Nowadays, I often consider the following three scenarios: (1) I am in remission (yay), (2) cancer has spread but is not dramatic; I will need more treatment (note: some treatments due to their destructive nature you can only do once, so I'm not sure what the options are if so), (3) I will die in the very foreseeable future, months or few years.
I'm a little older than you, Helen. My children are grown (though still dependent on me) and my mortgage is almost paid off. I am approaching the end of my career. I have had a rich and fulfilled life and I am ready for my death. I am calm at the prospect.
I came back to England with the intention to travel to all those place in Europe that I have not seen yet but my diagnosis got in the way. I am comfortable with that though. I have travelled a lot in life already and I've lived in many cities. It would be nice to see a few more places but the place I am in now is nice too. I spend lots of happy time with my family. It's like there's a special focus on happiness now and everyone knows it. Life is good.
I take comfort from Epicurus' observations. I've done all the things I need to do in this life. I'd really like to finish my degree and I'd like to know that my family are set to deal with life without me but, after that, I am comfortable with what comes next. The time after my life is over will be similar to the time before my life — as Epicurus reminded me — and I am relaxed about that.
I love music and I listen to Spotify all day every day while I am working. I have been doing this for 20 years and feel like I have heard all the music already and there's not much more to find that's new. What would it be like to still be listening to the same songs in another 20 years?… or 200 years?… or 2000 years? I think I will have had enough by then.
I don't think I would enjoy immortality and death doesn't make me fearful or sad. OK, wait. My wife and I often have days where we just want to snuggle up and love each other and cry together — but I think that's more crying for **her time** after me than crying for **my time** after me.
It's not my intention to try to change your mind about any of this Helen but I felt the need to share how my attitude to what is coming is different to yours. We all deal with it our own way.
Thank you Kevin, I appreciate it. I suppose in my more reflective moments I do take comfort from it. But I was so upset writing this bc I might have progression (or pseudoprogession) and I do worry if the news is bad, I'm going to go kicking and screaming (how unphilosophical of me! I somehow find I failed as a philosopher if I cannot take a properly philosophical attitude to all of this)
It's not easy for any of us, Helen. Philosopher or not.
I recently started chemo (I originally said I wouldn't) and I have a few extra symptoms that might be the chemo or might be the tumour. I probably won't be able to work for much longer though I am doing OK for the moment.
Kicking and screaming is OK too as Dylan Thomas told us.
Forgive me, Helen, for making a purely philosophical point in response to your moving post, but I think you've dismissed the argument from the length of time before we were born much too quickly. The point is not that we didn't care then because we didn't exist yet. The point is that we exist for a short finite amount of time, and not before that or after that, so why are we so much more troubled by all the time that we won't exist in the future rather than by all the time in which we didn't exist in the past? I don't think your pointing out that we can only care about such things while we exist is really relevant. Now that we are here, why does the finitude of our existence in one direction and not the other bother us, is the question. Or at least that was how my dad always explained the argument to me and my sibling when we were kids, and it made a real impression on me!
I think there's an asymmetry there. You can't really have a desire to have lived longer in the past, because your having been born and growing through childhood is part of your nature now. This would be a wish to be a different person.
It should be also noted that there's a community of transhumanists, Singularity enthusiasts, etc., who cope that maybe biological immortality could be possible if our technological and medical prowess increase exponentially in the future.
Another asymmetry is that we have quite a lot of access to the past but none to the future. So the fact that we weren't actually there in the past doesn't mean that we have completely missed out on it in the way that we will miss out on everything after our deaths. For example, because of what I have heard about some of my ancestors who died before I was born, I feel a bond with them. But I can't feel a similar bond with descendants who are born after I die. Or another example: as a mathematician I have often enjoyed learning about the mathematical discoveries of the past, but there will be many wonderful breakthroughs that I won't get to hear about because I'll be dead when they happen.
Yes, of course there is an asymmetry in the sense that we can do things to try to extend our future but not our past. I take it the point is that we are going to die eventually regardless, and perhaps there is no more point to regretting the time after we die than the time before we are born. The logic of regret is not necessarily the same as the logic of action.
I'm nearly 70, just in the process of retirement, and hoping for another 20 years in reasonably good health. I'd happily take another 20 if I could get it. After that, I have no idea - I can't really bring to mind the person I was in my 20s.
