Death (Todd May)
OVERVIEW
“Death” was written by Todd May, an atheist and philosopher who lectures on death and mortality. I paid really close attention.
For May, death is the most important thing about us. And why not? Death, like nothing else, has the capacity to swallow our entire world. Death is complete erasure. The theme of death is of central importance in our lives, and the determination with which we ignore or deny it speaks to the significance of the dread that death inspires. May, like many philosophers of antiquity, sees no point in denying the reality of death. Being central to our humanness, we must confront our mortality
The conditions of mortality
Death is the end of us, in a way that’s hard to imagine. As I said in my review of Stephen Cave’s “Immortality,” the nothingness of death, the reality of non-being, defies understanding. I like May’s addition here:
The silence that is death, my not being there any longer, is something else again. It seems to resist thought. It is a wall my mind runs up against without being able to penetrate or find its way around. It confronts me, not as a threat to my being (things are already too late for that), but as an incomprehensibility that nevertheless is who I am to become.
Death is not a satisfying closure to life, not an ending that makes a life whole in the same way that the ending of a movie or novel does. Death does not fulfill a life’s trajectory. It does not bring a life to completion… it just stops it. It’s a fine distinction to make, but an important one. Death is not the culmination of your life, it is the abrupt termination of all your relationships, projects, and passions. Life is about being involved. What’s difficult to grapple with is not just the end of awareness, but the stoppage of our life’s engagements without closure.
Further, living with the inevitability and uncertainty of death is a feature of our existence. Death is always a possibility. May says we navigate our lives in the shadow of this understanding, and not only does it fill us with existential anxiety, it raises a possibility that we would rather not consider: that our lives do not really have a meaning or a point.
Meaning and meaninglessness
One way to examine whether a finite life has any meaning is to compare it to an infinite one. Much of May’s exploration on the prospect of immortality draws on reflections from Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “The Immortals” and philosopher Martha Nussbam’s study of Greek mythology. The conclusion is that immortality would, unquestionably, take away life’s meaning. There would be no impetus to do anything because there would be a thousand tomorrows to start. Immortality would drag relationships and passions past our capacity to remain involved or interested. Time would stretch out endlessly for trillions and trillions of years; a shapeless existence with no end. And so, May brings us to this paradox: death is both the source of meaning and meaninglessness in life. The fragility of our lives both makes and unmakes the importance of them. Without our death, life would be devoid of meaning, but with death we wonder “what’s the point?” This brings May to ask: what do we make of ourselves if the death that undermines us is a necessary feature of our lives being worthwhile? There is no resolution to this dilemma. There is only figuring out how to live within the paradox.
How to live in the shadow of death
May presents and then immediately discards many strategies for living as creatures haunted by death. Some he wholly rejects, such as living in denial of death or hoping for an eternal afterlife. Anything that ignores or refutes the fragility of life is necessarily unsuitable.
Two strategies May entertains partially. The first is that it’s fair to die. It’s a necessity that people die and make way for new generations. In this way, your death and the deaths of everyone else fits into a larger pattern of living; and that, in turn, gives your death a meaning or purpose within this pattern. The second strategy simply embraces that one has a place in the cosmic process of which one’s own existence is a fleeting moment, but a moment nonetheless. That’s not to say that the universe has any inherent meaning or purpose, but this also is a way of seeing yourself as part of something bigger than yourself. We know from Ernest Becker, Sheldon Solomon et. al., Stephen Cave, and Kathryn Mannix that the more we see ourselves as part of a larger whole, and the more we let our individual self dissolve into some larger meaning, the better we feel about our own personal extinction. But May pushes further. For him, these strategies are only partial remedies because they do not seek to deny the fragility of life, but neither do they help us live within the knowledge of that fragility. They only ask us to take our precariousness less seriously, to adopt perspectives that make our fragility less pressing to us.
May thinks we can do better (…and gosh I hope so because there are fewer than 20 pages left for him to inflate the life raft).
May’s final solution takes us through an examination of Stoic philosophy and the “Meditations” of Marcus Aurelius. We come out the other side with what are, in my view, three “To Dos.”
WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)
Think about your own death
You’re going to die. You could die today. I mean, you probably won’t, but you could. More than 150,000 people die each day. Why not you? Death is always a possibility. We know this intellectually, but few understand it viscerally. The knowledge of death must be affirmed and integrated into your life in a way that you’re impacted by the prospect of death. You have to live not just with the knowledge of death, but within the knowledge. Absorbing the lesson of fragility is necessary to imbue your life with a sense of preciousness and urgency. That’s your first task. (*existential sweating*)
Live like there is no tomorrow – enjoy the present moment
Bare awareness, living in the moment, is not the only thing that matters, but it does matter a great deal. The future is uncertain and death is inevitable; you never know if you have a tomorrow, so it’s prudent to enjoy the present. Do things you like to do, and really enjoy them while you’re doing them. Ask yourself: if today was all I had, would I have lived it differently? Of course, you probably shouldn’t quit your job, but do you really need to get swept up in office politics or gossip? Letting death into your life is a great way to clarify what does and does not matter. So enjoy the moment, don’t squander it pining for the past or worrying about the future. That being said,
Live like there is a tomorrow – engage in long-term projects
Living like there’s no tomorrow acknowledges the inevitability of death, but it doesn’t fully embrace the uncertainty of death. While it’s not certain you’ll have a tomorrow, it’s also not certain you won’t. For May, living in the moment is only half the equation; the other half is engaging in rewarding long-term projects. And the key is to pick projects and engagements that are satisfying in the moment and satisfying upon completion. The journey and the destination must both be the reward. And so, May’s ultimate advice is to live within the knowledge of one’s fragility and within the paradox of uncertainty – live like there’s no tomorrow, and also like there is. One can live engaged in the present and yet also engaged by one’s projects that extend into the future.
That isn’t to say that each moment will be sublime. There will always be the mundane – the dishes to wash, the instrument to practice… the chores of the present – but living with death in mind asks us to decide which among our projects are worth pursuing, what matters and what doesn’t. Does this project, relationship, etc. contribute to who you want to be, to where you want to go?
Life is too short… even if immortality would be too long.
IN SUM:
Is this book entirely secular? Yes.
If you had to describe the book in one sentence? A modern philosopher considers how we should live in the shadow of our mortality.
Who should read this book? Anyone who’s interested in mortality and/or philosophy