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We’re All Going to Die
Everywhere I go I hear people talking about the massacre in Las Vegas. The 24-hour news cycle is obsessed with the tragedy, and there is no getting away from it. But one question that is asked over and over again frustrates and saddens me: “When we know why he did it, we’ll able to make the future safer.”
It’s a lie. A well intentioned lie, a desire to delude ourselves into thinking that we don’t live in a dangerous world and that we can protect ourselves. But in many ways, we can’t assure a perfectly protected existence. There is no living with “zero risk.” Let me try to clear up the delusion about making a safer world in a constructive and positive way.
The world has always been dangerous. Two thousand years ago, people died from exposure to the extreme weather, tribal and national wars, famine and disease. Many children died in childbirth. Many of these conditions are still true in third-world countries.
Today in the US we can make our cars safer, yet people will die in accidents. We make safer products, but children and adults will be killed by using them. We’ve developed cures for many diseases, and have the best healthcare in the world, and people still die from under-treatment, over-treatment, no treatment or the wrong treatment. All kinds of gun laws are already on the books and people are still dying from shootings.
Still, you say, there must be some way to stop these devastating terrorist acts. So we create the illusion that we are “doing something”; taking off our shoes for the TSA; opening our purses at concerts; providing security for controversial speakers at universities. We do all of these to protect the public, we say, but effectively we do them to fool ourselves; we are trying not just to protect ourselves, but to keep ourselves from dying.
But we are all going to die.
A part of you may say, I can’t give up! We are a civilized, intelligent, ingenious people. We should be able to come up with a solution to protect ourselves. What we are really saying is, we must be able to figure out how not to die, how to live forever.
So, you say, I don’t want to live forever! I just don’t want to die prematurely. I just want to be able to raise my kids. I just want to ensure that I see my daughter married and meet my grandkids. Is that asking so much?!
Yes. In fact it is asking for too much.
When the day comes for our deaths, we are likely not to have much, if anything, to say about it.
And yet there is a different kind of hope for us. You will not live forever; you can, however, come to terms with the fact that most things in life are out of your control. (This statement drives some people crazy, but if you think about it carefully, you’ll realize it’s true.) With that realization, that life will unfold as it will, you can experience a certain peace for important reasons:
- You can make good choices when choices are available.
- You can appreciate that you are alive to experience this special gift of your own precious life.
- You can experience and express gratitude for the big and little things you have.
- You can love those around you.
At those times when you become startlingly aware that life is fragile, ephemeral, and uncontrollable, remember you have all these gifts to embrace and share with others.
We are all going to die. But we can do our best to live with our eyes opened, enjoy every moment, show appreciation and celebrate.
Published in Culture
As I was writing my comment, I was thinking of just those kinds of things. I think they broke many barriers about what scientists thought they could cure: the sky was the limit! And beyond! There will be so many new cures that will benefit mankind, when those people with determination and curiosity can just find them. So yes, even the apparently unsolvable should be pursued.
MAXIMUS [ laughing]: I knew a man once who said, death smiles at us all. All that man can do is smile back. Gladiator (and many attribute it to Marcus Aurelius).
Great post Susan – do what you can, with what you have, where you are at.
Rage, rage! Against the dying of the light!
All the really good insights come to us in the form of paradox.
You see that in the gospels: Jesus seems able to treat death as a kind of revolving door…but his death is nonetheless so important that the earth shook when he died…for three days, and then came back to life…the most crucial event in history…except it was only for a little while and then he was gone again…
It’s easy to make a paradox sound idiotic, because while it can balance (nice, Susan!) on the one hand/on the other hand, it can’t actually resolve. Death is incredibly important! And…death is nothing.
I see so much death, of all different kinds and qualities.
Once, I found myself talking on the cell phone to my kid while standing next to a corpse on a riverbank.
