To Die, To Sleep, No More

I have always loved the famous Hamlet soliloquy ‘To Be or Not to Be’. At some point I memorized it, though I must refresh it periodically or it slips away.  I have even written a song that addresses the same question.

The question ‘To Be or Not To Be’ postulates the possibility of suicide in the face of the myriad ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’.  The same theme and question come up in the Goethe classic The Sufferings of Young Werther (Die Leiden des Jungen Werther).  The question of whether suicide is justified when a person is tortured by mental anguish, physical infirmities or sickness of the soul is one many poets and scholars have wrestled with over the centuries.

But in this essay, I am not posing the question of whether suicide is an acceptable escape from misery. Fortunately, I am not facing that dilemma.  I am more interested in the corollary questions that Shakespeare introduces in those famous stanzas.  What will one find in that ‘undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns’?  Indeed, ‘what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil’?  I am intrigued by death itself and what it will mean for us, if anything.

Most of our religions and spiritual allegiances assure us that we have an immortal soul that continues to exist after physical death.  This is one of the main consolations of being a person of faith.  It is very disconcerting for most people to imagine that they will cease to exist after death.  And I would dare to hypothesize that even the most cavalier atheist is displaying a bit of false bravado when he or she claims to have no fear of the finality of death.

Attempting to visualize or conceptualize an existence of any form after death leads one to a series of questions that border on the absurd.  What form of being will we be?  Will there be a physical form?  If so, what age would we be?  Would we have the same personality and the same history or memory?  Would we meet family and friends?  Will our pets accompany us?  What would we do on a daily basis once the harp playing and singing gets old?  Would we tire of milk and honey? 

The ‘opiate of the masses’ school of thought on death portrays heaven as an idyllic place that will compensate for the pain and suffering that occurred on planet earth.  This is understandably a powerful and compelling story for the heartbroken and miserable. This is the idea that heaven will replace the brutal world with a loving, compassionate place and an eternal life of good things.

Every mother who has lost a child, every husband whose wife has died young of breast cancer, every person whose loved ones have been brutally taken from them by crime, disease or war; every slave, every victim of abuse, every hapless, luckless denizen of this cruelly arbitrary world, deserves such a recompense. 

But the imagery doesn’t hang together well and breaks down under any real scrutiny.  Would the mother who lost an infant child meet that child as an infant or an adult?  Would she have the opportunity to see that child grow up?  What if her own mother had died when she was a teenager? Would she be a teenager again in the eyes of her mother?  What about the billions of children who died in childbirth and never experienced life at all?  How will they be compensated?  Will they meet their parents for the first time and somehow go through a full life with them?  It seems like it would be better to give them another go at life, which brings up the new complication of reincarnation!

Another big question is how the whole eternity thing works. If heaven is an eternal dwelling, would we perceive time?  What purpose would time have?  How does the space-time continuum fit into this? All of these details quickly become self-contradictory and the whole enterprise becomes acutely unimaginable.

Moreover, the idea of a ‘perfect’ place with everything one needs to be happy also has its challenges.  A brief look at the ultra-rich who should be living the ideal life on earth is strong evidence that too much of a good thing is ultimately kind of bad!

Still, there are some indications that a post-death experience awaits us.  Countless near-death episodes have been recounted with tales of passageways leading to luminous, wonderful places, of powerful feelings of peace and contentment, of seeing deceased loved ones and so on.  There are even scientific studies and institutions that have catalogued these experiences and are attempting to understand them more fully.

I want to believe that I will continue to exist after death.  It would make it easier to die, and that certainly appears to be one of the main benefits of a belief in the afterlife.  Dying is a solo gig for the most part.  No one is sharing the experience.  One is all by oneself.  And very few people seem all that eager to let go of life and embark on that journey.  Most of us would ‘rather bear those ills we have than fly to others we know not of’, or perhaps even worse, to nothing at all.

