“Now it is autumn, and the falling fruit and the long journey toward oblivion.  The apples falling like great drops of dew to bruise themselves and exit from themselves.  And it is time to go.  To bid farewell to one’s own self and find an exit from the fallen self.  Have you built your ship of death?  Oh, have you?  Oh, build your ship of death for you will need it. We are dying!   We are dying!  So, all we can do is now to be willing to die and to build the ship of death to carry the soul on the longest journey.  A little ship with oars and food and little dishes and all accoutrements fitting and ready for the departing soul.  Now, launch the small ship.  Now, as the body dies and life departs launch out the fragile soul in the fragile ship of courage.  The ark of faith with its store of food and little cooking pans and change of clothes upon the flood’s black waves, upon the waters of the end, upon the sea of death where still we sail darkly, where we cannot steer and have no port.”

I offer my reflections on death from the point of view of an amateur. There is an enormous difference between dealing with death and grief as an objective occurrence and as the primal, existential fact of my death and my grief. I am dedicated to trying to understand human existence through the mirror of the life of Sam Keen, and I am convinced that I can best understand what’s going on in my culture by reading my own psyche and my own soul. As a philosopher, it is my hope to be a physician of the spirit and the soul. And, that means that I must first be a physician to my own spirit and my own soul.  Philosophy is about the healing – or if you want – the salvation of the soul, not particularly or necessarily in a religious sense of the word.

It has been said that philosophers are perverts! And it’s true!  That was the charge made against Socrates. Everybody in Athens pretty well understood the cultural norms until Socrates came on the scene. Euthyphro, for instance, was on his way to turn his father in for impiety when he met Socrates who started asking him questions. By the end of the dialogue Euthyphro has no idea what piety is. For this disturbing habit of questioning,  Socrates was charged with perverting the youth of Athens and given a hemlock milk shake. And that is the job of philosophy, to turn things over, switch appearance and reality.

As a philosopher of sorts, I would like to examine the ways we think about death and suggest that maybe we’re dealing with it the wrong way.

The structure of my remarks is going to follow a scheme I learned a long time ago from Paul Tillich. Tillich taught us that there were three questions that any religion, philosophy or therapy has to ask and answer.  First, “What’s wrong with us?  What’s the disease?  What’s the pathology?” Second, “What would we look like if we were whole? Healed?” (We don’t even have a word for a state of positive health, or ideal.)  Third, “How do we get from one to two?  What are the means of healing?” My remarks are going to follow these three questions.  First, I will look at the pathology of death. Second, at a good or ideal way of dying. And, third I will ask, “Is there any way to achieve a better death?” (Full Essay)

Here is a summary:

We demand the right to consume at any cost to the environment. We hate the pushers but love the drug. With a modicum of discipline we could take individual ownership of our escalating carbon debt and eliminate most or all of the need for deep horizon oil.

The plan. Require every automobile and light-truck to be fitted with a gauge, such is now standard equipment in the Prius, that measures the MPG for the last tank of gas used. This information would be fed into computer in the gas pump that would determine the appropriate cost of a gallon of gas. A light pickup that gets 15 MPG might pay four dollars for a gallon of gas, a Hummer that get seven miles 7 MPG six dollars per gallon, a Prius or other hybrids that gets 48 MPG two dollars a gallon. Those with hardships, low incomes and high needs might be offered a discount. At first, such a plan would, no doubt, be met with outrage, cries of injustice, and tough talk from the petroleum giants and automobile companies. How dare anyone deprive us of our God-given right to life, liberty and an endless flow cheap gasoline! But once the government offered subsidies for the purchase of fuel efficient cars and trucks the ethos would change. Conserving would become sexy and smart and we might be able look our children in the eye knowing we were making an effort to become responsible environmental citizens.

The carbon debt belongs to each one of us. The responsibility and guilt belongs equally to corporations and consumers. In the oil-besmirched face  of BP we see the enemy. If we look closely we might also see a reflection of our own petrol-greed. Time to pay our debt. Let’s reward the behaviors we want to encourage and, otherwise, make the punishment fit the crime.

Sam Keen. Q and A.

Q. You strike out with a two edged sword against both neo-atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, all of whose books have been on the NY Times best seller list in the past months, and the defenders of religious orthodoxy.  Why?

A. To begin with they are both dogmatic. “True Believers” threaten us with damnation if we don’t believe in their particular brand of “revealed  Truth.” The neo-Atheists insist that all forms of monotheism, even the most liberal and progressive, are murderous, intolerant and irrational and they argue that we should all become rational atheists. Admittedly, a great deal of religion is unintelligent at best and violent at worst, but that doesn’t mean we should abandon the jewel in the lotus because it floats in polluted water..

