[MD] The MOQ and Death

[Steven Peterson]

Hi all,

>From a cosmic perspective you are but a tiny invisible speck on the
third planet of an average sized star--just one of billions of
trillions of such stars in the vastness of nearly empty space.
Furthermore, your existence as a single speck on a speck among
billions of trillions of specks is contained in a mere blink of an eye
in the expanse of time. However, even though you are so utterly
cosmically insignificant, you are also completely unique. There will
never be another you. As a human being, you have the perhaps so far
untapped genius and creative power of a Mozart or a Davinci. You have
had extraordinary experiences including profound sorrow in mourning
the loss of a loved one, and you may have experienced transcendent joy
while bringing a child into the world or while simply contemplating
nature. You have felt such experiences transform your world in
profound ways. You have experienced love so all-encompassing that the
only way to describe it in such a way as to give it justice is to talk
about being literally IN love. The profundity of such unquantifiably
precious moments is in tension with the trivializing fact that they
have taken place against a infinite and virtually vaccuous cosmic
backdrop. You are made of stardust, but you will end up as worm food.
This is the fundamental paradox of existence. You have seen
indescribable beauty and experienced boundless joy, you've cultivated
intense human connections and a mind with the power to contemplate
untold marvels, you've sought simple pleasures and overcome profound
suffering, you've lived through times of both bliss and heartbreak
beyond measure, yet (to quote Rutger Hauer's character in Blade
Runner) at the moment of your death, all these memories will be washed
away into nothingness "like tears in the rain."

Much has been said about religion as a human invention in response to
this paradox--the mother of all problems--the problem of death. Though
the MOQ offers a broader explanation for religion, many atheists (as
well as perhaps some theists) see fear of death as the complete
explanation of the human need to believe in religion. Ernest Becker in
his pulitzer prize winning book The Denial of Death explained how it
is not only religion but in fact human civilization as a whole which
may be thought of as the product of our broad endeavor to suppress the
knowledge of our own death.

Such supression is accomplished in many ways. One way is the nearly if
not completly universal human denial of identification with our animal
nature, our "creatureliness." We are that one sort of animal that can
decide how to think about itself, and this one sort of animal prefers
not to think of itself as an animal at all. We are unique among
animals in knowing that we will one day cease to exist, and so we are
the only sort of animal which needs a way to cope with that knowledge
by convincing ourselves that we are something more than creatures, as
Becker described us, "tearing others apart with teeth of all
types--biting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars,
pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating
its essence into one's own organization, and then excreting with foul
stench and gasses the residue." To accept this picture of ourselves
would be a sort of death in itself.

The beings to practice intellectual patterns became aware of their own
finitude and needed ways to make sure that this knowledge of our
deaths is only ever understood on a surface level and never felt in
its fullness. According to Becker, to truly face the fact of our
mortality would be an unbearable terror. He wrote, "This is the
terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of
self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and
self-expression--and with all this yet to die." Becker argued that man
needed to create defence mechanisms against the knowledge of our own
eventual and inevitable annihilation. Many of these mechanisms
accomplish this denial in creating distinctions between humans and
animals. In such distinctions we find comfort. We learn to ask
ourselves, how could our lives simply end as those of the animals when
we are so fundamentally different from the animals? We create and
appreciate music, design and wear fashionable clothing, and read and
write philosophy. Surely we are not mere animals, so surely we will
not share the animal's fate.

Religions, of course, have been a big part of humanity's efforts to
deny its animal nature. Though different religions manage the task in
different ways including promises of real immortality, one commonality
among religions is that their systems of mythology generally emphasize
the creation of humanity as a special act that was distinct from the
creation of the animals. One reason why evolutionary theory is so
threatening to so many is that it reasserts a connection between
humanity and the animal kingdom that humanity worked so hard
throughout history and through culture to deny. We can understand much
of the discomfort that many of us have for the theory of evolution
when we recognize it as an unwelcome reminder that we will one day die
just as all animals die.

While some atheists take religion be a mere crutch for the weak who
cannot face death, I think Becker would have been critical of such
atheists. Have they really faced the fact of their own deaths or have
they simply found other crutches? Some atheist seem to be feeling a
little too smug about their ability to live authentically without a
belief in an afterlife. I can imagine a scene where such a smug
atheist is perhaps cheering for a sporting event on television.
Becker's book is the prose equivalent to taking him by the arms,
shaking him and yelling, "How can you just sit there comfortably on
your sofa as though there were some real significance to who wins this
game? You are going to DIE some day! Stop and really think about that.
You are going to DIE! Someday it will be as if you never even existed.
You may be remembered for a time. If you are quite famous, perhaps you
will be remembered for a thousand years or more. But what about 10,000
years from now? 100,000 years? In fact, one day the sun will burn out,
and it will be as if not just you but everyone you ever knew and all
of humanity had never existed." From that perspective, an engrossing
sporting event is an empty distraction from the outcome that we all
must face--our eventual utter anihiliation.

If you have never been terrified by that thought, then perhaps you
haven't truly and deeply faced your mortality. Existentialists such as
Becker have asserted that we need to feel this fact on a profound
level and respond authentically to our eventual deaths in order to
truly affirm life. Perhaps smug atheists are no different from
believers in their inability to face their mortality. Perhaps they
have merely chosen different sorts of distractions and illusions.
Since Becker takes all human behavior to be guided by the need to deny
or transcend death by becoming a hero in a cosmic drama of our own or
society's making, this smug atheist for him can be no exception. Such
distractions if not illusions are necessary for survival of all
self-conscious mortal beings.

What does the MOQ have to say about this "fundamental paradox"? Is
fear of death necessary, or can it be transcended?

Becker takes this fear to be fundamental and necessary, but his
conclusions seems to follow from an ontological distinction between
mind and body. There is a fundamental paradox that can't be resolved
because our symbolic self is forever alienated from our mortal bodies.
Since the MOQ  disolves this ontological distinction, the MOQ may
offer some insights which Becker, with his SOM assumption, may have
overlooked overlooked.

I would love to hear what thoughts you may have on that idea since I
don't have much insight to offer myself, and I fear that I will die
some day.

Best,
Steve