Clinging to Life and Denying Death
Work has afforded me plenty of time to sit and think. The macro I mentioned earlier that reduced the amount of time it took to do a repetitive task has now grown to the point where it simply does everything without input from me, and all I have to do is watch it go. What I've been thinking about is the cycle of life and death, which I can blame Joseph Campbell for, as I've been reading his Hero with a Thousand Faces at my leisure.
What I think I've come to realize is that we (I don't know exactly who that encompasses, but certainly more than just myself) have decided to value life to such an extent that the value of death is becoming forgotten. Birth and other life milestones are taken to be the good aspects of life, while death is relegated to the negative, but I don't believe that should be the case. Rather, death should be final good part of one life that makes room for another birth. Take for example a forest fire, which must necessarily occur in order to clear out old wood and allow new trees to grow, but people seem to want there not to be fires in forests. Then earlier this summer there was an enormous fire that consumed the old growth that apparently would have been cleared by smaller, more regular fires, but since there weren't any, it burned out of control and made itself into a problem. It's as though the cessation of miniature cycles brought about by a misunderstanding of life and death had given way to a far larger and more dangerous cycle.
Conversely, the Ise shrine in Japan is a wooden structure that has been around for centuries, though its longevity isn't due to mankind's meticulous preservation of it, but because every twenty years it is newly reconstructed. As long as there are people and trees in the world, there will never not be shrine in Ise, and it's because of an acceptance of life and death in their natural roles that this is possible.
Human life, I think, requires a similar understanding. Anyone who is born must die, just like anyone who has died must have been born, and trying to avoid the last step as unwise as trying to postpone or avoid other steps in life (the smaller forest fires, as it were). I'm 25 (an adult), yet I still attend college (a young man's pursuit) and I have no career (a child's privelage). I'm an adult by age, yet I haven't truly passed into adulthood because there are aspects of my younger life that have not yet died to allow me to move on. It's not such a terrible thing to be an old boy, but it may shorten my time as an adult, and make difficult my elderly years, and my death may come before I'm ready.
I don't really have a conclusion to all of this, I am just thinking after all, but I can see how a love of life could lead to a poorer one in the absense of a need for death, and that seems like something one ought to avoid.
22 comments:
I blame the selfishness of Western culture. We seem to believe that every thing should happen in a way in which we get what we want. Death is thought of as a negative because we can't get the opinions of those who have experienced it, only that of those left without that which they previously had.
Also, I blame the arrogance of said Western Culture, in that we think we can control every aspect of the world around us. It is just plain naive to think that we can control mother nature, and counter act father time.
Death is the end of life. The question of how to acknowledge that end is difficult to answer. How one can live with an acceptance of one's inevitable death and also know how to act in the meantime? If I am to die ought I eat? Ought I take medicine? Ought I exercise? To pursue health with the understanding that one will inevitably die creates a sort of dilemma. Because, certainly, a 26 year old ought to eat. But what of a 40 year old? A 70 year old?
Unless we are to acept that we are going to die yet at the same time fight against death and strive to live, but what sense does that make?
Often in stories there will be some sort of death-bed acceptance, but I think that these have to be seen as they are, stories, idealized tales of reality crafted to impart an understanding or teach a lesson. How someone is to live in the real world is still not explained.
Hanover has a class called, "You're going to die" in which students read books and watch movies about death and accepting death and mortality. Those sorts of things. This is done, in part, to explain to freshmen that they will inevitably die, because youth often forgets this.
Once one comes to this realization, though, what then? How does one live while knowing that one will eventually not? How does one act?
I'd say we don't exactly disvalue death.. we undervalue, most assuredly.. but.. well.. it defines what it is to be human, you know.. I mean.. literally everything we do is in terms of coping with death. We just have gone out of our way to avoid talking about it explicitly.... which camoflauges and muddies things.
Man, You're Going To Die was a wonderful class.. more so becuase of the girl who falls off Crowe Falls during it.