Working my way around to the idea that, just as you never step twice in the same river, you can't really live forever as the same person
I am 55 and in my 4th year with a heart transplant. My family carries a rare LMNA mutation, although we have a tepid version. Death has definitely been near me a few times, for decent periods of time, but had always been a in my life, as my mother died when I was 1 and 3 of my 4 grandparents by the time I was 7. Things quieted down for a bit after that.
It doesn't offer consolation really, but I find some resolve in Epicurus' other 'death argument', as I used to call them in class: "Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not."
When I assumed I would die, before the transplant, I definitely felt the importance of having pursued and really investigated and manifested ways of making life meaningful, and that I had largely accomplished the main contours of the life I hoped to live. It's weird to be cavalier about the end of life, especially if you are enjoying it. As I have re-established a full life, I do find myself clinging to the idea of longevity and a future. Right before and after the transplant I was pretty non-grasping about all of it.
Does the 'death is nothing to us' argument have any effect for you?
Sometimes. I think of people who lived in the past, and then I think, somehow, they were "okay" (whatever okay will mean) with the lifespan accorded. Now not everyone. I have an uncle I never met, a boy called William who died after just 2 years of life. My grandma kept on grieving for him. I still think he got seriously deprived of the goods that life offers. But maybe someone in their forties, like me, can't really complain bc they already had so much. It's not that we look at, say, HP Lovecraft who died age 46 (of cancer) ah what a pity he didn't live for 20 yrs more, we'd have more Lovecraft stories (sorry, I know Lovecraft was a racist, and that is very uncool, but I really do like his works nonetheless, I enjoy reading his horror now).
Like Quill below, I feel self-conscious about responding on an abstract level (although maybe you welcome more philosophical cope options to choose from?). But another take on the Epicurean standpoint might be that the asymmetry actually works in the opposite direction: because your life was a singular event that mattered for you and others during that short time, when you no longer exist in the future there is at least that history folded in, and a trace of you left behind in the world; whereas beforehand there was nothing of you on cosmic record. So emotionally it's a loss, but metaphysically it's a gain, for the rest of time.
I suppose one could turn to the philosophical pessimism movement, and its affirmative embrace of negativity and loss, as a form of philosophical "anti-cope." I have also known a number of people with severe depression or in deep despair, for whom mortality and finitude is the "cope," and the prospect of living the shadow. But this seems more useful for dealing with the pain and loss that comes with living, than the pain and loss that comes with dying. One of the ironies of having a life as rich and interesting as yours sounds (based on some of your descriptions), is that the thought of suddenly losing it must be all the more painful. I don't really know what it's like to face that down.
So, lots of respect for dealing with it so bravely, and sharing about it so thoughtfully. Wishing you a Scenario 1 next month!
I think an infinite afterlife has plenty of value. Imagine an infinite library with books you can read. You can never run out of books. Or imagine spending time with an infinite amount of persons.
Maybe it is wishful thinking to hope for an infinite afterlife. Mortality is just an illusion.
Or maybe it is wishful thinking to hope that there isn't an infinite afterlife. And mortality is the real illusion.
It is strange for me to see your perspective, because it is so opposite of mine. To think that most people would be delighted to live longer perhaps indefinately. Are there really that many people who cope well with our world? Prolonging life would prolong all that is negative about our life as well as all that is positive. It prolongs how long weust bear the burdens of our duties, the burdens of our our past decisions. It prolongs all the negative effects we have on our loved ones and our world. I always figured the momento mori was intended as a comfort. You will escape this eventually. You will lay this burden down eventually. Surely there are people like you who are enjoying life and feel that dearh may come to soon. But surely there are those who fear death comes too late as well. Which is the majority? I cannot day with any confidence. You worry about the negative effects of your death on family and world, and fairly. But I often worry about the negative effects of my continued life. Think of all the resources I will consume between now and my death. All the errors I will make. All the people I will inadvertantly hurt or even just inconvenience. Death at least radically lowers ones consumption. Think of how families would be effected if older generations did not die off regularly. The boredom of vampires, is nothing compared to the status quo bias and static heirachies of vampires (or other hypothetically very long lived beings). How much of the future am I holding back by my continued breathing? How much more social space, or housing, or wealth ownership would there be for my younger loved ones such as children and neices, if I and those like me passed away? Isnt the world ready to grow beyond my failures and limitations, and those of my generation? Or at least soon will be? Your primary thesis that much of philosophy of mortality is cope sure seems correct to me. But much of our hope for dying relatively soon seems like cope as well, even if as you point out some feel they are dying far too soon.
