Conrad Montell
“To the dreamer dreams can be just as real, just as
rich in experience. Is the world perhaps only a
dream? Thoughts such as these must have struck
with overwhelming force the man who had just
emerged from the twilight of an unreflective, ‘ani-
mal’ realism, and it is understandable that, beset by
such doubts, he should turn his back on the external
world and concentrate his whole attention on the
newly discovered inner world” (Lorenz 1977, p15).
The origin of spiritual belief in connection with
death is to detach the survivors’ memories and
hopes from the dead (Freud 1950). What “tools”
might be found or made to “reshape” death? Those
who had the ability to think such questions were on
their way to answers. Early humans who developed
rituals to mourn the dead, and then developed
magic or religion to make the apprehension of death
“bearable”, would function better: would tend to be
less debilitated by fear of death, as individuals and
in community. The foundation of all ritual is that
one cannot do it alone. The individual cannot im-
part life to himself; others: human or superhuman,
are needed (Hocart 1954, Becker 1975).
Natural selection might have favored altruism:
such behavior might have had an evolutionary com-
ponent—favoring those tribes, as well as those indi-
viduals within the tribe, who demonstrate altruistic
behavior. “There is ample evidence that humans co-
operate with people to whom they are not closely
related—more so than for any other species... Hu-
mans, however, have evolved dispositions to coop-
erate or compete that take their cues from the actions
of other individuals” (Sulloway 1998 p38). In a sim-
ilar way, natural selection might then favor tribes as
well as individual members who, having come to the
realization that everyone, including themselves,
dies, developed the ability to make death bearable—
for the tribe as well as for themselves as individuals.
Natural selection would then favor those with the
ability to imagine and explain, to create and socially
share ways of making death bearable. Ultimately,
they would search for and find spirits and gods.
Memory: stored imagination, would now get to be a
communal process, a unique social process for pre-
serving “the meat” hunted down by individual
imaginations. Our ancestors, hunting for game with
their appetites set on finding antelope meat, might
have to settle for lesser game, or even for vegetation
that merely took the edge off their hunger. These
ancestors, hunting for spirits with their minds set on
finding one that could awaken the dead, might have
to settle for a lesser god, or even for vaguely sensed
spirits that merely offered hope.
Conclusion
All societies, in their rituals and beliefs, have tran-
scended the reality of what their senses and experi-
ences reveal about human death (Becker 1973;
Brown 1959; Hocart 1954). This is true even of so-
cieties where the people deny that such death has
occurred (Langer 1957; 1982). It is also true of Bud-
dhists, who have no God or belief in afterlife. Bud-
dha left these matters sufficiently equivocal to allow
beliefs that transcend the sensed reality and even
those that “abolish” death (Hocart 1954; Smith
1958).
The essential difference between human brains
and those of other animals, the difference which I
believe led to other differences, lies in imagination:
an adaptation which enabled humans to wrestle
with the one set of problems which no other animal
has had: a problem originating with human aware-
ness of self, and then, some shrouded awareness of
impending death-of-self, and finally, the problem of
how to make that awesome awareness bearable.
Early Homo sapiens, to the extent they lacked imag-
ination and culture built on imagination, would
also lack the individual and collective support sys-
tems we now have in place to make such awareness
bearable. Modern minds, drawing from past cul-
tures, have developed abilities to keep conscious
thoughts of mortality separate from day-to-day
business thoughts. Thus we have learned to live and
function in pockets of immortality (Montell 1999,
2001). We go to work each morning, wrapping our-
selves in a mantle of immortality, the fabric of
which is sewn in a series of plans and activities we
“know” will be executed; we will not die today; we
have no thought of it. Intellectually, yes: we are
aware of possible mishap. Practically, no: we have
developed mechanisms and processes that allow us
to function day to day, week to week, and beyond,
as if we were immortal. Early Homo sapiens, newly
aware of their mortality and fearful, lacking such
mechanisms and processes, would expend precious
energy in a state of unproductive alertness and anx-
iety, and would function less well in an already pre-
cariously balanced existence.
Nature would provide the mechanisms and pro-
cesses of imagination. Nurture of the human spirit
would lead to the rest: untold years of development,
recorded over the past five thousand years. Beyond
our brief individual struggles, living under the edge
of awareness of mortality, we’ve had long years as a
species, surviving and even flourishing under this
sword of Damocles nature has set for us. Intention-
Evolution and Cognition ∣ 17 ∣ 2002, Vol. 8, No. 1