Follow up to: The Death of a Friend

‎”Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we’ve lived. After all Number One, we’re only mortal.” — Captain Picard

I’d like to interrupt my normal blogging schedule for this announcement: my grandma died this week.

As I have done before, I have decided to use my blog to write about it reflectively rather than talk to people about it. I don’t want to make this essay on death all about my atheism thing, but if my best guesses about how the universe works are right, I will never be able to see my Grandma again, short of figuring out how to simulate her on a computer program or something, which seems pretty far off in the future and probably outside my personal lifespan.

I think my grandma was religious, but I never really knew for sure. Religion doesn’t play any role in my immediate family as far as I’m aware. I haven’t really asked around, but I’m fairly confident that my parents and brother don’t believe in any gods, souls, or afterlives. The point being not that I care about whether my family members are religious or not; I’d love them all the same, of course — and honestly, outside of this blog, I really don’t focus on religion much at all.

However, the point is that definitely me, and probably lots of other people who knew Grandma, are all going to have to sort out this permanent death deal.

 

Religion or Non-Religion, We All Face Death

Reflecting upon death isn’t when I’m particularly looking to score points in my “atheism vs. theism” debate, but I have noticed a long recurring trope that being religious makes death easier to cope with and come to terms with. After all, you’ll be seeing them in {insert afterlife of your preferred religion here} when you die, which won’t be too long from now, especially relative to an eternity of everlasting life.

But I honestly haven’t noticed this to be any helpful. Instead, I see lots of confusion over why an all-loving God allowed, or even chose, this person to die at this time in this way. I see people worried about Heaven and Hell, especially if they think they might end up in Heaven while they’re loved ones don’t make it. I see confusion over the theology about what, exactly, happens after death. And I see a lot of questions worth being confused about.

Again, I’m not looking to score points. I think the fact that theists mourn deeply, care about their own lives, fear death, etc. — even in the face of potential everlasting life — doesn’t make them hypocrites or somehow exposes them as not really believing their religion. Instead, I think it makes them human, like the rest of us. We cherish life and love our loved ones, so it makes sense to mourn when they’re gone.

 

Making Some Sense of Death

Death is something we all have to make sense of. We might notice how we weren’t born for millions of years, and those millions of years of nonexistence didn’t bother us at all, and then realize that our death will be very much like that. We might recognize the uncountably massive amount of possible people that never actually came into existence, and recognize how monumentally lucky we are to have even been born at all.

Those of us in my family might give thanks on top of that to recognize that we beat the odds a second time around and were not only born, but born into a functional, caring, educated, wealthy first world family. If you, like me, live in America and earn more than $41K per person, you are in the global 1%, with many resources and opportunities that billions of those who live don’t get to enjoy.

We furthermore might recognize that our lives will always have existed in their moments in time despite moving away from them toward the future, just like California continues to exist when we move away from it toward Chicago. We might recognize that we will have impacts toward the future and even many people to remember us by, even if we get muddled into a bigger chain of causation.

 

Fighting Death Back

However, while these reflections on death seem to stand scrutiny and are comforting, I’m additionally comforted by the fact that death doesn’t have to be something that I accept. As I have said before, permanent death is perhaps one of the most unfortunate parts of how the universe works. If I had my way, I would construct a universe in which there was no unconsensual death.

I associate with a transhumanist philosophy of wanting to abolish death, if and when possible. It may seem bizarre, but it’s really simple when you think about it further — if it’s good to save lives and restore people to full health, it should be worth keeping people in full health and vigor for as long as they want to live, even if that may be millions of years. It seems like you have to add an extra inconsistency to explain why saving people is good when they’re 70 or younger, but bad when they’re 70 or older.

 

I think that there are ways to think about death that can be somewhat comforting. But at the same time, I think everyone has the right to be angry at death, to recognize that we’ve been robbed of something extremely irreplaceable, something that had the height of sentimental value, by an uncaring and unfeeling universe. No sentient being deserves to face an unconsensual death and witness the loss of absolutely everything that could have happened, even if there is so much that did happen.

The scope of death is staggering — while my grandma’s death personally affects me, 105 people die every minute. That’s the permanent, irreversible loss of 105 people every minute — a loss on the order of what I felt from my grandma more than twice a second… Compound that with the loss of millions more nonhuman animals out in the wilderness or at the hands of cruel farming practices, all of whom matter some.

 

I’m told there is a Jewish tradition of donating to a worthy organization to commemorate someone’s death. I’m not Jewish, but such a tradition is admirable and worth perpetuating nonetheless. I think it’s not enough to work hard to conceptualize the sheer scope of this loss and then not want to do something about it. This is why I dedicate efforts to fighting the death of humans and nonhumans through being a GivingWhatWeCan member, and allocating 10%+ of my income to charitable causes, like bednets to prevent malaria. This is also why I watch, with some skepticism but much hope, not only attempts to cure normal diseases like the cancer that my grandma died from, but also the anti-death efforts of the Methuselah Foundation and Alcor.

To this end, I encourage everyone to fight death the only way we currently can; through a monetary contribution to a worthy organization. I’m fine with you donating to an organization you sincerely feel will allow someone to live a longer, better life, but I personally offer you the careful and thorough research of Givewell.org to find a good giving opportunity.

 

Conclusion

We’re lucky that my Grandma died the way she wanted, comfortably and with people who love her, after a comparably long and rich life. Other people aren’t so lucky. But just because our universe is uncaring and unloving doesn’t mean that we have to be. By a lucky and accidental quirk of evolution, there is consciousness in this universe and while its fragile and capable of death, its also capable of the very life and love worth preserving.

My Grandma exists no longer. There is nothing I can do to have prevented her death. But for others, there is still more I can do. While the sheer amount of death — both human and nonhuman, both here and presumably elsewhere in the universe — is staggering, what we can do for each individual is reassuring.

 

By way of final conclusion, I’m reminded of a parable of starfish:

Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. [...] One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.

As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.

He came closer still and called out “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”

The young man paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean.”

“I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?” asked the somewhat startled wise man.

To this, the young man replied, “The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them in, they’ll die.”

Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, “But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can’t possibly make a difference!”

At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, “I made a difference to that one!”

In memory of my Grandma, I invite everyone to make a difference… for those who are still alive.

‎”Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.” — Carl Sagan