Thank you. So part of the reason that we might
seek some meaning in our lives is that we recognize
the inevitability of our death. We are mortal,
regardless of what you might believe about an
afterlife. The truth is that our body here on
Earth, right here, right now, is limited, at
least until we develop the technology to transfer
our consciousness to some other biological or
mechanical bodies. I imagine... I imagine if
we were mortal, our attitudes towards what we
do with our lives would differ, in the least
because we have more time, an endless supply,
honestly, which changes how we plan for our future.
But since we are mortal, we have the prospect
of death, the prospect that is present every
moment of our lives, even if we don't think about
it. That may be one reason to be interested in
the question of death. But there is, I think,
another more personal reason. All human societies
seem to have some set of practices or rituals
centered on death. We feel deep within us a profound
sense of loss. We cry, we grieve, we mourn, we
suffer. I mean, some cultures might do this a
little less and do something else, but it's fairly
common, right? So death seems... in many ways,
at least the way that we practice, you know,
have practices around death, seems like a bad
thing. I mean, even when we honor and celebrate
the legacy of someone that we lost, it's with
a somber tone, right? Not with the kind of joyousness
you get maybe with a surprise birthday celebration.
Even if we recognize that death is inevitable,
even when we know the death was coming, like
somebody was ill for a really long time and we
prepared ourselves for it, we still feel a deep
sense of loss and brokenness when it does come.
We avoid death by maintaining good health, developing
medical technology. We try to keep death at bay
for as long as possible. We see it as a symptom
of a mental disorder if someone were to seek
out death, to want to die. The message that's
being sent seems very clear. It is good to live.
It is bad to die. The badness of death seems
even worse when it is not through natural causes,
when the death is sudden, when it comes through
some accident or crime, when it was quote -unquote
before their time. And the younger the person
that died, the worse it seems. So again, on the
surface, death seems bad. I want to ask this
in earnestness, right? Like, why is it bad? Like,
if death is nothing more than just a reality
of life, it's part of the circle of life, if
death is inevitable, then why is it bad? I mean...
We don't think it's bad the many, many centuries,
millions of years that somebody did not exist
before their birth, right? So why are we mourning
them once they do pass away? And in the same
way that death comes to all, so does maturing,
right? Like, yet we don't mourn when our bodies
change and grow into adulthood, at least. you
know, in the way that we do with death, right?
Maybe you get a little upset when your body's
changing in ways. I'm aging now, so, you know,
sometimes I do mourn the loss of youthfulness
than might have once had, right? But no one cries
the way people do at funerals when an infant
becomes a toddler, right? But here's the thing.
Death seeming bad also is a bit perplexing. It's
a little bit confusing when you acknowledge that,
Living isn't all that it's cracked up to be,
at least for some, right? I can't speak for everybody,
but I do know that at least for some people,
living just sucks, right? Living just sucks.
Look, let me just speak from my own experience,
right? I grew up in poverty. I'm not talking
like, oh, I didn't have money to go ahead and
buy nice things, kind of poor. No, no, no. I'm
talking... Going around the neighborhood digging
through trash for cans and bottles to sell so
that we have food on the table kind of poor.
I'm talking can't buy clothes at all, and we
only wore whatever was donated to the church
kind of poor. I'm talking, and this might seem
a little crazy, but foraging for plants in the
abandoned lots near my home kind of poor, right?
This is to have food on the table. Aside from
struggling to live, the shame, helplessness,
and the sense of injustice that I felt every
day, it was unbearable, and it led to a deep,
deep depression. Some of you who have experienced,
you know, like a really serious depressive episode,
right? Like waking up each day was hard. Living
became overwhelming. Suicidal ideations were
normal, was a daily thing. And it became normal
for a reason, because death seemed like a solution
to a problem. The problem being living. Living
was a problem, and the way to solve it was by
ending the living. We often assume that it's
better to live than to die, that as hard as life
might be, living and all the experience that
comes with staying alive will outweigh the bad,
but... Honestly, that explanation makes absolutely
no sense to someone who is in a deep depressive
state, who is regularly in a deep depressive
state. If you came at me with that kind of line
saying that, you know, even as hard as it is
for you, it's better for you to be alive than
to be dead, I might have just punched you in
the face because I'd be so offended because it
tells me that you have no idea what it is that
I'm going through. Because the reality for me
was that however bad death is, it couldn't have
been worse than what it is I was living through.
This is the reality for many. To try to argue
that death is worse for people who are going
through something like this, who have been going
through something like this for their entire
life, it's just a non -starter. Look, I'm not
trying to make everyone miserable here. I'm simply
making a point. The default in our attitude towards
death is that it's bad. Yet, it's not clear why
death is bad. It just seems to be something that
we all assume is a bad thing. And maybe, I don't
know what's going on. It might be because a lot
of the lives that we have encountered, maybe
death is overall worse than living for that person.
But surely it doesn't take much to realize that
there are going to be quite a few lives where
you might think that living is honestly worse.
And this matters because it matters for real
-life decisions that we as a community are making
collectively today. It wasn't long ago, at least
at the time of this podcast episode, right? It's
not... We're passing laws around the country
in various places that give people the right
to die. And this is a real discussion that's
happening not just in the United States, but
worldwide. Various countries are grappling with
exactly what kind of, you know, active euthanasia
they're willing to allow. And the reason for
it is fairly simple. For some, like the terminally
ill, that are suffering in pain every day, so
much so that life seems unbearable, they would
rather just die. Living is worse than dying.
You might think that, look, death is bad regardless.
It is to be avoided as much as possible. But
to assume that there's some inherent good to
living and that there's an inherent bad to dying,
seems to not align with at least, I think, the
way that people's intuition go in cases like
determining where to draw the line with euthanasia
or in allowing for just, let's just call it what
it is, suicide. I'm going to have to decide at
some point what I want to do towards the end
of my life. I could... dictate you know at least
write down to some degree what the law allows
me what i can do with end of life support people
are facing these decisions you know all the time
right people who are not just terminally ill
but people who are on life support should we
end life support what's the reason for ending
life support People deciding whether or not to
have an abortion because they found out that
the fetus has some birth defect that is going
to lead them to suffer and die. So might as well
not prolong the living. That's part of the idea.
These are real questions. And we're not just
addressing them as individuals. Some of them
we are. Unfortunately, some of us have to go...
through having to make these kinds of decisions,
whereas others don't. But we're also having to
make these decisions collectively as a society,
through policy, through voting, in a democratic
society anyways. We're passing laws to try to
create better guidelines for what we as a society
deem acceptable. And much of what's going to
inform how people vote is going to be their attitudes
towards death. So if you're going to make a decision
that is so impactful in the lives of so many,
you better have a good reason for figuring out
why you're deciding one way or the other. If
you're doing it based off of some unexplainable
feeling or gut reaction you have, that's honestly
not going to be good enough for me. I need to
know exactly where you stand on... on death,
on why it's bad, why it should be avoided, and
when it might be acceptable. Because I'll be
honest with you, it's going to also have a lot
of implications for how we treat the living.