How I Feel About Death
As explained in a Harry Potter fanfiction
I have this conversation quite a lot with people, and as this is an emotional topic for me it takes lots of energy to tell it over and over. So here’s a summary of my thoughts & feelings on it, taken from one of my favourite books, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (+ my own thoughts at the end)!123
“"This day you have helped me much, Harry," said the Headmaster. "And so there is one last thing I would ask that young man.”
Great.
"Tell me, Harry," said the Headmaster (and now his voice sounded simply puzzled, though there was still a hint of pain in his eyes), "why do Dark Wizards fear death so greatly?"
"Er," said Harry, "sorry, I've got to back the Dark Wizards on that one."
"What? " said Dumbledore.
"Death is bad," said Harry, discarding wisdom for the sake of clear communication. "Very bad. Extremely bad. Being scared of death is like being scared of a great big monster with poisonous fangs. It actually makes a great deal of sense, and does not, in fact, indicate that you have a psychological problem."
The Headmaster was staring at him as though he'd just turned into a cat.
"Okay," said Harry, "let me put it this way. Do you want to die? Because if so, there's this Muggle thing called a suicide prevention hotline -"
"When it is time," the old wizard said quietly. "Not before. I would never seek to hasten the day, nor seek to refuse it when it comes."
Harry was frowning sternly. "That doesn't sound like you have a very strong will to live, Headmaster!"
"Harry..." The old wizard's voice was starting to sound a little helpless; and he had paced to a spot where his silver beard, unnoticed, had drifted into a crystalline glass goldfish bowl, and was slowly taking on a greenish tinge that crept up the hairs. "I think I may have not made myself clear. Dark Wizards are not eager to live. They fear death. They do not reach up toward the sun's light, but flee the coming of night into infinitely darker caverns of their own making, without moon or stars. It is not life they desire, but immortality; and they are so driven to grasp at it that they will sacrifice their very souls! Do you want to live forever, Harry?"
"Yes, and so do you," said Harry. "I want to live one more day. Tomorrow I will still want to live one more day. Therefore I want to live forever, proof by induction on the positive integers. If you don't want to die, it means you want to live forever. If you don't want to live forever, it means you want to die. You've got to do one or the other... I'm not getting through here, am I."
The two cultures stared at each other across a vast gap of incommensurability.
"I have lived a hundred and ten years," the old wizard said quietly (taking his beard out of the bowl, and jiggling it to shake out the color). "I have seen and done a great many things, too many of which I wish I had never seen or done. And yet I do not regret being alive, for watching my students grow is a joy that has not begun to wear on me. But I would not wish to live so long that it does! What would you do with eternity, Harry?"
Harry took a deep breath.
"Meet all the interesting people in the world, read all the good books and then write something even better, celebrate my first grandchild's tenth birthday party on the Moon, celebrate my first great-great-great grandchild's hundredth birthday party around the Rings of Saturn, learn the deepest and final rules of Nature, understand the nature of consciousness, find out why anything exists in the first place, visit other stars, discover aliens, create aliens, rendezvous with everyone for a party on the other side of the Milky Way once we've explored the whole thing, meet up with everyone else who was born on Old Earth to watch the Sun finally go out, and I used to worry about finding a way to escape this universe before it ran out of negentropy but I'm a lot more hopeful now that I've discovered the so-called laws of physics are just optional guidelines."
"I did not understand much of that," said Dumbledore. "But I must ask if these are things that you truly desire so desperately, or if you only imagine them so as to imagine not being tired, as you run and run from death."
"Life is not a finite list of things that you check off before you're allowed to die," Harry said firmly. "It's life, you just go on living it. If I'm not doing those things it'll be because I've found something better."
Dumbledore sighed. His fingers drummed on a clock; as they touched it, the numerals changed to an indecipherable script, and the hands briefly appeared in different positions. "In the unlikely event that I am permitted to tarry until a hundred and fifty," said the old wizard, "I do not think I would mind. But two hundred years would be entirely too much of a good thing."
"Yes, well," Harry said, his voice a little dry as he thought of his Mum and Dad and their allotted span if Harry didn't do something about it, "I suspect, Headmaster, that if you came from a culture where people were accustomed to living four hundred years, that dying at two hundred would seem just as tragically premature as dying at, say, eighty." Harry's voice went hard, on that last word.
"Perhaps," the old wizard said peacefully. "I would not wish to die before my friends, nor live on after they had all gone. The hardest time is when those you loved the most have gone on before you, and yet others still live, for whose sake you must stay..." Dumbledore's eyes were fixed on Harry, and growing sad. "Do not mourn me too greatly, Harry, when my time comes; I will be with those I have long missed, on our next great adventure."
