There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller overtaken on a plain by an enraged beast. Escaping from the beast he gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to climb out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring to leap to the bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes s twig growing in a crack in the well and clings to it.
His hands are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still he clings on. Then he sees that two mice, a black one and a white one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which he is clinging and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself will snap and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he looks around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig, reaches them with his tongue and licks them.
So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces; and I could not understand why I had fallen into such torment. I tried to lick the honey which formerly consoled me, but the honey no longer gave me pleasure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed at the branch by which I hung. I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet. I only saw the unescapable dragon and the mice, and I could not tear my gaze from them. And this is not a fable but the real unanswerable truth intelligible to all.
- Leo Tolstoy’s “Confessions”
I read this passage in the syllabus of a fascinating course at the U of A. It was the setup for a semester of profound, challenging and interesting discussions. The companion material to this passage consisted of texts about people who’ve tried to, in a sense, cheat death. We discussed the biblical story of Abraham, for example, and his willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, in exchange for a covenant with God. It was agreed that because of his obedience, God would “make of [him] a great nation” (Genesis 12:2) despite his advanced age. Abraham would thereby gain long or perhaps eternal life in that his progeny would endure as a nation for a great long time and remember him as their forefather.
It was during this course that I learned a favourite new word: aporia. From the dictionary:
1. Rhetoric . the expression of a simulated or real doubt, as about where to begin or what to do or say.
2. Logic, Philosophy . a difficulty encountered in establishing the theoretical truth of a proposition, created by the presence of evidence both for and against it.
What a fantastic way to encapsulate the crux of such a confusing and difficult argument in a single word. Tolstoy argues that the honey can never taste sweet in the face of the dragon and the mice, but do I believe him? There seems to be plenty of arguments to the contrary by characters like Socrates, which leaves me in an aporetic state.
Abraham feared the end of his family line; he was an old man with no offspring. Tolstoy feared death because he worried that he, as a person, and all of his works would some day be forgotten. Socrates took an entirely different view. He had no fear of death. Plato’s Apologia tells the story of the trial and execution of Socrates, who had been accused of impiety and of corrupting the youth of Athens by planting the seeds of doubt in their minds.
Socrates is sentenced to death by his accusers. He responds to their verdict by saying that “those of us who think death is an evil must be mistaken” (Apologia 40c). He says that death is either a dreamless sleep, a state of nothingness where the dead have no consciousness and therefore no worries, or it is, as the oracles and priests have told him, a “change of habitation from here to some other place” (40e) where the possibility exists to meet with the great men of history. Socrates says that he is “willing to die many times over, if these things are true; for [he] personally should find the life there wonderful.” (41a)
If one is apt to take a more cheery view of life, Socrates’ fearlessness and wisdom is certainly the more useful and enlightening idea of death. He tastes the sweetness of the honey, even in the face of the most certain death. I have always loved reading the Socratic dialogues for their questioning and careful logic. This particular argument, though, leaves me again with more questions.
I suppose that one half of Socrates’ conclusion is correct. If consciousness is seated in the physical brain, and the brain dies, so too does its content. Therefore, if that which makes us a person in the “spiritual” sense is contained within our own physiology and brain chemistry, once the neurotransmitters stop firing, there will be no more consciousness.
His second option, however, causes an aporia in my mind. Socates supposes that if we are not eternally unconscious after death we will find ourselves transported to a new place place where we will meet people who have also died. I see a false dichotomy. If the second option involves consciousness or some preservation of the self after death, why would we take it as gospel that the automatic destination for our “spiritual selves” would be a realm that is populated by other spirits or souls of departed people?
Nobody who claims to know what will happen after death is telling the truth. Death is a veil that we cannot see through in life. It is an event horizon, to borrow a term from physics. Life is the event, and the horizon is death, and nothing external to that horizon can have a measurable effect on the event inside of the horizon insofar as we are capable of observing it.
I am not saying that nothing exists outside of the event horizon of life. Nor am I suggesting that there is no way to break or thin the veil. What I am saying is that there is no measurable effect from one side of the event horizon to the other. I mean that we cannot qualify or quantify any interaction between living and dead people, unless you believe in kooky things like psychic mediums. I do not.
We travel through this life, and we will all pass the event horizon and be dead some day. When that moment occurs, we will either lose our consciousness and be nothing, or we will not lose our consciousness and we will be something, but how that consciousness will persist is anybody’s guess, yours as good as mine. There are plenty of conjectures as to the nature of that persistence, and I hold them all in fairly equal regard; interesting to speculate on, but ultimately of little value on this side of the event horizon.
I consider myself a pragmatist, and I am certain that my views on life and death will change as I walk through life. At the moment, and in summary, my take is this: I like the idea of the possibility of life after the physical death of my body - I think that would be a popular opinion in most circles. Where I differ from, say, a religious take on that notion is that I don’t count on the possibility of an afterlife any more than I count on the possibility of no afterlife. I believe that regardless of the outcome beyond the event horizon of death, I can have life here on earth by keeping a memory of me alive in the minds of the people who knew me. There is no great secret to eternal life or reincarnation or resurrection, no special ritual or prayer. The way to life after death is to live in the minds of those who knew you by giving enough love back to the world to be worth remembering.
