learning how to die in the anthropocene

[jaelh]

anyone interested in a discussion on this essay?

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... hropocene/

it sits... well with me. as in, yes, it seems to me to be speaking a truth - even if "this" won't end us, we will end. necessarily and inevitably. i practice (or, really, should get back to practicing) a particular type of meditation, during the teaching of which students are told the 'test' is how you face death. my mother, a palliative care nurse, holds this to be a general truth - being able to die well is vital. it's not fatalist - it's not until you accept death you can truly live, kind of thing.

how you do that though as a world.. yeah, i don't know.

anyway. i read this two days ago, and it's stayed with me. i've got a great discussion group elsewhere, but we have a member who is pregnant and experiencing some serious anxiety - it would be inappropriate to off this up for analysis. but if anyone is interested, i'd love to hear your thoughts.

[StacyW]

The author is a very good writer, and it's interesting that he went from being an enlisted man in the army to a PhD student at Princeton. I don't understand why he thinks our civilization is already dead, though. As for preparing for death, I've read that yoga also helps you with this. The last pose you do is called "corpse" pose, and if you have been exerting yourself during the yoga class then your body will feel very still at that point, and your mind quiet.

I've found as I've gotten older that I'm less wary of things I found too dangerous before, because I know I'm going to die anyway. For example, I MIGHT try sky diving some day.

Has your mother described the different ways that her patients face death?

[jaelh]

I think the "already dead" is intended as a mental technique, not a statement of actuality. by accepting ones mortality, and the imminence of ones mortality, is a technique to facilitate the jettisoning of 'petty' concerns. if you meditate on the inevitability of your own mortality each day, that you accept you are, for all intents and purposes, dead*, the life choices you make are usually very different.

Applied to humanity, if we accept we're going to come to an end - at least, this life that we know (this modern, western, rich, [relatively] easy life) will come to an end, and likely within the lifetimes of our grandchildren and great grandchildren) - the decisions we will collectively make about our future will be fundamentally different. They have to be.

Re my mother - oh yes. in much detail. the short version of her opinion is: there are good deaths and there are bad deaths. people who are OK with their own mortality die much more.. calmly then those who are not. You can see people fighting death to the last breath. Applicable wether they are conscious or not when they die, which I found interesting. She maintains there is a real difference when people have something to hold to when facing death. A religious belief, a belief in the inevitability but OKness of it all, whatever works for you. If you can be ok with, you will "die well". Or at least, "die better".

*not the right word. i don't know what the right word. the whole "die unto yourself" motif appears throughout western and eastern traditions. i don't have the theological or philosophical training to translate it into words. it's like a get it, but I can't explain it. So.. 10 points for unhelpful, no? :)

[Artemis]

Death is almost a taboo subject now, as sex was in previous centuries. It's hard for people to understand that there comes a time when no medical science can save: a time when death will be there, staring you in the face. For myself, I have a similar philosophy to Thomas a Kempis:

'If a man would live well, let him bring to himself every day his last day, and make it his company-keeper.'

I have always considered myself a coward about suffering, but I do believe that I have made my peace with death. I don't want to die, but I know that I must, so every day for me, I understand that it may be the last day, not just for me, but for anyone I love. It makes me appreciate life, and the people I love, so much more, and every day I try to appreciate something specific. Some people may think that this is a morbid idea, but I don't experience it as morbid, I experience it as liberating.

I know that there will be pain, confusion and grief in my future, and that when I go through it, it will be hard to deal with it with the serenity with which I now regard it. But because I have accepted that it will be there, I am not afraid of it. I know it will happen, and I accept its inevitability. I do not look forward to it, but if I could ask for any gift in dying, it would be that I am able to experience it with a sense that it is the last great adventure.

I have more fear that those I love will not be able to accept their ends with a similar serenity than I have for myself.

[jaelh]

individual death though is (relatively) easy to accept. yes, we no longer speak of it, yes it's mediacalised, yes it happens behind closed doors. but the inevitability of death is something we all have a consciousness of, even if we fight it.

death of a humanity though? do you think we have it in us to face up to that?

[bionicmlle]

Sounds like your mother studies Erikson -- I love the theory he taught about end-of-life. We must look back on our life and be able to find some sense of fulfillment with the goal of gaining wisdom in order to have peace and lack despair at the end of our life. Although he generally defined this as a post-retirement developmental stage, I think it's important for all of us, at varying life stages, look back and find fulfillment and a readiness for death or, even, the end of this "season" (thanks J'chelle) of our life and be able to move on. It doesn't mean we want to die or welcome death - it's peace and contentment with the now.

[JesusFightClub]

Sounds like your mother studies Erikson -- I love the theory he taught about end-of-life. We must look back on our life and be able to find some sense of fulfillment with the goal of gaining wisdom in order to have peace and lack despair at the end of our life. Although he generally defined this as a post-retirement developmental stage, I think it's important for all of us, at varying life stages, look back and find fulfillment and a readiness for death or, even, the end of this "season" (thanks J'chelle) of our life and be able to move on. It doesn't mean we want to die or welcome death - it's peace and contentment with the now.

Beautifully put.

I got hit by a car when I was 14 and while I didn't die (obv :D) I was knocked out for a while and just before I passed out I thought I was dead. The last thing I can remember coherently thinking was "Oh well! It's been a great laugh really". :dance:

I hope to retain that mindset if at all possible.

[Confused_by_religion]

I was present at the dying of my grandmothers (some years apart), and I got away with the impression that death really is hard work. This may sound stupid or superstitious, but still that was my impression.

Before they died, both my grandmothers were in a coma for a couple of days, and my family spent a lot of time sitting with them. When it was my turn, I observed that there were phases when there seemed to be a stillness in the room and phases when I had the distinct impression of a lot of energy, of hard work going on. It's really hard to explain, but as I had this impression in two different cases duriing several days in total, I don't think I just made it up. Something was definitely going on, and although I'm not particularly religious I think it might have been something like the soul trying to sever the links to the body. Both of my grandmothers were atheists, and it would be interesting to know if their death would have been different if they had been religious.