“If there is one great joy to be derived from scanning the scientific literature over a week, it is the barrage of studies that challenge your beliefs and preconceptions, demonstrating the weakness of intuition: because if we knew all the answers to start with, there’d be no point in doing research.”

I don’t think we should ignore intuition, because it can be useful, but in this particular case my own “spidey senses” aren’t tingling. Perhaps that’s because I’ve read some of the other stories about mortality salience. It’s a very interesting field.

Whether or not Climate change is a taking place, or if it exists at all, (honestly, I no one can honestly KNOW, because if we KNEW we would already being doing something about it), it still makes sense not to pollute and hurt this planet. I was not playing the blame game, nor would it make sense because I hold my own skepticism on the subject.

However, I do agree with most of you conclusions. Although due to some misunderstandings and foggy connections, I assumed that the concept of progress what directly related to progress on an economic level. It is essentially correct, we have come – what appears to be – miles from where we have started. Yet, we still seem to be facing some of the same core frustrations about your existential “self’s.” But as soon as we are able to accept our death, our existence will shift for the better (which I believe was the point you were trying to expose.)

I’m not sure what you find unclear about the evidence presented: “people who were first asked to think about their own death were then less likely to agree with an essay claiming that progress is a myth” seems straightforward enough, as does “Alternatively, people who first read an essay claiming that progress is a myth were then more likely to think about their own death.”

I didn’t anywhere suggest that we don’t need genuine progress (whether political, material, environmental, etc), which is what you seem to be think I’m putting forward. What I’m suggesting is that much of what we call “progress” isn’t actually progress at all. To take your point about Ethiopian children (and by that I presume you mean “poor Ethiopian children”) it’s arguable that some of the drought that struck their country in the early 1980s and even last year was caused by “progress” in the developed world. We fly more and drive more, the climate changes, and they suffer. It’s conceivable, in fact, that we as a species could “progress” our way to global catastrophe.

The “discomfort” I was talking about was not material discomfort, as I think you were suggesting, although it’s not clear. I was talking about the existential discomfort of recognizing what’s really happening in the world. The idea of “progress” may be comforting because it connects us to something bigger than ourselves and therefore gives our lives meaning, but as I’ve already suggested, the idea of progress may well be an illusion.

I’m puzzled by your closing statements. China, per capita, produces a fraction of the greenhouse gases that the US does. Even as a whole, bearing in mind that they have a population three times that of the US, they produce only slightly more CO2 than the US. None of this is “pointing fingers” — it’s just recognizing what actually happens. Playing a blame game may also be comforting, but ultimately it’s a distraction. Blaming developing nations is merely a way of diverting ourselves from doing what we can actually do to make things better.

I’m a teetotaler though because the drunkards progress is what would probably happen to me when I start drinking.

The six element practice sounds interesting, but if I were to have any use for it, it would be modified not to let go of just any connections but rather to examine them, let go of the bad and strengthen the good. Not knowing what those six elements are, I suppose my modification might not amount to all six of the elements.