Phil's Newsletter #11: Memento mori
Meditations on death. 💀
What I’m thinking about
Death, especially in western societies, is something we tend to keep at an arm’s length. But it's always present in the background, whether we are conscious of it or not.
Sometimes it makes its presence known to us. An accident on the news, a distant war, a celebrity that just passed. Sometimes it hits closer to home, a relative or friend gets sick or passes away. And of course, sometimes and for some us, death announces itself like a kick in the gut as we are given unwelcome medical news or are 1 cm away from getting hit by a car.
These days, death is more present than usual as we are confronted with the statistics of new COVID-19 cases and counts of deaths that increment daily. For the most part, these deaths are still just statistics. But sometimes, and more frequently as the weeks pass, these statistics turn into anecdotes.
In my life, I've been lucky enough to not have experienced the deaths of very close friends or family members. So it's with some hesitation that I'm writing about this topic. I wouldn't want to profess to have any deep personal insights on the topic of death and I apologize in advance if any of this comes across as insensitive - it's not my intention.
Nevertheless, it is something I've been thinking about lately. I'd like to share a few perspectives on death that I have found useful myself. Precisely because we otherwise tend to avoid the topic as much as possible.
For the most part, we live our lives as if we will live forever. But I think we can embrace life more fully when we realize the fact that death can be waiting for us at any moment. Instead of death just being a source of angst we can turn it into a catalyst and an inspiration. But it requires we deal with it head-on.
"Keep death in mind at all times."
- Bushido Shoshinshu
It is when you recognize this that you can better appreciate every moment you get with your children, close friends, or your parents - because it may be the last time. In fact, there is a last time for everything we do. So it follows that we should give each and every such moment the attention it deserves. By keeping death in mind, it instills a sense of urgency that can snap us out of the trivialities we spend a lot of our time worrying about.
"Death makes a mockery of almost everything else we spend our lives doing."
- Sam Harris
Last evening I spent about 15 minutes staring at my pantry, paralyzed by the choice of what I was going to cook for dinner. Was that really the most important thing I could have done with those minutes of my life?
With the prospect of death salient in our minds, the importance we ascribe to the things we pay attention to become quite clear. You either prune the actions, thoughts or commitments from your life, or you give it your full attention. Everything else becomes a waste of time. At least this should be the intention.
In both the Stoic and the Samurai traditions death is a highly salient concept. The Samurai would consider all the ways they could die every day. Instead of making them fearful, this meditation makes them feel invincible because they have nothing left to fear.
"Begin each day pondering death as its climax. Each morning, with a calm mind, conjure images in your head of your last moments. See yourself being pierced by bow and arrow, gun, sword, or spear, or being swept away by a giant wave, vaulting into a fiery inferno, taking a lightning strike, being shaken to death in a great earthquake, falling hundreds of feet from a high cliff top, succumbing to a terminal illness, or just dropping dead unexpectedly. Every morning, be sure to meditate yourself into a trance of death."
- Hagakure
Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and Stoic wrote a great deal about death in his Meditations (what was essentially his journal). Often he wrote about it in order to better deal with his own mortality, sometimes to inspire action or to be better:
"You may leave this life at any moment: have this possibility on your mind in all that you do or say or think."
“Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”
Seneca, perhaps the most famous Stoic philosopher wrote in the aptly titled book "On the shortness of life":
"People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy."
I've also found a lot of wisdom in the writings of the late Christopher Hitchens. In a debate on whether or not the afterlife exists (during which he was terminally ill with cancer) he made this rather striking analogy of the "never-ending party":
“It will happen to all of us, that at some point you get tapped on the shoulder and told, not just that the party’s over, but slightly worse: the party’s going on — but you have to leave. And it’s going on without you. That’s the reflection that I think most upsets people about their demise.
All right, then, because it might make us feel better, let’s pretend the opposite. Instead, you’ll get tapped on the shoulder and told, Great news: this party’s going on forever – and you can’t leave. You’ve got to stay; the boss says so. And he also insists that you have a good time. [...]"
So the point is that life is worthwhile exactly because it is finite. The prospect of an infinite afterlife is not just slightly claustrophobic, but it takes away some of the preciousness of the one life we can be sure we do have.
Although I do find some solace in these sorts of perspectives, I’m secretly hoping that Ray Kurtzweil is right and that I will be able to extend my lifespan by a few hundred years or that I can upload my brain to the cloud within the next 50.
1. Article
Will Voluntary Self-Isolation Work Better Than State-Enforced Lockdowns in the Long Run?
Johan Norberg argues in this article that although some countries have been able to suppress the total number of cases through enforced lockdowns, it’s possible that new cases will rise quickly once those lockdowns are loosened. Whereas in Sweden we’ve already taken the bigger “hit” early on. Thus, when looking at the long term we could expect more similar outcomes regardless of the current approach.
I’ve been pretty critical of Sweden’s way of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. I think the “relaxed” approach is too risky and that we might be better of following the example of many other countries. Having said that, it’s still too early to know whether or not Sweden is doing the right thing or are running a very risky experiment. As far as deaths and new cases go, Sweden seems to be somewhere in the middle, better than some countries like Spain and Belgium, but worse than Norway and Denmark.
People (myself included) tend to be quite trigger happy when it comes to sharing graphs and statistics that confirm their existing beliefs.
If there’s a lesson I’m having to learn over and over again it’s that we should be very careful with how we interpret data and statistics. The devil really is in the details. For example, just looking at the first picture above one might conclude that Sweden is doing really badly and that people are dropping dead like flies. But what the death statistic doesn’t show is that many deaths have been confined to nursing homes and that Sweden counts deaths differently from most other countries; including not just people that died from COVID-19, but people that died with COVID-19 too (meaning that the virus might not have been the cause of death).
Let’s all try to do better and practice good hygiene when sharing statistics we don’t fully comprehend.
“There are lies, damned lies and statistics.”
2. Book
“What you do is who you are” by Ben Horowitz
I recently read the latest book from famed Silicon Valley veteran and Venture Capitalist Ben Horowitz. I'd highly recommend this book to entrepreneurs and leaders across any kind of organization or community that are mindful of the cultural practices that exist in their organizations, and want to learn how to change the culture for the better. It's a fun and surprisingly profound read.
The biggest takeaway from the book it that your culture is a result of the actions and practices of the people in the company, and not the result of a document or what the leadership wishes the culture to be like. In other words, your culture is not what you say it is, it is what you do. Do you really need a whole book to get that fairly obvious message across? Maybe not, but the book is both entertaining and practical with many historical and contemporary examples of culture-shaping leadership.
3. Podcast
Peter Thiel on The Portal Podcast
Peter Thiel is probably one of the most interesting people alive today. He’s the embodiment of an intellectual contrarian. He was the founder and CEO of PayPal, today he is a successful Venture Capitalist (an early investor in Facebook). Among other things, he believes that we need more monopolies in the world, that we’re living in a world with too little innovation and growth, he supported Donal Trump in the 2016 elections, and he’s also gay. People love to hate him because they don’t know what box to put him in. As Peter himself is famous for saying, “it’s not enough to be contrarian, you have to be contrarian and right” (or you’re just a kook). You don’t need to agree with him, but you’ll do well to listen to his ideas.
Memento Mori,
/Phil