> From: [log in to unmask]
> Just a short PS: why do the words "immortal soul" have to belong
> together? Why can't one have a mortal soul?
A very good question, though again one which would take us too far
away from the list. But since it's been asked here are a few random
reflections:
That the soul exists is obvious: there is a difference between a
person alive and that same person's dead body, and that difference is
the soul. The question is why should it be immortal.
Freud, who called the soul the unconscious, remarked that death is an
abstract concept with a negative content, and since the unconscious
admits of neither abstraction nor negativity it cannot conceive of
death, which is the psychoanalytical way of saying that the soul is
immortal.
Freud's disciple Weston LaBarre may have come closest by calling
death "the ultimate insult to our narcissism." Human vanity is such
that we simply refuse to believe we can die. A similar revelation
inheres in the old Peanuts cartoon showing Snoopy lying on his dog house
contemplating death: "I'm to young to die. I'm too good to die. I'm
too ME to die!" In historical support of this we see that all through
history all over the world very few people have ever simply refused to
believe that they are are really going to die. Most members of the
human race have and do believe in some sort of afterlife. Even
agnostics and atheists usually use some sort of weasel words like "I
don't think anyone can tell." (I myself am among the minority who
realizes exactly what happens to us when we die.)
Pindar said that a human being is the dream of a shadow. But if
there is a shadow there must be something that casts it; if there is a
dream there must be a dreamer.
ObPoetry: Aye, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod, and the dilated spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and uncertain thought
Imagine howling -- 'tis too horrible!
Measure for Measure 3.1
Footnote on above: For all his terror of death Claudio still does
not really think he is going to die: he thinks that what happens to him
after death is going to be horrible, but he thinks that he is going to
be there for it to happen to him.
Additional footnote: the speech is really pretty funny when you take
it with the Duke's speech on death a few minutes earlier.
====
When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his
limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry
reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power
corrupts, poetry cleanses.
-- John F. Kennedy
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