Life without Death: A State of Perpetual Nothingness - Essay Example

Life without Death: A State of Perpetual Nothingness My thesis is that when death is no longer a factor, some of the meaning of life is lost but it is the human condition to create burdens in order to create meaning. Jose Saramago wrote a book called Death with Interruptions in which death is suspended and immortality is gained. One would wonder what life would be like should death no longer be a factor. The idea of immortality should slow the human condition to a slower pace, ambition having more time to be realized. The ideas in the novel, however, show that the continuation of burdens and the shift to causes relating to the idea of death would maintain real life conditions in relatively the same manner. Without stasis, the physical being no longer being relative, immortality is a burden. The gift of immortality becomes blurred with the burdens of caring for an aging population which has no hope for the resolution of death. In constructing a world in which death is no longer a factor, problems emerge that replace the issue of death with the issue of unfettered life. Saramago writes about a world in which people no longer are burdened with death. The burden is reversed to be centered with on-going life which becomes a problem in a world where death is no longer an issue but growing old, illness, and injury all still impact life. The Catholic Church becomes wary of this event, believing that if there is no death then there is no resurrection, thus negating the premise upon which the Church was built. This gift of immortality comes at a high cost as those who would have died linger, the idea of aging becomes a more fearful state, and the question of what to do about birth of children is contemplated. The solution to the burden of life is to once more seek out a way to find death (Saramago & Costa, 2009). Everlasting life has been the domain of the Church since its beginnings. The premise of the death of Christ overriding the burden of sin and then to be given over to resurrection so that those sins can be forgiven has been the primary focus of the Church. If everlasting life comes through some other means, this would threaten the Church and Saramago writes about this concept in his novel. St. Augustine writes about death and offers up some reasons why continued life would not be in the interests of human existence. He states that “every soul is wretched that is bound in affection of mortal things” (Levenson & Westphal, 2002, p. 24). In other words, when bound to the mortal body, transcendence is not possible. Without the hope of the afterlife, there is nothing but the continuation of the turmoil of life. What is life without the resolution of death? The afterlife becomes immaterial, so the concept of sin is no longer relevant to the operation of daily life. The question can become centered on the idea of sin as it relates to social interaction. Would people generally still behave in a social manner or would they disintegrate into anti-social behaviors, free from the burdens of hell and purgatory that often are the barriers to acting on impulses that are not within the social welfare of the state. Hanh (2002) discusses life through the metaphor of the flame. As each flame is replaced repeatedly, it is never the same flame that it was when it was first sparked. He says “It may appear to be the same flame, but it is only our perception. In fact there are multitudes of flames succeeding one another in every instant. They give the impression that it is always the same flame, but it is not” (Hanh, 2002, p. 74). One is never the same from moment to moment, each second revealing something new and providing a very slightly changed context. Without death in that future, the changes might become stagnated, the flicker of the flame no longer symbolizing what is natural but becoming something foreign and unnatural. The difference could be seen in the comparison between the flame and a LED light that acts as a flame. Without death, the meaning of change has a more significant impact on continuation, but a less significant impact on the meaning of life. The question of the meaning of life in relationship to immortality is defined by how much human experience remains. Sartre (2002) stated that “I realized that there was no halfway house between non-existence and this flaunting abundance” (p. 60). Life is messy, filled things that might actually offend the senses, which is what continues and plagues the people in Saramago’s work. They are not locked in a moment, but continue forward bleeding, excreting, and being alive. Camus (2002) writes that as human beings we live in the hope for tomorrow, thus in many ways nothing changed for many of the people for whom death was suspended. It is in how people viewed themselves that the differences between life before and life after were little changed. Beauvoir (2002) writes that people think of themselves as fallen gods, thus they do not see the end that will come. She writes “more often man is in revolt against his carnal state; he sees himself as a fallen god: his curse is to be fallen from a bright and ordered heaven into the chaotic shadows of his mother’s womb” (p. 82). The physical self and all that it entails are immaterial. People do not see their mortality, thus gaining immortality without changing their humanity would not have the impact on their existence that one might think. Those things that make the human part of the physical and biological world, are often abandoned in a belief that human beings are already above natural existence. The change in the development of the human being is then minimal when life continues forward. The afterlife promises a purified life, but the messy nature of life