3.The fear of death.
It’s
a topic most people avoid, and for good reason. Every single organism avoids it
as much as their instincts and biology allows.
Even the smallest of insects will scamper away at the first sign of
danger. Microscopic protists will wiggle
their tiny cilia to swim as fast as they can from their predators. But humans are the only species that can
imagine their return to non-existence over and over again in their heads. This additional mental fear is solely unique
to our incredibly creative mind. I
wonder if my beloved cat has ever questioned “to meow or not to meow”?
So what is to be done for such a poor creature as us?
A
majority of us decide not to ponder too much about it - stay on the bright side of the road. I know a friend who refuses to see any movies
that are not comedies or life affirming dramas. No films with violence or tragedy
need apply. He always attempts to fill
the day with laughter and glee - to
focus on the aesthetically beautiful arts and attune the senses to the glorious
offerings that nature has to offer.
Fears, however,
have a unique ability to grow in strength the more one tries to hide them. Oliver Burkeman writes about the Ironic
Process Theory. Try to not think about a
white bear for the next minute. It’s
almost an impossible task. No matter how
hard one tries, inevitably, the white bear pops up. This is what also occurs with our attempts to
put all negative thoughts deep into our subconscious. There is another drawback to avoidance,
besides it’s ineffectiveness. When the
universe, as it often does, sends tragedy our way, we are left defenseless and
ill prepared to incorporate such dark events into our lives. It’s as if we were
children once again, being introduced to an adult world full of scary adult
challenges. The tragedy may come in the form of disease, personal loss, or
death – but nevertheless, ones which shatter our protective shield of beauty
and pleasure like it would a soap bubble.
In
the rest of the book, I’ll tackle the myriad of ways that the fear of death
manifests itself in our lives. For now
however, let us tackle death head on,
with all its scientific, spiritual, moral, and emotional implications. Perhaps, if we lay out all the facts about
death, it will be like a vaccine that strengthens, rather than debilitates.
The
first method of overcoming the fear of death is to tackle it with the part of
our brain meant for rational thought – the frontal cortex – rather than our
ancestral lizard brain – the emotionally turbulent limbic system. When we logically analyze any fear, we realize
that we dread the negative effects of an event.
From this perspective, I will argue that the labeling death as purely a “bad”
event is irrational.
Death
in fact gives positive meaning to our lives.
Imagine we were immortal and have lived for as long as we could
remember. When one has an eternity at
one’s disposal, the motivation to experience or do anything at the present
moment loses all meaning. Why do it
today if one has forever to do it in?
Besides this, after an eternity, one eventually does try everything –
several million times. All actions,
plans, achievements, and experiences loses its intrinsic motivation for
existing rather than not. The very
concept of existing makes sense if the polar opposite, nonexistence – uhmm –
exists.
The
believers of a heaven may say, that after death, the human psyche is relieved of ever being
satiated or bored. Perhaps we may just
sit on a cloud and become infused with an euphoric trance and sit in awe of the universe. Of course there are some existential
protestations that can be brought up to criticize this scenario, but
nevertheless, religion at least offers those who are capable of faith a remedy
for a fear of death (unless one expects to go to hell). But for those of us who are at best agnostic
towards the belief in a supreme being, immortality has an unsolvable problem of
meaninglessness and boredom. But more on the topic of religion in another
chapter.
Even
if we accept the premise that death is necessary to have meaning in our lives,
we still may anguish over the limited amount of experiences we are allotted in
this short period of time. Perhaps one regrets never seeing the
pyramids, the polar ice caps, or hear the festivities at Carnivale, run with
the bulls in Spain, etc, etc.
Again,
Burkeman beautifully retorts to this lament by asking why we don’t feel the same
way about the seemingly endless eons that passed before we came into this
world. We have already missed out on
several billion years’ worth of experiences already by the time we were
born. We missed our chance to view
Michaelangelo at work, to live in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, to
see the discovery of the new world, and so on.
We shall never see dinosaurs roaming the land. If we have been living so far, without
anguishing the unseen past, then it is irrational to also anguish the unseen
future as well.
The
other daunting reality is that death puts a stop to the achievement of all our
unrealized goals. Perhaps you wanted to
create that masterpiece, or make a name for yourself in a career, or raise a family. Many fear that death will come all too quickly,
before their lifelong dream has been accomplished.
This
argument is a circuitous one. When we
question why we want to achieve these goals in the first place, we realize it’s
a delusional way to achieving an illusionary immortality. We believe that if we leave some remarkable
achievement behind, we will cheat death in a certain sense. Our self would live on and somehow appease
the fact of our bodily death. It should
be clear by now, that motivations spurred on by a fear of death, is not the
path towards happiness.
I
always pondered about how so little we know about famous figures we have
learned about in our history books. How
truly scant is the public’s awareness of the full humanity of that person. Names become mere answers to test questions
in school or trivia games. There is no
real sense of the totality of that person as they lived. Like the myriad of tombstones inscribed with
names, even the most famous among us are remembered with just a few lines in
most of our minds. This immortality
seems not worth the effort to obtain. Thank you, Mr. Edison for inventing the
moving pictures.
Finally,
death allows us the greatest example of how thoughts deemed negative, can be a
source of connectedness and transcendence.
Humanists have always attempted to break down barriers among people by
pointing to every man’s right to pursue happiness. That all men are created equal. But the reality is that we are not all
created nor live in equal circumstances.
We find ourselves in different social classes and gender classifications. Some are fortunate to grow up in beautiful
neighborhoods with great schools. Some
have immense talent; while others – have you ever heard of Alexander the Great’s
Son – Alexaner the Mediocre? Others may be weighed down by poverty or
dysfunctional family circumstances. Add
to this the ethnic and cultural differences that seem to divide many of us, and
we can see how the humanist’s challenge is a herculean one.
Death,
however, has been aptly described as the great equalizer. In its finality, the king and the pauper will
finally share the same fate. The most
gorgeous actress in the world with the elephant man; the billionaire and the
homeless living beneath the subways; all of us must face that inevitability
that confounds us all. This is what
connects us toour humanity – that we must face this with our conscious selves
and the fears they illicit. It humbles
us. So the next time you feel alienated
by all the differences in the people around you….think about death – and feel
connected.