Q. You argue that we need to return to the root meaning of religion which involves the experience of elemental emotions.  What are these emotions?

A. We might begin with the experience of wonder which is the wellspring of both religion and  philosophy. D.H. Lawrence got it exactly right—”There is a sixth sense, the religious sense, the sense of wonder.” Why should there be something rather than nothing? Where did I come from? What is the meaning of my life?

Q. What are the other elemental emotions?

A. To name only a few: gratitude, compassion, joy, humility, reverence, trust and open mindless.

Q. These emotions aren’t the ones we usually associate with the average CEO or NFL quarterback. They don’t mix well with a drive for success.

A. Exactly, that is why they have been repressed in modern societies and must be recovered. Secular culture teaches us to be self-assertive, hard driving, ambitious, aggressive, prideful and patriotic.

Q. Are you saying we must abandon these quintessential  American virtues in order to be religious?

A. At the very least, we have to acknowledge that there is a radical difference between a secular and a sacred manner of being in the world. In the 21st century we will have to learn to cherish all creatures in the commonwealth of sentient beings if we are going to preserve our fragile environment,

Q. Among other things, you propose that we declare a moratorium on all religious word and undertake “a verbal fast.” What is the point of this?

A. To transform religion we need to recover its mystical element. Learn to be silent. Refrain from using the tired, old language and explore new metaphors, symbols and poetic ways of expressing what it means to dwell in the presence of the sacred. We need to take religion away from the clergy and the theologian and give it back to the singers and poets. End the pious arrogance of claiming to know the unknowable.

Q. Give me an example of some new metaphors.

A. Instead of God: The Ground of Being. The G-d Beyond God. (Tillich). The Self Surpassing Surpasser of All (Hartshorne)  The Cosmic DNA. The Big Bang and Blossoming. The Particle Rancher and Wave Rider. The Lord of Fractals. The Universal Unknown Subject of our Insatiable Longing. Central Casting. Etc

Q. I am not sure I could pray to The Cosmic DNA.

A. Maybe not, but it will stretch our imagination to think about The Ever Evolving One and Many (formerly known as God) in new ways.

Q. You refer to yourself as a reverent agnostic. How does that differ from being an atheist?

A. I don’t know enough to be an atheist. I don’t believe in the kind of God I hear about on Sunday morning television, or the God of Jihad and Country, and I don’t know how to think about the unknowable intention, energy, mind, purpose that unites the myriads atoms and galaxies into a single timeless universe. So I remain, happily, ignorant of the totality. But I do have a sense of being at home in this strange world and dwelling in a sacred place.

Q. Rumor has it your wife is a minister in United Congregational Church. Does your agnostic version of faith bring you into conflict with her more traditional notion of religion?

A. Hers is a progressive type of Christianity that is more concerned with social justice and establishing a caring community than it is with orthodox belief. Neither one of us takes the creeds very seriously. We enjoy frequent disagreements. I am not a member of her church, but I attend from time to time and am warmly welcomed. And, after all is said and done, religion is more about loving dialogue than it is about right ideas.

I have been thinking recently about the evolution of evil.

How innocently it begins, how invisibly it grows.

The D/evil is in the details

His first trick is to encourage a sense of entitlement.

I deserve it. It is my just due.

Add to this a touch of envy. Memetic desire.

I want it (and deserve it) because you have it.

Why should Bill Gates have so much and I so little.?

When my (impossible) expectations are not fulfilled I become resentful, my sympathy turns into antipathy.

Resentment morphs into paranoia. I imagine that the other –my neighbor, my mate– is hostile to me, withholding, a cheating, not giving me my just share of cash or care.

I give more than I get.

Paranoia leads to creating a fortress —the self puts on its character armor, the nation builds its defenses, the quest for revenge emerges as a perverted demand for justice. Defeating, humiliating or killing the enemy sets the world right, balances the scales. Withholding love and punishing the other allows me to get even. You only got what you deserved, what was coming to you.

Once established the cycle of resentment and revenge becomes autonomous of its origins, a self-reinforcing feedback loop in which hostile expectation become self-fulfilling prophecies.

To escape the grip of the Devil I must practice living with  a sense of gratitude for what has been given me. My life is a gift, not an entitlement. You—my mate, my child, my neighbor do not owe me love (although I am entitled to civility and justice).