Death as Meaninglessness
Death is neither good nor bad. Death is simply a state. If life is one state, death is another. Life is one. Life is on. Death is zero. Death is off. It’s a bit flip, from one to zero. To lament or proclaim that death is bad or good isn’t objective. Death matters in context. At the individual level, it’s problematic because humans–on the whole–want to prolong life and death is to be avoided for as long as possible. Yet, on the macro level, an argument could be made that death is objectively a good thing, in that it keeps the population to a manageable size and decaying material provides the growth for new life. Humans tend to view their self and place in the world as the most important person; we are always the heroes of our own stories. We want our story to continue and so death ends up being a bad thing for us, individually. Yet, zooming out of our own lives, death is merely a name we give to go from full of life to empty of life. We could even call it lifeless instead of death and use the time before our birth and time after our death as both consisting of lifelessness. We weren’t concerned with the time before we were born so why should we concern ourselves with life after our death?
Death could be considered useful, to spur a life mission or as impetus to complete one’s novel. The Stoics practiced it, something along the lines of memento mori, Latin for remember that you have to die.
For most people, death is something we pay lip service to. Sure, we know we’ll die but that’s not real. Something that takes place so many decades in the future isn’t something to concern ourselves with. It isn’t until death is foisted upon us, whether through our own or, more likely, someone we know. For most of us, this doesn’t occur until much later in life, when a loved one dies. Death is unable to make an impact into how we live our lives. This makes a case for not worrying about death.
Death is finality and knowing this should give every human alive permission to live a life of fullness and excitement.
Death isn’t necessarily evil or something to lament; it some instances, death is a welcome respite from the pain of living.
Death may not be the end for those who believe in an afterlife or reincarnation. Even those of us who do not believe in the standard reincarnation, we may still posit that what constitutes the being I am now may again be reconstituted in the same manner a millennia from now. Montaigne’s famous quote here, “Since the movements of the atoms are so varied,” he wrote, “it is not unbelievable that the atoms once came together in this way, or that in the future they will come together like this again, giving birth to another Montaigne” (Greenblatt 209).
The arguments presented here are made in with the way the world and humans are now. If advances in science are made and humans gain the ability to live longer lives, to live with dignity and physicality reminiscent of our youth (or even a spritely 60), death may be something we can argue with. It may become a choice as to when and how we are to die. But, until then, death is death and there is no point in lamenting about it or fearing it.
Death cannot give life meaning, as Williams posits, because in the very fictional scenarios of Sisyphus, his meaning had to come from within. Even if he had the opportunity to die, would his life had meant anything if it were not coming from him?
Works Cited
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve : How the World Became Modern. 1st ed., W.W. Norton, 2011.
Nagel, Thomas. “The Meaning of Life” Canvas, uploaded by M. Derya Honca, 15 July 2022, https://canvas.harvard.edu/files/15265656/download?download\_frd=1.
Taylor, Richard. “The Meaning of Life” Canvas, uploaded by M. Derya Honca, 15 July 2022, https://canvas.harvard.edu/files/15265812/download?download\_frd=1.