The Myth Of Death As The Equalizer
[quote=Rajneesh]In life you may be poor or rich, but death is the great equalizer...Howsoever you live, it makes no difference; death happens equally. In life, equality is impossible; in death, inequality is impossible. Become aware of it, contemplate it.[/quote]
As a young person growing up, I've often heard it being told that Death is the one and only neutral party in the universe and that, it's often phrased this way, rich or poor, king or beggar, the Grim Reaper visits each one of us with complete indifference. Good to know, right? In some twisted sense, it's comforting to know everyone dies no matter how unequal we are in life.
Yet, if one looks at the statistics, we see a disproportionate number of deaths among the poor, the underprivileged, the minority, the weak, the downtrodden; any individual or group on the wrong side of an inequality has the unenviable distinction of having an increased risk of dying prematurely.
The same logic applies to animals. The weak or sickly are, as they say, culled from the herd.
It makes sense that the weak, here meant to represent all who are lesser in some respect, be removed from the population from an evolutionary point of view - they're not going to be able to handle the rough patches which we know are inevitabilities. Mind you, I don't mean that we should cull the weak; all that's to be understood here is that death, far from being the great equalizer it's touted to be, is in fact, a ruthless henchman, so to speak, of the strong and powerful.
Death is NOT, by a long shot, the great equalizer. It, if anything, is more like the hitmen in the service of the power mafia.
As a young person growing up, I've often heard it being told that Death is the one and only neutral party in the universe and that, it's often phrased this way, rich or poor, king or beggar, the Grim Reaper visits each one of us with complete indifference. Good to know, right? In some twisted sense, it's comforting to know everyone dies no matter how unequal we are in life.
Yet, if one looks at the statistics, we see a disproportionate number of deaths among the poor, the underprivileged, the minority, the weak, the downtrodden; any individual or group on the wrong side of an inequality has the unenviable distinction of having an increased risk of dying prematurely.
The same logic applies to animals. The weak or sickly are, as they say, culled from the herd.
It makes sense that the weak, here meant to represent all who are lesser in some respect, be removed from the population from an evolutionary point of view - they're not going to be able to handle the rough patches which we know are inevitabilities. Mind you, I don't mean that we should cull the weak; all that's to be understood here is that death, far from being the great equalizer it's touted to be, is in fact, a ruthless henchman, so to speak, of the strong and powerful.
Death is NOT, by a long shot, the great equalizer. It, if anything, is more like the hitmen in the service of the power mafia.
Comments (43)
It is the absolute nothingness which results through death that makes it an equaliser and neither the manner of the death nor the circumstances have any bearing on this effect.
Those who are born in war torn countries with no opportunity for wealth or peace, live lives far less then the fortunate. It is a good reminder. While people may believe there is something after this life, there is only us to help each other in this life.
You're not a very patient person.
Quoting TheMadFool
Oh you better not. Some of the weakest people you can imagine are some of the strongest physically or in terms of social power. They never had to do anything for themselves or go through what someone who has to struggle to do what others have the inate and unearned ability to do. True weakness seeks power, be it physically or by position of authority. Anything to be the bigger man and lord over others without ever actually having to sacrifice, risk, or otherwise "do" anything difficult.
While the scales were forever tipped in the battle of brain versus brawn in the favor of the former the first time a tree fell atop a boulder creating the first lever, with each subsequent innovation an obscenely overwhelming victory for the former, strength is only half physical. At most.
In regards to the previous sentence, you're not incorrect. If something ever happens to the favorable circumstance or physical endowments one decides to build not only their entire identity and sense of self on but meaning of life on as well, it'd be like watching the training wheels fall off of a bike ridden by a toddler. At best you'd be left with an angry, confused child- at worst something not even Jane Goodall would recognize as human. If they keep themselves alive that is. Which is a toss up.
Not everyones like this. Any sensible person would want to keep themselves healthy. Of course. One who chooses either brain or brawn over the other will never know either.
Quoting TheMadFool
They won't die? You can't have weakness without strength and vice versa. There's always going to be someone on top and another beneath. Someone has to pay the piper. The difference is one will never have to face their weaknesses while the other will never be able to hide behind circumstance or "an easy life" and call themselves strong.
I think Judaka is completely right in stating that what is meant in that quote is that death, which is inevitable, will eventually come to all. This is not focused on the life of the deceased or their death.
