DEATH AND . . . DISNEY

European “intellectuals” – the, to us Anglosaxons, pejorative sobriquet, is not only accepted but appreciated, even sought after in Europe – tend to denigrate Disney, pirate, according to them, of Europe’s best fairy-tales, turned into sentimental, marshmallow movies destined for brain-numb American, and unfortunately world-wide, child and even adult audiences.

Personally I dip my lid, as we say in Australia, to Uncle Walt – which is not terribly significant, because neither I nor anyone else would suggest that I am an “intellectual”.

The “Lion King” educates children – and the adults who take their children and grandchildren to see, and secretly themselves enjoy, the movie – into the reality of the food-chain.  Not dog-eat-dog.  But lions have to eat other animals which themselves have to eat other animals.  That’s the way it is.  They will die if they don’t eat meat (Vegan is not yet an option for them).

I will die, more or less soon, whether I eat meat or not.  I would not mind, being dead, becoming part of the food-chain myself., but it is highly unlikely that anyone would be a taker of my … ashes.  So my possible contribution will be wasted – due to something about respect for us supposedly unique human beings, endowed with eternal “souls” and all that.  (Why not leave our cadavers in trees, for the vultures and the other volatiles who would appreciate a little protein ?)

The producers of “Charlotte’s Web” also deserve a pedagogical pat on the back for a movie that has the Spider-Star, Charlotte, proclaim, at the moment of giving birth to her 514 children, that she is about to die.  The most natural thing in the world.  I was happy to see the movie with my, at the time, six-year old grand-daughter, who now has a new respect for spiders if not for grandfathers.  I don’t know whether she caught the bit about the normality of dying.  I hope she did.  As I hope she will, concerning my own more or less … imminent demise (in dealing recently with the supposed threat of Iranian attacks, Trump has not only assassinated a general but a perfectly good word).  It will be up to my grand-daughter whether she goes further and recognizes that the dead have entirely ceased to exist.  I dare to hope that she will accept the reasonableness of atheism.

Walt Disney is dead, the Lion King is dead, Charlotte is dead.  Pretty soon we will all, even you, dear readers, be dead.  Kaputt.  Finis.  Terminés.  Gone with the wind.  Terminado.  No more.  Inexistent.  Let’s hope that our survivors come to accept this basic, fundamental … vital truth.  And that they don’t count on an imagined God to give them, or us, an imagined “after-life”.

                                             RIDENDA      RELIGIO

BORN INTO ETERNAL LIFE

It is a comforting, hallucinogenic thought at Christian funerals.  It is also the ultimate delusion.  We cannot let go.  Death cannot, must not, be the end of it all.  We even imagine family reunions after our death.  “See ya, buddy !”  “If you get to Heaven before I do, just bore a hole and pull me through”.  “The Mother of all Reunions : eternal life together”.

Death, as the end of existence, annihilation (“nihil” is Latin for “nothing”), literally reduction to nothingness, is too much to accept  Many need to believe that loved ones live on, as they themselves will, as we all will, together.  We are going to need one helluva playground and “many mansions” for all the people who have died since we became human (mind you, many – most – of us will not be in Heaven, but in the Other Place : the limit seems to be just 144,000 who make it upstairs).  Animals, lacking an eternal soul, just decompose.  Thank God, otherwise we would be facing an animal kingdom that far outnumbers the human race.  Who would keep the lions and tigers at a safe distance ?  Or does no one need to eat in Heaven (no Ben and Jerry’s) ?  The Sacred Writ is silent on the point.  Who would pick up the droppings of elephants ?  Can you imagine the number of cat-litters needing to be replaced ?  The mind boggles.

Most of us cannot face the truth.  Dead, buried, cremated, gone, girl, gone forever.  Like Clementine.  Like your dog, your cat, your hamster, your goldfish.  Back to no-thingness.  No God, no Heaven, no way.  Why can’t we look death, “The End”, in the face ?  We used to put that phrase at the end of books and movies; why not to our life ?

