Some clever research from the field of social psychology has demonstrated a close association in our minds between animals, animal products, bodilyness generally and our own mortality. The upshot is that these things give off a whiff of the Reaper that colours our response to them. The studies are part of a body of work known as ‘terror management theory’, which holds that our world views largely function to help us manage the terror of death. That means all world views: in the case of religions such as Christianity with their promise of eternal life, the link is very obvious, but secular belief systems have their death-defence-mechanisms too, often closely paralleling the religious ones. For example, just as Christians believe they will be resurrected by God, those who subscribe to cryonics – being frozen upon death – believe they will be resurrected by scientists. .... There is a long tradition of seeing in the omnipresence of death the negation of all meaning, hope and value. It was what the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson meant when in 1849 he described Nature as ‘red in tooth and claw’. He laments that she is ‘so careless of the single life’, then, on considering fossils, how she is so careless of whole species. She cries: ‘I care for nothing, all shall go’, and Tennyson concludes: ‘O life as futile, then, as frail!’ But just as the first attempt to escape the paradox becomes an attempt to deny the undeniable, so does this one. The fact of death does not destroy meaning: indeed, as we pass through the heat of life we cannot help but produce meaning, like a popcorn machine produces popcorn. This is what living things do: they imbue the world with significance and value; for an organism there is always better or worse, relevant or irrelevant; there is always something to do. This is what differentiates us from the rock that is indifferent to being pummelled to sand by the sea. Perhaps, as Tennyson believed, death’s relentless reaping should lead us to question the existence of some higher meaning – one above, beyond or external to us. But whoever thought there was such a thing anyway? Not the frogs and tadpoles. And not me – yet I’m not therefore tempted to despair, at least not while a good dinner is waiting. Because life is so teeming with intentions and meanings, the death of each creature really is a catastrophe. But we must live with it anyway: as we saw, the alternative is the most desperate and convoluted of denials.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 23:07:03 +0000
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