A religious person may argue that death is an equaliser because, before God, everyone is equal and judged on the good of their deeds and hearts, not of their wealth and privileges of life. As an atheist, I would argue that death is an equaliser because, in death, we all cease to exist... equally...
Where death would cease to be an equaliser would be if they manage to 'Cure' death, i.e. find a way to avoid it but only make it available to the rich, which it would be. In that case, death would certainly only be another thorn in the sides of the poor
Why does he think this? Just a cursory glance at what America is going through right now reveals a country of desperately unhappy angry people.
I think he's been so disappointed in life that he feels his situation must be very unusual. I agree with you that many people are unhappy
One way to look at it is that Death is the language of privilege through nobility and honor. The code of Bushido combines the acceptance of death with the freedom to fulfill obligations and desired outcomes. Swearing till death do we part creates a structure in society.
The idea of a an equal life has more to do with leveling the differences between people. The Christian idea of a reality of souls that is what it is whatever roles people play in society is a clear expression of this principle.
Wouldn't this imply no selfless and caring person has ever had a hard life? And that no selfish and toxic person ever had a good one? Let me guess. You're fortunate enough at present to call yourself happy?
It's a good enough equalizer at least. In the throes of crippling and debilitating sickness, the poorest, meekest man and the richest, strongest man lay side by side on the doorsteps of death .. and suddenly all the strength, money, and power in the world means little more to him than being able to hear the faintest breath of the weaker man he never gave a second thought to, letting him know he's still alive. Difference is .. some never seem to learn.
True happiness is completely seperate from those things.
Quoting Outlander
Happy? Yes.
Achieved true happiness? No.
I beg to differ. Is there a difference or not between a short life and a long life? Don't people say that someone was fortunate to have lived to a ripe old age? Don't people say things like, "he died too young?" All these common utterances indicate a felt injustice in dying early, kicking the bucket prematurely. In other words, death occurring too early counts as a loss, vindicating my claim that death is not an equalizer - some die too young - this is unfair - and those that do die young are usually underprivileged - this is also unfair. A double whammy.
Quoting Gregory
It appears that it does matter whether someone had more fun than someone else. That's precisely the reason people are more grieved by the death of the young rather than the old and that's why death is unfair - more underprivileged folk are taken away from us than those who have it good.
Quoting Outlander
What means you by that?
Quoting Outlander
All that matters is this: the weaker side dies more quickly and in more brutal ways than the stronger.
Quoting Outlander
Read my replies to other posters above.
There's very little to misinterpret I'm afraid.
Quoting TheMadFool
Well if that's all that matters. More quickly yet more brutal eh? That's.. an interesting conclusion. Are we still defining strength as physical or mental or a toss up? Again, you'd be surprised what a few inventions can do..
Well, name one occasion where the weaker side ends up on top in the game of survival.
I can't. But that's the point. We live in a world- and for the most (recent) part always have- where technology, innovation, logic, and reason paves the way forward. You use your brain. A tiny, frail man who thinks can poison the watering hole of a city of 10,000 brutes (or why not more) leaving them all dead or incapacitated by morning. The same goes further, see the atomic bomb. You clearly believe in evolution, yes? Why do we live in an age of technology, comfort, and convenience? Why are 95% of all scientists not large, buff, stocky "jock types"? Have you any other explanation why we're not still living in caves, hunting game to survive and beating each other over the head with a club for food and shelter?
Basically, we've yet to hear your definition of strength and whether or not it is primarily physical or mental.
There usually is an exception to every rule.
Quoting Outlander
Quantitative differences (counts/measurements) in money, weaponry, physical prowess, mental ability, and population, to name a few, are strength disparities. Negatively viewed, fewer weaknesses than your competitors in the same areas go toward your strength.
Quoting TheMadFool
What death equalised are not our opinions on life, fairness, what we want for our loved ones, ourselves or people in general. It is from the perspective of the dead that we look to find what has been equalised. There is no truth to any of it, just interpretative relevance and consequence. If thinking that death is a great equaliser helps you to live with less worries then great, if you disagree, you're not really wrong, it's just interpretation.
This really opened my eyes.
What you write makes sense. All these years, I had read 'Death as the equalizer' in a simplistic fashion - no one escapes death. Now, I understand it a tad better.
