9. | The Two Faces of the Death
Talking about politics is a topic that can ruin the mood of a party. However, talking about death guarantees it. Why is that? What does death mean psychologically?
Without understanding death, we are not able to live life to the fullest. We are living in fear due to our need for control. We are afraid of changes that come with death, regardless if it is our death or someone else’s. Modern psychology argues that the best way to get rid of our fears is by meeting them — even if it’s just mentally. The following is my attempt to do exactly that in my way.
If I were to find one word to describe death in the best way, it would be “change.” Death is the biggest change that could happen to someone. That’s why we could probably argue that both fear and the fear of death express unwillingness to meet the unknown, originated from unexpected change. It is a desire to control the future experience, to avoid surprises or unexpected changes.
The desire to avoid surprises and unexpected situations could be conditionally called a death consciousness. It is a state of mind that avoids death as a change or process and prefers death as a static condition with a safe and predestined future. We are afraid of future events that don’t meet our expectations.
As a result, a lot of us also give up positive surprises in life. We let our fears close up the window to life opportunities. Being afraid of negative experiences or losing something feels much more intense than the happiness we could experience when exploring the unknown paths.
This is the dual nature of death. Depending on the point of view, death could be a symbol of the biggest change or, instead, a symbol of lack of life and complete stagnation. Symbolically, death could be viewed as an explosion, something that was just there, and it is suddenly gone. That’s the dynamic aspect of death. But the explosion is immediately followed by the silence, a complete stagnation.
Modern physics describes this as the second law of thermodynamics and the principle of increase of entropy. During the explosion, the old disappears, and without adding new energy to the system, the so-called heat death arrives. The change turns into stagnation.
Our attitude towards death is determined by our worldview, the way we subconsciously view death as a phenomenon. Most of us are not aware that our worldview is like a habit that can be changed by conscious behavior. Our habits of picking our noses or chewing nails are not genetically determined; they are habits that can be changed. The same applies to worldviews. When we learn to view death as part of life, it is possible to overcome fears of the future and fear of death. This does not mean we lose our survival instincts, which are biological rather than psychological and are needed for staying alive.
How could life be defined based on the above? Broadly speaking, it can be defined as a change. There is no life without change. Therefore, it can be argued that life is an unbroken chain of deaths or changes in the most positive sense.
Psychologically, it means the constant change of sense of self. In the early stages of life, the changes happen semi-automatically — as soon as a child's identity dies, a teenage identity is born. When teenage identity dies, an adult identity is born. Our life should consist of several sub-personality deaths. In the end, all archetypical and non-archetypical sub-personalities should die. The victim, doer, and rescuer are some of the most frequently occurring sub-personalities, and their “deaths” would help us move forward in life. Every individual has their own unique set of sub-personalities that are characteristic to them, and the death of each identity opens up opportunities to new, broader identities.
Ideally, we should have many changes through the deaths of internal identities in life since there is no life without death. We will become a closed system. The second law of thermodynamics applies to the latter, and the system starts heading towards heat death. For the human mind, it often reflects as mental disorders. Dementia could also be a result of the stagnation in personality development, which, in a way, expresses the “heat death” of the internal world.
Finally, the prior helps us understand better the Bible character, Paul, who said:
And why do we endanger ourselves every hour?
I die every day.
1Cor 15:30–31