On Death
I’ve been thinking about tragedy and death recently. This post is meant to bookmark my thinking so far, so that I can look back at it in the future. The entire page can be summarised as Memento Mori, but it’s useful to describe how and why my values are changing for the memories.
I’ll structure in two parts: Why I’ve Been Thinking About Death; and What I’m Now Thinking Having Had Thoughts About Death.
Why I’ve Been Thinking About Death
Death has been coming up a lot recently:
- Jordan Peterson commonly talks about the tragedy in life. At his talk, he spoke at length about a woman who was constantly berated by her family, not very attractive or smart (either of which would have helped her escape), and who was very agreeable (so she found it hard to stand up for herself).
- Spotify has been recommending me a lot of musicals which include death (spoilers in this bullet point). There were a lot of terrible events in the 20th century which individually led to people’s deaths. For me, musicals turn these statistics into specific characters who die of AIDS or who dies at war or who completely ruin their reputation.
- I have recently started dating someone, and so when I think about these songs and this person dying it becomes a lot more real. I guess I now have Something to Protect.
What I’m Now Thinking Having Had Thoughts About Death
Stop being petty
This has helped me deal with unpleasant emotions more. When I am upset, I consider how much worse things could be (e.g. I could be unable to breathe, I could not have a house to live in) which makes me feel better. It makes me feel an immense sense of gratitude that I have this. I may lose these things in the future, and that fear is enough to make me grateful. I may gain much more in the future, but if I’m not happy now then I probably won’t be unhappy later.
Stop being impractical
The amount of suffering in the world has also made me more concerned with the effectiveness of our actions. I’m already a big advocate of Effective Altruism, but I now care much, much more about being practical. Money spent on doing good is scarce compared to the scale of the problem. So people spending their money on doing good, but not actually selecting and monitoring their choice of donation, is a huge opportunity lost. It feels like an extension of this tragedy which is this world: here we have people suffering; and here we have people trying to do good; and like characters in some Shakespearean tragedy (say, Romeo and Juliet) they’re pursuing all their efforts and exercising so much virtue into the wrong place; and the people keep suffering.
On special duties
There’s an idea that utilitarianism cannot represent our morality accurately because it ignores that we have a special duty to take care of those close to us. Utilitarianism tells us to value everyone equally, but if we could save our mother or a stranger, most people would think it morally permissible to prefer saving the former (you can spin the hypothetical to make it moral to save your mother, but just change the scenario so that’s not the case – we all know that people value those who are closer to them).
So on the one hand, memento mori motivates me to call my mother, my family, my good friends and treat them well so that they know I respect them. But on the other hand, it also makes it me aware of the amount of suffering with everyone out there – there are those who are suffering much more than my mother, and surely the practical thing to do is to care for them first.
There is to a degree a false dichotomy because I’m not not-calling my mum because I’m too busy counselling those worse off. Though you could spin the scenario to say that I am collecting spoons[1] so that I can do either of those actions. And there are people in my friendship circle who I feel are hurting more than my mother is, and perhaps I should talk to them soon, at least before I decide I should definitely call my mother.
[1] I’m not sure if I’m allowed to use the words “Spoons”, given I don’t really have a disability.