If we wish to be fair to death, then we need to say that the fate of the dying - whether early or old - is actually not very dire. After all, if we have the right to call immortality an illusion, then the dead do not realize that they have lost their life or that the living lack them. They cannot grieve over their separation from their loved ones.
After the paroxysmal fever of life, they sleep soundly; nothing else can touch them, not even dreams. The grave, as Job said, is a place where the wicked cease to bother us, and the tired rest. Those who die prematurely or in some other way cannot experience any blows, no disappointment, no remorse.
As Epicurus emphatically summed up 300 BC. e.: “When we exist, death is not yet present; and when death is present, we no longer exist. Only if a future life exists do we need to worry about the dead, or the dead themselves need to take care of themselves. Only immortality can disturb their eternal peace.
If death is the end, we can feel sorry for ourselves for the fact that we have lost a dear friend, or feel sorry for our homeland or humanity as a whole for the fact that they have lost a person of outstanding abilities; but, being reasonable, we cannot pity the deceased person himself, because he does not exist and cannot know either sadness or joy. We cannot be upset because of him as dead - we are upset only when we see a dying person dying against his will, in the consciousness that he leaves this life prematurely and, therefore, part of the human experience that was rightfully entrusted to him was not given to him.
We can continue to regret that he, as a living being, was unable to continue to enjoy the benefits that life gives; we can strongly wish that he was alive again and could share our pleasure on one occasion or another. But it is unreasonable to transfer these desires and regrets to the deceased as a dead person, because as a dead person he is absolutely insensitive to all such things, like some earth or inanimate matter. He does not exist in the same way as it was before his birth or conception.
The living, not the dead, suffers when death has done its job. The dead can no longer suffer; and we can even praise death when it puts an end to extreme physical pain or sad mental decline. Without pretending that the dead can somehow rejoice in their liberation from the vicissitudes of life, we can rejoice in the fact that the deceased is no longer subject to the trials and afflictions that may have caused him suffering. And in fact, it is natural to use euphemisms, like the verbs "sleep" and "rest", in relation to the dead. The usual formula "let him rest in peace" is a poetic feeling and can be used without any hint of supernatural meaning.
But it is wrong to speak of death as a "reward" because true reward, like true punishment, requires a conscious experience of the fact. Thus, for the one who sacrifices his life for a certain ideal and leaves forever in the desert of silence or oblivion, death is hardly a reward. Although some people, sacrificing their lives for their loved ones, will be quite sure that in this way they will achieve eternal bliss, there are many others who do so, knowing full well that death means their absolute end.
There is no higher type of morality than that in which one meets its hour of death in this way. In the life of every person there may come a moment when death will be more effective for his main goals than life; when what he stands for, thanks to his death, will become clearer and more convincing than if he acted in any other way. Great unyielding martyrs of the past, like Socrates and Jesus, have made this statement certain to be true. And many smaller personalities - countless unsung heroes of history and everyday life - have similarly demonstrated their contempt for death in the name of life, love, or some other higher obligation.
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As a rule, it was assumed that death, as such, is a very great evil, the worst enemy of man. In fact, some specific types in which death manifested itself throughout the history of mankind, constantly mowing individuals and masses of people in the prime of years and appearing in endless ugly forms, it is correct to characterize as evil.
However, death in itself, as a natural phenomenon, is not evil. There is nothing mysterious about death, nothing supernatural that could be legitimately interpreted in the sense that it is a divine punishment to which people and other living beings are subjected. On the contrary, death is an absolutely natural phenomenon, it played a useful and necessary role in the course of a long biological evolution.
Indeed, without death, this much reproached institution, which gave the fullest and most serious importance to the fact of the survival of the fittest and thus made possible the progress of organic species, the animal known as man would never have appeared.
People could not exist also in the event that they were not helped by the hand of death, which puts at their disposal the most basic means of human existence. Fuel, food, clothing, housing, furnishings, and reading material are all highly dependent on whether death is doing its job.
Coal, oil and peat come from decayed organic matter; wood for fuel and construction, for the manufacture of furniture and paper is obtained at the cost of the death of living trees; destroying plants, a person provides himself with food in the form of vegetables, bread and fruits, as well as clothing in the form of cotton, linen and artificial silk fabrics. The death of animals gives people not only fish, poultry, game and meat for food, but also furs and wool for clothing and leather for shoes.
Life and dying, birth and death are essential and related aspects of the same biological and evolutionary processes. Life asserts itself through death, which during the early period of evolution was called into existence through life and receives its full meaning from life. In the dynamic and creative process of the development of nature, the same living organisms do not live forever - at a certain stage they leave the stage giving way to newborn, more energetic and viable organisms.