There is enough mystery in the world to make one hesitant to hold fast to either skepticism or unquestioning belief.  I know enough of quantum physics and cosmology to see that all is not what it appears to be.  I may write whimsically about death but in the end, I respect and echo the earnestness with which most human beings approach the end of their days.  My own speculation and hope are that my spirit does somehow continue to exist, and that in some ethereal way we attain new levels of consciousness, love and compassion.  There is no logical or rational way to imagine it, so I will simply hope for the best.

 

 

Texas Heralds America's Own 'Cultural Revolution'

Neighbor spying on neighbor.  Indoctrinated children betraying their own parents.  A cadre of the ideologically unhinged and would-be bounty hunters searching for women, doctors, nurses, social workers and even drivers who they suspect of violating their version of religious law.

Yes, Texas has codified its own version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.  Bravo! 

The shocking nature of this new move by the anti-abortion zealots is a sign of the extremes to which these people will go to implement their self-righteous crusade.  The fact that five of the supreme court justices refused to immediately reject this radical vigilante-encouraging law is extremely sobering.

There is something about deputized citizens, bounties and vigilante justice that is supremely distasteful.  It is antithetical to a sense of fair play and due process.  It conjures up images of Nazi Germany, the KGB and many other totalitarian regimes where neighbors are encouraged and even paid to turn in their neighbors for perceived infractions or disloyalty.

The religious right may have gone a step too far with this attempt to circumvent our judicial system.  The incredulity, outrage and anger that it has engendered could cause a wave of reaction in independents and middle America and find expression at the polls.

I am not sure what these extremists ultimately hope to accomplish.  The availability of pharmaceutical abortions and the willingness of people to help women find and fund alternative places for ending pregnancies will probably reduce the impact dramatically.  Moreover, there has been a continuous decline in the rate of abortions in the USA since a peak was reached in the 1981.

Here is an extract from the Wikipedia article on abortion in the USA:

In 1973, the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalized abortion in all 50 states. Thoughout the 1970s, the abortion rate rose almost 80%, peaking at 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age according to the Guttmacher Institute and at 25 abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age according to the CDC.

From 1981 through 2017, the abortion rate fell approximately in half. It did not fall every single year, but it has not risen two years in a row since 1979 and 1980. The abortion rate fell below the 1973 rate in 2012 and continued to fall through 2017. 

Abortion foes would be so much wiser to encourage these downward trends of abortions by promoting sex education and birth control, especially the newer IUDs that provide highly reliable birth control without the risk of non-compliance that pills, condoms or other means entail.

That presumes that the goal of abortion opponents is truly to reduce abortions and not simply to wage a culture war that projects their own insecurities about a changing and uncertain world.  If they really want to save lives, I would recommend they put their energy towards reversing climate change.  The number of future victims of that onrushing calamity, all of whom will be cognitive, self-aware human beings, will dwarf the number of aborted fetuses.

 

Living in the Moment

I have often heard people say that they are trying harder to ‘live in the moment’.  It seems that we have all become acutely aware that most of the time we are focused on either the past or the future rather than the present.  We suspect that it would be better for us to more fully experience the current moment of our lives rather than be distracted by thoughts of the past or future, or other daydreams.

But what does it really mean to ‘live in the moment’?  Does it imply that we must actually be thinking about or analyzing what we are doing and examining our state of mind and feelings?  Can one be ‘in the moment’ without telling oneself to be ‘in the moment’?  Can we experience something fully without our thoughts conducting a monologue about that experience?

When one is involved in a vigorous activity, such as playing a sport or practicing a musical instrument, background thoughts seem to disappear.  The more the activity requires effort and concentration, the less one is able to conduct the usual soliloquy of conscious thought.  But when one performs less demanding activities, such as listening to music or going on a hike, one often finds that significant periods of time go by without one being at all aware of the activity.  We daydream, fret about a coming event, or analyze something that happened in the past.  Instead of fully experiencing the thoughts, sensations and emotions of that activity, we are distracted and lose whatever benefit those moments might otherwise have brought.

