07 Jan 2011
Death: Bad?

This is an essay inspired by Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchely. You know what: he's right. It's the fear of death that drives this culture. Or at least the Christian parts of it, which is to say, nearly everything.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself. -- FDR

If Roosevelt was right, we should be afraid, very afraid. For there is an epidemic of fear that sweeps across this land like a dark shadow, clouding everything we think, do and say.

We are scared to death of dying.

It's been growing in our culture since I was a kid - so the effect of being middle aged is serving me well, as I can see the "before" and "after". I now understand the impulse to nostalgia that is evident in many of our senior citizens, and is getting more evident in me with each passing day.

You can see it in the health campaigns that regularly convulse our culture: we all want to live longer. When I was a kid, a mere 4 decades ago, seat belts weren't even standard equipment in automobiles. Car seats were unheard of. Smokers made up nearly 60% of the population, and a non-smoking bar would have gone out of business in a day or two.

Now, don't get me wrong: I don't particularly want to cross the Rainbow Bridge. I'm not suicidal. But neither am I obsessed to the point of rearranging the details of my life merely to prolong it by a year or two. Because, statistically speaking, that's the net effect of counting carbs, quitting smoking, selling our Harleys and giving up skydiving: one to five years added to our life expectancy. Which has already been stretched beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors.

Fear of death drives this. I've tried to think of other motivating factors, but can find none: it's got to be raw, naked fear.

This fear is manifested in our obsession with safety, to the exclusion of nearly everything else.

In 1965 we didn't make our kids look like the Michelin Tire mascot just to ride a bike or a skateboard.

It's manifested in "ghost hunter" shows: "oh, look, somebody actually died here..." Death is mysterious, remote and creepy.

The fear shows up in folks like Ray Kurzweil:

Some elements of Kurzweil's lifestyle are conventional. He exercises frequently, does not eat to excess, and does not abuse recreational drugs. Many others, however, are controversial and may be explained by his obsession with living as long as possible. Kurzweil ingests "250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea" every day and drinks several glasses of red wine a week in an effort to "reprogram" his biochemistry.[55] Lately, he has cut down the number of supplement pills to 150.

I'm not saying that any individual course of action for safety purposes is necessarily wrong. I'm not saying everybody should go drive drunk while puffing a cigar and munching a Big Mac. I'm saying that it's our collective reaction to fear of death that is driving large segments of our culture. Death is a part of life. We're all going there, kicking and screaming or not. We can't take it with us.

It's one thing for individuals to dream of immortality. But a culture that denies the reality of death is a culture that's doomed to die a quick one.

What defines bourgeois life in the West today is our pervasive dread of death.

(link) [New York Times]

Update: Here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about, as well as the benefits of overcoming this morbid fear.

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