Taboos, who needs 'em!

[liv]

I made a big post talking explicitly about class and finances and the sky doesn't seem to have fallen in, so why don't I talk about death while I'm at it?

My social circle have been celebrating a sort of pre-death wake for author Iain Banks who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He's very well liked both personally and as a writer, and he's shockingly young, and people are devastated. papersky wrote a magnificent elegy and rant against mortality in his honour. She mentioned in the comments that: There's not a whole lot of comfort in the face of death for people who aren't religious. That sparked off a whole pile of thoughts which I think are better here than dumped in the comment thread full of grieving people.

I am religious (by most definitions), but I find more comfort in broadly secular responses to death than stereotypical "religious" ones. At least, if somebody tells me the equivalent of: 'don't be sad, they're safe with Jesus now', that's completely unhelpful to me. And only partly because my religion doesn't share that Christian view of the afterlife; more importantly, there is no comfort for me in a religious position which doesn't acknowledge my grief as real. Neither does it help me if you tell me it's part of God's plan for people to suffer debilitating illnesses and die young; my conception of God's plan is that humans were created to repair what is broken in this world, and I can't fulfil that plan if I go around being piously resigned to things that are patently awful.

Religious rituals can be comforting, of course. Gathering together with a community I'm connected to, having practical actions to follow, having familiar, resonant words to recite, all of those things do help even if I don't always agree with the content of the words, not in that moment of raw misery when someone is lost; faith that there will be some kind of resurrection and continuity doesn't alter that. It seems to me like the SF fandom community are doing pretty well at creating a spontaneous ritual to mourn Banks, and using the internet, blogs and Twitter and so on, to connect to other mourners. I think that doesn't always happen when the bereaved are outside religious communities; sometimes the burden falls on the people closest to the deceased, who may or may not be in a fit state to organize anything, sometimes non-religious people have to rely on a sort of watered-down Christian without the theism type of ritual. But I don't think the underpinning beliefs are the reason why religion may be helpful in dealing with death. Even then it only may be helpful; if either the deceased or the mourners are non-believers, religious rituals are just as likely to be offensive and uncomfortable as comforting.

pw201 posted an atheist response to the death of another well-loved geek celebrity, Roger Ebert. Ebert's own words quoted at the beginning fit in with some religious and some secular theologies; I am surprised to learn that the devout can’t abide such sentiments, because for me, I could easily restate Ebert's point in overtly religious language. The references to Hume and via Hume to Lucretius (also quoted in Paul's post) are I think good examples of the best kind of secular response to the horror of death. The Skeptics scrabbling around to look for a rational justification why they feel bad about death (in spite of these noble sentiments about how oblivion is no worse than the state of non-existence before birth) I think are missing the point rather. As far as I can tell, some religious people are extremely philosophical in the face of death and some fear it ( or perhaps fear punishment in the afterlife or something), some atheists are entirely accepting of death and some fear it. I don't think one's beliefs or lack of beliefs about the afterlife actually address the emotional issue of how it hurts to lose someone you care about, nor the moral issue that so much suffering and so many lives cut short seem unfair.

I do agree with papersky that it's somewhat easier to accept my own eventual death than other people dying. People have built academic careers arguing whether Plato's Socrates was a theist or secular, but I have always been a bit fond of his discussion of death at the end of the Apology:

Let us consider in another way also how good reason there is to hope that it is a good thing. For the state of death is one of two things: either it is virtually nothingness, so that the dead has no consciousness of anything, or it is, as people say, a change and migration of the soul from this to another place. And if it is unconsciousness, like a sleep in which the sleeper does not even dream, death would be a wonderful gain. For I think if any one were to pick out that night in which he slept a dreamless sleep and, comparing with it the other nights and days of his life, were to say, after due consideration, how many days and nights in his life had passed more pleasantly than that night, – I believe that not only any private person, but even the great King of Persia himself would find that they were few in comparison with the other days and nights. So if such is the nature of death, I count it a gain; for in that case, all time seems to be no longer than one night. But on the other hand, if death is, as it were, a change of habitation from here to some other place, and if what we are told is true, that all the dead are there, what greater blessing could there be, judges?

Which I read to mean, either there is an afterlife, in which case death isn't really an annihilation, something of "me" will continue on in some form, or else there isn't, in which case I won't be around to experience my lack of existence. There's also this poem, which is theist in that it mentions God in the penultimate line, but it's not really tied to any particular theology. The general sentiment, that there's more to celebrate in having experienced life than to regret that life must come to an end, seems to agree with the passage Paul quoted from Ebert and I think could be of some comfort to religious and secular people alike.

