On Death ...
Death is regrettable, life is inevitable, but love is imperative. I think I've thought about those three things the most in my life, in all my daydreams and nightmares. Nothing else has occupied my mind so much. They led me to philosophers and pontificators. I guess I should begin with how I feel about the end.
I should open with a declaration, that I do believe there is life after death. There most certainly must be an afterlife. Without something beyond our mortal coils, the whole human condition is meaningless. And I refuse to believe not only humans but all life on Earth, even the very firmament itself and the great star it circles while whipping around a galaxy that spreads apart from other galaxies .. that all life and all motion is meaningless.
I've had a taste of nihilism, and I reject a good deal of it. Neitzsche had a couple good ideas. In the chapter "The Shadow" from 'Thus Spake Zarathustra', the Shadow says to our dear Zarathustra, "Nothing liveth any longer that I love; how should I still love myself? 'To live as I incline, or not to live at all': so do I wish; so wishest also the holiest." He brings up a good point. We are all capable of determining when we should cease to exist, but the majority of us let death happen to us. Why do we do that? Well, most of us have happy lives, and we live in content. A good deal of us don't have that luxury. We scrape for nothing. People live in horrible countries where their government has forgotten about them. The earth is being overpopulated and underfed. And while people consider leaving the world, most are afraid to do it. Some are afraid out of natural skepticism, our innate fear of the unknown. Others have had fear driven into them by religious zealots. And yet others due to obligations to loved ones. Me, I'm selfish in this sense. I'm totally selfish. I have always considered my life to be my own. If I don't feel love any more, and I don't have a desire for anything .. why should I stay? Shakespeare put it as such:
"To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous fortune;
Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: To die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to?
...
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Countrey from whose Bourne
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather beare those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all"
It's cowardice that keeps us here. I remember when I read The Brothers Karamazov that there was a footnote about some famous theologian who preached that suicide wasn't a sin, and he drowned himself in a river shortly thereafter. I guess if you are afraid of something after death, it has to be one of two things, nothing or something. And I think most people are afraid of "something". The idea of Hell. A little horned man in red tights with a prod, maybe he has companions, and they prod people all day. Silly notion. Even if I were to believe in a person like Lucifer .. I would feel sorry for him. I would pity the devil. "Satan" is Hebrew for enemy or accuser. So he turned on God, and God cast him out. Must be the same God responsible for all those floods and deaths and plagues. That Old Testament, vengeful God. While Milton gives us a nice portrait of how things shaped out after "dubious battle" and the fall, and Satan's temptations of the newly formed humans, it's a flawed story in keeping with modern Christianity. The Christian God is a god of love and forgiveness, even unto Angels and 2/3rds of Heaven's deserters. But I don't even believe in a hot place, down there. I've read of temptations of Jesus in the Bible, and I don't know if I can believe that. I think there is a punishment worse than a Lake of Fire and all of John's hogwash in Revelation, and not so much even the Gospel of John. If anyone's account is to be taken, it's the Gospel of Luke, and even then I question some parts. But for those fearing torture and a fiery furnace, I would say to read your bible. The worst fate a man or a soul can suffer is the loss of God. If Satan suffered at all, it wasn't because he was in Pandemonium, it was because he was without the presence of God. I have some doubt that I have to get rid of before I die.