I pity the clergy, some of whom are at least agnostic, who find themselves obliged to continue to reinforce the illusion.  I will do what I can to destroy it.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

GOOD-BYE ? AU REVOIR ? ADIEU ?

I may be dead within the next two years, or, let’s be optimistic, perhaps the next ten, certainly within the next twenty years (if I make it that far – I hope I don’t – I will be as old and decrepit as is Kirk Douglas, 103).  At 83 years of age, this is one of my rare certitudes.  If you can pardon the cliché, I am a lot closer to my death than – wait for it – my birth.

I cannot say “Good-bye” (“God be with ye”) to my Australian family and friends, for all the reasons I have presented in this blog.  And I cannot say “Au revoir” to my French family and friends, for we all know we will never see each other again, nor can I say to them even our definitive “Adieu”, because I cannot rationally commit them to the care of a non-existent deity.

The best I can do is to say “Fare well !” : I wish you all health, happiness and prosperity.  Enjoy your life, as I did mine, and accept the fact, as I have, that one day it will end.  I would like to think that you will remember me, but more important, you must remember Horace : “Carpe diem, et quam minimum credula postero” (“Seize the day, and think as little as possible of the morrow”).

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

 

LIFE AFTER DEATH ?

Christian resurrection ?  Buddhist reincarnation ?  Sorry, but pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die, or the rat-race of rebirth, waiting for Godot or Nirvana, are both literally incredible exercises in wishful thinking that feed on the fear of ceasing to exist.  Eulogies based on either myth are an insult to intelligence.  But we can live on, after shedding this mortal coil.  Many will, for better or for worse, leave the legacy of children (which is the only real purpose, dixit Darwin, of our existence, “non obstante” the celibate Catholic clergy), real estate, books, works of art or of engineering, enterprises of whatever type or dimension, or at least the mark we will have made on memories as celebrities of world or local renown, or nobodies, remembered by just one or two survivors who knew us, waiting their turn to die.  In this sense, Napoleon lives on.  So do Hitler, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, St Vincent de Paul, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Jesus and Mahomet, as do deceased parents, siblings, husbands, wives, children, dear friends and hated enemies.  Whether six feet deep or housed in an urn on the mantelpiece, or like Clementine, lost and gone forever, without a trace, like soldiers and terrorist victims, blown literally to smithereens, the faithful and other departed – all the above are no more.  We may never understand why from dust we came and to dust we must return, why we emerged from non-being to go back, after more or less four score and ten, to non-existence.  But once we realize that this is it, that the life we now live is the only life we will ever have, we may learn to make the most of it.  Carpe diem !

P.S.  Artificial Intelligence promises us not immortality but indefinitely renewable extensions of life.  I’ll not be around to see whether anybody will actually achieve this aptly named new lease on life.  Those rich dreamers who pay a fortune to be frozen solid, in expectation of a cure for the disease that killed them, have Buckley’s chance of another crack at life.  Given the opportunity for either, I would not be tempted.  People have been asking me for years to give them a break . . .

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

HEART AND SOUL

The former, the heart,  is vulnerable, mortal, destined one day to stop functioning.  I know.  Mine nearly did.  And really did, when the surgeon stopped it during my triple bypass.  The latter – the soul, “a contrario”, like the brook – is supposed to go on forever.  We were taught that our soul is immortal.  Dogs’ aren’t, if they ever had one.  They die and that’s it.  We die but our soul supposedly lives on.  Good news if you have been a good guy or gal, bad news if you haven’t.  Your soul – to which the resurrected, restored, recomposed body you once had, will one day be reunited – will enjoy Heaven or suffer Hell.  Nothing you can do about it.  You can commit suicide, ask for help to die with dignity, as proponents of euthanasia like myself say, but you can’t kill your soul.  You’re stuck with it for eternity (and that’s an awful long time).  I’ll be either a High Flyer, up there with the Seraphim (I was, after all, once a “Seraph” at the Franciscan Juniorate, the “Seraphic College”, at Robbo), or as an ex-Friar, renegade ex-priest and atheist, a Low Fryer in the depths of Hell.

