My brother-in-law recently died of ALS—a miserable disease
of gradual degeneration and incapacitation of nerves, muscles, and bones for
which there is no known cure. As he lost all bodily functions until even the
muscles of his heart and lungs gave way, he retained full consciousness
including his ability to remember, to emote, to think, to pray, and to desire.
Even when the capacity to talk and write, except through a machine, was gone he
retained his sense of loss of organic capacity. But he also miraculously
retained a sense of humor. His body was shutting down and he knew it acutely.
But his mind stayed whole. And his soul.
Dick had retired from his paid job at 65, but he did not
retire. Like my own father whom he idolized, he stayed active in the
community—helping build houses for Habitat for Humanity, volunteering as a
financial director for a community center, and helping with the local food bank
which my father had been a founder. But most of all he was a family man devoted
to and by his many children and grandchildren.
He did not choose this disease unto death. It chose him. Yet
he walked with it until he could no longer walk. He breathed with it until he
could no longer breathe. It chose him and then he chose it. He made dying with
ALS his vocation. And my sister’s as well. This was a vocation chosen not just
by him but by his life’s partner, by his children, and all his caregivers.
Dick was a practicing Catholic but a very liberal one. His
Catholicism was an expression of a much deeper faith than any dogma or ritual.
As are the religions of most persons with faith. It was his faith, not his
religion, and the love for and by his family and community that emerged from
that faith by which he chose his new vocation. And he taught us all well.
The second law of thermodynamics, entropy, ultimate
dissolution could be depressing if we so choose. We do not choose to age and to
die. They choose us. We can’t escape aging though many futurists with the aid
of science are trying to. We can try to endure aging because there is no
alternative just yet, and ultimately, as far as we know the laws of nature, not
at all. I do see unhappy people merely enduring. And, feeling my rising quirks
and pains, my shrinking frame, my declining sense of balance, my inability to
run as long and as fast as I once did, my rising forgetfulness, I do not judge.
A vocation is considered a calling from a higher power. It
is a calling from beyond us. It is also a calling to beyond us. Not by or to
some supernatural entity or place or time, I conjecture. But to the future of
others starting with my own children and theirs, the future of friends and
family, the future of community and the earth, and the future of humanity and
of the future itself. A true future not just some extended current fate.
Choosing one’s condition transcends it. Therefore, faith beyond religious,
scientific, political beliefs engenders hope and love.
But it is our perception and our choice that makes a
compulsory condition a calling. Instead of being a necessity that drags us
unwillingly, it becomes a decision that makes us free. A condition of necessity
becomes an opportunity to grow the soul. It becomes a stimulus to transcend
through action. But that step into freedom from fate takes a little help from
our friends. To answer the call is much more than personal faith, it is
communal faith in action.
And thus, aging to death is not a lonely event. Aging and
death are culminations of life and action in community.
As the saying goes: aging isn’t for sissies. Presently I
live, eat, work, play, laugh, and cry with aging people in a Continuing Care
Community. I did not want to come to what I joke as the “old folks home” and be
daily reminded of aging and death. But Bernie did and I chose her. We have
become close to people here. When we listen to their stories, we find them
quite amazing. We journey with them as they move from independent living to
assisted living and then on to the nursing home and to death. We constantly
realize that we are on that same journey.
I remember in Hawaii thirty-five years ago working with a
seniors’ organization led by Doc Gibson and Myrtle McConnell. They were
learning and teaching computers at a time when many young people were not
familiar with the digital revolution. They were political activists fighting
for social insurance for the aged (and everyone else), against prejudice
towards seniors (and everyone else), for equality of the elderly (and everyone
else). They were my introduction to the Raging Grannies and Grey Power. I told
them often that when I grow up, I want to be just like them. The other day, I
received the greatest compliment I could receive from a young activist who said
to me: “when I grow up, I want to be just like you.”
Bernie and I know how fortunate we are to be able to afford
to live in Asbury Methodist Village thanks to our social security, our
government pensions, and our tax deferred IRA that was matched by previous
employers and of course our government-supported health insurance. I am
grateful to a nation that made this possible for us. I am grateful to a
previous generation including my ancestors that made a good education and
therefore occupations possible. I am grateful to a nation and families who
provided the means to create and sustain our Village.
