The Art of Dying

While dying for a cause might seem old fashioned, and I myself have huge reservations about the ramifications of “paying the ultimate price” in service to abstract principles, the truth is I’ve been thinking more and more about the necessity of accepting death, of even being willing to die, as a basis upon which a person can live a full and meaningful life. In other words, it doesn’t have to be about abstraction, at all. Fear of death holds us back from living - a platitude, you might say. But I’m not talking about vacuous justifications for trivial and relatively solitary pursuits like bungee jumping.

As a society, we need to come to terms with death. We seem more than willing to bankrupt ourselves and our families (and, ultimately, our society) in order to prolong one’s own or a loved one’s life by a year or two. We also seem unable to even fathom the idea of going to war for a just cause, or a greater good. Even if this is a dangerous idea, even if you believe that ends don’t justify means, isn’t it important to maintain a tradition of dignified strength and bravery in the face of small-mindedness and cowardice?

People talk about “treading lightly”, with respect to environmental issues. This could (mistakenly, I think) be taken to imply that we live less fully, that we’re less “here” than those who disrespect their surroundings, and the lives of others. But I’d submit that the person who lives conscientiously in this manner is more fully “here” than the person who is relatively careless. Likewise, I think it’s possible to “tread lightly” in a broader way with respect to the will to live. It’s not that a weaker will to live is desirable, it’s that if there isn’t also an ever-ready willingness to die, this “will to live” is trivial - it is just careless, unquestioned habit. I think a healthy willingness to die provides access to a reserve of strength and composure that results in what people call character. Character, contrary to conventional wisdom, isn’t a mere given - it is something that can be developed. I’d suggest that one way to develop character is to familiarize oneself with death - to learn to face the reality of death, unflinchingly.

For all the talk about people not fearing death, only pain, something doesn’t seem to add up. People still cling to life as if living is, in all circumstances, its own reward. And too much fear of pain is pathological. People can’t even eat lunch with a couple bees around. They jump up and down, run inside, and next time - if they’re even brave enough to eat outside again - they come out with Raid® in hand.

I’m suggesting that this attitude - this inflated fear of pain and death - is a degraded one, which in turn degrades our quality of life.

I agree completely, well said. I too have been thinking about this issue lately. Death should be welcomed, accepted and planned for, as the finale of one’s living. This does not imply a lack of “will to live”, far from it, it grounds such a will, provides a context for it. I believe that when we face and accept death,philosophically and psychologically, can we move from living merely accidentally to living intentionally and fully. But this isn’t to say it is impossible to live fully or authentically without coming to terms with death, I also think there are people who by some virtue of the conditions of their life are able to live fully and intentionally while keeping consciousness of death at bay. It would be interesting to analyze these two types and see where they converge, where they diverge, and why.

Probably true. I wonder if such an analysis is possible though…

The drive to chaos must be embraced those with power hold an iron grip on human consciousness and nature to maximize profit and influence but soon their worlds will be collapsed their legacies unearthed and new leaders will arise to flay their corpses like the dancing buffoons they once were they shall be steeped in slop and robed in maggot flesh and their kingdom will be the territorial fecal heap they once lorded over like silly rats over plagued carrion carcass

For many people the attachment to life declines with the death of those you like or love…that’s a natural process that means with each passing year your death becomes less of an issue for you…unless you’re a really sad, self obsessed, sonofabitch.

Enjoy your saturday mate.

thanks bro

Great OP, anon. I think maybe you should look into Heidegger after all.

Oh, it is. Phenomenology, specifically that German guy I keep mentioning developed a good ontology in which to ground it.* Sartre’s concept ‘bad faith’ could be a useful tool in the analysis proper, in case anyone should feel compelled to carry it out. (I certainly don’t, I’m more concerned with re-reading Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus with some regularity. Also a good, general description of how people tend to seek comfort rather than accepting their mortality fully.)

• Churchill would be so proud. (“Ending sentences with prepositions is something up with which I will not put.”)

