The BBC have been pumping out a lot of stories about death this week, think it might be national dying week or something.
It started with the annual poll of death related issues from the “Dying Matters Coalition” published by Comres
http://www.comres.co.uk/poll/669/dying-matters-coalition-survey-of-gps-and-the-public.htm
71% of the population think we feel uncomfortable talking about death. I can’t help feeling that some of this is down to some of the ridiculous theories of death propogated by some religions. I heard someone on thought for today on Radio 4 saying that we don’t really know what happens when we die. Of course we do – our concious self ceases to exist and our physical self decays or is incinerated.
Death is an end of us as an entity although we remain as a memory in the minds of people who knew us (until they die) and also as, for and for an increasing number of us, a redundant page on facebook.
Obviously the idea of ceasing to be is a frightening one and talking about it a bit morbid. All that we are and have been will be no more. However death can also be a release, the end of the struggle which is life and for many when the time comes it can also mean the end of pain. It is true that we find these thoughts difficult to express and the acceptance of death, despite its inevitability, seems like defeatism.
However I see life and conciousness as a marvel. We are made of the same stuff as the mud, stone and rivers. A collection of atoms, forming molecules, molecules forming cells and cells cooperating as living beings. Death will bring our personal end but our components (I know this sounds a cold, technocratic phrase) become part of the life around us. We are not reborn but we reform to be part of existence. We re-enter the rocks, the air, the waterways, we become part of everything which is this planet. Our lost ones are in the trees, the fields and the hills. Most things we see have been a part of previous life and will continue to be part of future life. This is not mysticism or religion, this is science and for me there is little more full of wonder than scientific truth coupled with our ability to understand it.
Our life may be fleeting and ultimately without meaning but it is still wondrous and awe inspiring.
Have you been smoking cannabis again?
Paul doesn’t smoke
I just steam and smoulder a little
The suicide rate for transgenders is pretty high with estimates varying from 30-40%. Partly that might be down to the way our brains work but the rest seems likely down to having to deal with social attitudes. Religion is a primary driver here but science is no saint either with research lacking across nearly all key areas.
Both science and religion are guilty of peddling fear and ignorance from their separate worlds warmly wrapped within an event horizon of their own limited perceptions, yet, both religion and science have played their role in accepting and enabling transgenders so is this an issue of religion and science or merely the singular perspective of individuals working within various flavours and influences of different belief systems operating under random labels?
Christianity, Catholicism, and Islam are large and dominant religions but by no means the only religions let alone the oldest. Science itself is neither the originator of the scientific method nor the only belief system to use the scientific method. So claims of authority and exclusivity by either look a little over the top don’t they?
What of different and more intuitive forms of knowledge like mythology, stories, and painting? The unspoken and indescribable experience of creating and appreciating art is equally valid and comes from the same place so I guess it’s no surprise that both religion and science exploit art and, sometimes, by accident or design create art themselves as, in turn, art makes use of both.
My life thus far is effectively over and the only thing that stopped me killing myself was the lack of any pain and accident free way of doing it and the sheer uselessness of it all. Not saying having your bits rearranged by surgeons and skirting the wrath of binary minded patriarchal religions is an effortlessly fun reboot but you have to do something with your time don’t you?