in society designated by a certain culture implies. According to this theory, the cultures of the world have in common the melioration of emotions caused by death awareness as unique certitude through a belief system ("shared fictions" as Sheldon Solomon named them) invoking the origin of the universe, desirable behaviour throughout life and symbolic (biological descendants, multitudinous belongings, art or science important works etc.) or literal (afterlife) immortality.

"Thus, psychologically, culture's function is not illuminating the truth, but rather obscuring the terrifying possibility that death would cause the permanent annihilation of the self", Becker wrote.

The first experiment, from 1989, gathered 22 judges, split in two groups. They were told it was going to be a personality test and they were given identical questionaires, with the exception of an assigment constituting of a detailed envisioning of their own death, which was completed only by one of the groups. They described in detail what will happen to their bodies after they would die and which feelings they had when they thought about it. Afterwards both of the groups were presented a case of a woman accused by prostitution and they were asked to establish the sum of money that would be necessary for the caution. The group of judges that didn't activate their thoughts regarding their own death established an average sum of 50 dollars and those who had to complete that task – 455 dollars. This striking difference, even for the psychologists, indicated that the moral principles protect the human being from the anxiety caused by death and that this fear intensifies the desire for coercition towards those who are not subordinated to those principles. Hundreds of other experiments regarding religion, politics, patriotism have subsequently confirmed the terror management theory.

In 2004 Daniel Ogilvie's book, Fantasies of Flight was published; it inspired Cohen, Sullivan, Solomon and Greenberg and together with the author of this book, they presumed that flight is for human beings a form of absolute disobedience towards nature, a denial and a counterintuitive breaking of the human limitation which offers a feeling of invulnerability and imortality and that would be the reason why flight fantasies are universal, both from a historical and a cultural point of view. Myths about deities or emperors that fly are common for almost all the ancient cultures: the legends of the ancient Egypt, Minoa, Mesopotamia, China, Northern Europe, the jews, the greeks, the romans, the hindu mythology or the Cherokee are just a few examples. In their first study, imagining their own death made the participants express a more intense desire to fly. A second study replicated this effect and showed that it does not extend to other supernatural powers (walking through walls or reading other people's thoughts). This suggests that fantasies of flight have a unique role in ameliorating the uneasiness bestirred by mortality. Following this possibility, two studies subsequently demonstrated that after mortality salience, the participants who were induced fantasies of flight didn't manifest the mechanism of defending their own worldviews which was activated in the control condition, without this imaginative task.

A final study showed that the flight fantasies, but not other fantasies conferring power and pleasant sensations, decreased death thought accesibility after mortality salience and this effect was uniquely mediated by a feeling of freedom from corporal limitations.

In another study from 2004 by the same group of researchers, participants who were asked to think about their own death appreciated more a discourse by George W. Bush. Those who didn't imagine themselves flying manifested an increased support for president Bush, when in the flight condition this defensive effect was completely eliminated. This fact indicates the way flight fantasies decrease or neutralize the defense mechanisms of terror management theory.