8 XI 2007
There indeed may be an afterlife, or some form of reincarnation, that reinforces an idea of immortality beyond death. But assured as these claims may stand: to a subject-unto-death, there truly can be nothing, as long as the subject is still in death–that which is the terminus of time, that which gives life–beyond the notion of death before that peculiar moment happens. That moment, my friend, is one of pain: time disappears as its terminus is reached; the subject-unto-death is to be devoured by a vast notion of nothingness, while realizing the painful doom of his subjectivity. Nothingness is to become the great unifier of all.
Yet the subject-unto-death always contradicts his inevitable fate in every act. He is a part of a family, a geneology, and attempts continuation through procreation. He is a part of a society, a civilization, and attempts to cope with death through the continuation of the collective. He is a man of remarkable statue, and wants his name remembered through achievements. But neither children nor grandchildren, neither his estate or the commune, neither a bard nor an encyclopedia, could truly capture his existence as a subject-unto-death and preserve his subjectivity. Even Virgil, the poet whose task was to immortalize, realized the impossibility of his task: as he writes, Aeneas entering Carthage finds his own image in a series of murals depicting the fall of Troy, but the content already deviates from the real experience of the subject-unto-death. And social order, too, cannot last. A little bit over ninety years ago a revolution realized an Utopian idea in an unlikely but mighty nation, with a historical determinist ideology that claims an end of history. Well proclaimed; yet it is that ideology rather than history that fell not even a century after its realization. Same things could be said to many; achievements of any historical accountability have yet to surpass five thousand years, a tiny fraction of material existence beyond subject-unto-death, and only a small portion of man’s existence as a collective whole. Hence, nothing material lasts for a subject-unto-death
As for metaphysical ideas of immortality? These are notions by definition beyond the scope of death, and hence cannot be considered within the scope of death. Sure, let the one live forever in some alternative realm, let him appear in life again as something difference! But these cannot be observed within death, and they do not belong to subject-unto-death as a subject. God might be all powerful, but he is also beyond time and space–and hence, beyond death. To subject-unto-death He is merely an idea that the subject may choose to believe. And the kingdom of heaven, Brahman, nirvana, and other similar notions all share a similar notion: the elimination of the subjectivity. Hence, for a subject-unto-death there can be nothing beyond death. Even if something happens, it is not his concern unless he, too, transcends death through death itself. To create something out of nothingness, is impossible to conceive for subject-unto-death.
If death must come, then let it be a painful one. The subject-unto-death knows that his time is constrained by that moment of doom. He has already allowed his senses to be numbed in quasi-real feelings of the collective; he belongs to a society governed by a state that attempts to solve all problems for him, so he can live “in comfort”–mindless, but blissful. Indeed, we have created a facade that allows our “pursuit of happiness”? What is that notion of happiness? Do we really care to know? If so, we must accept our fate as subject-unto-death first. Society will not die for us; in fact, it will do the very opposite, in vain, but nevertheless heroic. One is to embrace death alone. That process of embracing death contains the fullness of life: its happiness, its pleasure, its sorrow, its pain.
Hence, I, as a subject-unto-death, accept death, as nothingness, as the terminus with nothing beyond so long as I retain my subjectivity.
I affirm life.
