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 A
Postmodern Meditation on Death
By
John Horvat II Of all Catholic meditations, none
is more wholesome than that on death. Catholic authors like Saint Alphonsus Liguori
wrote passionately and extensively on the subject; modern homiletics seems to
avoid it like the plague. The topic remains ever
timely nevertheless. Death comes to all in all epochs. It marks the conclusion
of earthly human life, when one must render accounts for the life one lived. O
moment on which depends eternity! Death gives life its ultimate meaning. In function
of death we live our lives. The sinner, as Saint Cyprian
says, has just reason to fear death, because he will pass from temporal to eternal
death. But he who is in the state of grace and who hopes passes from death to
life, and he fears not death. How much evil and sin have
been avoided by the mere thought of death! How much good
such meditations have done for society! Death is inevitable It
is death's inevitability, above all, that thrusts itself upon us and forces us
to meditate upon it. Saint Cyprian says that we are born
with a rope around our necks and as long as we live on earth we hourly approach
the gallows. "The sentence of death has been written
against all men: you are a man; you must die," writes Saint Alphonsus. "It
is uncertain whether the infant that is just born will be poor or rich, whether
he will be in good or bad health, whether he will die in youth or old age. But
it is certain that he will die. When death comes, there is no earthly power able
to resist it." Saint Augustine says, ''Fire, water,
the sword, and the power of princes may be resisted; but death cannot be resisted." "It
would be madness for anyone to delude himself with the idea that he shall not
die," Saint Alphonsus concludes. "There never has been a man so foolish
as to flatter himself that he will not have to die." The
postmodern folly Indeed, while such considerations may have
nourished the souls of countless men throughout the centuries, our postmodern
times are different. Postmodern man avoids and hates death's
rational and inevitable call. He disdains death's ability to give identity, meaning,
and coherence to our lives. Rather, he prefers a conception of life that resists
the face of death and celebrates the incoherent, the fragmented, and the superficial.
In fact, the post-modern world defines itself
by its incoherence. MIT professor Sherry Turkle in her book
Life on the Screen calls the postmodern a condition
where "there is the precedence of surface over depth,
of simulation over the 'real,' of play over seriousness."1
The "death" of
FM-2030 In was in this setting that the futurist "FM-2030"
died. This tragic and untimely death provides an opportunity for a postmodern
meditation on death so contrary to that of the saints. Who
was FM-2030? What is known of the person? The obituary column of The New York
Times reported that he died at 69 from pancreatic cancer. Born
F. M. Esfandiary, the son of an Iranian diplomat in Belgium, FM-2030 was the archetypal
postmodern man. He sought to surmount repressive modern forms of identity by legally
changing his name to FM-2030, an enigmatic name he never fully explained.
He eschewed all claims to nationality, proclaiming himself a citizen of the universe.
He saw himself as a person of the twenty-first century accidentally born in the
twentieth and looked forward to the time when men would become "post-biological
organisms."
"It is only a matter of time before we reconstitute
our bodies into something entirely different," he wrote in 1989, "something
more space-adaptable, something that will be viable across the solar system and
beyond."2 FM lived in Miami, forging strange and optimistic
thoughts about the future. He envisaged copying machines that would reproduce
3-D objects. He believed that unlimited energy from the sun would soon resolve
all energy problems. He dismissed families as anachronistic. Tyranny
of death
Most of all, he ardently believed that humans
would become immortal. Ironically, at the time of his death,
he was revising a book called Countdown to Immortality.
He denounced death as tyrannical and told his friends it must
be eliminated.
Yet, poor FM-2030 died. Cursing
his pancreas as "a stupid, dumb, wretched organ," he succumbed to its
cancer. However, even his death was not without its surrealistic
drama. His body is now cryogenically immersed in liquid nitrogen at the Alcor
Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. Expecting future technological
advances, FM hoped to be resurrected, cured of his cancer, and freed to continue
his future life. Real-life science fiction? At
first glance, the unfortunate FM-2030 might seem to be an eccentric whose views
certainly need not be taken seriously. Yet, in our postmodern times, nothing is
certain but anything seems possible. The same obituary notes
that FM-2030 taught at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan, at UCLA,
and at Florida International University. Besides teaching at these prestigious
schools, he wrote novels and other books that apparently sold well. He also served
as a consultant, peddling his opinions about the future to such companies as Lockheed,
J.C. Penney, and Rockwell International. Many people took FM seriously and paid
dearly for his ravings. A post-human nightmare
Even more unsettling is the fact that FM-2030
was not alone. Postmodern culture abounds with references
to cyborgs and virtual bodies that aim to change humanity
itself.
Not infrequently do we find projections
about a so-called "post-human" society modeled on
fantastic themes, taking their cues more from popular films
like Robocop or Terminator than from real science.
Meanwhile,
"serious" scientists, authors, and researchers at major universities
and corporations fantasize about a cyberfuture that stretches beyond existing
evidence. They leapfrog over necessary proofs for evolution, artificial intelligence,
and artificial life, which they assume will be resolved. They take it for granted
that man will discover the secret of creating life and even escaping death. Conquering
death Indeed, theorists of the future have left the sci-fi
fringe and gone mainstream.
Wired magazine's founding editor,
Kevin Kelly, writes in his book Out of Control about
alternative life in a neo-biological civilization that includes
other lives which "are artifacts of humans rather than
nature, we call them artificial life; but they are as real
as we are."3
Hans
Morevec of Carnegie Mellon University maintains that human immortality will be
assured by downloading one's consciousness on diskette. One thousand years later,
one may put the diskette in a machine and start oneself up again.4
What about evolutionary biologist Gregory
Paul and Fortune 500 consultant Earl Cox? In their book Beyond
Humanity: Cyber-Evolution and Future Minds the co-authors
write: "As it becomes increasingly apparent that SciTeeh
is going to become increasingly powerful and godlike, the
possibility of and the need for a great supernatural deity
becomes ever more remote. The Extraordinary Future promises
to render faith irrelevant and actually counterproductive
because those who choose to hope for immortality via god(s)
may miss the real thing."5
Death
comes to all The postmodernists' meditation on death is
not to meditate upon it at all. Like FM-2030, they commit the folly of suspending
such considerations in liquid nitrogen, vainly waiting for science to resolve
the age-old problem of death. Yet death refuses to cooperate.
Amid the delirious speculations about the future only one thing remains certain. To
paraphrase Saint Alphonsus: "The sentence of death has been written against
all men, even postmodern men: thou art postmodern; thou must die."
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