The first quarter of the 21st century has ended. Statistically, I’m unlikely to see the end of the second quarter. This makes me think about the end of my life. As far as I know, I don’t have any conditions that will kill me in the near term, but I’ve probably got just a couple of decades left at most. How should I look at the unpleasant topic of death?
“When I die, the world ends.” That’s one way to think about it: that nothing matters after you’re dead. It’s bleak but tidy. However, people make out wills, think about how the people they love will get along, and so forth. We think about the future beyond our lifetimes. Science fiction writers and fans think about what the world will be like centuries or even eons in the future and hope it will be a good one. People risk their lives to promote a cause. What happens after we’re dead matters to us.
A person’s experience is reproduced in others. When reading a novel or watching a movie, we’re thrilled at the protagonist’s triumph or dismayed at the dangers. In real life, we share the responses of people we care about. We feel satisfaction when they share ours. We maintain traditions, family and cultural values, and ideals that others started.
The reason lies in what makes us individuals. The “stuff of consciousness,” which we barely understand, is the same in every human, every animal, even in life that might exist on other worlds. Each one equally sees itself as unique. What makes it unique is perceptions, experience, values, and goals. Each mind experiences itself as the center of the universe, but we’re aware that others experience themselves the same way. We can imagine to some extent what it’s like to be someone else. We can, in a way, experience their triumphs and failures. We live on in other people.
The whole bundle of thoughts and experiences that makes us who we are doesn’t survive death, but parts of it do. It’s more substantial than the reincarnations some religions offer, where we’re supposedly the same soul we were before but usually can’t remember a thing. It’s certainly better than the claim that we’ll be resurrected to eternal life, but at best will spend it endlessly praising a narcissistic deity and might be tortured forever for having the wrong beliefs.
As I wrote in my song “Beacons in the Darkness,” “Something dies, yet life continues.”