Here in my “old folks home,” I have hundreds of friends, I
have access to public transportation to downtown, walking distance to a top of
the line county library, contact with local city and county leaders with whom I
can interact to maintain my life’s vocation in community organizing and
development. We also have all the amenities of gym, pool, and fitness coaching
staff. We have our own university and great connections to universities, think
tanks, foundations around us. We have computer centers, music halls, a theater
for movies and plays, numerous meeting and class rooms, our own park with duck
and fish filled ponds, and a meal plan with great food.
I only wish that all my fellow citizens were afforded this
opportunity. It takes a village not only to raise a child, but also to sustain
citizens, junior and senior. Those without soul, those caught up in an
individualistic objectivist up-by-the-bootstraps mindset, would not appreciate
that. Indeed, even the Republicans who live here are progressive, maybe because
they are older and lived in a time when most Republicans were progressive. *
Here a competent, considerate staff, the “associates,”
educated in the needs and idiosyncrasies of their aging charges, are aware that
they work for us the residents. They are conscious that the residents to be
happy need to participate in major decisions concerning the development and
management of the Village and, most of all, need a sense of purpose in their
personal and communal lives.
I am fond of antiquity’s enumeration of the three desires
that define the human being: the desires for life, for meaning, and for
respect. All three of these desires are fulfilled in an adequate plan for
aging.
The first defines animal
economicus. We desire to preserve and enhance our organisms, to survive and
thrive. Well-being is understood as self-detemination and wealth in economic
man.
The second defines animal
rationalis. We desire to learn and to know, to attain the meaning of and in
life. Well-being is understood as truth and wisdom in cultural man. The third defines animal
socialis. We desire the esteem of our fellows, friendship and community,
caring and love. Well-being is
understood as respect and freedom in political man.
To have all the needs of organic life provided, e.g.
healthcare, nourishment, shelter, entertainment, makes it possible to expand
one’s existence through education. When a person stops learning, including
taking on data, renewing formulations, and making new judgments, he has already
died. And growth in truth and wisdom makes possible the participation and
action with others that makes for a progressively better life and community. It
is in our nature to do and be better. When we stop the quest to be, to know,
and to do better, we stop life itself. If our families, our community, and our
nation value their elderly, they will guarantee their capacity to live, to
learn, and to act.
But this is for now. Scientists are envisioning a time when
aging and death will be deferred indefinitely. Futurist Peter Diamandis states that the rate of human
evolution is accelerating as we transition from the slow and random process of
“Darwinian natural selection” to a hyper-accelerated and precisely directed
period of “evolution by intelligent direction.”
Already experiments in BCI (body/brain computer interface) and AI
(alternative intelligence) are being advanced. This and the development of an
integrated cloud, storing vast quantities of memory, could lead to a new global
consciousness or what he calls a “meta-intelligence” and, with the opening of
the space frontier, to a multiplanetary species beyond what even science
fiction imagines. What this transformation retains of our present humanity,
what values which we have developed for good and for evil will be maintained,
and how the polarities in our existence between individual and society, past
and future, space and time, interior and exterior life, body and soul, organism
and spirit, will be resolved—these are the questions we must deal with now as
we move ahead.
How can a life that is not “towards death,”
one that does not maintain the tensions of existence, one that is in continual
quest for life, meaning, and love—will such a life be human? Will the
transhuman life be worth living?
Diamandis states: “All of us leaders,
entrepreneurs and parents have a huge responsibility to inspire and guide the
transformation of humanity on and off the Earth. What we do over the next 30
years – the bridges we build to abundance – will impact the future of the human
race for millennia to come.”
I have arguments against immortality and its
quest, not that it isn’t possible, but that it isn’t worthwhile. The first is
more psychological and philosophic. The self we now know is a social
construction, not a permanent entity. What I experience as “I” is a continuing
accumulation of habits, attitudes, and beliefs. It is also a node of
relationships with many others and their habits, attitudes, and beliefs. It is
a point in space-time, not a sort of rock removed from the changing forces of
time that grind it down. Yes, there is a continuum—but the “I am” today is not
identical with the “I am” of 1945. So, take me out of this space-time, out of
my present relationships, make my organism last forever, put me in some eternal
paradise, retain the memory and consciousness of all the “I am’s” I ever was,
and I am still not immortal. To be who I am here and now, I am aging and dying.