That doesn't completely help me to accept the deaths of other people, people I care about, people who it seems to me morally deserve to continue living for many more years, or at least to die gently without first enduring months and years of illness, loss of capacity and misery. I don't think there's much in religion that can really properly answer that, and religion that tries to be glib or forbid adherents from questioning this part of reality is religion I find difficult to respect. What we have is the collective wisdom of all of human history of grappling with this question, some of it from people coming from within a religious frame and others explicitly secular, but what's beautiful and profound in facing the reality of suffering and death I think can be of value irrespective of whether it takes this reality as "God's creation" or "just the way things are".

And then, what about the case when unpleasant and hated people die? I find it abhorrent that anyone might be said to deserve prolonged illness or premature death, and if an evil person dies peacefully at the end of a long and full life, that seems unjust towards much more admired people who don't get that benefit. Which honestly isn't much of a benefit, it's still their life being cut short, and I am not willing to concede that this is a desirable state of affairs, for anyone, of any moral standing. I said a couple of years ago that I might have to avoid the internet when former PM Baroness Thatcher dies, and today she has. I suppose that since I wrote that post I've come to realize that if someone has been so badly hurt by recent UK politics that they feel inclined to celebrate and rejoice in the death of a sick, elderly woman, then it's not my place to criticize. But I'm not going to join in. Just no. No resignation. Tears and rage. And that goes for all of illness and death, not just of people I care about or my friends care about.

Tell me, is there anything that you find comforting when you have to confront death? Texts, art, music, philosophies? How do you live with knowing about mortality and the enormous unfairness of it all? Or are you reconciled to living in a world like this?

Comments

[vatine]

Well, grief and crying helps in the short term.

Remembering good and bad things (although hopefully more good than bad) helps.

And the realisation that life goes on and at best continued debilitating grief will be just shouting in the void. Still, moments of grief surface, many years after the event.

I don't know how to put it more eloquently than that (and I am under no illusion that my mental processes map well onto everybody, they seemingly do not).

[liv]

This makes sense to me. Remembering the person, especially if I can do it in the company of others with connections to both the deceased and to me, really helps a lot. I think this is why I prefer honest eulogies and obituaries over sugar-coated ones; if everybody has to pretend that the dead person was a perfect saint, it doesn't feel like a meaningful act of remembrance.

And yes, it does make sense to acknowledge that excessive grief doesn't change the situation, so you might as well go on with life. I like that because it also doesn't deny the validity and reality of feelings of grief, but it's pragmatic. I don't want to be forced to be cheerful when I'm missing someone, but I also don't want to be forced to prolong the intense phase of misery in order to show respect.

I'm sure everybody is different, that's partly why I made the post, because it's something that people feel constrained about talking about sometimes and I'm really interested to know what people think.

[jack]

I thought this was going to be about when we do and don't need taboos :)

[nameandnature]

I am surprised to learn that "the devout can’t abide such sentiments", because for me, I could easily restate Ebert's point in overtly religious language

Clearly you're not devout enough. :-)

Actually, it's more complicated than that: Beck's experiments showed that digging your heels in as a result of being primed with thoughts of death was more common among people who believe in an interventionist sort of God (or at least, who say they do). So perhaps it's not surprising that it's a certain sort of devout person who reacts aggressively to Ebert's essay, or Hume's apparent calm (there's a story that his housekeeper told a bunch of people she was a on a coach journey with that he was despairing when his friends were not around, but I wouldn't put it past his detractors to have made up or exaggerated here).

The sceptics feel bad because death is bad. I'm not signed up for cryonics, but I can see the appeal of actually doing something, it's just that cryonics (and attempting to make weakly godlike entities in our image) don't seem as likely to yield fruit as, say, research into cell death. I think there'd possibly be a conflict between acceptance and rage if there were more that the average person could do to help which they might not do by accepting death, but there doesn't seem to be much I can do, personally.

[liv]

I probably am not devout enough in some senses; in internet debates between people who strongly identify as "religious" (often the Evangelical side of Protestant, in practice) and people who identify as atheist or skeptical or rational or whatever, I do find I'm much more strongly aligned with the secular "side". I'm not at all sure where I fit on the scale you refer to of healthy or sick souls, summer or winter believers; I guess I don't have a strong sense of a personally involved, interventionist God, so I'm probably more winter / sick than otherwise. And thus not particularly likely to get extra-stubborn about views that conflict with mine if I'm primed with thoughts of death. Cool research, though.