"Oh!" Harry said in sudden realization. "You believe in an afterlife. I got the impression wizards didn't have religion?"
"How can you not believe it? " said the Headmaster, looking completely flabbergasted. "Harry, you're a wizard! You've seen ghosts! "
"Ghosts," Harry said, his voice flat. "You mean those things like portraits, stored memories and behaviors with no awareness or life, accidentally impressed into the surrounding material by the burst of magic that accompanies the violent death of a wizard -"
"I've heard that theory," said the Headmaster, his voice growing sharp, "repeated by wizards who mistake cynicism for wisdom, who think that to look down upon others is to elevate themselves. It is one of the silliest ideas I have heard in a hundred and ten years! Yes, ghosts do not learn or grow, because this is not where they belong! Souls are meant to move on, there is no life remaining for them here! And if not ghosts, then what of the Veil? What of the Resurrection Stone?"
"All right," Harry said, trying to keep his voice calm, "I'll hear out your evidence, because that's what a scientist does. But first, Headmaster, let me tell you a little story." Harry's voice was trembling. "You know, when I got here, when I got off the train from King's Cross, I don't mean yesterday but back in September, when I got off the train then, Headmaster, I'd never seen a ghost. I wasn't expecting ghosts. So when I saw them, Headmaster, I did something really dumb. I jumped to conclusions. I, I thought there was an afterlife, I thought no one had ever really died, I thought that everyone the human species had ever lost was really fine after all, I thought that wizards could talk to people who'd passed on, that it just took the right spell to summon them, that wizards could do that, I thought I could meet my parents who died for me, and tell them that I'd heard about their sacrifice and that I'd begun to call them my mother and father -"
"Harry," whispered Dumbledore. Water glittered in the old wizard's eyes. He took a step closer across the office -
"And then," spat Harry, the fury coming fully into his voice, the cold rage at the universe for being like that and at himself for being so stupid, "I asked Hermione and she said that they were just afterimages, burned into the stone of the castle by the death of a wizard, like the silhouettes left on the walls of Hiroshima. And I should have known! I should have known without even having to ask! I shouldn't have believed it even for all of thirty seconds! Because if people had souls there wouldn't be any such thing as brain damage, if your soul could go on speaking after your whole brain was gone, how could damage to the left cerebral hemisphere take away your ability to talk? And Professor McGonagall, when she told me about how my parents had died, she didn't act like they'd just gone away on a long trip to another country, like they'd emigrated to Australia back in the days of sailing ships, which is the way people would act if they actually knew that death was just going somewhere else, if they had hard evidence for an afterlife, instead of making stuff up to console themselves, it would change everything, it wouldn't matter that everyone had lost someone in the war, it would be a little sad but not horrible! And I'd already seen that people in the wizarding world didn't act like that! So I should have known better! And that was when I knew that my parents were really dead and gone forever and ever, that there wasn't anything left of them, that I'd never get a chance to meet them and, and, and the other children thought I was crying because I was scared of ghosts -"
The old wizard's face was horrified, he opened his mouth to speak -
"So tell me, Headmaster! Tell me about the evidence! But don't you dare exaggerate a single tiny bit of it, because if you give me false hope again, and I find out later that you lied or stretched things just a little, I won't ever forgive you for it! What's the Veil? "
Harry reached up and wiped at his cheeks, while the glass things of the office stopped vibrating from his last shriek.
"The Veil," said the old wizard with only a slight tremble in his voice, "is a great stone archway, kept in the Department of Mysteries; a gateway to the land of the dead."
"And how does anyone know that?" said Harry. "Don't tell me what you believe, tell me what you've seen! "
The physical manifestation of the barrier between worlds was a great stone archway, old and tall and coming to a sharp point, with a tattered black veil like the surface of a pool of water, stretched between the stones; rippling, always, from the constant and one-way passage of the souls. If you stood by the Veil you could hear the voices of the dead calling, always calling in whispers barely on the wrong side of comprehension, growing louder and more numerous if you stayed and tried to hear, as they tried to communicate; and if you listened too long, you would go to meet them, and in the moment you touched the Veil you would be sucked through, and never be heard from again.
"That doesn't even sound like an interesting fraud," Harry said, his voice calmer now that there was nothing there to make him hope, or make him angry for having hopes dashed. "Someone built a stone archway, made a little black rippling surface between it that Vanished anything it touched, and enchanted it to whisper to people and hypnotize them."
"Harry..." the Headmaster said, starting to look rather worried. "I can tell you the truth, but if you refuse to hear it..."
Also not interesting. "What's the Resurrection Stone?"
