Death

There was an article in the New York Times the other day about the "death cafes" that are springing up everywhere.  No, this isn't a retake on the Jim Jones Koolaid thing.  What these gatherings are, people get together at Starbucks (or at a real coffee shop or tea room) to simply talk about Death, not actually do it.  http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/death-be-not-decaffeinated-over-cup-groups-face-taboo/ 

According to the article, these groups trace their origins to a web designer in London named Jon Underwood who organized the first "Death Cafe" in 2011.  Mr. Underwood, in turn, was inspired by the work of a Swiss psychologist, Bernard Crettaz,  who organized what he called called "cafes mortels," designed to encourage people to engage in "more open discussions about death." 

That's great.  I'm concerned with death as a philosophical problem, too-- in addition to its presenting a pretty heady math problem related to investment horizons and estate planning.  But I would suspect that there's a lot of wheel-spinning going on at those get-togethers, because you can't get away from the fact that the reason we're interested in Death in the first place is that it's the end of Life.  I have to think that in order to understand what Death is, you'd have to start out with a consensus on what Life is, and there's remarkably little agreement on that.

After all, just one last rattling breath, a gunshot, a heart spasm, or a splat on the pavement is all that stands between the Here and Now, whatever that is, and the Hereafter, if in fact there is such a thing.  So, in my humble opinion, it stands to reason that you'd get a good leg up on the problem of Death by taking stock of all that you know or can learn about "pre-Death," i.e., "Life."

Well, I think that we've all heard about Darwin by now, and the Law of the Jungle, a.k.a. the "Survival of the Fittest."  So, at one level, at least, Life is all about trying to stay alive.  Which, of course, begs the question, "Why?"  Why struggle to stay alive?

You'll find no shortage of people who will say that they "love" Life.  Most of those people don't live in war zones, though, nor do they suffer from lingering, painful diseases, nor have their kids recently been kidnapped, raped and murdered.  Then again, just living a life of privilege isn't enough to make one "love" Life; otherwise, movie stars and millionaires wouldn't become drug addicts or alcoholics or attempt suicide at a rate greater than troops returning from a year in Afghanistan.  Frankly, there's a lot of Life that is pretty crappy, all told, and even if things are going well for you it's possible to become upset about the destruction of the environment or children on chemotherapy or terrorism or illiteracy or cruelty to animals or the sudden death of James Gandolfini or intolerance or hunger or hate.

Of course, there are positive aspects to Life, too, like Springtime and flowers and Mozart and fireworks and Yosemite and horses and Rodin sculptures and cherry pie.  But like all of Life, all of these things are ephemeral (yes, even including Mozart and Rodin, although each of them will probably last longer than Yosemite, at the rate that the environment is deteriorating.)  And some of the "good" things, like fireworks and cherry pie, can also kill you.  And although in the Bible it says something like "the poor will always be with us," (or am I thinking of Dickens?) unfortunately nobody can say that about honeybees or blue whales or even elephants anymore, so how long do you think horses have got?

So, maybe there are reasons to "hate" Life, too, if you can't bring yourself to "love" it.  But either way, it's legitimate to ask if there's a point to it, and I think you have to have at least a working hypothesis on that point in order to formulate a theory concerning  the nature and meaning of Death.  (We can save the empirical experiments for later, if that's O.K. with you.)

If you approach the problem from the other direction, it's just as tough.  Is Death a "transition" or a "graduation" or a "fulfillment" of some kind, as people quoted in the NYT article conceptualized it, or is it just "the end?"  If it's just "the end," is it possible for Life to have meaning?  If it's a "transition," what's it a "transition" to?  And if it's a "graduation," what are the criteria for promotion to the next grade level?

As pointed out in the aforementioned NYT article, a lot of people (in Western nations, at least) shy away from talking about Death, and many people acknowledge that they fear it.  Why fear death?  It appears to be as natural as birth, after all, and as far as we know it is inevitable and, except in Oregon, is pretty unpredictable.  Maybe our fear of Death is nothing more than our instinctive fear of the unknown.  Maybe.

If you turn off like a light bulb when you die-- i.e., simply cease to exist-- all your troubles are over.  But, as Hamlet realized, you never can tell.  "To sleep... perchance to dream.  Aye, there's the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come..."  What if everything doesn't zero out?  What if your life really does flash before your eyes and then you have to remember all the smallest details forever?  After all, the human mind doesn't seem to be programmed to imagine its own mortality.  And since we don't really know what consciousness is, why assume that it resides exclusively in the brain, and that it is dependent for its existence on the continued viability of that organ?  What about those stories of organ transplant recipients who begin to experience memories associated with the deceased individual who donated the organs?  What about dreams, what about ghosts?  And, dare I say it, what about the possibility of retribution for all the crappy decisions and bad acts and evil thoughts?  Have we done enough good deeds to balance things out?  Are we accountable to Anyone but ourselves for all of that?

Some people (well, maybe a lot of them) think that all these questions are answered by their particular brand of religion.  Ricky Gervais, whom I admit is an acquired taste, explored the formulation of religious dogma in a film called "The Invention of Lying," in which the protagonist, living in a fictional world in which everyone always tells the truth, attempts to comfort his dying mother by making up a story about a "Man in the Sky" who controls everything and has a beautiful afterlife waiting for Mom.  Mom is comforted, but this story is overheard, and the thing quickly spirals out of control.  Next thing you know, the son is a world-famous prophet.  What is impressive to me is how hungry all those naive, honest people were for some answers, and how uncritical they were in examining the "prophet" once he started giving out the answers they sought.  "How do you know?" is a question that never came up... pretty much like real life. (And in real life, of course, if the question did come up, the response would be gibberish:  "Because the Bible says so," or "According to the magic golden plates that I lost," or "The Angel Gabriel buttonholed  me in a cave.")

If there is no purpose to Life, then it seems to follow naturally that there is no purpose to Death, either.  If there is a purpose to Life, then is there necessarily a purpose to Death?  (Other than just making room for more Life, that is.) Or is it something that just happens?  In the case of infants and kittens who die young, does either their life or their death have a purpose?  What is the purpose of the life of an evil, destructive person?  Or the death of a gentle nobody?  If Life is all there is, what's wrong with being a hedonist?  Or a sadist, for that matter, or a child molester?  What's worthy about being a saint?

If there is an Afterlife, a strange concept for which the empirical evidence is at best inconclusive, is it something that is the same for everybody, or is it tailored to the individual?  Are we constructing our own Heavens and Hells right now?  Or is there a big, shining City out there somewhere, with incessant harp music and hymns, one size white robe fits all?  Why would switching from Led Zeppelin or Steely Dan to that stuff necessarily be a reward as opposed to a punishment?  Remember that "Twilight Zone" where the crook winds up dead, and thinks he's in Heaven because he gets whatever he wants and things always go his way... until he realizes that the complete lack of adversity (can't even lose at pool) is driving him nuts, and it is revealed (by a leering, whited-suited Sebastian Cabot) that he's actually in the Other Place?

In the end, it all comes down to a belief system, whether you start from some holy book or a science text.  Either you believe that Life and Death matter, and have rules of some kind, or you don't.  And either way, I'll bet you stop and wonder sometimes.