On Death
DOES pragmatism have anything to tell us about death? Certainly; in principle, the pragmatic approach can be applied to any belief whose alteration would have a practical impact in the way we live. Our beliefs about death fall clearly within the category of types of beliefs that affect our behavior here, on earth. Yet again, before you run away scandalized by what I am about to say, let me make very clear that I actually have no idea what really happens when we die. The question about the ontological status of death and which area of human knowledge is supposed to say what really happens when we die (science, religion, esotericism, you name it) is a very interesting one, yet is not my topic as a pragmatist. My topic is way simpler: what type of belief about death is more consistent with the type of society that we live in today? I cannot tell you what will happen when you die, but I can certainly tell you which beliefs about death are going to make your time on earth more difficult.
People certainly hold many different beliefs about what happens when we die and these can vary tremendously depending on our cultural, religious, philosophical or scientific background. However, let me simplify the whole gamut of beliefs in four general categories:
Belief 1: When we die, we go to heaven if we have been good or to hell if we have been bad
Belief 2: When we die, we eventually reincarnate and our reincarnation has some connection with our current behaviour or status
Belief 3: When we die, we end as physical beings but transcend into an unknown dimension that is not connected with our current behavior or status
Belief 4: When we die, we die; we cease to be and we will never be again
Now, I guess I do not have to remind you in which type of society we live in today — yet I will because you probably either have very bad memory and do not remember what I have said before or you simply do not stop and think about these weird philosophical things. We currently live in a globalized and exponentially interconnected society, where the contact and day-to-day interaction between people with vastly different world-views has reached a point never experienced before in human history. The social, economic, political and cultural consequences of the digital era are only beginning to be grasped and it is in this context that we need to ask ourselves the pragmatic question about “what is good in the way of belief” to use William James pragmatic formula. If this is the type of reality we have to cope with today, which of the previous four beliefs would have better practical implications? Lets get down to business.
Belief 1 and 2 suffer from the same fundamental problem: they presuppose the existence of morality, or in other words, they only work if we assume there are universal values to which we can map a man’s life in order to come up with a verdict on his post-earthly status. This is a problem because, as I argued in a previous post, viewing our values as static and universal is a dangerous outlook in a society characterized by an exponentially-growing mixture of multiple and usually diverging world-views and moral beliefs. Good luck with trying to live a sane life in the type of plural environment we live in today while holding to the belief that what we call “good” is fixed once and for all. Let me know how that one goes; but if you see my point instead, you will have to agree that we can start forgetting about heaven, hell and reincarnation. They are nice beliefs, but they do not make a whole of pragmatic sense in the world in which we live in.
Belief 3 is an interesting one, because it keeps the idea of transcendence that we had in Belief 1 and 2 but drops the whole need for a moralistic outcome. I do not have much bad things to say about this one other than the fact that I do not think it is really sustainable. If you actually believe you transcend, you want to know where you go. But if the morality door is shut, then is not a lot you can say about that. I actually think those who hold Belief 3 are probably just “in-transit” believers of 4, which is the more radical outcome of abandoning 1 and 2.
As you would suppose, Belief 4 is the one I think we should hold from a purely pragmatic standpoint. First, because there is not that many other choices when we realize 1 and 2 are dangerous and 3 is kind of boring. But besides that, Belief 4 has a key ingredient that properly fits our current environment: it introduces the radical consciousness of temporality, something Heidegger became famous for insisting on. Being fully conscious of our “ticking clock” is a condition that makes us more compatible with ideas of change, finitude and adaptability rather than ideas of immutability and eternity, and the former are precisely the type of ideas that thrive in our digitalized and fast paced environment. What we think is going to happen to our being (what we believe death is) sets the example to many other beliefs we hold, and in our day and age, ideas of universal constants are having a tough time.
Now, in all intellectual honesty, the argument for preferring Believe 4 over Belief 3 is not as strong as the argument for dropping 1 and 2. I just personally think that 4 is better, but it is more of a judgement call than anything else as I find 3 boring and unsustainable for curious minds. However, I do think that the argument for dropping 1 and 2 is fully consistent with a pragmatic take on the world in which we live in. Heaven, hell and reincarnation are just not practical beliefs. I am not saying that they are not plausible, they could certainly turn out to be true, I am just saying that until we get confirmation on that, we would be better-off dropping them altogether.