The cryonics fad among some of the rationality fans looks to me indistinguishable from a Pascal's Wager approach to Christianity, tbh. I have in my head a half-formed essay about attitudes to death in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, but decided that's both too unfinished and not really appropriate to include in this blog post. Scientifically I don't think we're really any closer to finding a cure for death than the ancients when they looked for the Elixir; for me I prefer to concentrate on the goal of giving everybody 80 years of good quality of life rather than extending lifespan. My cancer research is explicitly part of that goal, so it's not just philosophical for me, I'm not trying to find a cure for death. I do think it makes sense that since death is in fact unavoidable, it is better to accept it than get uselessly upset about it.

[emperor]

A previous chaplain used to observe "Anyone can have a faith they can live with. Having a faith you can die with is harder." I concur that saying to even someone with a strong belief in a positive afterlife "They're in a better place now" is unlikely to be at all helpful, although I think the BCP's "sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life" at the right time and in the right context can help with the grieving process.

I don't feel I can honestly say what facing my own death will be like until I have to; I am fortunate enough that I've never come close to so doing.

[liv]

Thanks for this, it's really interesting! I think you're right, people can't know if they're truly accepting of their own death until they actually have to face it. I think for me dealing with other people's death is a much more urgent problem. I mean, ok, I might be in a fatal accident tomorrow, but statistically it's likely that I will suffer several bereavements before I eventually die myself.

I do agree that liturgical optimism can be powerful in the right context. I like

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil

and, ugh, the BCP translation of Ps 90 misses a lot of nuance, they have:

You turn us back to the dust and say,
"Go back, O child of earth

which doesn't explain why I like it. You turn each mortal back to dust, and You say: "return, o children of humanity". Return to God [in repentance], not go back, 'go back' sounds like rejection. I like that Psalm because it addresses the fact that God creates suffering and death, and I feel more able to be sincere in hoping for redemption / resurrection if I don't have to handwave that away.

[siderea]

Or are you reconciled to living in a world like this?

Yeah. I find the whole entitlement-to-fairness-from-natural-phenomena thing emotionally alien, and chalk it up to something that happens to people who were raised from a young age to believe in a higher power. The idea that the concept of "fairness" applies to natural phenomena in any way has simply never occurred to me, even as a very little child, because (as best I can tell) I was raised atheist. Railing against children getting cancer, or earthquakes causing tsunami, is like railing against gravity, or the turning of the earth.

I am very grateful, however it was that I came by this state, because that entitlement-to-fairness-from-natural-phenomena clearly makes grief worse. For me, loss and suffering are terribly sad. For someone with a sense of entitlement-to-fairness-from-natural-phenomena, loss and suffering are terribly sad and a wrong done by someone which is angering -- two tragedies for the price of one. Entitlement-to-fairness-from-natural-phenomena turns every death into a murder, and every misfortune into a crime.

Worse, in the case of entitlement-to-fairness-from-natural-phenomena-because-one-believes-in-god, every tragedy is not only sad for its own sake, but grounds for anger at the unfairness of the divine party who could have done something about it (or is simply responsible, depending on theology) and a feeling of betrayal. At exactly the moment one most needs comfort, someone with that belief is also experiencing a rupture in one of their relationships, the one with their god. Two losses, for every one.

So, to get back to your question, I simply don't experience "the enormous unfairness of it all" -- I think it's obvious there isn't any unfairness -- and that means dealing with death is simply not the big Problem for me it is for most other people.

[liv]

Huh, that's really interesting. Thank you for describing that attitude of mind. I can definitely see the sense in not expecting natural phenomena to be fair, and therefore not getting angry about it.

Do you think that's in any way similar to the attitude of people who are phlegmatic about suffering because they regard it as part of God's plan? It's part of the plan / it's just random, both seem to relegate the problem to the realm of something that it's not your responsibility to do anything about, which might contribute to not experiencing anger when you actually can't do anything and when the status quo is not as you might want it to be?

[siderea]

Do you think that's in any way similar to the attitude of people who are phlegmatic about suffering

Stop. Right there.

I don't know anybody who is phlegmatic about suffering. Whether because of their belief in god or gods or for any reason whatsoever.

Perhaps you do. Not saying you don't.

But I don't. So I could only hypothesize about such people's attitudes in the most speculative, hypothetical way.

Should such people exist, I would have to get to know what it is they actually think and feel to be able to answer your question about similarity.

