Now, in my late 20’s, as I notice my body getting ready for the ravages of old age, my thoughts dwell on death in a way that fascinates me. I am someone who has tried suicide many times and yet I’m still here, almost laughing at those failures. Why do I laugh?
Because I’ve finally reached a point where I want to refuse suicide against all future pain. This realization comes to me suddenly, that no matter how my body begins to fall apart, I will accept it. I will actually watch myself fall apart, surely showing pain, and sounding of pain, but with secret mirth hidden at my core.
I say this while my fear of the unknown has turned into more of a curiosity. The mystery has me hooked. Call this masochism if you’d like.
My point of this post is that I wish to make death a proper study of mine, one that I may revise until my last breath. But I ask you, where do I start? Many philosophies talk of the meaning of life, but which ones talk more about the meaning of death?
Most importantly, what aspects of death are worth reflection? I’m not really interested in proposed theories of death like heavenly gates or demonic circles of hell, as much as I am about how death affects our perceptions now?
So, if you would please refer me to the authors and books that deal with death in this way, I sure would appreciate it.
Damn skippy. Direct experience is the only true teacher for these questions. All reading can do is give you different perspectives to stand at. While you’re at it, though, try the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Somone can have insights that you don’t which you can agree with because their true, its not a lapse in someone’s judgement to hold someone elses explanation as part of their understanding.
If this was the case lots of important jobs/education would cease to exist. When a brain surgeon learns from a mentor or a book, its just as useful as experiencing it themselves.
Not all things should be experienced, like learning that your patient died because you cut the wrong thing. Just apply it to this situation as well, other people can offer valuable insights i’m sure.
“What does not kill me only makes me stronger.” Nietzsche
I think this is a good motto to live by concerning your past sucide attempts.
As for the subject of death, I think it’s a good idea to explore this philisophically. I am also very interested in death, mainly because it scares the shit out of me and I know it is ineveitable. It is the curse of being self-aware, because we know we exist we also know that we die.
Some texts on death
The Denail of Death by Ernest Becker
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
This is certainly a pertinent topic, one that really underscores all our philosophical bullshitting - one that really is open to the individual interpretation as well, as who can say whether we all each have the same experience at death? It is, of course, the great unknown. Perhaps we are all disembodied consciousnesses from each a very different dimension, appearing together on this tiny planet for a cosmic microsecond before we flit away into some other body? Perhaps really death is not all that important at all, simply a fading into a new set of memories, a new body or lack thereof…who are we in the first place, anyway? “I was not born Adam, I was not born a human being, a dentist, a soldier, all these things were learned…”
An early death angers the gods. The gods want to feed on you for the full cycle, before you die. They will be angry if you leave before they are done taking everything away from you. Their hate for you exists in your own body, and it is your pain and your madness, to keep you under their control.
…in case you are interested. That might sound terrible to someone with a ‘serious’ interest, but I think it is actually quite good and conveys a lot (in a completely non-intellectual manner). It might be called ‘new age’ by cynics.
I think many books about literal end-of-life death in the Buddhist tradition relate that macro process to the micro processes of birth & death that occur each moment of our lives if we learn how to pay attention to that. The authentic ‘Book of the Dead’ probably won’t do that for you however - although I’m not sure because I have only read it in bits and pieces. It’s a bit exotic.
Any good empirical study requires observation. I would suggest that you keep a detailed diary of all events and occurences in your life that may relate to the subject under study. In a separate book, properly annotated, you could keep your ruminations of what your observations seem to mean and how you think they relate to the object of your study.
Or you could just do it in one book on alternating pages. The idea is to be organized and through.
Peroidically, you could go back and peruse these journals and perhaps develop new insights and observations that could be developed into a monograph suitable for publication. You could enlist others to do the same and start a scholarly journal where yours and others writings and ruminations could become more widely disseminated.
Eventually, if you live long enough, you could become partly famous as an expert on the long slow nickle and diming of the death process.