I am in Cambridge UK guest lecturing for a week. It is a beautiful place with 1000 years of stories. I took a walk this morning to Grantchester, the village in the PBS TV show. I did not realize it was a real place! At the church of St. Andrew and St. Mary there was a meditation attached to a memorial stone near the entrance. I read it and immediately thought of you.
It has an excerpt from Psalm 42 and then it says, "Look down at your hands, close them into tight fists." The idea is to put all your anxieties, all your worries into your clenched fists. Tell God about them, then open your fists and offer them up to God. (I will put a picture on BlueSky for you.)
"Time is not on your side, it’s rather scary, so with the Corpus Chronophage I changed the cuddly image of a Walt Disney grasshopper into a rather frightening time eater. I thought it would be fun if in a minute he slowly opened his jaws wider and wider, and on the 59th second of every minute he went crunch, got that minute, chewed it up and swallowed it so you could never get it back."
Anyway, I wanted you to know that your worries were on my mind even before I saw this latest post. I pray that you will get good news or at least news you can take and then find peace.
I think about my death all the time, and I'm terrified of it. I would say that my death is the greatest source of my anxiety.
I grew up with my parents, grandma, and great-grandma, so I was 3 generations away from death. My great-grandma died when I was in college, my grandma died when I was in grad school, and my parents are now elderly. They may have a decade left. After they die, there will be no more generations between me and death, no more buffer between me and the oblivion.
I hate that I can't pause time. The only thing I can do is to try my best to live the most meaningful life. But would I want another 100 years if they were healthy years? Absolutely.
I'm a deprivationist. I do think death is bad for people because it deprives them of future well-being. It perfectly explains why I'm so scared of it.
This is a powerful post, and like the other commentators I am hesitant to respond abstractly. But I wrote something about this, in which I (for all my love of philosophy) suggested that this was perhaps the domain for poetry, not philosophy (since so much of it is, as you say, cope), and cited a bunch of poetry (and poetic prose), and tried to make what I hope is a poetic response to a philosophical problem:
I'm a little older than you, Helen. My children are grown (though still dependent on me) and my mortgage is almost paid off. I am approaching the end of my career. I have had a rich and fulfilled life and I am ready for my death. I am calm at the prospect.
I came back to England with the intention to travel to all those place in Europe that I have not seen yet but my diagnosis got in the way. I am comfortable with that though. I have travelled a lot in life already and I've lived in many cities. It would be nice to see a few more places but the place I am in now is nice too. I spend lots of happy time with my family. It's like there's a special focus on happiness now and everyone knows it. Life is good.
I take comfort from Epicurus' observations. I've done all the things I need to do in this life. I'd really like to finish my degree and I'd like to know that my family are set to deal with life without me but, after that, I am comfortable with what comes next. The time after my life is over will be similar to the time before my life — as Epicurus reminded me — and I am relaxed about that.
I love music and I listen to Spotify all day every day while I am working. I have been doing this for 20 years and feel like I have heard all the music already and there's not much more to find that's new. What would it be like to still be listening to the same songs in another 20 years?… or 200 years?… or 2000 years? I think I will have had enough by then.
I don't think I would enjoy immortality and death doesn't make me fearful or sad. OK, wait. My wife and I often have days where we just want to snuggle up and love each other and cry together — but I think that's more crying for **her time** after me than crying for **my time** after me.
It's not my intention to try to change your mind about any of this Helen but I felt the need to share how my attitude to what is coming is different to yours. We all deal with it our own way.
I wish us both serenity and peace.
Thank you Kevin, I appreciate it. I suppose in my more reflective moments I do take comfort from it. But I was so upset writing this bc I might have progression (or pseudoprogession) and I do worry if the news is bad, I'm going to go kicking and screaming (how unphilosophical of me! I somehow find I failed as a philosopher if I cannot take a properly philosophical attitude to all of this)
It's not easy for any of us, Helen. Philosopher or not.
I recently started chemo (I originally said I wouldn't) and I have a few extra symptoms that might be the chemo or might be the tumour. I probably won't be able to work for much longer though I am doing OK for the moment.
Kicking and screaming is OK too as Dylan Thomas told us.
