Thursday, October 23, 2003
Birth and Death (in that order)
Oy, she's going on about death again... who does she think she is, Woody Allen?
I saw a movie recently... I don't remember what it was, but people spoke with English accents, so it must have been cultural... it might have been I, Clavdivs (which I highly recommend, because despite the designer bedsheets and Telemundo production values, it is superbly written and acted). Anyway, the characters were talking about death and one of the characters said, "I am no more afraid of Death than I was afraid to be born..." Which is a great quote and puts the whole thing in perspective; but which at the same time raises whole new questions about pre-birth, oblivion and the soul.
(It was SPARTACUS... not I, Clavdivs. And Kirk Douglas was talking to Tony Curtis and neither of them had English accents. In fact, one of the funniest parts of that movie is listening to Tony Curtis try to be a Roman poet/ singer with his atrocious New York brogue. Like I said, I highly recommend I, Clavdivs...)
I'm not a big believer in the soul, so for the purpose of this piece, we'll just assume that there is none. If you happen to believe in the soul, then you can think anything you like about pre-birth... like those fluffy, pseudo-Christian movies that come out every five years or so where the soul is in heaven talking to St. Peter about what new baby body he's gonna get... then whoops, a white soul gets put in a black body... or whoops, a former president is accidentally put in the body of an Indian girl... then hilarity ensues and people learn valuable life lessons. I'd rather avoid all that.
Given that after consciousness, there is only oblivion, does it then follow that there is oblivion before consciousness as well?
The tragedy of death is that we are conscious of ourselves, our lives and the perceived value of that life. Evolution has wired us that way. It's only once we become conscious of our self (around 5 or so) that we begin to fear death. It is also at this time of consciousness, that we begin to form long term memories, the basis of our concept of self. We have no memory of non-existence, yet we all didn't-exist before we did exist, and non-existence is just as natural a state, since we have spent the majority of capital "t" Time in a state of non-existence. Once we're done existing, we'll return to not existing and be none the wiser. I posit therefore that life is the oddity, not death... we're all a bunch of living freaks spinning out in the middle of the universe having consciousness. The rest of the universe must shake its head and cluck its tongue at our foolishness.
Which, of course, makes us all rebels... a bunch of Sparticai painting our faces blue and shaking our fists at non-existence and saying, "You'll never take... our freedom!" Living well, and happy, and eating foods that are bad for you and having good sex with bad people and writing novels and poetry and fighting entropy through punk rock are all appropriate ways to behave.
