The Tuscan's awful tale of what happened to him on his return to Italy last weekend got me thinking about death. That, and the fact that I had attended a memorial at Winchester Cathedral earlier in the week for a very close friend, plucked from this earth before his 50th birthday, whose son is an idle godchild.
I am an atheist, but not in a hostile way. I love Agnus Dei and Miserere, and the rollicking good hymns of my youth. I entirely see why "Christian" morality is deemed to be A Good Thing, and I try to be tolerant and charitable, though I indulge myself quite often in frothing intolerance and selfish pursuits. I think the modern Church of England is a confused rabble.
But I was challenged by an intelligent fellow to explain myself, given that I bring my children up in (low-intensity) CofE private education, and have no shame entering churches. Also whether I "feared" death. I mumbled and gibbered and failed completely to articulate my philosophy.
Later, I remembered another obituary I had read a few months ago. This clever man got it about right:
He did not think it was necessary to believe in God to recognise the value of religion in providing the individual with a moral compass. In a recent exchange on AskPhilosophers.org, a questioner wanted to know whether it is rational to fear death: "It's irrational to fear what death will feel like if you know it won't feel like anything," Lipton replied, "but it doesn't follow that it is irrational to fear death. It's not irrational to look forward to the pleasures of living, and if we know that death will take these away, the fear of losing those pleasures doesn't seem irrational either."
12 comments:
Ditto that, sir, esp. para 2.
The Tuscana is keen to set up a private international school here to enable her to sing plenty of hymns, esp at Crimble, without having some overbearing intellectually substandard loser at the front tooled up in a dog collar and gimp suit try to extract money from her by the use of a spurious overseas "Christian" project, thus enabling him to take a few exotic flights and holidays a year to said hotspot and justify himself. Having said that, there are plenty of harmless loons in the trade that would be lost at sea in the real world, so the church has its institutional uses too, like Cane Hill in Coulsdon did 40 years ago.
BTW - shouldn't you be furiously adjusting interest rates or whetever it is you bankers do ini the daylight hours? Two posts in a week sounds rather too intense for your monicker!
..Baker obit read (missed the link first time through). An extraordinary person; and very sorry to hear of your loss of a friend. RIP.
Well said
You have seen death close up.
I happen to think that we do survive physical death(remind me of this as my eastern bound Boeing hurtles to the ground)frankly ,the idea of spending eternity with a cockney insurance salesman is my idea of Hell,So lets hope Im wrong about life after death.
Nice one Idle...as long as you go at the right time and definitely not before 50, that's a sad state of affairs.
Spike Milligan once said that when he died, he hoped that he would go to heaven, but if Jeffrey Archer was there, he's rather go to Lewisham..!
I am so sorry to hear of your loss Idle.
I am not scared of death, I am scared of the consequences of death. Not the immediate personal consequences of being dead as that is nothing. But I am scared of being left or leaving too soon for those being left. That's what frightens me. Old age death can be a very welcome thing for many, and not something to be feared, in spite of loss. The "premature" stuff scares me shitless.
Lils - don't you worry Lil gal!
Sure you'll be ready to say "bye" in any case - unless you get run down by a train...
Agree about leaving the rest of the family to deal with everything, but, we had to do that didn't we?
'Fraid you can't worry about these things when you're a long time dead...
I am fatalistic, lil, which doesn't necessarily banish fear, but it does in my case.
The premature thing is a bugger, of course. We made sure that there were confidential agreements with brothers and grandparents about who brought up the idle daughters in the event of Total Idle Eradication, fearful of a tug o' war if these matters were not anticipated; the wisdom of Solomon is not universally applied, as we know, and people do the strangest things when dealing with trauma and grief.
Never argue with an optimist, they say. It just makes you look embittered by comparison.
And I am an optimist before I'm a nihilist, killem.
Woody Allen once said, (I believe) 'Im not afraid of dying, I just don't want to be around when it happens!
I feel like Lilith. It's leaving those that love you behind that bothers me.
Last year, I had to watch my three darling daughters grieve and look after their Father (my ex- husband) as he struggled with the Pancreatic Cancer.
I felt helpless, and then, dreadful guilt when he died, because, I instigated the divorce( 26 years ago).
I too, read Tuscan's post about the 'road crash', and was so upset about it, that I've had dreadful dreams since.
I couldn't find words to write on his post, so just left it .
I will drop over now and write to him....He seems to be one hell of a decent guy.....
Di.xx
I've always been mildly catholic(?) but over the last few years have become more devout.Part of the reason is just to piss off godless libs and partly tomake a tiny statement against the religion of peace...sad but true.
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