It is also possible that there are people out there that you are projecting phlegmaticness about suffering onto, because of your forced-choice belief system, which I describe below, in which one must either get blameful, resentful and angry about tragedy or not feel anything at all.

[liv]

Fair call. It seems very likely indeed that people who seem phlegmatic to me are simply choosing not to let me see their emotional response. You're right that this isn't a useful line of speculation.

I was trying to avoid the dichotomy you pointed out to me, by thinking of feeling sad and grieved, yet also accepting, but I think I wasn't really imagining what shape of emotional state that would entail, so I probably am still in this either-or frame of mind even though I'm trying not to be.

[naath]

I mostly don't have any emotional response to things that are outside my monkey-sphere; and not very much emotional response to things inside it either.

It's not a philosophical position I've worked myself around to having. It's a defect in the way my brain is wired.

[siderea]

Something I noticed in your post. You set up a dichotomy between being angry at "the unfairness of it all" on the one hand, and some unspecified concept of "accepting" on the other. You don't unpack that "accepting", but the way you use it seems to suggest that you think it means "not being upset by death or suffering or loss".

As my previous comment illustrates, those are not the only two options. If one believes that the only choices are being angry every time one grieves or not grieving at all, well, that would explain why one would never get over the anger at "the unfairness of it all".

[liv]

I think you are right to point out that dichotomy, I wasn't consciously positing that but I think it is there. My feeling is that a lot of what I'm experiencing as anger is at other people's suffering, not my own. I do have a moral problem (irrational though that may be) with the fact of Banks having this horrible cancer which will soon kill him. I suspect that may explain why I'm particularly bad at dealing with suicide; I really find it unbearable that anyone's life should be so bad that ceasing existence is preferable.

Grief is much more about my own loss; I don't count Banks as a personal friend myself, but lots of people I'm close to do, so my immediately relevant feeling is empathy for them. But like any death, this reminds me that many, (perhaps most depending how long I live) of the people I care about will also die, and then I'll be bereaved, I'll have to go on living without their positive presence in my life. I don't know what acceptance of that would even look like; perhaps some kind of non-attachment, maybe? Or simply feeling whatever sense of loss I feel but not having any desire to change the reality that makes me feel like that?

[siderea]

I think maybe (in the sense that I'm formulating a weakly held hypothesis) that your concept of "acceptance" is actually toxic, and you might get further on these issues if you set it aside and tackled them without recourse to it.

How about instead of trying to reimagine "acceptance" (and try to fix alternatives to that procrustean bed) what if you were just to ask, "how else could one approach this?"

[liv]

This seems reasonable advice, thank you. I don't think there's a "right" emotional response to death; I mean, I can probably think of a few wrong ones, but I'm not looking for the magical correct formula here.

When you made your initial comment about not finding illness and death unfair, I didn't form the impression that you were an emotionless robot who doesn't feel sad when people die, and I hope I didn't come across as implying that when I was talking of phlegmatic or acceptance possibilities. Throughout this conversation I've been thinking of sadness without anger, sadness without a sense of betrayal, as potentially very good things.

[siderea]

Good, good. I wasn't feeling personally maligned, just concerned for you.

Throughout this conversation I've been thinking of sadness without anger, sadness without a sense of betrayal, as potentially very good things.

Good, but don't for imagine it doesn't hurt like whoa.

Which, actually, may be the psychological point of the anger. One of the neat things about anger is that most folks can readily substitute it for other emotions. That is both a feature and a bug. The bug is that doing so can become a easy out... into a dead end. So I think some of the tendency to become angry (at God, at by-standers, at other people at the funeral, at first responders, at friends deemed insufficiently supportive, at you name it) is to shield oneself from the anguish of grief or from existential fears.

So maybe the thing that needs "accepting" is you're going to feel pain like you would not believe.

Grief Mini FAQ:

Q) I'm afraid if I open up to that pain, it'll never end.
A) There is a bottom to the well.

Q) I'm afraid if I give up my anger, I'll stop being sad, and that's like betraying the dead.
A) That won't be a problem. Your anguish will ebb in time, but you will always be dyed a tint of sorrow. And you will never forget.

[liv]

Thank you, that's really reassuring. I'm doing that thing of finding a new to me idea and wanting to explore the ramifications, and I know I've accidentally offended you in the past by the way I react to new interesting ideas.

I do really like your mini-FAQ! I am not coming from a position of wanting to prolong intense negative emotions to honour or avoid forgetting the dead, I can understand that but it isn't something I'm much prone to. But I find it easy to believe that undirected or misdirected anger is playing the role of shielding me from pain. I didn't know that it was possible to substitute anger for other emotions, that's really cool information.

