[MD] The MOQ and Death

[Platt Holden]

Hey Steve,

Correction. The quote I attributed to you was from Bruce Underwood. Also I
related to his witnessing the death of brother and other relatives.

Platt

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Steven Peterson
<peterson.steve at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
>