There's a lot more I want to say and think about here.. but I'm at work.. so.. I'm just spitballing without running it through my parsing/editing mode.. conclusions are likely full of shit... more to come when I get a moment.
The thing I keep thinking about is how very much my fundie friends seem to fear death. As if the fact that they fabricated an invisible man into the sky wasn't proof enough, they way they talk about funitarls is just bizzare. If one thinks there is an invisible man in the sky, and that one's friend who died is now with that invisible man in the sky, what the fuck is there to be sad about?
"They're gone!"
So fucking what? You'll be gone, too. And since Eternity > 100 years I don't see why having to live without them for, say, the 80 years you could possibly squeak out of this existence is at all your concern, given that you think you will spend eternity with them I don't see the problem.
I can understand mourning loss if you don't think there is an afterlife, because then they're fucking gone. But if you think there is an afterlife, and you think you'll go to the same place your friend is while all of those assholes will be somewhere else? What the fucking hell are you sad/scared about?
Unless the fundamental problem is that you're scared, and your invisible father-figure story isn't quite doing the job you want it to do.
... the interesting thing about this discussion is that it inevitably returns to religion, and least cuturally for us, Christianity.
Same thing as the class. IF anything, that's where the real crime comes into the picture.. not the selfishness of Western Culture, but it's monopolistic nature.. it comes in and sets up shop and dominion.
I mean.. I'm not fully convinced that we don't consider death at all/only consider it negatively.. A case can be made that the majority of our attempts to cheat death, put it off, and so on are noble in as far as they have been relatively successful. They are the epitome of being human... to struggle against a clock, and do your thing to survive past it, as singular entity or as a species..
In a sense, the fact that we even struggle acknowledges that we recognize and accord death it's due.
None of this precludes the fact that I want the return of Memento Moris.
The Christianity thing.. damnit.. lost that thought, in scrambling around here.. at work, still, bear with me, last day.
So.. here's the thing about fundies/funerals/life.
They're so scared of death that they've turned life into a negative fetish. Look at folks like the Quiverfull crowd. I would say they're the epitome of what Adam was getting at in the initial post.. Folks who are so wrapped up in the life is sacred that they resist ALL forms of birth control including simple family planning.
The problem with Adam's outlook, at least so far, seems to be that it becomes very easy to look at it and say "hell, if death's coming, it's coming, it's inevitable, so why try and put it off.. hell, why try anything?" style ennui/apathy that fundies always seem to stick to athiesm..
You don't find it arrogant to believe the inevitability of change over time can be overcome?
On one hand, I can understand struggling against that which we cannot defeat. It is what drives the human spirit. But on the other hand, we must learn to embrace that which we can not change, in this case death.
This is actually the case according the five stages of death. Acceptance being the final stage.
The problem is that acceptance is rarely the case for those who continue to live after someone close dies. This is attitude that passes on, as the person who has died can not share their feelings anymore.
I say selfish, because those who continue to live rarely willingly accept the loss. They refuse to concede something they once had. To me this is selfish.
But selfism is not, de facto, bad.
I suppose that's what I'm getting at... Adam's shrine example is, in a sense, a selfish creation. Human crafting, and continually RECRAFTING this shrine in defiance of time? Kinda selfish.. the shrine is not natural, serves only the builder-humanity...
I get what you're saying.. but I think that attitude carries within it an intrinsic and important good, as well... I'm not certain how to pin down that concept, is all.
I mean.. the same seeds of that selfism are the seeds of human greatness, of literature and monument...
The problem with saying "that which we cannot change" is that lots of times that which we think we cannot change actually can be changed. It's just a matter of learning how. That idea leads to plenty of retarded ideas, though. So it's often best to sidestep the "ever" argument and just talk about how things are now.
I think "selfish" defines much of the things in this discussion. We think of our selves and so our own death means, to us, the end of everything. We think of "those we lost" in terms of our loss.
Even if we try to accept death we have the question, "So, what do I do now?" There is the selfish question of how one is to live until one dies. Confronting one's own death is itself a selfish confrontation. It's all about the individual when viewed from the perspective of the individual.