Word count: 1,077.
His hands are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still he clings on. Then he sees that two mice, a black one and a white one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which he is clinging and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself will snap and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he looks around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig, reaches them with his tongue and licks them.
So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces; and I could not understand why I had fallen into such torment. I tried to lick the honey which formerly consoled me, but the honey no longer gave me pleasure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed at the branch by which I hung. I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet. I only saw the unescapable dragon and the mice, and I could not tear my gaze from them. And this is not a fable but the real unanswerable truth intelligible to all.
- Leo Tolstoy’s “Confessions”
I read this passage in the syllabus of a fascinating course at the U of A. It was the setup for a semester of profound, challenging and interesting discussions. The companion material to this passage consisted of texts about people who’ve tried to, in a sense, cheat death. We discussed the biblical story of Abraham, for example, and his willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, in exchange for a covenant with God. It was agreed that because of his obedience, God would “make of [him] a great nation” (Genesis 12:2) despite his advanced age. Abraham would thereby gain long or perhaps eternal life in that his progeny would endure as a nation for a great long time and remember him as their forefather.
It was during this course that I learned a favourite new word: aporia. From the dictionary:
1. Rhetoric . the expression of a simulated or real doubt, as about where to begin or what to do or say.
2. Logic, Philosophy . a difficulty encountered in establishing the theoretical truth of a proposition, created by the presence of evidence both for and against it.
What a fantastic way to encapsulate the crux of such a confusing and difficult argument in a single word. Tolstoy argues that the honey can never taste sweet in the face of the dragon and the mice, but do I believe him? There seems to be plenty of arguments to the contrary by characters like Socrates, which leaves me in an aporetic state.
Abraham feared the end of his family line; he was an old man with no offspring. Tolstoy feared death because he worried that he, as a person, and all of his works would some day be forgotten. Socrates took an entirely different view. He had no fear of death. Plato’s Apologia tells the story of the trial and execution of Socrates, who had been accused of impiety and of corrupting the youth of Athens by planting the seeds of doubt in their minds.
Socrates is sentenced to death by his accusers. He responds to their verdict by saying that “those of us who think death is an evil must be mistaken” (Apologia 40c). He says that death is either a dreamless sleep, a state of nothingness where the dead have no consciousness and therefore no worries, or it is, as the oracles and priests have told him, a “change of habitation from here to some other place” (40e) where the possibility exists to meet with the great men of history. Socrates says that he is “willing to die many times over, if these things are true; for [he] personally should find the life there wonderful.” (41a)
If one is apt to take a more cheery view of life, Socrates’ fearlessness and wisdom is certainly the more useful and enlightening idea of death. He tastes the sweetness of the honey, even in the face of the most certain death. I have always loved reading the Socratic dialogues for their questioning and careful logic. This particular argument, though, leaves me again with more questions.
I suppose that one half of Socrates’ conclusion is correct. If consciousness is seated in the physical brain, and the brain dies, so too does its content. Therefore, if that which makes us a person in the “spiritual” sense is contained within our own physiology and brain chemistry, once the neurotransmitters stop firing, there will be no more consciousness.
His second option, however, causes an aporia in my mind. Socates supposes that if we are not eternally unconscious after death we will find ourselves transported to a new place place where we will meet people who have also died. I see a false dichotomy. If the second option involves consciousness or some preservation of the self after death, why would we take it as gospel that the automatic destination for our “spiritual selves” would be a realm that is populated by other spirits or souls of departed people?
Nobody who claims to know what will happen after death is telling the truth. Death is a veil that we cannot see through in life. It is an event horizon, to borrow a term from physics. Life is the event, and the horizon is death, and nothing external to that horizon can have a measurable effect on the event inside of the horizon insofar as we are capable of observing it.
I am not saying that nothing exists outside of the event horizon of life. Nor am I suggesting that there is no way to break or thin the veil. What I am saying is that there is no measurable effect from one side of the event horizon to the other. I mean that we cannot qualify or quantify any interaction between living and dead people, unless you believe in kooky things like psychic mediums. I do not.
We travel through this life, and we will all pass the event horizon and be dead some day. When that moment occurs, we will either lose our consciousness and be nothing, or we will not lose our consciousness and we will be something, but how that consciousness will persist is anybody’s guess, yours as good as mine. There are plenty of conjectures as to the nature of that persistence, and I hold them all in fairly equal regard; interesting to speculate on, but ultimately of little value on this side of the event horizon.
I consider myself a pragmatist, and I am certain that my views on life and death will change as I walk through life. At the moment, and in summary, my take is this: I like the idea of the possibility of life after the physical death of my body - I think that would be a popular opinion in most circles. Where I differ from, say, a religious take on that notion is that I don’t count on the possibility of an afterlife any more than I count on the possibility of no afterlife. I believe that regardless of the outcome beyond the event horizon of death, I can have life here on earth by keeping a memory of me alive in the minds of the people who knew me. There is no great secret to eternal life or reincarnation or resurrection, no special ritual or prayer. The way to life after death is to live in the minds of those who knew you by giving enough love back to the world to be worth remembering.
Word count: 1,077.
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