I was waiting there, keeping the corpse—a drowning victim— company, making sure it was never left alone, because, although I doubt the corpse had a preference one way or the other, the corpse’s family cared a lot. So there I was, waiting for the loved ones to arrive, but they lived pretty far away. So it was going to be at least forty minutes, and in the meantime, my daughter called with a question about homework.
I am never quite sure whether having quite so much exposure to death has been a good and healthy thing? Or not?
This has been quoted many times here, but it’s apropos:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
Robert Heinlein
One could make the case that risk avoidance, death avoidance is one of the problems with modern society and the reason it can not evolve. In the past society members’ negative traits like laziness, stupidity, etc were culled from the bloodlines as natural selection kill these members off. Now in our kinder, gentler, world we protect those members of society with the worse traits even encourage them to flourish. It may be that these mass shooting events are natures way of culling the herd.
Maybe a little off topic but, Kate, you reminded me of the old WWI poem by A.E. Housman:
Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.
Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.
Every time I see that headline, Susan, I giggle… okay, I’m weird. But also, there’s a video the Maine Warden Service made for our Death Notification classes in which I appear, looking sort of tender and motherly, and say: “we’re all going to die…”
So of course, now it’s a thing the guys mimic, to tease me, saying in starry-eyed falsetto “we’re all going to die…”
Funny. Smile back at death indeed!
While what you say is true, I think it fails to acknowledge one important point. Even if we were to attempt to achieve a zero-risk world, there are probably thousands of things more likely to kill us than a mass shooting.
These incidents are horrific when they happen, but despite the lies told by the Left, they are rare. And even when they do happen, they barely register as mass killings. In a bad year, maybe a few tens of people die in mass shootings. How many die from car accidents? Drowning? Medical malpractice? Heart disease? Cancer? Lightning? It’s more. In some cases, a lot more.
That’s my response to the gun-control people. When we’ve managed to eliminate all of these much more important risks, then talk to me about guns.
Thanks, Kate. I think if people recognized paradox more often and learned to live with it (embracing it might be tough!), life would be a bit easier.
That is so hard to say, isn’t it? You have much more exposure to death than I do (I’m a hospice volunteer). You seem to celebrate life so beautifully that I suspect you find a way to keep it all in perspective. I also think that if you feel the need to move away from your work, you’ll know when that time has arrived.
Law enforcement does a great job with dark humor. It’s a great survival tactic! I knew they were including me in those rare times when they’d make a dark joke. You know of what I speak. ;-)
Hear! Hear!
Thank you Susan, for a well-written and very thoughtful post. All you said is true – and can’t be avoided over a lifetime. However, in the case of Las Vegas and the other mass shootings we have had over the last decade in the United States, I do not remember these large mass casualties happening so frequently. I think our culture is evolving in a dangerous way, where we are increasingly disconnected.
The few people surrounding this monster knew something. The people who perished and are lying in the hospital deserved to see another beautiful October day. Attackers have been using weapons that create mass carnage in a very short amount of time. Yes, we will all die, but we’re not having a serious enough conversation about how to handle the modern dangers we now face. We don’t and will not ever accept the terror of ISIS, so I cannot accept the terror in Vegas as a part of normal life with all its complexities.
Death is not the End. There still remains litigation over the estate.
I have posted some reflection on death on the member feed. (links not working at present). It is a different perspective.
As to this, of course, the gun-banners are out. Since they know they can’t get an all-out ban, they are going the incre-mental route. They have manufactured “studies” “showing” that various psychoactive drugs (sedatives, antidepressants) “promote” violence. They are attempting to deny guns to anyone ever treated with such medications. A police officer friend, when asked about this, told me that half the police force would then have to be disarmed. Anyway, expect more gun banning on this pretext.
I think the reason we need to find out why he did it is so we can prove how dangerous the leftist rhetoric has become. They dehumanize the right, and people are dying because of it.
We all have a death wish. More so now because everywhere we look, in fiction and real life, death is often a really painful transition. As well-organized human beings who desire to get our work done each day, increasingly death looks like something we need to get done. There are fleeting feelings of “let’s get this death-thing over with,” a growing impatience with daily life and suffering, and a passing envy of those who have already made that transition.
