I have been reading
"Nothing to be Frightened of" by Julian Barnes, a dissertation on death, which has been making me think quite philosophically. I have been fascinated by death since I first realised it was going to happen to me. I don't have an exact age for that realisation, but I was certainly under 10. Though the more I think about it, the more I realise that I still don't
really think I am going to die. Obviously I am going to die, but I really can't visualise it. Even when, like today, I am sitting on a plane and imagine it crashing into a mountainside I still secretly think that somehow I will be thrown clear and walk away unscathed. Because somewhere inside myself I believe that I am too special to die and that I am strong enough to overcome physics and fire.
Of course I know if I think about it that that is nonsense, but I think practically all of us delude ourselves of our own worth. We are, after all, the stars of the movie that is our life and though we like to flirt with the idea of our demise, until we are face to face with death (and maybe not even then), we still think some twist in the plot will save us. It is hard to truly accept that each of us is just one of billions of humans on this planet, and that we are no more important than any of the others in the grand scheme of things. And in the grand scheme of things we are all pretty irrelevant. No more important than a dog or an ant or an amoeba. Unless you believe that there is a god up there who has created us all and keeps an eye on us all, for whatever twisted reason He would want to do such a thing.
I have spent much of my life mocking the religious for their self-delusion - most of them, I feel, can't bear to live in a world where their life has no meaning and that is as much of a reason to believe they are special as anything. There is a certain arrogance to believing that you have been especially created by a supreme being, who is interested in every single thing you do and not even a flicker of wondering what is in it for a perfect superbeing to even spend a second of his time judging petty and pathetic imperfect idiots.
And yet today, reading Julian Barnes's thoughts on this, I realised that all of us are deluding ourselves to some extent and all have an arrogant view of our place in the Universe (it's really almost impossible not to). Because it's hard to accept the truth, that we are the random product of chance and even if we think we realise that, then we still formulate fantasies to get us through this bleak existence. Most of us have some kind of moral or ethical system which we live our lives by and are prepared to fight for, but of course, if the Universe is a random product of chance then nothing we believe is absolutely true. And it's hard to get away from the false belief that our own life and the things we do are significant in the grand scheme of things. Just because I believe in my heart that I am too special to be meaningless killed in a plane accident doesn't mean I am. I am being just as superstitious as any religious person somehow believing that a) if I predict that the plane is going to crash, that it won't do so, as that would be too much of a coincidence and b) thinking I would survive if it did, because the Universe would not be able to withstand the loss of as important an individual as me.
It is this arrogance and exaggerated sense of our own importance that keeps helps us survive and without it, no doubt the human race would never have existed, but I have no right to criticise someone for believing in God, when I believe in equally spurious and ridiculous concepts like true love, fair play, that Gandhi and me would have a lot to share and secretly my own immortality. We need these ludicrous conceits to get us through the day and it is better for us in the short term that we have them. But even without God the rest of us still over estimate our worth by a multiple of approximately infinity.
I was thinking about that Cathedral in Siracuse, built around the statue of the weeping statue of Mary and really most of our belief systems are like that. We decide something is true, no matter how unlikely it really is and then metaphorically (and occasionally actually) construct an elaborate gigantic structure around it, to celebrate that belief. We have invested so much in the idea that it becomes an absolute imperative to defend it against all-comers, because to question the initial idea is now also questioning the wisdom of building the massive ugly Cathedral that has taken us time and effort. It's hard enough to have someone telling you that the statue can't possibly have wept without admitting that you've wasted your resources on the edifice around it. It makes it more vital to insist that the initial belief is true. It must be, otherwise why did I build the Cathedral? Are you saying that building the Cathedral was a stupid waste of time? It can't have been. it was really hard. And so your initial belief is further cemented, because any admission of error would make you look even more stupid.
All of us are guilty of this, it's not just the religious and in a way it is ridiculous for anyone to mock someone for attempting to blot out the realities of life through worshipping a God, when we all blot out the realities of life through other ethical systems or beliefs or self delusion that anything we do at all is important or that any of our actions come from a higher purpose than simple animal instincts and self-interest.
Barnes talks about the possibility that we have no free will and my knee jerk response is that we must have free will, because I wouldn't want to live a life where I didn't have choices and influence over what I did. But if I examine that argument, it is just the same as a religious person saying they wouldn't want to live in a Universe where everything they did had no meaning or purpose. I want to believe in free will because I don't like the alternative, but that doesn't mean I have free will. In fact I suspect that for all our posturing and vanity we actually have very little control over what we do. We can romanticise the idea of falling in love as much as we like, but in truth it's no more about two souls that were destined to meet recognising something spiritual in each other. It's about chemical reactions and biological imperatives and probably two bottles of wine.
Though as Barnes concedes, who would want to live their life like that? It is much better that we pretend that love is this metaphysical wonder and that we create this and other fantasies to keep ourselves on track. But as much as I might mock the idea of worshipping a crying statue it is only slightly more ridiculous in reality than all the fantasies I am a part of.
Except the thing about me being immortal. I am sure of that. I mean I can't die. Just not exist any more? I don't want to live in a Universe where I might not exist. So I am just going to deny it. Which means whatever happens to the plane I am about to get on then I will be all right. God will watch over me. But he doesn't care about the other few dozen idiots with me. They are not as important, obviously.
I know this is a rambling mess, but there's something in there.
