Begin with the end in mind

You will die and be forgotten

My wife and I agreed many years ago that we do not want to be buried, but instead wish to be cremated and have our ashes scattered. A friend told me about his friend who died young and was cremated. The family gave each of the young man’s friends a small vial of his ashes and asked them to take the ashes somewhere that they would have liked to share with the young man and scatter them there. I liked that story. It was a way for each of the friends to honor their friend and create one last connection with him.

I think I would like to have my ashes scattered on the Oyster River, where I have spent so many hours contemplating its natural beauty. The Oyster flows into Great Bay, which in turn flows into the Piscataqua River, which then ultimately empties into the sea. It would be a final journey back into the source of all life. 

I don’t like the idea of being buried because within a relatively short period of time, no one will be left to visit my grave. The image above is of a gravestone in a graveyard outside of San Antonio, but living in New England we see lots of graves that are hundreds of years old, usually fenced off in some random place along the side of the road. Maybe a historian knows who was buried there, but no one really cares, and the rain and wind gradually wear down the markers until the names are barely legible. Graves are a final expression of ego, and an imposition on the living. I think of Shelley’s poem Ozymandias: 

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

I know some people like to think that a grave will give their loved ones a place to come to and commune with them. I would like it better if anyone who wants to remember me would come to the river and see its living waters, rather than an assemblage of rocks in a field. And then when everyone who might remember me is gone, there will be no wasteful pile of rock occupying space that would be better used by the living for something else.

Like Ozymandias, sooner or later we will all die and be forgotten, regardless of what we did in our lifetimes. There are a handful of names that come down to us through history - Odysseus, David, Socrates, Jesus, Muhamed, etc. - but we mostly only know of them through other people’s words. Who knows whether any of the stories we have inherited are accurate? Some of these we simply take on faith, if they are part of our faith, but still - we really don’t know. But of the vast majority of the billions of other humans who walked the earth for a period of time and have become dust - we know nothing of them. They are a faceless mass. As Shakespeare’s Macbeth says, 

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more.

There may be an afterlife - many religions posit that idea as a means of getting moral compliance in this life - but that is fundamentally unknowable. It’s a good mechanism for getting people to behave well. Pascal’s Wager is a simple and fairly convincing argument for believing in God by implication following the edicts of the Church. 

Payoffs in Pascal’s Wager

The basic argument breaks down to the above 2x2 of payoffs. If you believe in God and you live a good life according to the edicts of the Church, and God exists, you will go to Heaven and have infinite happiness. If you don’t believe in God and you don’t live a good life according to the edicts of the Church, and God exists, you go to hell and have infinite suffering. If God doesn’t exist, nothing happens, so you can do whatever you want. It is a wager because we can’t know if God exists or not until after we die, at which point we cease to exist, go to Hell, or go to Heaven. But even if there is a tiny percent chance that God exists, statistically, a tiny percent multiplied by the payoff of eternal happiness vs. a tiny percent multiplied by the payoff of eternal misery makes a strong argument for believing in God. A tiny percent of an infinite amount is still staggeringly huge. So Pascal says, you may as well believe in God and live a good life. 

Let’s say you think the probability that God exists and there is an afterlife is zero. If that is true, then you are not playing the odds against an infinite payoff. Instead, there is only the payoff of your secular life. Without what some anthropologists call a “Big God” who is waiting to reward or punish us, what we should do with our lives becomes less immediately clear. With the assumption of a Big God, you do what the Big God says or face infinite punishment. But without a Big God, you don’t have the Big God’s edicts that define what a good life is, let alone fear punishment if you don’t comply with that version of the good life. This was the problem brought about by Existentialism. If we only have this one life, and there is no infinite or eternal existence, what should we do with our one shot? 

I think to answer that question, we begin with the end in mind. We will die and be forgotten. What makes a life worth living if we assume that this is the end state? What is a worthy life? This is the question I will be working toward in future newsletters. Not all of them will take on the question directly. There is a lot to being in the world other than answer this question, but I think it all ultimately does come back to this question. And here’s a spoiler alert - I don’t have a definitive answer. You’ll be along for the ride while I work on my thinking about it. You are welcome to add your thoughts and make suggestions. I would love to hear from you.

To be continued…