It is extraordinary that so many people persist in believing that they will live forever.  We know that we live and die, decompose and disappear, to make room for those we and others have begotten, who themselves (unless they are genuinely celibate clergy, or at least sexually unproductive bachelors or spinsters), will live and die to provide “lebensraum” for our and their descendants.

Where did we get the idea of an immortal soul ?  Your guess is as good, or as bad, as mine.  The fact is that we have no evidence whatever for such a belief.  Animists attribute a soul to every living creature.  We smile at their naïveté.  But people who believe in the existence of immortal souls are just as naïve.  It is true that we are impressed by our own ability to think, to reason, to communicate, in ways unknown to the animal kingdom.  Some would like to believe that this unique capacity is immortal.  For heaven’s sake, for God’s sake, for cryin’ out loud,  WHY ?

Some wag, on the Net, invented a new word : “Frisbeetarianism”, defined as “the belief that after death the soul flies up on to the roof and gets stuck there”.  Enough said.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

FOUR SEASONS

Shakespeare spoke of the seven ages of man, in the last of which we end up, as he so delightfully wrote, “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything”.  I prefer to see life as a succession of four seasons.  The first, Spring, lasts twelve to fourteen years, from birth to puberty, the second, Summer, is for most people a lot longer, as many as fifty to sixty years.  Then there is Autumn, Fall, no more than ten years, followed by an often even shorter Winter.

Every year, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, where the seasons are more dramatically differentiated than in the Southern, Nature reminds us that life follows a pattern, with a beginning, a development, a waning and an end.  There is no need to be afraid of death or of the Winter which precedes it.  O.K., so it gets cold.  Old folks are never warm enough.  But one day we will close our eyes – or have them closed for us – and never open them again.  We will never be cold again either.

I prefer this view of life and its definitive disappearance to the myth of an after-life.  Enjoy Spring, Summer, Autumn and even, if you wish, Winter.  No point in thanking “God” for giving us life, nor blaming Him for cutting it short, nor believing in a life after death.  Make the most of your Four Seasons, if you, like me, are lucky enough to make it that far.  They are the only ones we will ever have.  Nature wakes up after Winter.  We won’t, after ours.

Meantime, enjoy Vivaldi’s “I Quattro Stagioni” (“The Four Seasons”).  I still prefer the version performed by “I Musici”.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

THE LAST THINGS

Death, Judgement, Heaven, Hell ?  No.  I am thinking of things that I have already done, or soon will have done, for the last time.  I know will never ride a bike, much less a horse, ever again.  I know I will never again conduct international seminars.  Long ago I played my last tennis-match, and more recently stopped mowing the lawn.  I still make my own bed, fix my meals, invite family and friends to lunch at one of my homes (exclusively BBQs).  Until a few years ago, I even conducted individual coaching sessions to help French people master our beautiful, infuriating Queen’s English.  But there will come a time when I make love for the last time, drive my car for the last time, when I cut my toe-nails for the last time, when I check the Stock Exchange for the last time.  One day I will kiss my children and grandchildren for the last time, write posts like this for the last time, go to sleep for the last time.  Autumn’s over.  My Winter has already begun

Some people get sad, frightened or angry when they think of their death.  I do not.  The liberation that comes with atheism includes a certain serenity, an acceptance of death, though not necessarily the courage to face the physical pain which often accompanies the process, nor the disappointment that comes with definitive separation from loved ones.