I got one! Say society turns into a supremacist dystopia where the physically (and I suppose for this example mentally, either of) superior are allowed to live in some "super city" where everything is perfect and the rest of us average folk have to scrounge on the outskirts of barely maintained living complexes. This super city the elite live in is walled off and can be sealed off in an airtight fashion just in case. Now say, in their attempts at security and longevity their defenses end up failing or malfunctioning during an outbreak or major weapons malfunction or a nuclear meltdown, trapping everyone inside and resulting in there being no survivors. Stuff like that could happen.
Oh God it's spreading. Wait a minute- before you make any conclusions, consider this.
Without death, the weak would still be weak and alive and the strong would still be strong and alive. Instead, both weak and strong will die respectively. Sure, as TMF said, those who have greater resources generally have greater ability for security and as a result longevity. But this would be true regardless if death existed or not. So, both the weak and strong can take solace in the fact that death comes for us all, while the weak have to face this head-on, the strong only have the ability to delay and stave this inevitability off another day. Death is by no means any man's "henchman".
Important to differentiate a single individual whether strong or weak from any number or pool of random people who due to circumstance just so happen to be able to be categorized as "strong"(er). The pendulum of power sways back and forth until the end of time. David and Goliath- for example. At no point was David ever stronger than Goliath, wielding a slingshot or not. Yet. He was able to defeat him using an application of leveraging forces to work in his favor which another was ill-equipped to defend against, perhaps from becoming complacent in one's own strength thus being taken by surprise or otherwise not thinking of all possible outcomes and the defenses needed to defend against said outcomes no matter how unlikely.
What is death?
Well, the collapse of the body of course. But that's not really what concerns us. What makes death worrisome is the absence of the data, our memories, thoughts, opinions etc. A careful observation will reveal this absence of data already happens all the time on a regular basis, and not only do we not mind the absence, it often forms some of our favorite experiences.
As just one of an endless number of examples, what is an orgasm but a brief moment of psychological death? I don't think it's a coincidence that this brief psychological death is the reward we are given for engaging in life creating activities.
And what this connection between life making and death experiencing may reveal is that life and death are not two different things. Lifedeath could be a single phenomena, much in the same way spacetime is a single phenomena. It could be that our highly dualistic division creating minds have conceptually divided something that in the real world is one. Always, always, always be on the look out for this source of distortion.
Well, this is a theory that entertains me. The best way to engage such a theory is not to agree or disagree, but to observe your own experience very carefully, and discover how many of the experiences you enjoy involve psychological death.
There's no competitive element to this in the sense it isn't actually a case of one side meeting the other on a batttlefiled where strengths/weaknesses work with or against each other. No side has a hand in causing the opposing side's auto-destruct sequence. I suppose one could say that the enemy of my enemy is my ally. Can you look into this and get back to me.
That said, you've made a pertinent observation - the reality of what's seen in a lot of films viz. the self-destruct button. Strengths can be a double-edged sword - useful for offense but can be/become a liability. I recall discussing our so-called superior intellect in this regard. However, anything that negatively impacts our survival at any point in time, sooner or later, would be a weakness. I sense a mistake in this line of thought but can't quite put my finger on it. I mean if a strength/weakness is defined in terms of how advantageous/disadvantageous something is for survival then how do we explain the Architect's statement to Neo in The Matrix?
[quote=The Architect (The Matrix) ]Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.[/quote]
We need to get past the contradiction of course.
What is it that ensures that good people are happy and bad people are not?
I think you've missed the point that it's not saying all groups are going to have the same distribution of ages or types of death. Merely that everyone is going to die eventually; the end of every life story, good or bad, rich or poor, popular or pariah, is death.
In the not-too-distant future it may no longer be true though. Many people alive today may get to see a time where life extension therapies are available. In the long run, what will the effect be? Will some of us still live mere decades, bodies plagued with disease for the end third of that time, while others run and play for centuries?
In that scenario, I don't think many would find it very comforting to reflect on the fact those elf-people will eventually die someday, probably when they've had their fill of pleasures.
But is it true that this always occurs? Do good people always end up happy? Do bad people always end up unhappy? When we see people suffering, is it always because they did something bad and so deserve it?