One example is the act of eating.  I have often noticed that I will look forward to eating something but discover after I have finished that I was distracted by other thoughts or social interactions and didn’t fully savor the food.  When I focus my full attention on the act of eating, I get much more enjoyment, especially if the food is something special.  But unfortunately, this is difficult to do when one is in a social setting or watching TV.  Even eating alone, the typical thought distractions that one has may get in the way of that enjoyment.

Distractions - whether daydreams, anticipation, memories or worries - are always waiting impatiently at the doorway of our consciousness.  We have all developed a bad habit of letting them in because much of our time is spent in mundane activity that does not offer any great joy ‘in the moment’.  It requires a certain discipline and training to refocus our mind when we are doing something that merits our full attention.  But life will probably be much more satisfying if we manage to do so.

When Presidential Aspirations Become a Deadly Flaw

The political world is filled with enormous egos.  Politicians on the left and right are generally possessed of ten parts ego-fed ambition for every one part of public spirit.  No, I don’t have a source for that.  Let’s just say that is an aphorism born of many years of observing politics and human beings.  My cynicism in this regard may be a bit exaggerated, but I doubt I am far from the mark.

Shooting for the presidency is perhaps the biggest ego trip of all.  To imagine oneself as the supreme ruler of the most powerful nation on earth is heady stuff.  Becoming the Master of the Universe is such an incredibly seductive accomplishment that politicians will do almost anything to achieve it.

First and foremost, they will give up any normal life of family, friends, work and leisure.  They will abandon whatever firmly held convictions they had in their earlier years and bend their opinions and platforms to conform to a best fit for winning.  They will court powerful people and corporations with so many promises and assurances that they won’t even be able to keep track of them.  They will spend most of their lives fundraising.

But the link between these compromises and truly dangerous or deadly consequences is generally not visible or easily discerned.  The candidates can rest easily, assured that their dalliances with the powerful, the rich and whatever policy issues they have endorsed are just the normal political game.

However, in the time of COVID and Trump, this link is crystal clear.  There is no doubt that Presidential aspirations are directly causing death and misery.  Governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, both eyeing a possible run for the presidency in 2024 should Trump decide not to, have burnished their Trumpian reputations at the expense of their constituents’ lives.

By refusing to promote and mandate mask wearing and vaccination, in direct opposition to the best medical advice in their states and in the nation, these two governors have essentially committed wholesale manslaughter in the name of their presidential aspirations.  They have sacrificed thousands of lives on the altar of their egos. Their names should go down in infamy.  The names of the dead should be chanted to them wherever they go.

Politics is often referred to as a dirty game.  But this type of pandering for the votes of the Trump world is despicable in the extreme.  It deserves condemnation from all quarters and it is a sad reflection on the state of our political life.

The Tragedy of Afghanistan

War is always a tragedy.  Our ‘forever’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are tragic for so many reasons and have had almost an endless series of heartbreaking events.  The latest one, the death of 13 service members and over a hundred hopeful Afghani civilians by an ISIS suicide bomber, is one more sad reminder that we must only commit human lives to military operations when it is absolutely necessary and there is no other choice.

The tragedy of 9/11 produced understandable horror and outrage.  Unfortunately, that triggered a crusade for vengeance that precluded a more sober and sensible approach to seeking justice for those killed in the attacks.  The subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have reaped a harvest of death and destruction that dwarfs the 9/11 attacks and has diminished the USA in the eyes of much of the world.

Over 7,000 U.S. service members and over 8,000 contractors have died in the post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Over thirty thousand post 9/11 U.S. service members have died of suicide.  Were these deaths necessary to quench our thirst for revenge? 

It would no doubt have been difficult to root out Al Qaida in Afghanistan without invading, but when one looks at the cost in human lives and suffering to kill Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaida meambers (who by the way have been replaced by innumerable new extremist volunteers and new terrorist organizations such as ISIS) then only a very contorted rationalization can justify it.