Yes, being toward death offers us a good starting place here. It is really what is being described here. What I am curious about is whether or not one may life authentically without such an active being, without “angst”. I believe this is possible. It is possible to pass through angst and “conquer” it, submit it to your/a higher “will” (drive, unity), but it also seems possible to be in this state culminating naturally in an angst-free mode of being that does not shy away from death consciousness, but, structurally speaking, makes of this consciousness an integral component pre-analytically as a way of incorporating death into being without falling prey to terror, angst, depression, nihilism or despair. What of the being that might recognize death, its own, but be unable to affectively militate against this recognition? It seems the character of such a being would need to be along the lines of innocence, but an innocence born of strength, and of distance from the pathos of suffering and ressentiment. This would perhaps be an innocence of both the creator and the child, ignorance of the destabilizing other and sufficient potency of spirit to impregnate this ignorance with (one’s own) truth as artistic creation.

i think it is useful to spend time evaluating death…

but most of the time i need to spend thinking about life…

Yes, I have had a further insight here. Death ought be dealt with, faced and/or planned for because it is something which is often enough unfairly privileged in the scheme of our meaningfully experiential. There is natural hesitation to face death, it is an inordinately powerful conceptual destabilizer whose presence becomes a potentially destructive occurrence. In this sense, that we naively or unfairly privilege death in this manner, conceiving it under intention or cognition serves to strip away this unwarranted destructive power. Death has this power not because “awareness of death” or being toward death (sein zum tode) is a primary mode of our being, but precisely because it is NOT such a mode. Meaningfulness and being/s spring from entirely different and fertile grounds, of which the notion of our own death need not participate constitutively or essentially, but certainly CAN become such an essentially constitutive participant were we to spend enough time with this notion, allow ourselves to orient toward it sufficiently, but this goes for any notional object, be it death or anything else. Certainly some such objects are more prone to gathering this sort of inertial gravity than others, and the notion of death would not be an insignificant such notion, but it is also certainly not the only such notion nor nearly the most potent.

This understanding provides an answer to the question of how is it that it is possible to live fully and authentically without facing or being oriented toward death, while at the same time addressing the undeniable fact that such orientation to death may at times seem necessary or important to cultivating authentic living.

I’ve faced the idea of death many times during my life. As a result, I just may have a lot of practice, but I do think practice gives you a way of discerning the importance of living life as best you can. Unfortunately, it takes a certain amount of maturity to do that. Children with a fatal disease can meet death calmly, so I don’t really mean that maturity comes with age. Perhaps aletheia is correct in saying:

No one should ‘allow’ themselves to ‘suffer’–either physically or emotionally. It’s just not the ‘thing to do’ and it keeps you from doing so much. Death is gonna happen sooner or later; in one way or another–like taxes–so why not be prepared? Hold when you need to hold and apologize when apologies are needed. Then face life.

For many people the attachment to life declines with the death of those you like or love…that’s a natural process that means with each passing year your death becomes less of an issue for you…unless you’re a really sad, self obsessed, sonofabitch.
Un-retired.

I agree completely, well said. I too have been thinking about this issue lately. Death should be welcomed, accepted and planned for, as the finale of one’s living. This does not imply a lack of “will to live”, far from it, it grounds such a will, provides a context for it. I believe that when we face and accept death,philosophically and psychologically, can we move from living merely accidentally to living intentionally and fully. But this isn’t to say it is impossible to live fully or authentically without coming to terms with death, I also think there are people who by some virtue of the conditions of their life are able to live fully and intentionally while keeping consciousness of death at bay. It would be interesting to analyze these two types and see where they converge, where they diverge, and why.
The wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
‘What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?’

No moment of a being-alive is predicated for its existence on any future moment/s in which this being-alive may not exist.

I haven’t abandoned this thread. I’ll try to get back to this when I can.

I guess I can’t think of how to respond, so I’ll let it be…

so we have figured out the art of dying…what do you have to do…

What do you mean, turtle? I don’t think I’ve figured anything out, and I don’t think there’s a set of requirements involved.

For me, life is art. As such, death is the climax. In a dream once, an individual broke conversation with an admirer to tell me: “Do you know the primary function of art? It has an end.” Of course, “end” here works well with all connotations, whether as in something to hold on to, a purpose/goal or a point of termination…

Perhaps it is not the art of dying but the art of living…though depending on your point of view, living and dying may be synonymous…life being the slow process of death. Regardless, I propose that death and dying are not distinct from life, or more specifically, they are part of the same process which is commonly referred to as life. Is there an indelible line dividing the process of living from the process of dying, or do they coalesce, one becoming the other in imperceptible gradations…a wash from black to white? Life is perhaps the sentence which is completed by the period known as death.

Bushido culture sums it up nicely, and to draw from the vernacular: Death is the omote knot to the maki that is life.

I like that, MiaC. But what is an omote knot? What is maki?