"the shrine is not natural"
There are nothings which are not natural.
"an intrinsic and important good"
intrinsic goods don't exist and they are not real.
Do you honestly believe that at some point in time humans will have discovered the secret of immortality, and more importantly do you see any possibly scenario in which this would be a good thing?
secret?
Actually, we have discovered the secret of immortality. For some inexplicable reason, human cells just stop reproducing at the rate they would when they were younger. Scientists have yet to discover the root cause of this.
I should have clarified this earlier, and asked if you believe that humans will discover a way to stop their own natural decomposition. This is what I mean t by the "secret of immortality".
I hope we don't figure out how to keep people alive forever, unless at that point it becomes socially acceptable to kill one's self in order to make room for the people who enjoy living in 99 degree god awful Indiana summers, which by that point will probably be 115 degree god awful Indiana summers.
I love our climate
Really? Because it's pissed the fuck off at you.
"The problem with Adam's outlook, at least so far, seems to be that it becomes very easy to look at it and say "hell, if death's coming, it's coming, it's inevitable, so why try and put it off.. hell, why try anything?" style ennui/apathy that fundies always seem to stick to athiesm.."
I think that fatalistic attitude is a product on focusing on death to the exclusion of life, the counterpart to pursuing life in denial of death.
What I think I'm really driving for is a balance, whereby you are admitting to yourself that you and others will die and will be finished, and that you and others are currently alive and are still doing things. And then on a smaller scale, that there are stages of life which have their own beginnings and ends, which I think may be the source of answers to "what now", though the particulars of each stage depend on whatever culture pleases you.
And I don't think immortality is for everyone, and perhaps not even anyone. I assume the only people who would appreciate living forever would be the very ambitious, and I'm not sure they're the ones who should have as much time as they want. As for everyone else, it'd be torture having to live forever after some time with nothing to do. But who knows.
And the shrine at Ise houses the spirit of something or another, so these people aren't crafting a structure for themselves, but for a power apart.
Faulting a viewpoint because it can be drug out to a logical extreme isn't a sensible thing to do. Any view can be drug out to a logical extreme.
I think the stages of life, though, are constructs we've created. The idea that there is childhood, mid-adulthood, adulthood, elderly, or whatever is something we assume onto reality once we see people aging and we exist in a society which breaks people into groups by age. If someone wants to be like Buster and live with their mother into their late 30s there's nothing that says they can't do that, and nothing that says that it's necessarily wrong or incorrect.
Nietzsche says that for pretty much every value we have it only exists because someone says it is true. Other people can just as easily say it's not true. I think this is true of the "stages of life" idea.
From a certain point on, I can agree with you. Young adulthood through elderly are labels we press to describe generations. This label can mean different things depending on the culture, and level health care.
But childhood is a certainty. It is undebatable fact that children are in a development phase of their life, and are capable of learning at a much faster rate.
This stage doesn't exist just because someone says it to be so. This stage exists as a result of nature, because it would be impossible for a higher order being to just appear fully matured and experienced.
Notes for discussion, as I finish the thread-
Shrine- indirectly for themselves, though.. "Selfish" in the sense that something drives them to build it, and without it, little would change
(Selfish seems important, but also perjorative in this discussion)
Balance between understanding Life/Death... wouldn't that be the silent majority, so to speak? The problems stick as visible, audible parts, becuase the problemic folks are vocal and seek attention?
Terminology here is tripping everything up in some sense.. Childhood as a phase exists as Kyle names it.. but does the cachet of meaning "childhood" holds exist? That's in part what Adam and Jay are getting at, it seems... and what Buster will never give up. Oh how he hates Lucille.
Also... I miss my angle brackets. Stupid HTML error messages. Your time is ended, Death comes for you! Error Fixx'd!
Is it possible to address these problems entirely through quotes from Ronin Warriors?
"QUAAAAKE with FEAAAAAAAAAAAR!"
Anubis, no!
Damn you, Talpa!
Armor of Hardrock, Dao Gi!!!
Kento? What? Get out of here... idiot.
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