"Then said Egil Woolsark, 'For a while I was afraid this long peace would never end, and I'd die indoors on a straw-bed. Much liefer 'ud I follow my chieftain and fall in fighting. Maybe it'll happen.'"
-Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Book Four, Chapter XXV, p. 377.
A violent death soon is preferable to a peaceful old age? Of course, Egil believes that death in battle will take him to Valhalla whereas a straw death leads to Hel. Or does he really believe this? It is not what he says. He seems to find prolonged peace wearisome and the prospect of a violent death exciting.
How many people really believe what they are supposed to believe about a hereafter? Once, when I pointed out that a supernatural realm is supposed to be a reality, not a mere concept, the fellow laborer with whom I was discussing such esoteric ideas replied: "What is it but a concept?" Because it was a mere concept to him, he had difficulty understanding that it is (at least supposed to be) as real as you or me according to those who accept that concept. But how many of them do take it that seriously?
Years ago, a Catholic curate working in a rural parish in the Republic of Ireland wrote that his parishioners simultaneously believed three mutually incompatible propositions about death:
that the dead no longer exist;
that the dead are in one of the hereafters described by the Church - or are yet to be Judged? (Maybe there is a slight inconsistency there?);
that the dead are in the Pagan Underworld from where they resent and wish ill to the living.
With a fellow Philosophy graduate who has worked as a Presbyterian Minister, I can clarify concepts and discuss logical possibilities but that is as far as philosophy takes us. I think that consciousness has arisen from organism-environment interaction and I remember a general anesthetic extinguishing my consciousness like blowing out a candle flame. I find it wholly implausible that, if this body is destroyed by an explosion a few seconds hence, then my stream of consciousness/sense of identity/personality etc (whatever we want to call it) will just keep on going as if nothing had happened. There is even a Spiritualist idea that the dead do not immediately realize that they are dead. Maybe we are in for a big surprise? But how can anyone be certain of that now?
3 comments:
Paul:
A peaceful old age. But that's also an age in which the muscles are growing less able, bones becoming fragile, eyesight weakening, arteries hardening -- remember, the people of that time lacked the systematic knowledge of diet, exercise, and geriatric treatment that our time has developed (and continues to work on).
So a peaceful old age could bring an unlucky warrior to a point where he's unable to rise from bed, unable to control his bowels and keep from fouling himself.... At that point, he might well wish he'd died while still hale.
David,
That makes sense.
Paul.
...and so far that systematic knowledge only delays the decline.
If I don't die before such decline becomes severe I may want some sort of assisted suicide.
Eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation
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