Poetry - its the only way an atheist can understand death

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by lightgigantic, Feb 3, 2007.

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Poetry is the only avenue that enables an atheist to understand the subject of death

  1. Absolutely - If they deal with it in any other way it is merely bravado

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  2. Mostly - If the emmotional stress becomes unbearable it is a likely avenue

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  3. Undecided

    3 vote(s)
    20.0%
  4. Not really - its only popular amongst the mentally weak

    2 vote(s)
    13.3%
  5. Not at all - an atheist can face anything without requiring such a crutch

    10 vote(s)
    66.7%
  1. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts/poetry-as-medicine/2007/02/01/1169919470973.html?page=4

    I STOPPED BELIEVING IN GOD six years ago. To say I woke up one morning with the realisation that religion is bunk would be a simplification, but only a small one. My conversion to atheism was rapid and joyful. I gloried in my new-found intellectual freedom and sense of moral responsibility and pitied those still caught in religion's web.

    All was right in my godless world until, within the space of just over a year, I faced the death of a beloved relative and the possibility of my own death at the age of 29. The first event overwhelmed me with grief, the second with terror. When I say now that I would believe in an afterlife if I could, that I would take comfort in religion if I could, I mean it most sincerely.

    How to deal with death without God? This question has been central to my life for two years. The sorrow of losing a loved one to death is different to other sorrows. We can pore over photographs and eulogise kind hearts and good deeds. We can read medical reports and talk about final hours. We can dissect the deceased's life and death, tell ourselves that the former was pleasant and the latter painless. All this is understandable and perhaps necessary, but none of it touches our grief, because grief is not an intellectual state. It cannot be altered by discussion or removed by reason. When the grieving heart asks how, it is not a question about heart attacks or car crashes or cancers, it is a question about the inconceivability of an entire consciousness simply not existing.

    Likewise, the terror of death is not like any other fear. One cannot minimise one's fear of death by gathering information and avoiding risks, the way one might do to calm a fear of sharks or plane crashes. It is possible to reduce the chances of dying in these specific ways, sure, but in the end it doesn't matter how it happens, only that it does.

    "After one has abandoned a belief in God," Wallace Stevens said, "poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption." This makes sense to me: poetry often has a murkiness that allows it to deal with subjects themselves shrouded in haze. And what subject is murkier than death, about which medical science can tell us everything and nothing all at once? We know exactly what happens to a body after death; we know nothing about what happens to the consciousness it used to house.

    ......

    But finding solace in poetry is not as simple as opening a random anthology. After the death of a dear relative, I searched the poetry shelves for fortification and consolation, only to be confronted again and again by poems that assured me of the impermanence of death and the inevitability of a joyful reunion in heaven. It struck me that had I believed any of these sentiments, I would not have needed to search for consolation in poetry in the first place.

    Still, every so often I would find a poem that spoke directly to my atheistic grief and I would copy it carefully into a notebook that I took to carrying with me everywhere. Dark nights of the soul do not only occur on dark nights. In the first page of my notebook I copied a line of Gwendolyn Brooks': "Beware the easy griefs, that fool and fuel nothing."

    These days I keep the notebook in a drawer and, like a first-aid kit, bring it out only at times of need. Like a first-aid kit too, the book is not designed to be emptied all at once. Each poem is powerful medicine, but some are expectorants rather than salves; some are best applied immediately while others work only after time has done all it can.

    TO BEGIN AT THE END, the last poem in my notebook is Philip Larkin's Aubade. Seamus Heaney called this "the definitive post-Christian English poem" because it "abolishes the soul's traditional pretension to immortality". It is the perfect antidote to our culture's coyness about death: a harsh, unblinking examination of what it means to no longer exist.

    "Waking at four to soundless dark", the poet considers the "sure extinction that we travel to" and admits to "the dread/ Of dying, and being dead". He rejects the usual comforts; religion is a "vast moth-eaten musical brocade, created to pretend we never die", and courage is "no good" because "Being brave/ Lets no one off the grave".