The novelist Anne Parrish elaborated on this idea. Each of us, she wrote, “must die for life, for the flow of a river too big to be locked in a pond, for the growth of a seed too strong to remain in the same form. Since these bodies must perish, we are greater than we imagine. The most selfish have to be generous and give their lives to others. The most cowardly has to be courageous enough to leave."
Thus, death opens the way for the largest possible number of individuals, including our own descendants, to experience the joys of life; and in this sense death is an ally of unborn generations of people up to the endless centuries of the future.
Of course, there are living forms, such as trees, much more simply organized than humans, who live for centuries and tens of centuries. In his novel A Swan Dies After Many Years, Aldous Huxley satirically depicts the desire for immortality and emphasizes the ability of certain carp species to live for several hundred years. He depicts an English lord who has achieved a monstrous extension of life beyond the reach of the common man - more than 200 years - thanks to the fact that he ate the intestinal flora of this fish.
It is especially emphasized that, apparently, the only price of organic complexity and specialization, including the precious acquisitions of the mind and sexual love, which make a person's life so interesting and versatile, and he himself is endowed with such a living self-awareness, is death for the individual after relatively short period of time.
“The individual, so to speak, made a deal. For the individual emerges from the germplasm, acts, lives and ultimately dies for life. The individual is a piece of germplasm that has risen and detached from the rest of the mass in order to see and feel life, and not just blindly and mechanically multiply.
Like Faust, he sold his immortality in order to live more richly. At least for me, one of the best antidotes to the idea of personal extinction is to fully understand the naturalness of death and its necessary place in the great life process of evolution, which created the conditions for the growth of individuality and ultimately gave birth to a unique and brilliant phenomenon - the person himself.
Another consideration that might counter the prospect of oblivion is that each person literally carries all of eternity in his own being. In this case, I mean that the primary elements of the body, as required by the law of the indestructibility of matter, have always existed in one form or another and will always exist. The indestructible matter that makes up our physical organisms was part of the universe 5 billion years ago and will remain a part of it in 5 billion years. The infinite past is, as it were, focused in our bodies with their complex structure, and the infinite future is also radiated from them.
The social significance of death also has its positive aspects. After all, death makes us close to the common concerns and the common fate of all people everywhere. She unites us with deeply felt heartfelt emotions and dramatically emphasizes the equality of our ultimate destinies. The universality of death reminds us of the essential brotherhood of humans that exists in spite of all the cruel divisions and conflicts recorded in history, as well as in modern affairs.
John Donne expresses this wonderfully: “No man is an Island, whole in itself; every person is part of the Continent, part of the Continent; if the Sea washes away the Lump of Earth - this is the loss of Europe, the same as if the Cape was washed away, as if it was the Estate of your friends or your own; the death of any person diminishes me, because I am part of Humanity; and therefore never ask for whom the bell tolls - it tolls for you."
When we reach the understanding that death ends, then we know the worst, but this worst is actually not very bad. It is so far from bad that traditional Christianity and other religions have always insisted that for us sinful people to leave and simply disappear at the end of our lives would be a terrible violation of justice and would entail serious doubts about the existence of cosmic morality.
If we understand that death is a necessary and inevitable end of our personal life, we will be able to face this fateful event with dignity and calmness. This understanding gives us an invaluable incentive to ensure that we die as nobly as any mature and civilized person should die.
As for the idea of immortality, a large number of people in the world are currently in a state of regrettable indecision. Many of the people are incapable of either believing or renouncing faith. They feel that personal existence after death is a highly dubious assumption; but the possibility of such an existence never ceases to worry them. The final solution to this issue can only be a psychological gain for them.
And there can be no doubt that a resolute acceptance by them of the fact that immortality is an illusion would only have favorable consequences. The best thing is not only not to believe in immortality, but also to believe in mortality. This means not only a positive belief that death is the end, but also belief in the value of human life on this earth and in the high inner dignity of ethical and other achievements of people throughout their life.
People who have a similar philosophy and are guided by it in life, being devoted to some significant work, occupation or business, are best able to rise above the emotional crises generated by death. Bertrand Russell gave some good advice:
“In order to endure unhappiness steadily when it comes, it will be wise to cultivate in oneself in happier times a certain breadth of interests … A person with the appropriate vitality and energy overcomes all adversity, continuing to show after each blow an interest in life and the world that is not can be narrowed down to such an extent that one loss turns into fatal. To be defeated by one loss, or even by several, is not something to be admired as proof of sensitivity, it is to be mourned as a lack of vitality. All our attachments are at the mercy of death, which can carry away those we love at any moment. Therefore, it is necessary that our lives do not have that narrow focus that gives all the meaning and purpose of our life to the power of chance."
