Autumn XII. Death and dying

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Autumn X-XI. Cosmogony and Brave New World

The free man, says Spinoza, thinks of nothing less often than of death. Free, in his sense of the word, I may not call myself. I think of death very often; the thought, indeed, is ever in the background of my mind; yet free in another sense I assuredly am, for death inspires me with no fear... the cessation of being has never in itself had power to afflict me. Pain I cannot well endure, and I do indeed think with apprehension of being subjected to the trial of long deathbed torments. It is a sorry thing that the man who has fronted destiny with something of manly calm throughout a life of stress and of striving, may, when he nears the end, be dishonoured by a weakness which is mere disease. But happily I am not often troubled by that dark anticipation.

...the end having come, and with it the eternal peace, what matter if it came late or soon?... There is no such dignity as that of death....

Alpha.

From Cosmogony to Eschatology... a natural enough progression, I guess, though I suspect it usually runs the other way. The conclusion from the previous sections also applies here: About what happens after we die we haven’t a clue. Personally, I think there’s a 50/50 chance that death is like switching off a light. The other option (again, just my feeling, really) is that, rather than like a light going out, the electricity from our light flows back and merges with the grid. Birth then would be an isolation (individuation) while death would be a reunion of sorts.

But here’s the kicker, if it goes the lamp-being-switched-off way, I’ll never know, since “I” will have been extinguished. And if it goes the other way, I will not get an instant of satisfaction about being right, because this will then be something “I/we” have always known. It will be like awakening from a dream in which I was arguing that people couldn’t actually fly.

Perhaps the reason I’m OK with Quantum uncertainty is that I’m so used to Cosmogonic and Eschatolgical uncertainty. Scientists may be freaked out by that damn cat being both alive and dead, until some consciousness takes a peek, but philosophy has been dealing with this kind of shit for thousands of years. What I don’t understand is why more people aren’t interested in these topics. I read that people tend to become more interested as they age, as Death begins to act like a dogged telemarketer, but I want to ask, “Why now?” I would think the right age would be much much younger, back when you first lost friends or family members. I guess the usual cultural rituals succeed in distracting most people from asking any serious questions -- or from questioning the pat answers that are given.

Next: Autumn XIII. Stoics - part 1.