I'm very much not asking you or anyone else to reassure me that somehow it won't hurt when people die.

[karen2205]

Tell me, is there anything that you find comforting when you have to confront death?

*knowing I've confronted it before and survived.
*practicality about arrangements/efficiency, perhaps to an extent others would find surprising/shocking.
*making space/time for me to cry by myself without interruptions on a daily basis until it's no longer necessary.
*being kind to me/caring for myself, even down to the basic level of eating three times a day and getting enough sleep. Finding distracting things - comfort reading etc.
*finding a real live person to hug
*doing something caring for others
*making plans to do things in the future [ie. life goes on]

[liv]

That's a very good list, thank you for outlining it. I do tend to find it helpful to have something to do / organize, definitely. Quite often that ends up being ritual because of the situations I'm most often in, but it could be phoning round the people who need to know, or admin, or even preparing food for the funeral. I think that can also cover caring for others, depending exactly what sort of practical tasks we're talking about.

The idea of making space to cry uninterrupted, and to specifically focus on self-care sound like really good ideas. Makes a lot of sense.

The hugs thing is also a good idea, but different from my approach; I tend to withdraw from physical contact when I'm seriously upset. For me that type of slot I think would be filled by having conversations with people I care about, which could also be an example of distraction especially if they're less directly affected by the bereavement than I am.

[karen2205]

I suppose having a reasonably good idea of how I tend to react to things is quite helpful as well. I know that I tend to not reach a point where I want to cry until some time after everyone else has - and that's fine, I just operate on a different schedule to others. I remember learning of the death of a Mertonian from my matriculation year (you either know who it is or would be able to work it out from Postmaster) in the October of my third year. Late one evening a friend phoned to tell me about it and I hadn't eaten and was hungry and while there was always going to be grief that hurt, I can make things better for myself by remembering stuff like feeding me/sleeping enough etc.

I won't necessarily use the time I've set aside when it's OK for me to cry for that purpose, some of the reason in having allocated time for it is so that I know there will be time/space when I get to be alone and can cry if I want to. It's another bit of how I look after me.

One of the ways I experience grief is as feeling like the whole world is abandoning me; I crave physical contact to remind me than that's not really true. Conversations for me are only likely to be really comforting/distracting if I can talk to people who aren't distressed by my grief or otherwise really upset themselves.

The other useful thing for me is looking for humour in the situation, even if it's a bit wry or not quite there, it helps me.

[liv]

Definitely definitely, knowing how you react and how you've experienced this kind of thing before is a big help. I think my first major bereavement was particularly terrifying because I had absolutely no idea how much it was going to hurt or for how long. I am really impressed with this level of self-knowledge and making plans for all the levels of self-care that you need when you're dealing with something like this.

[tig_b]

I found the words from Roger Ebert interesting - as a devout religious person I could accept this, but I think that is because I interpret the words in a different way.

Having lost my mother two months ago, I've been reflecting on many of the issues about how we approach death. When I heard the news that my mother had died I cried, when I visited her I cried, but then I moved on. So I didn't cry at the funeral. It seems to me that many people are shocked or disconcerted by my reactions. People want to comfort me, I want to talk about her.

Sis and I asked everyone to think about good stories to share after the funeral because we think of it as a time to celebrate her life - and to comfort those still here who miss her.

[liv]

Yes, Ebert's quoted philosophy sounds very close to a major strand of my own religious background, it seemed strange to me that it was couched as being completely unpalatable to a religious person. I may also be interpreting his words differently from how he intended them, of course.

I definitely think it's a bad idea to set up a template for what emotions people should be feeling on what timescale after a bereavement. It makes sense to me that once you'd finished crying you didn't want social pressure to cry because that's the expected behaviour at funerals. I do have mixed feelings about life celebrations; sometimes it's a really good thing, really helpful, but sometimes it can be a kind of forced cheerfulness when one wants more time to be sad about a loss. I am glad to know that you had the opportunity to share good stories when your people when your mother died.

[mirrorshard]

I get very quiet and internal, and focus on helping others cope by being practical and, eg., making sandwiches in a crisis. This may be a reaction to having buried about a dozen family & friends in the last 15 years; I remember being openly devastated the first time.