These wars have done nothing to improve the situation in the Middle East.  Indeed, they have arguably worsened it considerably.  They have also been unsuccessful in stemming the growth of extremism and terrorist acts.  Violence begets violence.

The current debacle of our withdrawal from Afghanistan may have been exacerbated by inadequate planning or haste, but I would argue that there was no way to leave the country without chaos and death ensuing.  No matter when or how we left there were going to be tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Afghanis desperate to leave with us.  The Saigonesque scenes were bound to occur in some form. 

An earlier mass exodus would not have been a logical plan, as it would have undermined the Afghani government and caused panic in the country.  But the exact nature of the planning, the decisions, and the mistakes made should be studied for the future, in the likely event that we still have not learned from the horrible mistakes of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Veterans of these cruel wars have spoken of their understandable despair in the realization that nothing was gained by their sacrifice.  I commiserate with their frustration, but a sacrifice should never be assigned value based on the success it achieves.  It is the nobility of the sacrifice itself, not its result, that deserves our recognition and praise.  A fireman who gives his or her life by racing into a building to save a child is no less noble if the child is not saved or if the child had been rescued earlier.

The time has come for the USA to make a sober appraisal of the utility of military exploits and the extent to which our employment of the empire-style manipulation of other nations and people has caused more harm than good.  The world is inter-connected now by global trade, tourism and cultural exchange in a way that should allow us to solve problems in a less catastrophic manner than warfare.  The calculus of war has always been problematic – more people die, and more lives are ruined in warfare than in the situations that warfare is attempting to solve. 

Diplomacy and international cooperation on terrorism and other ills of the modern world are often painfully slow and frustrating and require patience that has historically been in short supply in US foreign policy.  But the alternative of endless warfare is clearly a solution that is a tragic and unnecessary mistake.

The Demise of the Buffalo – A Not-so-simple Allegory

Everyone knows the story.  Once upon a time herds of buffalo roamed the great plains in uncountable numbers.  It is estimated that there were more than 30 million at any given time.  Indigenous people hunted them and relied on the success of those hunts to provide most of the essentials for their survival. 

They used every part of the bison.  They ate the meat and every other edible part of the animal – organs, tongues, fat, brain. They tanned the hides, or simply kept them as rawhide, and employed them for clothing and shelter.  They even used many of the skeletal components for tools.

Then along came the Europeans with their long rifles, and eventually their wagons and trains.  The market price of a bull buffalo skin was $3.50 and a man could make a good living killing buffalo, so they came by the thousands, especially after the economic depression of 1873. Buffalo Bill Cody earned his nickname by claiming to have killed 4,280 buffalo in an 18 month period. 

And as the market experienced a glut of hides, the hunters killed even more energetically to make up their losses.  They cut off the hump, the skin and the tongue.  They left the rest to rot on the plains. 

They were encouraged and aided in their work by the U.S. Army.  The battle against the plains Indians was being waged mercilessly, and Gen. Phillip Sheridan, the civil war hero, saw the extermination of the buffalo as a strategic ploy to force the Indians into reservations and agricultural work.  One army colonel wrote, “Kill every buffalo you can.  Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone!”

By 1875 the plains had become a vast graveyard, a veritable charnel house for buffalo.  Congress passed legislation to protect the buffalo, but President Grant refused to sign it. By the end of the 19^th century there were only a few hundred buffalo left in the wild. There are now twenty to thirty thousand after more than a hundred years of protection and conservation.

I started out to write this essay to condemn the European slaughter of the bison and extoll the virtues of the way the buffalo was treated by Native Americans – to portray the contrasting methods as an allegory for the excesses of our modern industrial society.

But as I read more about the topic, I learned that the plains Indians had also begun to overhunt the bison, and that the competition among Indian tribes was already paving the path to extinction for the buffalo before the Europeans built a super highway.  The acquisition of horses in the 1700’s and the subsequent dramatic increase in nomadic populations spelled disaster for the animals even before it was accelerated by the white buffalo hunters.