I get what you mean but if that's what's meant by "death is the equalizer" then, why is the world making such a big issue of premature deaths among the underprivileged? Among the criteria of how well a country looks after its citizens are maternal mortality rates, under-5 mortality rates, longevity/life expectancy and in all these areas you find a gap between the rich & powerful and pood & weak. There's an inequality of the death rates in various sections of society and it's at most childish silliness or at worst a gross oversight to then say death is an equalizer.
Because you're equating two different things. The only thing that they have in common is that they are both talking about death, but they are making wholly different points.
The first is a philosophical statement based on the fact that none of us can escape death, and indeed, death is not far away, since we're mayflies compared to the universe. There is no "happily ever after", only "dead ever after", no matter who you are. So equal in that sense.
However, when exactly that happens, and what was the proximate cause, very obviously is not equal between groups, or over time and regions, for a plethora of reasons. Humans can, and should, do a lot to try to address these inequalities and also generally improve the situation for everyone. We've had a lot of success in this: life expectancy worldwide has increased a lot, and in much of the developed world (not US) the life expectancy between rich and poor is negligible.
Yes, that's a reasonable thing to say.
1. It can't be denied that death has a preference for the weak, the poor, the underprivileged for the statistics is amply clear on that score.
2. No matter how powerful or rich a person is s/he will eventually die just like the weak and poor who do albeit much earlier. Such a person can't either use his/her power or money to escape death. If anything money and power can do it's to postpone the appointed hour of one's departure from the land of the living but for only so long.
It certainly appears to those of us still living that a longer or a higher quality of life is somehow better than a short, painful one. But in death, it makes no difference either way.
You can argue all you want from the perspective of life, but death really does have the same (infinite) quality for everyone who is dead.
I've been relying on the wisdom of the crowd all along. It's no secret that people have the notion of premature death or untimely death. Some of us, possibly most of us, believe that there are times when it's reasonable to say that death has been, well, unfair - either people met their end too early or they were murdered or got into a fatal accident, so and so forth.
Are you saying this is wrong? If yes, why?
Perhaps rather than bringing death into the matter, it would be better to explore equality with reference to life, rather than let death's angry face glaring at us, poke it's nose into the discussion about justice and equality in this life.
Sorry, I didn't press the arrow the above discussion was in response to you.
Death is deeply linked to justice. Apart from the fact that the death penalty is legal entity still in force in many parts of the world, religion is about escaping death by means of an immortal soul. Against the backdrop of religion and justice, death is a punishment, which makes it even more problematic for the idea that death is an equalizer. After all, what heinous crimes are the poor and weak guilty of to deserve capital punishment? None, right? Ergo, high death rates among the poor and weak, from a judicial perspective, is gross injustice, unfairness on steroids.
I can see your link between death and justice, especially the whole idea of capital punishment, although of course capital punishment does not happen in this country.
Apart from capital punishment being viewed as unjust in many ways, such as the possibility that a verdict on someone may have been wrong I wonder if it's also linked to an erosion of belief in life after death. Perhaps there is an underlying idea that a life of remorse in prison is a greater punishment than the oblivion of death.
That's something to chew on. Thanks.
Goodness is one prerequisite for happiness, but it is not the only one. Wisdom is another, for example.
As for "bad" people, I would say they will always end up unhappy. As I said, goodness is a prerequisite for happiness. If one possesses no goodness, they will not be happy.
Quoting petrichor
I don't think so.
Mind if I pick your brain a little bit on this matter because what you say doesn't jibe with facts as they stand? There's the general impression people have that abolishing capital punishment is progress in ethics i.e. doing away with the death penalty is a good thing. Your view in this regard - "that a life of remorse in prison is a greater punishment than the oblivion of death" - turns the anti death penalty case on its head. As per your logic the death penalty is a more humane, thus more ethical, punishment than, say, life imprisonment?
My question is whether being remorseful is bad? Repentance is a critical aspect of ethics and justice in that when the guilty experience it, a genuine desire to repair the damage caused develops in them, paving the way for a positive transformation that benefits all parties involved. Executing people robs them of this opportunity and is therefore, on the whole, a worse outcome than "...a life of remorse in prison..." Right?
I'm relieved!
Quoting Tzeentch
So it sounds like goodness and wisdom are conditions of happiness but not guarantors?
This is beginning to sound more reasonable that what I thought you were thinking!