So why are dragging this life thing out anyway?
Viktor Frankl spent most of his life responding to that question. From Holcomb Noble, “Dr. Viktor E. Frankl of Vienna, Psychiatrist of the Search for Meaning, Dies at 92,” New York Times, September 1997:
[continued in comment 52]
[continued from comment 51]
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl describes the emotionally sadistic way in which the prisoners were treated. The Nazis had electrified the fence such that all it took for a prisoner to end his life, end his suffering, was to touch the fence. Just touch it and all of this horrific misery would be gone.
Teenagers suffer a lot. As a mother, I found myself justifying our painful existence to many young people, young people who felt no sense of purpose yet. After all, there are six billion people on this planet. Why did God make people anyway? To which I would always say, “I’m guessing here, but I imagine God is saying something like this to himself: ‘Because for every one of those six billion people, I need another six billion because people need other people. A kind word, encouragement, an arm to lean on, or a shoulder to cry on. No matter how many I make, I still need more. I can’t be everywhere at once down there.'”
I looked at the title of this post and my first thought was of the first lie: “You shall not surely die” (Gen. 3:4)
There is another book with a different perspective that you might find more acceptable: “Finishing Well” by John Dunlop, M.D. – not so much about dying but about how we end our lives.
“Dying well is nothing more than living well right up to the end.”
After reading some of the comments on this post, I have decided to change my ways. I will no longer stop at red lights and stop signs. I will no longer look both ways before crossing a street. The list could go on for a very long time.
My point is that — for most reasonably healthy and happy people — death is something to be put off as long as possible. It can’t be escaped but it can be delayed.
It’s true that (in the U.S.) deliberate acts of violence (terrorism, mass shootings, murder) affect only a very small fraction of the populace. It’s also true that little can be done to prevent such acts of violence. But that’s not a reason to be any less prudent about red lights, stop signs, street-crossing, etc.
As Susan Quinn puts it, you can make good choices when choices are available.
That concept doesn’t speak to me, Marci; it would be the opposite of my point, which is that we are all trying to avoid death. More than that, I know many folks like myself who are so grateful for their lives. When death comes, I hope I can face it with grace and peace. But I’m in no hurry.
Was it a lie? Adam & Eve defied G-d; at that point, all bets were off.
Thomas, what comments made you think that people would not be prudent in these areas? Just curious.
I have been thinking about doing a post on this. There is something worse than death. That is Despair. JK Rowling had the Dementors, who spread despair wherever they go. Isaac Asimov had the drug called Desperance, which caused despair in whomever took it.
I just saw the following posted on Facebook. It’s another lie, but perhaps not so well-intentioned:
Knowing the left’s M.O., I can say with a fairly high degree of confidence that the 1.5 million includes suicides (such as that of the Las Vegas shooter), intruders shot by homeowners, citizens shot both justifiably and unjustifiably by police, etc. Furthermore, it does not take into account the lives saved by firearms.
The left is always fudging numbers this way. I also find it interesting that many of the same folks on the left who insist that we have to get used to a certain level of Islamic supremacist violence also insist that we must curtail constitutional freedoms in order to “do something” about mass shootings.
Assuming that the 1.5 million is a real number, I wonder what % of that figure is the deaths that occur in our major cities where the killing is “black lives on other black lives”? Yes, not politically correct to say. And the irony is that the only truth in this meme is that this killing of each other is happening in our inner cities. However, this national tragedy is not the fault of the police forces who are simply trying to keep peace in our cities, of “white privilege” or legal gun owners. Those communities need to look in the mirror and if Black Lives really Matter (and they do(!)), the protests should be against the drugs, gangs and violence of a minority of hoodlums in their communities. “We” is not our police force of our cities or ‘whitey’.
There were roughly 33,000 gun deaths in 2013, 21,000 of which were suicides. (Wikipedia).