But my second argument is a bit more
utilitarian. Jonathon Swift imagined a place of Gulliver’s travels where there
was no death. It was terrible. Not just
because the immortals kept aging, getting feebler as they went on, but also
because nothing changed. Bernard Lonergan cites Max Planck testifying that a
new scientific position gains general acceptance, not by making opponents
change their mind, but by holding its own until old age has retired them from their
professorial chairs. Progress in knowledge and all human endeavors requires the
passage of time, as well as the birth of new persons with different viewpoints
and biases to challenge the old.
I heartily agree with Diamandis that we now
live during the most exciting time ever in human history. Which I suppose makes
me a progressive, an optimist. And I say this even in my late 70s when I can
see and feel the looming dissolution of my organism. I do not know if our
transhuman existence will eliminate aging and death or extend it indefinitely.
And if it does, I hope that it does not eliminate the adventure and creativity
of being alive. It is being towards death and choosing my vocation in aging and
in dying that makes my life now so exciting. It makes me want to experience,
learn, and act more. And it makes me want to express more so that I do
experience, learn, and act more.
There is a time to die. It is our nature to be “towards
death.” But there is a difference between death as a culminating act of life,
i.e. a choice, and death as a fate or condition of necessity. To let go of
organic life may be the supreme learning and teaching event for others and an
opportunity for the empowerment of humanity. Aging and death as a vocation then
becomes a moment, perhaps the moment, of the diminishment of ego and the growth
of soul personally and collectively.
I hope I can let my ego pass on, so that soul will grow. I
hope my family and community will have the ability to accelerate the
dissolution of my organism including consciousness when I am in fact already
dead, that is, no longer able to experience, learn, and act into the future.
Just as my brother, Dick, did in his final act to the future. **
________________________________________
*By “progressive,” I am not espousing any political
party agenda or ideology. I only mean an attitude that we can always be and do
better, that we need not get stuck in any ideology or set of beliefs, that we
can honor the past and at the same time look to the future. Both conservatives,
those who honor institutions that have worked to hand down important lessons,
and liberals, those who want to remove obstacles that hold us back, can be
progressive. I contrast progressive with oppressive and regressive. I think it
is unfortunate that so-called conservative pundits many new Republic Party
members have distorted the meaning of progress and oppose the attempt to seek
progress through social justice. Their sense of reform and justice is putting
things back the way they were, in other words, reaction. Republicanism was once
a party of reform to abolish slavery, stop uncompetitive business, promote
internationalism, and preserve the earth and its resources. But that was before
their “southern strategy.”
**Future is a very complex concept. Like the past it is
experienced only in the present, in the tension of our existence thrusting from
before to after. Neuroscience demonstrates that our conscious present is in
fact already past. The human capacity for knowing and acting in the world through
symbols (i.e. artifacts) is also the ability for culture, for history, and for
planning the future.
In physics, Einstein demonstrated time’s relativity to
acceleration and motion with the speed of light as a limiting factor.
Physicists speak of the “arrow of time,” that is its directionality, e.g. from
the Big Bank to the Big Crunch or Big Spread, as a factor of the second law of
thermodynamics as well as the laws of gravity which haven’t yet been understood
at the quantum level. In any case, time is still mystery and may remain so
forever since it cannot be objectively accounted for. Certain physicists are
even taking time out of their formulas for the “theory of everything.”
Theologian Jurgen Moltmann, taking up the notions of
Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, defined God as the one whose essential nature
is the future. This is more than the Whiteheadian God of Process, sort of
Nature working itself out. Philosopher Sartre following Heidegger makes human
existence constituted by temporality. We put time into nature. Heideggar’s
Dasein (existence) is “being unto death.” So, without death there would be no
existence. Or without existence there would be no death. Or perhaps time, as a
passage from past to future in presence, is the conscious dimension of all
Nature. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin would like that.
But our topic is soul-growing. And the growth of soul
for us mortals seems to be intimately tied up in time and death.
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