Make no mistake, our treatment of the plains Indians is a horrible blight on our nation’s record.  But the plains were not an idyllic place before the Europeans arrived.  The brutality and the merciless nature of intertribal warfare was a fact of life, and each group was relentless in its hunting of the poor bison.

The near extinction of the buffalo is indeed an allegory, but it is an allegory for the entirety of human impact on nature, not any particular group’s.  Human beings are clever enough to find the means to exploit nature for their benefit and increase their population exponentially.  Each step of progress, each invention, each new technique, improves their lifestyle and longevity, and consequently heightens the environmental impact of humanity. 

We have little capacity for a united approach to conserve or protect our natural world, as we have spent hundreds of years glorifying private property, personal freedom and consumption.  The ‘tragedy of the commons’ (a model used by economists to refute Adam Smith’s ‘Invisible Hand of the Market’ concept in Wealth of Nations) is in full view everywhere these days - the use of carbon-based energy, the proliferation of plastics and other non-recyclables, the overuse of water resources and the ever-increasing materialism that infects every society on earth.

Ultimately, nature has feedback mechanisms that defeat extreme aberrations.  Our excesses are already provoking dangerous weather phenomena, wildfires, arctic and Antarctic glacier melting, and the proliferation of more deadly viruses.  The future will no doubt bring further shocking repercussions.

In the end, after painful disruption and cataclysmic events, perhaps humanity will be forced to confront and surmount its greatest challenge, the creation of a global social compact that allows it to live in harmony with the natural world. 

Meme Stocks, Gambling and Good Fortune

The current meme stock craze is yet another example of the sad propensity for human beings to gleefully rob Peter to pay Paul, Paul being themselves.

If one purchases a stock that has social media hype but little or no real value, then one is betting that latecomers to the FOMO hysteria will fund their good fortune.  When there is no real value or profit created by the company, then the appreciation of a stock and the profit reaped by early investors is the money lost by later investors.  In the long run, if the company is not growing or creating value, or if the stock is merely a fad, then the price will drop and the latecomers will lose money.  This is no different than going to a casino, where there is a zero sum game and for every winner there will be a loser (and if you count the casino's take, then there will ultimately be many more losers than winners).

One may argue caveat emptor, but is benefiting from the misfortune of others an ethical act?  There are many investments available that allow one to slowly acquire wealth through the success of a company that is creating a valuable product or service, an investment where all investors are likely to benefit.  The reason that meme stocks are so popular is simply because they offer the tantalizing prospect of immediate large gains.

This is the same impulse that has driven every gold, silver or diamond rush throughout history, every treasure-seeking voyage of discovery, and every frantic purchase of powerball tickets.

This obsession with lottery style winnings is a more dramatic example of a broader human trait – the selfish hoarding of good fortune.  If I happen to discover oil on my land, do I deserve the wealth that it brings, or should I share it with others?  If I am born into a stable, wealthy family in the richest country on earth, should I find a way to help others in less fortunate countries or circumstances?  Or should I build a wall around my country to make sure that my good fortune is protected?  If I am endowed with intelligence and good health, should I be motivated to share my good fortune with those who are less able or who suffer from maladies of various types? 

These are difficult questions.  The disparities in good fortune in this world are overwhelming and they are made more complex and sometimes intractable by the economic and political circumstances that surround them.  But it is perfectly clear that much if not all of our ‘good fortune’ is undeserved in any absolute sense, and that some measure of kindness, and generous sharing is incumbent on us.

How seriously we take that obligation and how far we go to respond to it is an individual choice that each person must make.  Few will choose to sell all their possessions and give the proceeds to the poor, as Jesus suggested to the rich, young ruler.  But the world would certainly be improved if all of us acknowledged the role that ‘good fortune’ has played in our lives and took measures to even the playing field.  And I am pretty sure that buying meme stocks is not one of these measures.