This is my doubt, that there could possibly be nothing after death. That Neitzsche and the nihilists and atheists were right, and there is nothing beyond this world but science and facts and a seemingly meaningless universe. That all we can attain to become is the Ubermensch, and we must all climb on top of one another if we're to be complacent while we as individuals exist. Then another thought arises, one voiced by the character Smerdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov ... "If God is dead, everything is permissible." I've heard a lot of Christians espousing the naive "With God, anything is possible", I say it's naive because a good amount of people have done things with or without God in their lives, Neitzsche for instance. The saying itself takes the human element and all human ingenuity out of the equation, and attributes everything to God. These are the people that glorify everything to God, in the highest. While I think God has created some glorious works, I think he created us so that we could create things ourselves. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, God doesn't want us to sit here on earth and do nothing. He wants us to grow and think and create. He would take the same pride in us as a father would watching his child crawl and walk and stand up tall. I think we owe a lot of credit to ourselves. Plus, I don't think God has as much of a hand in the affairs of the world, the way he used to, or if he ever did. I believe he created the universe and the world, planted seeds and watched them grow, created animal life and saw them change from being to being. About 8 years ago, after reading Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, I believed that we were just another station in Simian evolution, and something higher would come after us, and so on and so on. While I do believe in evolution, I'm starting to believe that we are at the apex of all creation .. that maybe all evolution has led up to this point. And while that's a stupid and irrational belief, I hold to it. I think we're at a point of understanding here in time, that if we move forward either away from God into a purely rationalized and analyzed universe, where all things are accounted for (which I highly doubt they will be), we could lose the whole point of existence. That isn't to say that we should head back either, and do away with all the progress we've made or are still making in understanding the world. I just think we should move with God, as Einstein and Galileo did. But maybe I'm wrong about us being the end of the line for the Primates. I question myself too, you know. So that covers "With God, anything is possible". I'll save "If God is dead, everything is permissible" for later. Back to death.
If we somehow end up in a world without a God, then we are really in Hell. Either on this little planet, third rock from the Sun, or after our dying breath. Because without God there is no meaning or purpose to life. You might think I mean, we must be subservient to God. We have to worship him all day and all night. No. I mean we have nothing out there except the blackness of space. That's hell. No companionship. No reason for anything. Everything ever made by human hands, every creature that scurried along the surface, every person you ever cared about will one day mean nothing, and the Earth wont even be here, nor the Sun, and the galaxy will clash with another galaxy and we might become a super galaxy and more chaos and entropy until we're all just a mess of nothing. Back to ashes and nothing else.
I don't buy it. I believe in Heaven. There are other religions to consider, but I don't buy reincarnation. It's a near-endless pattern of pain and suffering, hopefully followed by enlightenment. But even if you make it to nirvana, then what? With who? What's the point if we don't have each other. I read up on Mahayana Buddhism, it's probably the nearest to my own personal philosophy. Like everything else, it has its flaws and I have my questions. I just can't deal with reincarnation .. I don't need to go through this place however many times to get it right ... I really think it's just one and done.
Then you have to consider, who makes it into Heaven? How can bad people be rewarded into Heaven? Crimes against the innocent, and keep in mind I mean all innocents, not just children but animals, good people, etc. Questions considered by Ivan in Karamazov, in the chapter Rebellion. If the whole world has to suffer so we can attain eternal harmony, is it worth it that innocent people had to pay? When will the victim embrace the murderer? Ivan says to Alyosha, for the love of humanity he doesn't want it. He doesn't want a world where such sacrifices have to be made. Too high a price is asked for harmony. It's a legitimate question. How can Heaven allow this? And then we're back to Rebellion, and Lucifer falling out of favor with God. How can we as humans accept this? And I personally don't have an answer to that, except faith. That somehow in faith, all will be revealed. I know of mass murderers, from the first antichrist, Napoleon Bonaparte, to the second, Adolf Hitler, to modern war criminals like Saddam and Osama. And I know they all started off as little boys or little girls. Brought up in bad situations, in bad ways, and they turned to evil. I don't pretend to know how God doles out punishment. Maybe in the form of banishment. I really don't know, I just have faith that it's taken care of.
So, standing on a precipice (Crime & Punishment), a thousand feet up, with nothing in front or behind you, how long do you stand up there before you simply give in? In any case, it's a transition. I know it to be a transition into the afterlife. It's a natural part of life, something none of us can avoid. We all got it coming. Why not be in charge of when and where? Clint Eastwood once said, "It's a hell of a thing killin a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna get." It's true, you can't have any more earthly pleasures. Yet I believe what's yours is yours, and you take everything that's important with you.
I'm sure of what lies ahead, after death. I given death a lot of thought during my life. I've focused most of the questions I've had over the years into what I can comfortably say are well-thought out answers. For those I can't, I leave up to God. You have to believe death is not the end, that we will be reunited someday. Anything less, and your world is the void, and you are without lasting meaning. There is so much more to this place than just what we see. The real world, behind this world, will be revealed.