Date Published: 07/04/09
On Life and Death
By Jideofor Adibe
pcjadibe@yahoo.com
The news of the passing on of Michael Jackson, the ‘king of pop’, has sent shock waves across the world. Though death awaits everyone, Jackson’s transition is the type that sharply reminds the living of their mortality - that life ultimately ends in death, or what Plato, the great Greek philosopher called freeing the soul from the "hateful" company of the body. Here was a major public figure, whose unique voice is well known through his music, who was known to be rehearsing for well publicised concerts in the UK that were to start about three weeks before he moved on. Known to be health conscious, and buoyant enough to buy quality medical care despite his reported financial troubles, the manner of his death, reportedly of cardiac arrest, despite having a cardiologist by his side, adds another intriguing dimension to the Jackson story. Jackson’s multiple personas were such that at least one of these would embed itself into most people’s consciousness. In this sense, he was more like any relative or dear one, always there in our subconscious even if we do not have active contacts with the person. Any news of the sudden transition of such a person often triggers powerful emotions - shock, regrets or anger. The emotions tend to be stronger if the death had not been preceded by a long illness that would somehow prepare the minds of the affected people of the ultimate inevitability.
Mignon McLaughlin, the late American journalist and author, tells us that the death of someone we know always reminds us that we are still alive – perhaps for some purpose, which we ought to re-examine. Any such re-examination however usually leads to the ageless philosophical questions about life and death. What is really life? Is it worth all the hassle? Where did we come from? Where are we going? Is there an afterlife? If yes, what type of existence takes place there?
For Western Christian religion, the nature of afterlife is simple: on death, our real self, the soul, leaves the body for heaven or hell. Seen from this perspective, the essence of life becomes to prepare for the afterlife so our choices and actions on earth ought to be geared towards avoiding eternal damnation in hell fire. Early European Christianity was filled with images of, and sermons about the need to fear the judgment that would come upon the time of death. Christianity pontificates that the road is narrow that leads to eternal life in heaven and those who enter by it are few while the road is very wide that leads to eternal hellfire and those who enter by it are many. It offers prescriptions, codified in the Ten Commandments, on how we can organize our life on earth so we can avoid this hellfire and ensure an eternal life in the hereafter.
Not everyone however believes that death means entrance to another world. The 19th and 20th century existentialists tried to humanize and individualize death as the last stage of life rather than the entrance into that which is beyond life. Jean Paul Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher, playwright and novelist, believes that when a child dies, he or she becomes frozen in time, and the child’s experience of life ends. He argues that if the dead person was a coward while he was alive, then the image of that person as a coward becomes the way he will be remembered. Sartre, who is an atheist, believes that there is no divine being and therefore no heaven or an afterlife but that what survives of a dead person are only the memories of those aspects of the conscious choices the person made while alive.
If death is the ultimate end of life, then there is a related question of what kind of experience life is. If you believe that when you die, all your hopes, dreams and aspirations die with you, obviously life would appear to have a lot less meaning to you, and death would be something to fear because everything you have spent your life working for would be gone in a moment, and so would you.
Albert Camus, the French philosopher, journalist and winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature, argues that humans are creatures who spend their lives trying to convince themselves that their existence is not ‘absurd’. Camus’s philosophy of the absurd basically tells us that our efforts to find meaning in the universe will fail (hence are absurd) because such meaning simply does not exist, at least in relation to the individual. He contends that you will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. For Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, life is worth living only if there are goals inspiring one to live.
While there are disagreements on whether death is the final terminus for life or merely opens the entrance to another life, what unites the two perspectives appears to be that the legacy we leave behind is what we will be remembered for on earth. This is perhaps what Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States meant when he posited that “ it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.” Albert Einstein, the Jewish, German-born theoretical physicist, seemed to concur when he declared: “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”
Can we then infer from the above that the purpose of a meaningful life, which, irrespective of what we do will ultimately end in death, is in a selfless existence for others? If yes, where do we locate the pilfering and outright embezzlement of public resources by those entrusted to guard same, including by those, who by biological reckoning, should know that the end is not too far away? Why do so many people live as if there is no tomorrow and as if they are immortal? When you hear stories of public officials, including those nearing 70 years of age embezzling mind-boggling sums of public funds, am I the only one wondering what they need so much money for? Was the late American statesman James F Bymes after all right when he adumbrated: “Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death.”
As we mourn Michael Jackson and other departed, while continuing our own life’s journey - from the unknown to the unknown - it may help to moderate our behaviour if we can pause for five minutes everyday to reflect on how our family, friends and foes will remember us when our own inevitable apocalypse arrives.
Jideofor Adibe is editor of the multidisciplinary journal, African Renaissance and publisher of the London-based Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd (www.adonis-abbey.com). He can be reached at: pcjadibe@yahoo.com
