Aubade
Okay, one more Richard Dawkins-themed post. Dawkins, it seems, finds the fear of death puzzling, or at least “illogical”. Well, if he would like to understand this phenomenon better, he might want to consult his fellow atheist Philip Larkin, whose “Aubade” (published in 1977) is one of the bleakest and greatest poems of the twentieth century. Here’s an especially relevant selection:
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
— The good not used, the love not given, time
Torn off unused — nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never:
But at the total emptiness forever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says no rational being
Can fear a thing it cannot feel, not seeing
that this is what we fear — no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
You may read the whole magnificent poem here. An aubade, incidentally, is a “dawn song,” traditionally a happy one.
is it too harsh to say that this is moronic coming from a guy who accepts that humans are basically vehicles for replicators???
— razib · Apr 1, 10:34 PM · #
to be fair, he might be distinguishing proximate logic from ultimate logic. but saying fear of death is “illogical” in the proximate sense strikes me as informative as saying “liking sweet things is illogical.”
— razib · Apr 1, 10:49 PM · #
razib, yes, I think comments on this would have to begin by noting that trying to avoid death is what almost all organisms do most of the time, and that that behavior is in some sense “logical” — certainly the ability to avoid death is highly adaptive, usually for them and always for their genes. Given that fact, then sentient organisms who can have forethought of death, and for whom death is undesirable in the same way that it is for other organisms, will surely be fearful of it also. What could be more logical than that?
— Alan Jacobs · Apr 1, 11:37 PM · #
As razib points out above, for an atheist fear of death is about as logical as liking sugar – which is to say, very logical indeed.
But Dawkins usually makes this comment in the context of imagining how a Christian should feel. Dawkins does it often, as do Christians when they claim that, logically, atheists should have no morals.
That kind of argument is always tedious and rarely, I suspect, sincere.
— Kevin · Apr 2, 12:02 AM · #
Well, so, exactly what, Kevin? We can never attempt to detect inconsistency between someone’s stated beliefs and their actions? Not ever? Not even when the way those beliefs influence action is being set forth as one of the benefits of their beliefs?
Really? Not ever? We can never try to guess what someone would reasonably do or feel if they really did believe something?
— Chet · Apr 2, 12:30 AM · #
death is not negative
death is not zero
death is not even null set
death is just the equals sign
— Senescent · Apr 2, 06:27 AM · #
Death is a period followed by an infinite of spaces. At least, that’s what I heard.
— JA · Apr 2, 03:32 PM · #
Chet – Finding inconsistencies is one thing. Distorting an opponents view to draw absurd conclusions is the usual mode though.
— Kevin · Apr 2, 04:14 PM · #
Alan, except for your post I don’t know what Dawkins said or wrote on this. On its face, though, I don’t think it’s incorrect to say that for an atheist it’s illogical to fear death. This is not to say that atheists don’t fear it, it just means that this fear is deeply visceral not logical.
On another note. In the year 2000, while driving my car, I heard someone (Diane Rehm?) interviewing Martin Amis. Somehow during the conversation the subject of sickness, courage and the fear of death came up. What exactly Amis said I don’t remember, but the gist of it is that he learned the courage of the dying when they, out of love, try not to scare others. He quoted Larkin.
“Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others.”
Courage will not save you, but it is indeed good. And the courage of the dying is not the scare others. I was struck by that thought because at time my father dying of cancer. He, a Russian Orthodox, was both a stoic and loving man. I told him about the lines I heard: courage means not scare others. He understood and approved completely.
— Kolya · Apr 2, 04:26 PM · #
Kolya, I don’t think Larkin meant to say that courage is of no value — he just meant that it’s “no good” as a way of coping with the fear of death. Keeping your fear to yourself, he’s implying, may help others but it won’t help you.
— Alan Jacobs · Apr 2, 06:22 PM · #
Alan, I was not clear. I didn’t mean to say that Larkin didn’t think courage has no value. To the contrary. Martin Amis was moved by this thought: courage means not to scare others. And he fully attributed this insight to Larkin (who was a good friend of his late father.) And that’s precisely why I told my father about it, since I recognized that this is what he was doing: trying not scare us. He was dying. He knew it, we knew it. And yet he was determined not to scare us with his dying.
— Kolya · Apr 2, 06:43 PM · #
Me again, Alan. I became somewhat obssessed about what I really heard Martin Amis saying during that radio interview and—miracles of the Internet—was able to find the transcript. It was during a Terri Gross program back in 2000. Here is the relevant part:
“Mr. AMIS: His great friend, the poet Larkin, said—another death-obsessed writer—said that being brave while you die means not scaring others. And, you know, I think that was the great lesson. My father had not much control over his behavior and the things he said as he was dying, but he did a pretty good job of not scaring his children.”
Now I see why it stayed with me. I heard this interview in which, among other things, Amis talked about his father’s dying right at the time my own stoic father was dying.
— Kolya · Apr 2, 07:16 PM · #
Kolya,
Thanks for this tip. As someone who has watched a few parents die in recent years, and as a father (and Orthodox Christian) who will hopefully have the chance to not scare his own children, I find it really moving.
— Matt Frost · Apr 2, 07:20 PM · #
Kolya, thanks — sorry I missed your point. Which is, as Matt says, a very very good one.
— Alan Jacobs · Apr 2, 09:01 PM · #
Matt and Alan, thank you for your good words. And apologies for my bad writing.
— Kolya · Apr 2, 09:15 PM · #
If one were to wonder aloud why Christians, who believe that their personal hereafter will be an eternal paradise in communion with God, nonetheless fear death – a brief transition between this fallen world and inconceivable bliss and fulfillment – precisely what position is being distorted? What absurd conclusion is being drawn?
— Chet · Apr 3, 07:43 PM · #
I dunno about Dawkins but Christopher Hitchens at Biola this past Saturday evening didn’t seem to be familiar with debate format. He was somewhat difficult to follow because he was rambling a bit and seemed a little unwell. He was funny. It was awkward laughing at some of his slightly bawdy jokes when it was only my dad and me and about three others laughing in a gymnasium filled with 3,000 spectators; although, other jokes received universal laughs. William Lane Craig, using the debate format effectively, was clear, logical, articulate…okay, I’m biased—but he was!
— Julie · Apr 7, 04:46 AM · #