However, there is an equally important issue related to the ritual and its form, discussed in the paragraph above. The fact is that the essentiality of the fear of death is questioned by some researchers. They prove that the fear of death is the same cultural construct as many other ritual forms of human life. Children are cited as an example as an argument. The child receives food, affection, and care, and is not bothered by the fact that people disappear at some point. A child gets his first experience of facing death from his parents through observing their reactions to the death of loved ones and participating in funeral and memorial ritual practices. At this time, the child first discovers emotions of shame, hatred, disappointment, and fear when confronted (by his parents and loved ones) with loss. Thus, the child receives an idea of death and, consequently, of the correct and necessary reaction to it from the older generation. Up to a certain age, the child is deprived of information about this. The second position places the problem of the fear of death in an evolutionist focus, bringing it closer to the theory of Darwinism. From this point of view, the fear of death is not just a basic human fear, but a system-forming one for the psyche and even the human body. Freudians and followers of Carl Jung talk a lot about this, deriving the concepts of “mortido and libido”. According to the proponents of the evolutionist approach, it is quite natural for a person to strive for self-preservation and for the biological continuation of his existence. Thus, the fear of death quite naturally underlies his human behavior (Zilboorg 1943: 465-475). In this debate, I rather adhere to the position of Ernest Becker, who says that the fear of death lies “somewhere between evolutionism and constructivism” (Becker 1973: 74). The fear of death is integrated around a symbolic field, hence the socially determined nature of the fear of death, which varies quite a lot from one culture to another. Death turns out to be some kind of unexplored state in which a person cannot satisfy his vital needs. Thus, the fear of death is one of the fundamental formative factors for all cultures, which, in turn, is subject to symbolic content and design: “human death is not disputed in any way and does not raise questions. Whereas we have to build the idea of immortality from the very beginning. Immortality is not the absence of death. It is a challenge to death and a refusal to recognize its finiteness” (Bauman 1992: 169). Other psychologists also turn to the topic of death. According to Robert Lifton and Eric Olson, several strategies of “symbolic immortality” are possible for humans (Lifton and Olson 1974: 15): 1. Natural immortality. We die, we are biologically destroyed, but we remain in this world at the level of molecules and chemical bonds. From this understanding of immortality, various animistic ideas are born (the belief in the transmigration of souls into other biological objects). 2. Immortality through procreation. Family relationships allow a person not only to feel the passage of time, but also to feel the alternation of family roles, to experience important emotions of the legacy of generations. 3. Immortality through creativity and cultural products. We are talking not only about art objects, but also about culture in general, in a certain Marxist understanding of this concept. The teacher transmits his experience to the students, the master teaches the ward, the artist creates a picture, the scientist contributes to world science. The idea of progress, the constant accumulation of knowledge, in which absolutely anyone can participate, is what Robert Lifton and Eric Olson call “long heritage”, literally — a long legacy. 4. Immortality in the religious view. The ideas of the afterlife, reincarnation, belief in spirits and the magical are nothing more than the work of man with the fear of death and directly the idea of immortality. 5. Immortality as transcendental. A person refers to a certain sensualistic experience, talking about feelings and their properties. People often attribute the absence of boundaries and the impossibility of death to feelings such as love, faith, and devotion. That is why love, for example, is opposed to death: love creates life and conquers death. However, such a psychoanalytic turn revealed not only the need to take into account the psychological functions of rituals, but also marked another major crisis in the anthropology of death. Author: Mokhov S. V. Death as a research problem in social and historical anthropology: the genesis of ideas Source Photo: www.filepicker.io