A childish fear
On imposing the fear of death on others
“You seem to have the childish fear that the wind would really dissolve and scatter the soul as it leaves the body, especially if one happens to die in a high wind and not in calm weather.”
(Plato, Phaedo, 77e)
It has been claimed by many, that the corona insanity of the past years was fuelled by a pathological fear of death. It is because we have no healthy acceptance of our our own mortality, that we fearfully cling to life at all costs, whatever the quality of life that we might hold on to. It has been said that this has to do with our ‘materialist’ worldview, for which there is nothing beyond death, and thus no healthy way of relating to the end. For it is the end, and nothing but the end. As much as this might all be true, what really characterized the corona madness was not just the fear of death, but the desire to impose our own fear of death on others.
What I observed often; ‘healthy’ young people, going great lengths to ‘save the elderly’, but these elderly themselves, very often, couldn’t care less. They don’t want you to save them. They don’t want you to lock them up. They don’t want you to hide your face from them. They feel their death is theirs, the final accomplishment of a life well lived. And what do we do? We take it from them. Most pernicious, this fear of the other’s death, for under the guise of ‘saving’ a life, you in fact take life away.
Seen from eternity, the fear of death is a childish fear. But still, this fear of death is perfectly human. Yet, this fearful child becomes tyrannical, when it imposes its own fears on others. The fear of death becomes properly inhuman, when we impose it on others.
It were those we were ‘protecting’ from death, whose death we feared, whose lives were destroyed. Elderly people locked up in care-homes, denied access to medicine, and even denied the right to a proper funeral. Of course, I know well that lives were not saved by this attitude, but destroyed. Not only spiritually, as I contend, but also physically as purported. But we must understand the mind of the perpetrator. And the perpetrators are the Many which know not. Those for whom the ‘saving of the elderly’ amounts to isolating their bare bodies from ‘the virus’ at all costs. Those who think, that by preventing the other’s body from catching a disease, they are being examples of virtue vis-à-vis the other.
What is this ‘fear of death’? Let us speculate.
The fear of death, is the fear of what happens after physical dissolution of our bodies. But it is perhaps only the fear of life in disguise. Why? Let us attempt an answer. We know well, that we are not first and foremost our bodies, but the awareness that is conscious of the body. ‘Cogito’, ‘Consciousness’, ‘Soul’, call it what you wish. It is when this consciousness looks outward, intends towards the body, and identifies with it excessively, that we come to know ourselves as this body only. This excessive identification with the body, is reflected perfectly by the most recent developments of philosophical thought. We no longer know of a soul, we no longer even know of an individual, we know only of “communities of bodies.” Descent into matter, the history of which we call ‘the history of philosophy.’
It is in this self —intimately connected to the body, but not identical to this body—, that our life first and foremost resides. Down here, it has been given a body. And down here, it has come to love this body more than itself. But how can one come to love ‘what is other’, more than oneself? It is a lack of self-love, evidently. It is a fear, to be alone with oneself. As Plotinus beautifully puts it, those who long to be alone will not fear death. But those who cling to what is other, wish nothing more than to flee from death. We are amphibian beings, souls, caught between God and the world. And it is a matter of direction in this scheme, that determines the presence or absence of fear of death. Does one fear being alone with God or oneself, and thus fear the death of one’s body —that which attaches one to the world? Or does one long to be alone with God or oneself, and disdain a ‘life’ without a living self?
As in Descartes, where Cogito is torn between two realities. As we are thinking substance itself, that is: a being whose essence consists in thought or awareness, we are aware of many things through all the modalities in which we are aware; walking, seeing, hearing, understanding, feeling, willing, etc. These modalities of awareness attach us to all sorts of things; the world, the objects we encounter in it, and other people. As such, the meditation or focus on these modalities, is what attaches our thinking substance to the world. But, says Descartes, the meditation on what it means to be a thinking thing in itself, the focus on awareness itself —before it has attached itself to anything specific through one of its modalities—, this is what leads to God. It is perhaps the fear of this, the soul being alone with itself, that is at the origin of the fear of death. It is the fear of what truly makes us living, before we live through anything specific, that makes us fear the dissolution of the body. The fear of Life itself, in all its force, unencumbered, undiluted by whatever it might wish to focus on. What do we fear in fearing death? Perhaps only life.
It could be, and this is natural. But something is special, in that we witness not only the fear of death, but also the imposition of the fear of death on others. ‘You should fear death, and you should do it just as much as me’, this was the imperative of the covid-paradigm. It is perhaps only natural, that we are inclined to impose our own values on the other. And hence, why we should not focus on the other too much, but first take care of our own soul, from which the rest will follow. As it is said, the best you can do for the other, is to do the best for yourself. Refusing to heed this call leads to the fear of death, but much worse, it leads to the imposition of this fear on others. It leads to a life in which you are not responsible for yourself. But contrary to popular belief, this does not lead to a life in which you are responsible for the other. Rather, it leads to a life in which your own irresponsibility, is also imposed on the other. This applies to both sides of the covid-story; the care of the soul, and the care of the body. He who knows not how to care for his soul, will fear being alone with it: the event announced in death. And he will impose this fear on others. He who knows not how to care for his bodily health, will not care for the other’s health, but impose his own strategy of not-caring; isolate, refrain from getting sick, forestall infection through vaccines, but above all; do not heal yourself, do not make yourself stronger.
As Aristotle claims, a man who is not his own best friend, can never be a good friend to others. It is the same here; a man who values the life of whatever he is attached to more than himself, can only value the attachments of the other, but never his life. A man who cares not for his own soul or body, can never care for the other’s soul or body. A man who relates to himself in terms of fear, can do nothing for the other, but impose this same fear on him.