    The philosopher Montaigne, faced with the same deep dread of death, decided that the only way to overcome it was to avoid its contemplation, instead acting as an uneducated peasant whom "nature teaches not to think of death except when he actually dies". Larkin's poem ends on a similar note, and here the end of contemplation is brought about by nature. As dawn's light comes into the room, his mind turns to the fact that the world is waiting and "work has to be done".

    ......

    Denise Levertov's Talking to Grief takes up the theme of acceptance. "Ah, Grief, I should not treat you/ like a homeless dog/ who comes to the back door/ for a crust, for a meatless bone", it begins. The speaker acknowledges that grief has been "living under my porch", and that it is time that it was given "the right to warn off intruders, to consider/ my house your own/ and me your person".

    Levertov understands that after the death of a loved one we are changed permanently. Grief is not an illness from which you recover; it is, or quickly becomes, an aspect of your personality, a part of who you are and how you live.
    .......

    The attempt to pinpoint the value of a single life drives Kenneth Slessor's Five Bells. The poem is ostensibly a commemoration of the poet's friend, who drowned in Sydney Harbour, but it is important to me because of the insights about grief and remembrance that occur during the attempt.

    There is no suggestion of a happy afterlife here - his friend is "nothing except the memory of some bones, long shoved away, and sucked away, in mud". There is only a desperate attempt to commemorate the dead man by recording something of his life, the "unimportant things (he) might have done".

    Slessor fails to capture the individuality of his friend, but in doing so captures the nature of grief beautifully: the frustration of being unable to perfectly describe why our loved one was so special and is so missed; the random incompleteness of our memories and the feeling that in trying to memorialise them we are not doing them justice; the utter futility in trying to capture in words a whole life and death of a human being, no matter how "unimportant".

    ......

    THE FIRST POEM I COPIED into my little book - Dirge without Music, by Edna St Vincent Millay - remains the one that best describes my feelings towards death. At the funeral of the relative whose death sparked my existential musings, the refrain was that this man had lived long and well and had died peacefully. Repeatedly I heard it said that death is a natural part of life and that it was unquestionably this adored old man's time.

    With each repetition of these inarguably correct phrases, Millay's words roared in my head: "I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned." Like Millay, I am outraged at "the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground". That it has happened "time out of mind" does not make it OK; that it is natural, that flowers bloom from the remains of the dead, is no solace. I know that I will never again experience this man's "laughter (and) love", and I am not at all resigned.

    This is, perhaps, the essence of atheistic grief and also the essence of atheistic hope. To understand that death is the end of existence and that it is inevitable, but to live as if it is not. To refuse to be resigned to death even as we refuse to deny its permanence.
     
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  3. Cyperium I'm always me Valued Senior Member

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    Hello. I didn't answer the poll, since I don't know if poetry is the only way to comfort an atheist. For me, if I were atheist, I would find it rather meaningless, as poetry can only shroud it so that it doesn't become as immense. But reality is immense, when reality has broken through the clouds, what do you turn to then?

    I'm truly sorry for your sorrow, but it needs to face that death is real, and not clouded. It needs to know that death does come to everyone.

    When I have been in accidents and situations that have been near immense death, I have felt comfort that it was a part of reality too, that it was a part of my life, me, and only me did it happen too. I faced it, knowing that if I did all I can the inevitable would happen. If it is inevitable then how could I find anything wrong with it? How could I relate with it in such a way that it gives me fear?

    I believe in God, not because I'm afraid of dying, but because it is the most meaningful way for me to live.
     
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  5. redarmy11 Registered Senior Member

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    I voted 'Undecided'. I shouldn't have done though. My true opinion is that it's impossible to say. I'm sure some cope with it through poetry. Seems weird to me but there you go. Others turn to drink, drugs, God, friends, family, whatever. Others, like me, accept it as part of God's great plan life. Whatever gets you through the night.

    Poetry though? I ask you.
     
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  7. Ayodhya Registered Senior Member

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    Couldn't an atheist simply reason out that death is inevitable and shouldn't be trifled with? I don't understand why you chose poetry and also choose to use such absolute wordage such as "only". The world is very rarely absolute.
     