does not fit in with what human beings see as their immortality. This issue becomes a problem in Saramago’s work. At first he describes the state as “a unique and marvelous life without the daily fear of parca’s scissors, immortality in the land that gave us our being, safe from any metaphysical awkwardness and free to everyone, with no sealed orders at the hour of our death” (Saramago & Costa, 2009, p. 14). Soon, however, the problems that come from a lack of death begin to emerge. As an example, a recently widowed woman realizes that she would never again be joined with her husband. In a life without death, there is not hope for the release of the burdens of life. Death becomes a cause from which both those for and those against begin to rally. Rather than focusing on the gift of immortality, the problems of death emerge as the focus of the living. Freud focused on the drive towards death, calling it the death drive, in order to explain the human need to relive and repeat destructive or traumatizing events. In his book, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud explored this concept in order to explain the drive that people have to be immersed in their pain. While he believed that the concept of pleasure and the maintenance of pleasure at a low, but constant level was the state that was desired, the re-enactment and focus on the pain in life caused him to consider the nature of death as the patient would work towards living in a state of pain where trauma had been a part of their life (Freud & Strachey, 1914). This can explain the reaction to the loss of death by the people in the nation that Saramago created. In losing death, they lost their resolution to the pain of life. It is in the practical, however, that Saramago begins his discussion on how the lack of death would affect a population. He builds a case for the burden of the increased number of elderly who would still have the same conditions without the end of death to renew the population. He writes “with a gigantic, ever growing mass of old people at the top, swallowing up like a python the new generations”, the youth would be consumed with dealing with the old who would continue to age without end (Saramago & Costa, 2009, p. 24). The problem of the aging would affect the youth, the political system, and the social structure. Without death, there would be little room for anything but the care for those who had passed their ‘expiration date’. One might think that fear would be abandoned when the continuation of life is assured. This does not seem to be the case in the lives of Saramago’s world. Fear of the future is more poignant as the problem of a clogged system that no longer functions in respect to the population supplants the fear of death. Fear is a driving force that disallows the nature of the pleasure principle to be the overriding state of existence. While Freud framed it as the death drive, what he was really discussing was the idea that fears have a power of life that transcends the idea of pleasure and a drive towards maintaining pleasure. In living in a state of fear, the human condition is burdened by death because time is lost through fear that should have been spent on the pursuit of love, happiness, and peace. The human condition is often to remain in a state of fear which is based on the need to survive. Taking away the consequence of death does not delete the burden of survival where illness, injury, and aging still exist. In a way, society does not really change, it only takes on different problems and creates new causes for which to fight. Saramago writes within the practical applications of the problem, leaving the metaphysical for those within the stories for whom this is more important. He reveals the issues that the Church faces as they look to a world where the afterlife is immaterial. If the afterlife is immaterial, where does that leave the position of the Church? In relationship to Freud’s ideas about the death drive, the population that lives in a state of perpetual fear loses all hope for a resolution to their burdens. The nature of death is that it is both feared and suppressed so that the individual lives without its burden. When that burden is taken away, the gap creates problems through which life continues similarly to how it was lived before immortality became an issue. It is the nature of human existence to manage the burdens of life, even when death is no longer an issue. Life has impermanence, even when death is no longer an issue. Resources Camus, A. (2002). Absurdity is the divorce between reason and the world, from the myth of Sisyphus and nuptials. In C. A. Levenson & J. Westphal. Life and death. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Beauvoir, S. (2002). Woman and the meaning of life from the second sex. In C. A. Levenson & J. Westphal. Life and death. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Freud, S. & Strachey, J. (1914). Beyond the pleasure principle. John D. Sutherland (Ed). New York: Liveright Publishing Company. Hanh, T. N. (2002). No death, no fear. New York: Riverhead Books. Saramago, J., & Costa, M. J. (2009). Death with interruptions. Boston [Mass.: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Sartre, J. P. (2002). Mysticism of the absurd from nausea. In C. A. Levenson & J. Westphal. Life and death. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Sogyal, R., Gaffney, P., & Harvey, A. (1993). The Tibetan book of living and dying. New York, N.Y: HarperCollins Publishers. St. Augustine. (2002). I saw only death from confessions. In C. A. Levenson & J. Westphal. Life and death. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. In C. A. Levenson & J. Westphal. Life and death. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Read More