"I would not tell you," the Headmaster said slowly, "save that I fear what this disbelief may do to you... so listen, then, Harry, please listen..."
The Resurrection Stone was one of the three legendary Deathly Hallows, kin to Harry's cloak. The Resurrection Stone could call souls back from the dead - bring them back into the world of the living, though not as they were. Cadmus Peverell used the stone to call back his lost beloved from the dead, but her heart stayed with the dead, and not in the world of the living. And in time it drove him mad, and he killed himself to be truly with her once more...
In all politeness, Harry raised his hand.
"Yes?" the Headmaster said reluctantly.
"The obvious test to see if the Resurrection Stone is really calling back the dead, or just projecting an image from the user's mind, is to ask a question whose answer you don't know, but the dead person would, and that can be definitely verified in this world. For example, call back -"
Then Harry paused, because this time he'd managed to think it through one step ahead of his tongue, fast enough to not say the first name and test that had sprung to mind.
"...your dead wife, and ask her where she left her lost earring, or something like that," Harry finished. "Did anyone do any tests like that?"
"The Resurrection Stone has been lost for centuries, Harry," the Headmaster said quietly.
Harry shrugged. "Well, I'm a scientist, and I'm always willing to be convinced. If you really believe the Resurrection Stone calls back the dead - then you must believe a test like that will succeed, right? […] Do you have any other evidence?" […]
"I don't know what you take me for, Headmaster," Harry said coldly, his own anger rising, "but let's not forget that I'm the one who wants people to live! The one who wants to save everyone! You're the one who thinks death is awesome and everyone ought to die!"
"I am at a loss, Harry," said the old wizard. His feet once more began trudging across his strange office. "I know not what to say." He picked up a crystal ball that seemed to hold a hand in flames, looked into it with a sad expression. "Only that I am greatly misunderstood by you... I don't want everyone to die, Harry!"
"You just don't want anyone to be immortal," Harry said with considerable irony. It seemed that elementary logical tautologies like All x: Die(x) = Not Exist x: Not Die(x) were beyond the reasoning abilities of the world's most powerful wizard.
The old wizard nodded. "I am less afraid than I was, but still greatly worried for you, Harry," he said quietly. His hand, a little wizened by time, but still strong, placed the crystal ball firmly back into its stand. "For the fear of death is a bitter thing, an illness of the soul by which people are twisted and warped. Voldemort is not the only Dark Wizard to go down that bleak road, though I fear he has taken it further than any before him."
"And you think you're not afraid of death?" Harry said, not even trying to mask the incredulity in his voice.
The old wizard's face was peaceful. "I am not perfect, Harry, but I think I have accepted my death as part of myself."
"Uh huh," Harry said. "See, there's this little thing called cognitive dissonance, or in plainer English, sour grapes. If people were hit on the heads with truncheons once a month, and no one could do anything about it, pretty soon there'd be all sorts of philosophers, pretending to be wise as you put it, who found all sorts of amazing benefits to being hit on the head with a truncheon once a month. Like, it makes you tougher, or it makes you happier on the days when you're not getting hit with a truncheon. But if you went up to someone who wasn't getting hit, and you asked them if they wanted to start, in exchange for those amazing benefits, they'd say no. And if you didn't have to die, if you came from somewhere that no one had ever even heard of death, and I suggested to you that it would be an amazing wonderful great idea for people to get wrinkled and old and eventually cease to exist, why, you'd have me hauled right off to a lunatic asylum! So why would anyone possibly think any thought so silly as that death is a good thing? Because you're afraid of it, because you don't really want to die, and that thought hurts so much inside you that you have to rationalize it away, do something to numb the pain, so you won't have to think about it -"
"No, Harry," the old wizard said. His face was gentle, his hand trailed through a lighted pool of water that made small musical chimes as his fingers stirred it. "Though I can understand how you must think so."
"Do you want to understand the Dark Wizard?" Harry said, his voice now hard and grim. "Then look within the part of yourself that flees not from death but from the fear of death, that finds that fear so unbearable that it will embrace Death as a friend and cozen up to it, try to become one with the night so that it can think itself master of the abyss. You have taken the most terrible of all evils and called it good! With only a slight twist that same part of yourself would murder innocents, and call it friendship. If you can call death better than life then you can twist your moral compass to point anywhere -"
"I think," said Dumbledore, shaking water droplets from his hand to the sound of tiny tinkling bells, "that you understand Dark Wizards very well, without yet being one yourself." It was said in perfect seriousness, and without accusation. "But your comprehension of me, I fear, is sorely lacking." The old wizard was smiling now, and there was a gentle laughter in his voice.
