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"...Mortality is not merely the subject of philosophers' idle thoughts. The fear of death appears in the nightmares of both adventurers and ordinary men. Death is the magnified enemy in the drama of legends and myths, but it is also an implicit premise of daily behavior. Whether, in crossing the street, paying the mortgage, or working the hard earth in a poor Mexican village, life is organized around staying alive. The power of death must be calmed.
Ritual and repetition are commonly used to achieve anesthesia. TV detective shows demonstrate this nightly. Tens of millions of viewers watch a murder being committed. They watch, not with horror, or even fascination, but with boredom. The soporific effect is its purpose. There is also meaning in the ritual. An innocent is slaughtered. From man's long history of killing we might guess a deeply buried universal need is gratified. And there is also the other, opposite side. Justice prevails. Death is personified by the murderer. He is caught and eliminated. Evil is replaced by the good, death by life. TV violence is the modern Lord's Prayer, a repetitive mantra, apparently necessary to defend against the approach of the night.
The next morning's news will return death to its central focus. Newspaper editors have long known that murders, disasters, wars--death in every variety, sells newspapers. It is the news. It matters. It gets the adrenaline going. But what about the rest of the newspaper, coverage of political scandals, jockeying, debates over the issues of the day? In America we are blessed. Political discord does not take the form of assassinations, coups and counter coups. Yet the fundamental impulses, the underlying themes eventually emerge. Sometimes the passions of political beliefs are a surprise even to adversaries. Why, in politics, do thoughts so often become burning issues, assuming almost life or death intensity? Why do disagreements so often turn in to hatred.
Repeatedly, men have banded together into alliances and fought wars to maintain their safety. When we have considered the multiplicity of social, political, geographic, and economic forces that have been used to explain the uniqueness of each war (or truce) we are still left with a common factor, the sheer power of death concerns. Conquest of the fear of destruction brings destruction. Wars are fought to fight death. Granted, for certain individuals and nations, greed, politics, glory, revenge or other factors become so consuming that wars are started for other reasons. There may be an instinctual wish to kill. But for the vast majority of soldiers, it has been fear that made them fight, or take flight. For the vast number of nations it is fear of the enemy, a desire to end the fear, that brings war.
There are, of course, ways to fight with death other than by fighting others. In affluent America following Viet Nam, when preparing for war, or entering into wars, was no longer an acceptable way to feel protected, the fight against the enemy, nevertheless, went on unabated. We observed millions of joggers punishing themselves daily. With making war politically incorrect the health pages of newspapers were religiously scrutinized for the most updated list of virtues (anti-oxidants, vitamins, fat free food, fresh fruit and vegetables, mammograms...) and vices (cholesterol, pesticides, excess weight...) It is as if once shelter and food, the basics of survival, are accomplished, the mind is still not able to register progress. Only recently, in the Gulf War and in Kosovo, has the old outlet returned, fighting killing with our own killing.
The vast influence and wealth of religion has always been, in good part, traceable to a shared concern with death. United in faith (and fate) the accused attempts to flatter God, hoping for a lighter sentence, perhaps, as promised, immortality. The Aztecs once tried to bribe the gods by offering up their most desirable virgins. Judeo-Christian belief is founded on the knowledge that God could forego his appetite for human flesh. Abraham is told he needn't sacrifice Isaac. Thus began Judaism. A covenant is made. God makes Abraham and his heirs a chosen people. In exchange they must sacrifice a piece of their foreskin. When later, Christ is sacrificed, doctrine holds that forever after, no new deaths (or foreskins) are needed. Christ offered himself to wipe the slate clean. He took on man's sins and promised eternal life.
Today, as noted, the safety of adhering to God's laws, the reward of sanctification of the soul in eternal paradise has been replaced in secular society by a health religion. Our large hospitals are our cathedrals, in the same way full of grandeur and mystery. Our evangelists are our joggers, non-smokers and environmentalists. As we once were with the clergy, we are now children before our physicians. The resources of our society that are devoted to health compare to what was once paid for spiritual safety, roughly, a 10% tithe taken from our gross national product. Doctors and psychologists, guidance counselors and child rearing manuals are turned to instead of the Pope, the Shulchan Aruch, or our parents' morality. We are as likely to chastise ourselves for different vices, for sinful indulgences that are "unhealthy" rather than evil in a traditional sense. Indeed, those in the past, who on a dark gloomy evening once might have been preoccupied with the state of their soul, by their current and eventual accounting regarding their status in heaven as opposed to hell, now more likely focus their dread on their weight reduction program, or their cholesterol level. In the health religion, sickness is the only evil, health the ultimate good, a personal trainer the equivalent of a private guru.
In the 90's the health religion has gone in a typically modern direction. Disappointed with their priests, many have turned against doctors, turned to alternative medicines, to nutritionists, herbalists, naturopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists, health food stores and the like. Antagonism to mainstream medicine has also probably spread to the general population where there is often satisfying revenge found in cost cutting insurance plans that punish doctors not only for their perceived greed but for not bringing salvation. William Bennett has also noted that with the aging of the youth culture social trends may have come full circle. Many are beginning to hedge their bets as they reach fifty, returning to conventional prayer and religion. They are getting off their exercise bicycles and down on their knees.
There are of course, many who don't or won't organize themselves around guilt in any variety. For some, the accumulation of wealth, chasing after youth, gaining power, temporarily brings distance from their destiny. For others, hedonism, wild spending, living it up while they can, works for awhile. The net result is, however, always the same. The drama is what it has always been. Death is the enemy. There must be struggle to defeat it..."