[liv]

Yeah, I think over repeated experiences one learns some set of behaviours that are less awful than the alternatives. I don't think it gets any less painful, exactly, it's just getting a better skillset for keeping going through that. I'm definitely in favour of giving practical support to others, rather than trying to find the magic phrase that somehow makes it ok, because it never is, no matter how beautiful and poetic or cleverly philosophical some piece of text is.

[lilacsigil]

I'm an atheist and it makes sense to me to be much more concerned with suffering (including that of the people who knew the dead person) than the death itself. Like siderea, I think that terrible things happening is a natural phenomenon, however, there's so much human intervention around those terrible things that there are many things to be angry and grief-stricken about. Nearly dying from cancer doesn't loom so much in my mind as the terrible medical treatment that turned an easily curable problem into a major problem; people not believing I was sick hurt more than having to face death. I work with a lot of elderly people and it's only furthered my sense that suffering (whether through disease, decline or just loneliness) is worse than death itself; which is why we should concentrate resources on quality of life rather than just staving off death. Working with elderly and disabled people also makes me very wary of the assisted suicide debate - in the vast majority of cases it would be so much easier and cheaper to kill people than to take small steps to genuinely ease their suffering. (In a few cases, such as people with certain progressive degenerative diseases, this doesn't hold, and I would fully support their right to assisted suicide if their cases could somehow be separated from the others.)

[liv]

Absolutely, as a theist I can completely get behind the sentiments here. Definitely there's more value in trying to relieve suffering than in wishing that there wasn't death. And yes, when people are treated badly by humans who actually have a choice in the matter, that's a much more valid target for anger than diseases and injuries that happen by random chance. I am very passionate that society needs to address the interpersonal aspects of this as well as treating illness as a technical problem.

I definitely agree about assisted suicide. In principle people should have that right, in this world as it actually is, it would be pretty much legalizing murder of expensive elderly and disabled people.

[naath]

My reaction to thoughts about my own death are mostly about whether it will hurt; but my thoughts about others' deaths are I'm afraid more along the lines of "I'll never enjoy their fine company and sparkling wit again", which I think is a very selfish thing of me to think so I probably shouldn't.

I don't think it's unfair that people die. It's just a fact of biology. I like it when people manage to fight back against death, with health care and so forth, but I don't expect we'll ever actually stop death altogether.

[liv]

I am much more afraid for myself of pain and loss of control / capacity than of ceasing to exist. And yes, I suppose it is selfish for me to be sad about no longer having the pleasure that someone brought into my life; I can't help it, I can't take a broad enough view not to feel like that.

I am pretty convinced that mortality will always be part of anything recognizable as a human experience. I think the aim of medical technology and advances should be to give as many people as possible 80 years of good life, followed by a gentle decline, rather than believing in fairy stories about finding a cure for death. I find it unfair when people die young or in pain, which even with modern technology ends up being most people. I've experienced a few "good" deaths, as in people dying peacefully at a ripe old age, with strong relationships intact and feeling satisfied with their lives, and I think in the rare cases where that ideal is true, my predominant emotion is the quasi-selfish one of missing their company, rather than moral anger.

[lavendersparkle]

There was an interesting episode of iPM about death and grief this weekend http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01rlt1w/iPM_06_04_2013/

[liv]

Thanks for adding that to the discussion!

[rysmiel]

I think I am more inclined to take papersky's "There is comfort in the knowledge" poem as a way of dealing with death. I have had moments - I particularly recall one in autumn of 2008, watching a lunar eclipse, of getting a very very strong sense of this being something numinous and wonderful that was around well before humans, could easily be around well after, and does not need humans to be of worth.

I have never construed fairness or kindness as a quality to be expected of the physical universe, and it is because of that that I see such a strong moral imperative for kindness and generosity at a human scale; in my perceptual universe, that is all we have. I am also, though, wary of letting that lead in directions of crushing myself beneath experienced massive weight of responsibility, because there is a definite failure mode there of finitude feeling fallible.

[liv]

This is a really wonderful comment, I am so pleased you decided to join this bit of discussion. It's occasionally come up that I am more emotionally attached to humanity as well as individuals than you are. But still, I can see something in looking to enduring things as a counterweight to feeling sad about mortality, either on an individual basis or for all of our species.

I like the idea of defining a moral imperative to kindness because we don't get that from physical reality. I do like that very much. It's also an interesting point about responsibility issues; I have always felt completely comfortable with being a small cog in a big machine, in many aspects of my life, if I can make small, positive local differences I'm satisfied. I do hold very much to It's not for you to complete the work, but you are not free to refrain from it, which does come from religion but it isn't particularly theological.