The envelope of your death, hand delivered.

Opening it wouldn't be a straightforward decision, and receiving it isn't a far-out possibility.

Stipulate that God, or perhaps one of his unimpeachable representatives, sends you a very special, albeit, sealed envelope.  You are aware of this special envelope's origin, and upon observing its delivery information, no doubt written in fine Gothic calligraphy, you see a subject line which reads, "The date of your death."  Mercifully, someone has informally written, "Don't worry, it's not necessarily that soon."  Perhaps you're even told that opening the envelope is completely optional. Question --

Would you open the envelope?

As I think about this, there are couple of issues that come immediately to mind. First, people might vary on whether such information about the exact time of one's death would contribute or detract from the meaning of life.

For example, perhaps an Oklahoman has always dreamed of traveling to Maine, but upon opening the envelope, finds that s/he will be dead within four hours. Here a life-long wish has been decisively subverted, as one cannot physically accomplish the desired goal within the short time left in one's life. But to vary this example a bit, suppose upon opening the envelope, s/he finds that death will occur a month later. S/he then decides to immediately pack up the family and take the trip. Here the parameters of a life-long wish would be just as decisively fulfilled, since what might have been delayed, and hence at risk for never occurring, comes instead to immediate fruition. In the first case, the knowledge detracts; but, in the second case, the knowledge contributes to life's meaning.

As another example, perhaps a father of three children has always worried of dying in middle age of heart-attack or stroke, since there is an overwhelming medical history of these events in his family. But upon opening the envelope, finds that he will live to the ripe old age of 91. Here such knowledge would greatly contribute to serenity of mind and, no doubt, to financial stability, since term or whole life insurance costs would seem to be of a far less pressing matter in the face of such knowledge. One can imagine varying this case for a physically-fit, even athletic young mother who, to her horror, discovers she will die two months hence. Such knowledge would hardly contribute to serenity of mind, though some might argue it's better to know than not, since some amount of planning for such a catastrophe is better than none. Here, in the first case of the father, the knowledge enhances; but, in the second case of the mother, the knowledge detracts from life's meaning.

These kind of cases cases where absolute knowledge is available about one's death are not as far-fetched as one might think, since for some diseases there are very well-established statistics for how long one can expect to live. If one contracts disease X, and studies have shown that less than 5% of patients survive for three years or more with X, and that the median survival time is one year, then one of God's most reliable representatives, Science, seemingly has already delivered plenty of bulk mail to many persons who already face terminal medical conditions. Indeed, many 90+-year-old people who carefully reason about their future, and who fortunately experience a relatively stable health situation, are already in this bulk-mail situation. So, receiving such mail is not as far-out a possibility as one might think.


O.

REFERENCES

[image] me

Gun control should be a lower priority; yes, even now.

The horror of an event lasts, but the real and overall numbers belie weightier problems 

This info-graphic has been floating around the internet, as a kind of perspective on the recent tragedy of school shootings.[1] I think there are two suggestive things here. First, that we get upset over something which has comparatively very small impact (in terms of total number of deaths of citizens); and, second, that emotion of recent events easily clouds our judgement on overall factors.

I am presuming that since all deaths happen only once to each citizen, they must be counted as equal. Yet since so many more deaths occur in all these other categories, guns are actually a much smaller problem for the country as a whole than these other issues. However, the emotive baggage toward guns and the highly publicized (albeit terrible) episodes involving them is what biases a response in people.  But that doesn't change what facts there are on the actual numbers of deaths. So, as an overall assessment, I'd say the gun worries are overblown.

One might counter that self inflicted or accidental deaths are not a "problem" that the country needs to deal with, certainly not with legal solutions. In fact, some libertarians would further are that (1) we should be allowed to harm ourselves, and (2) we can't legislate accidents away.[2]

But I think there is a way to approach the matter which moves the issue to the first or initiating causes of citizen deaths. Just as a badly broken mental health system can allow a person to end up using a gun in terrible ways, so can other broken social systems -- such as substandard auto monitoring, allowing under monitored or dangerous practices,  perpetuating addictive cigarettes in society, etc. -- all these allow other consequences where many, many citizens die. Therefore, it's the initiating causes that we should be worrying about, and the initiating causes for gun deaths have far, far less consequences in terms of citizen deaths than the initiating causes behind these other social issues that lead to citizen deaths. So (and again), as an overall assessment, I argue that gun worries are overblown.

 O.

[1] One should also note that the claim about FBI and baseball bats is incorrect (source).

[2] Of course, if one can't legislate accidents away, there is this mystery of what the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been doing all these years.

How closet anarchists die

I like the graffiti style that makes a cardboard cut-out, and then sprays that same pattern in zillions of odd little places. (I believe this is called stencil style.) Graffiti is to the city what tattoos are to the body.

If I end up with a terminal case of cancer, and when armed with the certainty of nothing to lose, that's when I'm finally going anarchist by graffiti. As I think more about this, I've decided I'm not joking. Of course, now that I've finally reconciled my epiloguish acts with a closing philosophy of life, it will be just my luck to die of sudden heart attack or dozing happily in my sleep.

O.

[image] Remaining Relevant blog

[ * ] Some really interesting stuff comes up on Google Images if you type in "graffiti art" or "stencil graffiti"

Practice for the eternal state

{ Podcast } Crickets constantly remind me by their song that soon enough night will come along and force by habit that temporary death called nighttime slumber, my required rest.

[image] "I got crickets" by Bill Adams Flickr (Accessed 8/23/2007)

O.

Professional reapers teach of death

{ Podcast this essay } Have we not all seen death? Death is the fuel that powers life; that event which is fated for all things, and which makes life possible. Death at the small scale is easily overlooked, and thus our stunning upset when macro death -- death of people, of loved ones, even death of the self -- breaks from the horizon of the possible into the probable, and finally into the actual. Small scale death is death, nonetheless. And there are a host of professional reapers just waiting to teach us that single lesson that we must all learn, even if just once.

[image] Samuel Young.

O.