I hope I will not live too long, to the point of finding life a burden for myself and others.  I will make sure I don’t.  Believers lack this freedom.  They will go on aging, suffering, surviving, no matter what.  They look forward to pearly gates, pie-in-the-sky, eternal bliss (or they fear the opposite).  I look forward to a tranquil, if necessary, deliberate, end of my life, grateful to those who have made it worthwhile and to those who will help me end it, should that become “indicated”.  It has been good to live these last decades, with their joys and satisfactions, in spite of the sorrows and frustrations all of us know.

Jesus (is said to have) said many strange things.  One concerned His opinion that it would have been better if someone who caused scandal had never been born (Mark 14:21).  I’m glad I was born, and though I may have scandalized many, have no fear of impending punishment (Why should I ?  The “divine Judge” doesn’t exist).  I’m just glad that I got the chance to enjoy life, brief as it is, and happy – well, let’s say resigned – to accept its inevitable end.

P.S.   Have you ever wondered why we sleep so much, a full third of our life ?  Some anthropologists suggest it is to keep us out of trouble, from being devoured in the forest or jungle by noctural, ravenous animals which would find us easy prey if we were up and about at night.  I have another, personal, non-scientific explanation : it is to get us accustomed to dying.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

THE VESTIBULE

“122 – not out !”  To many of us it looks like a cricket score.  It was, in fact, the score achieved by a French woman, Jeanne Calment, who was still alive in 1997 at the age of 122.  She died before her next birthday (come to think of it, we all do, but you know what I mean).  A great score in cricket, and above all in life.

She was the world’s oldest woman.  Rivals in Russia and elsewhere came close, but no one, not even Mlle Calment, could compete with some of the old folks we read about in the Bible.  The record is held by Methuselah, 969 years … old.  I have suggested elsewhere that the “years” in question may well have been months, which would cut the champion down to our size (although, at the time, and until relatively recently, a person was old at forty).  You, avid reader, know that I am in my eighties, and though I may not make the Bard’s limit of four-score and ten, I can reasonably hope to chalk up eighty-five.

We might ask why anyone would want to live into deep old age, or, to put it differently, die progressively before D-Day, Death-Day.  Already I am slowing up (or down, if you prefer).  With heart-attacks, inevitable problems with prostates and cataracts, digestion and hearing, if not the tragedy for self and family of Alzheimer’s, you have to wonder what is the point of merely surviving (like Kirk Douglas at 103), rather than really living.  When worse comes to worst, euthanasia – positive, if necessary assisted, “mercy killing” or lucidly chosen suicide – is the only … viable, reasonable option.

But beyond these considerations, there are two others which we should address.  The oldest persons in the world ?  Well, in fact, there are three of them, “ex aequo”, because all three are eternal, with no beginning and no end.  Before they created the Universe, They used to live in the dark and in total silence (mind you, when you have neither eyes nor ears, and when there is nothing to see or hear … ), got along fine with each other as a divine nuclear family, a sexless Trinity.  They never had a family quarrel; there was never a paternal reprimand by the Father to the Son, both so united that somehow They begat the Holy Ghost.  Theologians and other erudite persons will recall that this particular point divided the Church into Roman Catholic and Orthodox.  The Catholic doctrine of the famous “Filioque”, “conceived by the Father AND the Son”, was heresy to those whose schism created the Christian Orthodox Churches.  Be that as it may (and is), the fact remains that God is old, very old, but doesn’t – anymore than the author of this blog – look His age.  We might retain one point.  Such an Old Geezer would find Jeanne Calment, and, a fortiori, the rest of us, infants.  I’m afraid, with His/Their eternal youth, He/They has/have no idea of the hell that is growing old.

There is a second implication in all this.  Why would the divine Old Geezer have wanted us to age – and to die ?  Not exactly His best gesture of love for His children.  (But, I hear some saying, in the Book of Genesis … .  C’mon, it’s Christmas-time; don’t tell me you believe in Santa Claus, Adam and Eve, talking snakes and all that !).