Forgive me, Helen, for making a purely philosophical point in response to your moving post, but I think you've dismissed the argument from the length of time before we were born much too quickly. The point is not that we didn't care then because we didn't exist yet. The point is that we exist for a short finite amount of time, and not before that or after that, so why are we so much more troubled by all the time that we won't exist in the future rather than by all the time in which we didn't exist in the past? I don't think your pointing out that we can only care about such things while we exist is really relevant. Now that we are here, why does the finitude of our existence in one direction and not the other bother us, is the question. Or at least that was how my dad always explained the argument to me and my sibling when we were kids, and it made a real impression on me!
I think there's an asymmetry there. You can't really have a desire to have lived longer in the past, because your having been born and growing through childhood is part of your nature now. This would be a wish to be a different person.
It should be also noted that there's a community of transhumanists, Singularity enthusiasts, etc., who cope that maybe biological immortality could be possible if our technological and medical prowess increase exponentially in the future.
Another asymmetry is that we have quite a lot of access to the past but none to the future. So the fact that we weren't actually there in the past doesn't mean that we have completely missed out on it in the way that we will miss out on everything after our deaths. For example, because of what I have heard about some of my ancestors who died before I was born, I feel a bond with them. But I can't feel a similar bond with descendants who are born after I die. Or another example: as a mathematician I have often enjoyed learning about the mathematical discoveries of the past, but there will be many wonderful breakthroughs that I won't get to hear about because I'll be dead when they happen.
Yes, of course there is an asymmetry in the sense that we can do things to try to extend our future but not our past. I take it the point is that we are going to die eventually regardless, and perhaps there is no more point to regretting the time after we die than the time before we are born. The logic of regret is not necessarily the same as the logic of action.
I'm nearly 70, just in the process of retirement, and hoping for another 20 years in reasonably good health. I'd happily take another 20 if I could get it. After that, I have no idea - I can't really bring to mind the person I was in my 20s.
Working my way around to the idea that, just as you never step twice in the same river, you can't really live forever as the same person
“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”
—Rainer Maria Rilke
I am 55 and in my 4th year with a heart transplant. My family carries a rare LMNA mutation, although we have a tepid version. Death has definitely been near me a few times, for decent periods of time, but had always been a in my life, as my mother died when I was 1 and 3 of my 4 grandparents by the time I was 7. Things quieted down for a bit after that.
It doesn't offer consolation really, but I find some resolve in Epicurus' other 'death argument', as I used to call them in class: "Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not."
When I assumed I would die, before the transplant, I definitely felt the importance of having pursued and really investigated and manifested ways of making life meaningful, and that I had largely accomplished the main contours of the life I hoped to live. It's weird to be cavalier about the end of life, especially if you are enjoying it. As I have re-established a full life, I do find myself clinging to the idea of longevity and a future. Right before and after the transplant I was pretty non-grasping about all of it.
Does the 'death is nothing to us' argument have any effect for you?
Sometimes. I think of people who lived in the past, and then I think, somehow, they were "okay" (whatever okay will mean) with the lifespan accorded. Now not everyone. I have an uncle I never met, a boy called William who died after just 2 years of life. My grandma kept on grieving for him. I still think he got seriously deprived of the goods that life offers. But maybe someone in their forties, like me, can't really complain bc they already had so much. It's not that we look at, say, HP Lovecraft who died age 46 (of cancer) ah what a pity he didn't live for 20 yrs more, we'd have more Lovecraft stories (sorry, I know Lovecraft was a racist, and that is very uncool, but I really do like his works nonetheless, I enjoy reading his horror now).
Like Quill below, I feel self-conscious about responding on an abstract level (although maybe you welcome more philosophical cope options to choose from?). But another take on the Epicurean standpoint might be that the asymmetry actually works in the opposite direction: because your life was a singular event that mattered for you and others during that short time, when you no longer exist in the future there is at least that history folded in, and a trace of you left behind in the world; whereas beforehand there was nothing of you on cosmic record. So emotionally it's a loss, but metaphysically it's a gain, for the rest of time.
I suppose one could turn to the philosophical pessimism movement, and its affirmative embrace of negativity and loss, as a form of philosophical "anti-cope." I have also known a number of people with severe depression or in deep despair, for whom mortality and finitude is the "cope," and the prospect of living the shadow. But this seems more useful for dealing with the pain and loss that comes with living, than the pain and loss that comes with dying. One of the ironies of having a life as rich and interesting as yours sounds (based on some of your descriptions), is that the thought of suddenly losing it must be all the more painful. I don't really know what it's like to face that down.
