[MD] The MOQ and Death

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Steve --


> 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 an 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. ...

That is perhaps the most eloquent appeal to transcendence that I've ever 
read on this forum.  And I find it interesting that only John and Ron have 
thus far seen fit to respond.

As a septuagenarian, my expiration date is earlier than yours, and I've 
given this a lot of thought over at least six of those seven decades.  My 
theory lends itself to the valuistic philosophy of Essence, so I can't 
articulate it in Pirsigian terms.  For what it's worth, I'll give you a 
précis of my theory in language that hopefully can be universally 
understood.

The individual Self is a fall-out of the negation of Essence.  If you've 
read my thesis, you know I refer to it as a "negate", meaning existential 
nothingness.  Everything that self depends on for existence -- a functioning 
physical body, self-awareness, differentiated beingness, and an ordered 
relational world -- is "borrowed" from otherness.  As individuated beings we 
are born from nothingness and will return to that nothingness at the 
cessation of life.  This is all fundamental to the ontology of Essentialism.

Now, you may have noted a "flaw" (i.e., logical fallacy) in this analysis. 
For if you are essentially nothing, and nothing does not exist,.how are you 
able to experience anything, let alone perceive it as "reality"?  My 
hypothesis is that, although we are psychic non-entities estranged from 
Essence, we are also inextricably linked to the Value of that essence.  From 
essential value we derive all our experience, thoughts and beingness. 
Conversely, it is our inherent nothingness which gives us the ability to 
differentiate (negate) self from other, present from past, and one thing 
from another.  In short, Value affirms what Essence negates. This is 
possible because Essence is absolute, and nothing that is negated from an 
absolute can be lost.  (Priday's maxim.)

So where does this leave us when it comes to transcending finite existence?

Life is an illusion which ends, as it begins, with a negation.  As an 
incremental negate of its estranged source, the individual cannot exist 
beyond the conditions of finitude.  Instead, having rounded the negate 
cycle, the individuated self surrenders its "I"-ness - conditional being and 
existential awareness - completely to otherness, thereby revoking its 
negated status and reclaiming its essential Value.  For each of us, the act 
of dying represents the supreme sacrifice because it terminates the 
"egocentricity" needed for the continuity of individuated "selfness" through 
its transitory existence.  Since concern about loss of selfness accounts for 
most of the fear we associate with death, it behooves us to remember that 
the truly meaningful experiences and greatest joys in life are those in 
which we lose ourselves.

In other words, it is the value of what we perceive that makes the 
life-experience worthwhile and unique for each of us.  The individuated self 
with its appropriated body can freely shape its life-experience in the 
knowledge that undifferentiated value is the common denominator.  Personal 
tastes and proclivities reflect the status of one's psycho-emotional 
"conditioning" at any given time; it is these factors which, although 
different for each individual, determine whether we feel an experience as 
"good", "bad" or "indifferent".

The net effect of these evaluations over a lifetime is to establish a Value 
Complement which defines and affirms our essential identity.  The fact that 
desire is preferential for each observer means that no two individuals will 
have the same exact "Value Complement" - a significant system variable that 
probably plays a "collective" role in shaping physical reality.  But, in the 
end, Value is the "essence" of experience that endures far longer than the 
specious details.  Ultimately, it is our identification with a unique and 
distinct Value Complement that transcends the gap of nothingness and affirms 
our essential Oneness.


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
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