For many, the impact of death can be lessened by changes in accepted burial and mourning practices. In these matters, we still remain barbarians to a certain extent. The gloomy, silent cities of the dead grew hand in hand with the crowded, restless cities of the living. It is already becoming a serious problem to find enough space for cemeteries; the already bleak territory set aside for the dead is a heavy economic burden.
Cremation seems to be a smarter and healthier method of deciding the fate of the dead than burial in the ground. If desired, the ashes of the deceased can always be stored in an urn, and the urn can be placed in a suitable place. On the other hand, those who want to think about how the elements of their bodies will mix with the active forces of nature can leave instructions that their ashes be scattered over some piece of land or water that is dear to their hearts.
There can be no doubt that cremation would go a long way towards weakening the unpleasant and gloomy associations that inevitably arise when a dead body is kept intact and placed in a viewable coffin and a visitable tomb. In this regard, it would be wiser to discourage relatives or anyone else from looking at the corpse.
As for mourning, although in this respect individuals will always act on the basis of their personal inclinations, its most extreme and public manifestations are clearly deserving of regret. Hopefully, over time, the custom of wearing black, which is a remnant of old-fashioned religious prejudice, will disappear. One must also sincerely hope that simplicity and dignity will prevail at the funeral.
Nowadays, vulgarity and high monetary costs often go hand in hand in this matter. It is all too well known how dear death is to man; very often there is absolutely intolerable financial exploitation of death. When a husband or father dies, it’s bad enough for the family that it’s losing its main breadwinner, so it’s hardly worth putting ourselves in further danger of ruin by arranging costly funerals and burials.
But we do not think it reasonable to propose to completely abandon funeral ceremonies. Regardless of the religious and philosophical views of the deceased, their family and friends, some kind of last meeting of people and ceremony seems to be an appropriate and wise event. A community full of social spirit, keenly aware of the value of the individual, will want to honor its departed, show its compassion for them, or at least express to all who die, no matter how insignificant their earthly achievements, their democratic recognition, contained in a latent form in a funeral or memorial ceremony.
In addition, people who loved the deceased should be able to express their feelings and take part in a kind of final goodbye. Further, if these people experience, in connection with the loss of a person whom they knew well, the familiar feeling of unreality, they need to be given the opportunity to rebuild both their consciousness and their subconscious psyche in accordance with the fact that the fact of death has actually happened.
Neither human dignity nor wisdom requires the suppression of emotions in the face of death. Normal expressions of grief are not incompatible with reasonable self-control and can serve as a healthy cleansing and release from emotional stress. What should definitely be regretted is the transformation of grief over the death of a loved one into a small cult of constant mourning.
Death rites are a kind of art and must embody a certain beauty. In my opinion, they should emphasize the fundamental kinship of man with nature and the deep social ties inherent in experience; they should be devoid of sentimentality, ostentatious pomp and gloom.
But no matter what improvements we make in human customs, no matter how much we reduce the devastation caused by premature death, no matter how calmly we look at the prospects of our personal individual end, the loss of people close and dear to us will always be a heavy blow for us. especially if this death is sudden or premature.
It would be simply frivolous to wish or demand that people behave in such cases in a completely different way. When Jonathan Swift heard that Stella, the woman he had loved all his life, was dying, he wrote in one of his letters: “I am of the opinion that there is no greater madness than to enter into a friendship that is too strong and close, which will always make you unhappy one of the friends who survived."
It is understandable that Swift, overwhelmed by grief, could display similar feelings. But his opinion does not stand up to serious criticism; we cannot give up higher human relationships just to avoid a cruel goodbye at the moment of death. The most ardent feelings will always live between people; and where they live, it must be recognized once and for all that death cannot be accepted lightly, that it cannot be responded to with a shrug of the shoulders.
Strong love, when death comes, which brings separation, inevitably brings with it intense sadness. Both men and women who are not afraid of the deep experiences of life will not want to avoid the emotional consequences of death.
"Death devouring love" is one of Shakespeare's most apt expressions. When parents lose a son or daughter who has not passed the age of blooming youth, or a loving spouse loses his wife, or a wife loses a husband in his prime, all philosophies and religions in the world, regardless of whether they promise immortality or not, do not can eliminate or mitigate the impact of this brutal tragedy on loved ones.
It is only possible to suffer and endure, to be, as far as the forces allow, a firm stoic. True, a favorable time will gradually soften the blow inflicted by death. Further, broad interests and deep social connections that go beyond friends and family can also greatly contribute to pain relief. This is all true. But the tragedy remains. The impact of a death blow can be mitigated but cannot be eliminated.
Lamont Corliss