We live in a theatre of the absurd.  Ionesco would have been perfectly at home here.  “Faut-il en pleurer, faut-il en rire ?”  (“Should we cry or laugh ?”).  The line from a popular French song is pertinent to the discussion.  I prefer to laugh.

For centuries before and after Cicero’s “De Senectute” (“Concerning Old Age”), people have been writing, talking and even singing (as is Jacques Brel’s “Les Vieux”, “The Oldtimers”) about getting old.  No God surely could ever have wished this vestibule of death on His children.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

” ETERNAL REST ” ?

I have a confession to make.  In my twenties I conducted not a few funerals.  I have always adored Mozart’s Requiem.  But I never really knew what was meant by “Eternal rest grant to them, O Lord”.

O.K. , so life on Earth has been tough.  The dead deserve a break, a long, all-expenses-paid, eternal holiday : “dolce far niente” (“doing sweet nothing”), “rest in peace”.  But what happened to Paradise (with or without those seventy-two virgins promised to Muslim heroes) ?  Are we going to just relax or have the party we were promised ?  When does the fun start ?

Eternal rest is a curiously unattractive idea.  Does it mean relaxing forever in a celestial hammock or Lazyboy recliner ?   This would be enough for most of us, if we were not already dead, to be bored … to death.

Let the believers recite their mantras.  Call it “rest” if you like, or, as Mgr Ronald Knox once quipped, “quies in caelis” (a pun for Latinists).  It is, in fact, a return to the nothingness from which we came.  Forget the … rest.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

DEATH AND SUFFERING

I saw my brother die.  Most of us have seen loved ones in their last days and months dying, often in excruciating pain.  Some of them may have been lucky enough to have had a sudden death – an accident, war, murder, or more prosaically, a heart attack or a cerebral occlusion – and we were lucky enough not to have had to witness their agony.  Either way, death has always been a source of questioning for thinking people.  A dog just dies.  Men, women and children die, and we wonder why, especially if you happen to believe in God.

Myths, like those of Genesis, suggest that it did not have to be, it was not meant to be, this way.  God did not originally intend that we should die, but because we – or at least our First Parents – dared to disobey our loving Father, He condemned us to death (can’t have kids doing what they damn well please !)  He could have decided that at four score and ten, give or take a decade or two, we simply … drop dead (we say that to each other, but in fact it’s a good way to go).  But no !  Many die in terrible, terribly long, suffering, for themselves and for their families.  The brave, the lucid, ones accelerate the process by euthanasia, an eminently humane solution to avoiding the meaningless suffering that so often accompanies terminal illness.  One thing is certain : we will all die, with or without pain.  God – presumably – knows why.

But surely believers should question their belief in such a God.  Christianity, in particular, has centered its faith on the frightful, sadistic (if not masochistic) so-called “redemptive” death of an innocent man, said to be the very Son of God.  The crucifix, or at least the cross, is at the heart of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant faith.  Catholics ask the Crucified’s mother to pray for them, “now and at the hour of our death”.

Even for rationalists, there is no clear reason why we should die.  Except perhaps that given the fact that Nature has provided us with a limited “lebensraum” and limited resources, we are programed first to reproduce and then programed to be unable to reproduce, so as to protect the planet from suicidal over-population.  Not a very satisfying or consoling solution, but more believeable than the biblical bit about Original Sin and divine punishment.

Death is as insufferably unintelligible as it is final.  The frequently concomitant pain is even more difficult to accept, both for the rationalist and for the believer.  The latter believes that “trials are sent to test us”, that dying is the ultimate testing-ground.  The former does not claim to be able to make sense of it, but refuses the false “consolation” that it is merely an often painful passage to a life of eternal bliss, merited by those who pass the test.

I prefer to try to accept the inevitable and make the most of living while there is still time.  I do not need myths about an afterlife to accept the absurdity of death.  And I oppose both inhumane religious dogma and civil legislation which would prevent me and others from avoiding the even greater absurdity of dying in pain.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO