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Death To America!
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Used to be, when I would chance to think about Death, the American philosopher
George Burns’s observation would come to mind: "Dying? Eh. It’s
been done."
And I would blissfully return to my stumbling pursuit of happiness.
Death is like the weather: there’s nothing we can do about it, except
dress appropriately; thermal underwear or sandals for whatever the weather;
black suits and skinny ties for funerals.
I’ve always believed that Life is about living—now—and
here. And I’ve always enjoyed and deeply admired how Americans have,
historically, culturally, and philosophically, put their energy into living—now—and
here.
But since the mass murders of September 11, 2001, when I chance to think
about Death, I now dwell on the subject more than I have since early adolescence
when I would listen to The Grateful Dead, very loud, in a basement room
lit only by "black" lights.
I could be wrong, but without Death, none of us would be alive. We would
just be...here…endlessly…here. With no motivation to do anything, to invent
anything, from clocks to insurance policies to instant replay cameras
to Palm Pilots. Without Death, there would be no such thing as taking
a risk. We would just be...here… endlessly……here…complaining about
the weather…for eternity.
Death is important. We don’t just say, "It’s a matter of life!"
We say, "It’s a matter of Life or Death!" Death is the ultimate Or
Else.
Yet, lately, I’ve wondered, is it me—my own self-absorbed myopia—or
is Death invisible in America?
How many Americans will die today?
As a person who insists on riding a bike and walking in Southern California,
one statistic I can quote with belief is that each and every year, an
average of 40,000 Americans die "from" cars. They die while driving the
cars, or while walking, or riding a bicycle, or standing at a bus stop
reading newspaper ads for menial minimum wage jobs that offer no health
insurance benefits—when someone drives a car into them.
So, just from drivers piloting cars into objects and people, roughly 109
Americans will die today.
And in this country of more than 200 million lives, if we consider all
the many ways to die—from cancer to suicide-by-cop, from AIDS to
slipping in the bathtub—it should be accurate to say that thousands
of Americans will die today.
So where is all this dying being done?
Sure. Some of it is being done on the road. And granted, few things in
this country are cleared up and cleaned up as quickly as the carnage from
our car crashes. But that only explains the dead doing a disappearing
act for the 109 of us who will become road kill today. What about all
those other Americans who will become dead today?
Some experts attribute the apparent invisibility of Death in America to
Americans having moved off the Farm, where Death was daily evident as
a defining part of the cycle of life—and into the City, where they
no longer raise and/or kill their own food, or helplessly witness Uncle
Zeke loose his footing and be chopped into mincemeat by a mechanical thresher.
Other experts say the reason for Death being invisible in America is that
fewer Americans are dying. They’re not saying Death is optional—they’re
just saying that Americans who once routinely died from infections or
influenza, from viruses or vitamin deficiencies, now—given the advances
in medical knowledge and tech-knowledgey—recover and live.
While I’m confident that the experts on Death are right, I also suspect
there is a more difficult to quantify—two-part explanation—for
Death being invisible in America.
Part One: Americans snub Death.
How do they snub Death?
Unless you work in or hang around hospitals and nursing homes, chances
are you won’t see any dead or actively dying Americans. (Except for
those people always clustered outside of California’s buildings,
smoking cigarettes.)
While once upon a time, Americans used to die at home, or on the job—
today’s Americans prefer to do their dying in hospitals and nursing
homes, often in rooms shared with strangers, behind curtains, with plastic
tubes in their arms and mouths and up their noses, and under the empty-eyed
watch of security cameras, heart monitors, and a few people who don’t
know them from Adam or Eve but earn their living working 12 hour shifts
watching strangers die.
That’s how American’s snub Death—the same way they related
to mental disabilities, back when I was a kid—they put all the "afflicted"
in one place, out of the way, off stage, in a container. Why isolate the
dying? Is it from a fear that if the young and healthy and whole were
to see—and worse—have relationships with—people who are
in a state of fatal disintegration—might this intimacy with Death
give the living pause? Might some of the living be inspired to decline
to work more overtime, decline to borrow $40,000 to buy that behemoth
SUV—and instead chose to go home, spend that time with their loved
ones, and maybe learn to play the clarinet?
This national corralling of the dying into a few designated places is
Part One of the magic act of making Death invisible in America.
Part Two is truly inspired. Or truly insane.
While Americans exert a staggering amount of psychic energy—and money—to
repress and deny real Death— they also spend a staggering amount
of psychic energy—and money— to revel in fake Death.
Fake Death. Watch American movies or television; look at American art;
read or listen to American storytelling—whether from Corporation
Hollywood or over the backyard fence, from music to television to literature.
Americans are obsessed with Death as a violent, random, meaningless, grotesque,
artificial absurdity, often presented as a punishment or penalty, and
almost never as the absolutely defining, natural, event of life.
While Americans fear Death, and work to keep it separate, and hidden—
they are also fascinated by Death— so long as it’s done at a
distance, done to someone else, and done with special effects. Many "normal"
adult Americans routinely consume way more stories of violent, meaningless
Death than even a horrifically hormonally unhealthy highschooler could
digest without reaching for his mom’s AK-47, stuffing a bomb in his
backpack and heading off to his Psychology 101 class.
I wonder, does the American preference for ignoring and fearing real Death,
and glorifying outrageously phony Death, play some role in how easy it
has become for so many Americans to seriously consider starting a war—
initiating the use of force to kill people they don’t know?
I wonder, has this denial of real Death and delight with fake Death made
it easier for the Secretary of Defense (who is by definition the bureaucrat
in charge of the national machinery of Death) to dupe Americans into believing
that Death is nothing more than a grainy image captured by television
cameras strapped to "smart" bombs—Death as a video game?
And I wonder about this language of smart bombs and dumb bombs? Is that
a subtle expression of Americans willingly substituting fake Death for
the real thing—as if "smart" bombs select who gets slaughtered—
we don’t? And how is it that modern Americans are so blasé that they
label the people they murder with the meanigless euphemism, "collateral
damage"?
This week, more than a year after the mass murders of September 11th,
new ideas, drawings, plans and models for buildings to replace the World
Trade Towers have been on public view in New York. This is the second
round of proposed ideas, and they are bold ideas, daring ideas, filled-with-life
ideas. Uncharacteristically, New Yorkers seem to be taking their time
to live with the thousands of Deaths at the World Trade Center. They don’t
seem to be in a rush to build over the memory. They seem to be considering,
prioritizing, evaluating and valuing. Real Death can do that to people—
can make them live with fuller consciousness, greater honesty.
This is in marked contrast to the many semi-conscious dishonest people
who inhabit the artificial city of Washington, D. C. There, they know
how to build, too. But Washington’s replacement for the World Trade
Towers— Washington’s memorial to those who were murdered on
September 11, 2001— seems to be the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act
is a labyrinth of laws that will end the very liberty that those people
who died in the Trade Towers were using, each in his or her own private
way, as their most potent tool to counter the reality that they did not
have forever to pursue their happiness. They—as free people everywhere
tend to do—were busy living.
I wonder, did the Washingtonians create the Patriot Act out of fear—the
fear of Death?
We live in a time of war. But then we have all of my time on Earth. I
disagree that the war is about smart bombs, weaponized bacterium or dirty
nukes. I think we’re engaged in a war of ideas.
And I wonder, if Americans were to face up to Death, to overcome their
fear of it, and fully reject this absurdity of fictitious, Fake Death—would
they wake up to the real war they are in—the war of ideas that is
truly a matter of Life or Death?
I can’t help but think that if they did, the world would hear a great
big thundering "Let’s roll!"
Because Americans have an endless supply of ideas about living—now—and
here.
And if Americans accepted the natural imperative of Death, maybe they
would not be so quick to drop bombs on strangers, accuse anyone who thought
independently of being a supporter of terrorism, pass laws to diminish
and deny freedom, rather than to protect and proliferate it.
If Americans accepted Death, maybe they would begin to use their astounding
creativity to find ways to make money from solar energy, from eradicating
AIDS, from building relationships instead of fighter jets.
If Americans would accept Death, they would have nothing to fear, but
fear itself.