So, lots of respect for dealing with it so bravely, and sharing about it so thoughtfully. Wishing you a Scenario 1 next month!
"Without death, our lives would have no value."
I think an infinite afterlife has plenty of value. Imagine an infinite library with books you can read. You can never run out of books. Or imagine spending time with an infinite amount of persons.
Maybe it is wishful thinking to hope for an infinite afterlife. Mortality is just an illusion.
Or maybe it is wishful thinking to hope that there isn't an infinite afterlife. And mortality is the real illusion.
It is strange for me to see your perspective, because it is so opposite of mine. To think that most people would be delighted to live longer perhaps indefinately. Are there really that many people who cope well with our world? Prolonging life would prolong all that is negative about our life as well as all that is positive. It prolongs how long weust bear the burdens of our duties, the burdens of our our past decisions. It prolongs all the negative effects we have on our loved ones and our world. I always figured the momento mori was intended as a comfort. You will escape this eventually. You will lay this burden down eventually. Surely there are people like you who are enjoying life and feel that dearh may come to soon. But surely there are those who fear death comes too late as well. Which is the majority? I cannot day with any confidence. You worry about the negative effects of your death on family and world, and fairly. But I often worry about the negative effects of my continued life. Think of all the resources I will consume between now and my death. All the errors I will make. All the people I will inadvertantly hurt or even just inconvenience. Death at least radically lowers ones consumption. Think of how families would be effected if older generations did not die off regularly. The boredom of vampires, is nothing compared to the status quo bias and static heirachies of vampires (or other hypothetically very long lived beings). How much of the future am I holding back by my continued breathing? How much more social space, or housing, or wealth ownership would there be for my younger loved ones such as children and neices, if I and those like me passed away? Isnt the world ready to grow beyond my failures and limitations, and those of my generation? Or at least soon will be? Your primary thesis that much of philosophy of mortality is cope sure seems correct to me. But much of our hope for dying relatively soon seems like cope as well, even if as you point out some feel they are dying far too soon.
Hi Helen,
I am in Cambridge UK guest lecturing for a week. It is a beautiful place with 1000 years of stories. I took a walk this morning to Grantchester, the village in the PBS TV show. I did not realize it was a real place! At the church of St. Andrew and St. Mary there was a meditation attached to a memorial stone near the entrance. I read it and immediately thought of you.
It has an excerpt from Psalm 42 and then it says, "Look down at your hands, close them into tight fists." The idea is to put all your anxieties, all your worries into your clenched fists. Tell God about them, then open your fists and offer them up to God. (I will put a picture on BlueSky for you.)
Then tonight we took a short tour of campus and we stopped at the Corpus Chronophage. https://www.johnctaylor.com/the-chronophage/corpus-chronophage/
"Time is not on your side, it’s rather scary, so with the Corpus Chronophage I changed the cuddly image of a Walt Disney grasshopper into a rather frightening time eater. I thought it would be fun if in a minute he slowly opened his jaws wider and wider, and on the 59th second of every minute he went crunch, got that minute, chewed it up and swallowed it so you could never get it back."
Anyway, I wanted you to know that your worries were on my mind even before I saw this latest post. I pray that you will get good news or at least news you can take and then find peace.
Francine
I think about my death all the time, and I'm terrified of it. I would say that my death is the greatest source of my anxiety.
I grew up with my parents, grandma, and great-grandma, so I was 3 generations away from death. My great-grandma died when I was in college, my grandma died when I was in grad school, and my parents are now elderly. They may have a decade left. After they die, there will be no more generations between me and death, no more buffer between me and the oblivion.
I hate that I can't pause time. The only thing I can do is to try my best to live the most meaningful life. But would I want another 100 years if they were healthy years? Absolutely.
I'm a deprivationist. I do think death is bad for people because it deprives them of future well-being. It perfectly explains why I'm so scared of it.
I'm sending you positive thoughts.
This is a powerful post, and like the other commentators I am hesitant to respond abstractly. But I wrote something about this, in which I (for all my love of philosophy) suggested that this was perhaps the domain for poetry, not philosophy (since so much of it is, as you say, cope), and cited a bunch of poetry (and poetic prose), and tried to make what I hope is a poetic response to a philosophical problem:
https://stephenfrug.substack.com/p/on-not-being-resigned
Forgive me for bringing poetry into this; if you, like Plato, want to ride me out of town on a rail, I won't blame you. :)
I wish you a full recovery and a long and fruitful life.