Harry was trying not to go any colder than he already was; from somewhere there was pouring into his mind a blazing fury of resentment, at Dumbledore's condescension, and all the laughter that wise old fools had ever used in place of argument. "Funny thing, you know, I thought Draco Malfoy was going to be this impossible to talk to, and instead, in his childish innocence, he was a hundred times stronger than you."
A look of puzzlement crossed the old wizard's face. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," Harry said, his voice biting, "that Draco actually took his own beliefs seriously and processed my words instead of throwing them out the window by smiling with gentle superiority. You're so old and wise, you can't even notice anything I'm saying! Not understand, notice! "
"I have listened to you, Harry," said Dumbledore, looking more solemn now, "but to listen is not always to agree. Disagreements aside, what is it that you think I do not comprehend?"
That if you really believed in an afterlife, you'd go down to St. Mungo's and kill Neville's parents, Alice and Frank Longbottom, so they could go on to their next great adventure, instead of letting them linger here in their damaged state -
Harry barely, barely kept himself from saying it out loud.
"All right," Harry said coldly. "I'll answer your original question, then. You asked why Dark Wizards are afraid of death. Pretend, Headmaster, that you really believed in souls. Pretend that anyone could verify the existence of souls at any time, pretend that nobody cried at funerals because they knew their loved ones were still alive. Now can you imagine destroying a soul? Ripping it to shreds so that nothing remains to go on its next great adventure? Can you imagine what a terrible thing that would be, the worst crime that had ever been committed in the history of the universe, which you would do anything to prevent from happening even once? Because that's what Death really is - the annihilation of a soul!"
The old wizard was staring at him, a sad look in his eyes. "I suppose I do understand now," he said quietly.
"Oh?" said Harry. "Understand what?"
"Voldemort," said the old wizard. "I understand him now at last. Because to believe that the world is truly like that, you must believe there is no justice in it, that it is woven of darkness at its core. I asked you why he became a monster, and you could give no reason. And if I could ask him, I suppose, his answer would be: Why not?"
They stood there gazing into each other's eyes, the old wizard in his robes, and the young boy with the lightning-bolt scar on his forehead.
"Tell me, Harry," said the old wizard, "will you become a monster?"
"No," said the boy, an iron certainty in his voice.
"Why not?" said the old wizard.
The young boy stood very straight, his chin raised high and proud, and said: "There is no justice in the laws of Nature, Headmaster, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky. But they don't have to! We care! There is light in the world, and it is us! "
"I wonder what will become of you, Harry," said the old wizard. His voice was soft, with a strange wonder and regret in it. "It is enough to make me wish to live just to see it."
The boy bowed to him with heavy irony, and departed; and the oaken door slammed shut behind him with a thud.”
—(end of quote)—
It does still steer a lot of inner conflict for me, as this is one of the most important topics, to cure this ultimate disease and make death optional.
I feel like from many thousands of years of having to come to terms with one of the scariest things there is, we had to come up with all sorts of stories surrounding it – what else were we to do? If you can’t change something, accept it, right? If you can’t change the thing that creates uncomfortable feelings, change your feelings.
But now that doesn’t apply anymore — and we find ourselves at this extremely unique point in history, where for the first time we have a chance of doing something about this thing that creates so much grief. Yes, we wouldn’t solve it all at once, and yes, there are open, important questions to think about to make it go well – of course.
But if we were to be brave enough to look it in the eye, if we were to actually be consequent (grieving war and the loss of loved ones *cough*) and honour our feelings and put the resources into it, it deserves, for the first time in 4.54 billion years we have a shot at doing something about maybe the greatest horror there is.
For the same reason people don’t like to touch hot stoves we don’t like thinking about one of the scariest things there is (even if it’s ultimately the reason we do almost everything). But I have met eye to eye with death multiple times – even having done so, I still ignored it and did not act in a self-respecting way through that, once the immediate panic of death resided.
Until it stroke my cheek – and I realized that this panic that I was feeling, and how everything else but existence faded in importance in the face of that; that that was still there. Even though I survived, there was only a fraction of time between that ultimate horror and me, I was still in danger.
Now, I don’t wanna live my life in panic of death, and I don’t wanna die inside to avoid outside decay. I don’t think either is productive. The fear is telling us something important, motivating us to act, but I think it’s probably better to run towards something than to run away. To feel all the emotions and still act from a place of safety. And as soon as we do it can calm down, when we take it seriously instead of suppressing it.
There has to be a third way. A way where we live in every sense of the word.
And I can neither rely on someone else to take responsibility for my life, nor can I do it alone
So what will you do?
Tell me your thoughts! <3
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I have some uncertainty about small parts, but it’s mostly how I think about it.