  8. zenbabelfish autonomous hyperreal sophist Registered Senior Member

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    With respect, Lightgigantic, the poll questions and answers are prescriptive and can only lead to conclusions that fit a presumption rather than being representative.

    If you had included an answer such as: No

    then I might have been able to communicate my experience of atheism and poetry in the context of the thread.
    Thank you...interesting topic.
     
  9. zenbabelfish autonomous hyperreal sophist Registered Senior Member

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    p.s. congratulations on this the anniversary of your conversion to atheism

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  10. (Q) Encephaloid Martini Valued Senior Member

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    Dealing with grief requires closure, like any other issue. Theists invent the afterlife and gods to deal with their losses, which only extends their grief as they imagine the person they lost somehow continues to exist. Atheists will grieve as well, but understand that death is final and that an entire consciousness in fact no longer exists, which provides the necessary closure to move on.
     
  11. everneo Re-searcher Registered Senior Member

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    An atheist can come to terms with oblivion with ease. It the theist especially who has nothing but familiarity with certain scriptures gets the anxiety of what the death would bring to him.
     
  12. Sock puppet path GRRRRRRRRRRRR Valued Senior Member

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    My father passed away a few years back. I loved him dearly and still do love the memory of him, poetry has not played any part in my grieving process. He is gone from this world but he is still here in the imprint he left on the lives of those around him (the same that will happen to me one day). That is complete and enough for me.
     
    Last edited: Feb 4, 2007
  13. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    I guess the point of the post is that poetry actually deals with facing the issue, whereas drugs and other things (including god in the eyes of the atheist) may not

    Actually the article is a cut and paste

    POETRY is the only way an atheist can understand the nothing and nowhere of death, writes Emily Maguire.


    As for having such an outlook, namely the rational - that will not help one in times of misery, as outlined in the post

    How to deal with death without God? This question has been central to my life for two years. The sorrow of losing a loved one to death is different to other sorrows. We can pore over photographs and eulogise kind hearts and good deeds. We can read medical reports and talk about final hours. We can dissect the deceased's life and death, tell ourselves that the former was pleasant and the latter painless. All this is understandable and perhaps necessary, but none of it touches our grief, because grief is not an intellectual state. It cannot be altered by discussion or removed by reason. When the grieving heart asks how, it is not a question about heart attacks or car crashes or cancers, it is a question about the inconceivability of an entire consciousness simply not existing.

    the last option is short of vouching for the negative?

    I guess such a theist fares better than a theist who is not familiar with any scriptures

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    I guess the point of the article is that it is only poetry actually deals with the issue of imminent (or nearby) non-existence - what one may do to deal with grief is a separate issue, but in terms of getting satisfactory answers from examining the nature of death, poetry is all an atheist has
     
  14. Sock puppet path GRRRRRRRRRRRR Valued Senior Member

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    That makes absolutely no sense to me are you saying that atheists have no method of processing experience or learning? I would say the opposite when I die I am gone that's, it lights out, I do not require a story that reassures me that I won't end there as a theist does. The only diffuculty I have with the idea of death is in my current situation with young children, I don't want them to be fatherless before they are grown. Otherwise I know one day death will come to me and it is as simple as that.
     
  15. redarmy11 Registered Senior Member

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    And I guess the real point I was making is that family and friends make better panaceas than any of the above - and that, if you haven't got any, you need to get some (friends, I mean).
     
  16. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I suggest that theists are the ones so uncomfortable with death that they would postulate a fake life (afterlife), rather than deal with the sudden end of a person they love.

    In some ways, the culture itself creates the sadness of death. If theists really believed what they say, death should be an occasion of happiness, but it's not because they are full of fear. It's the same fear that leads them to cling to man made symbols like "soul", and "God". Some sadness is reasonable, more so if the death was unnatural, violent, or premature but I just don't get the existential sadness that seems to confront many regarding death.
     
  17. zenbabelfish autonomous hyperreal sophist Registered Senior Member

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    Totally - its a cultural phenomenon like poetry...
     
  18. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    rational logic is useless in dealing with the sufferings of emmotions

    If you read te article you can see atheistic poetry which says the same thing, except more eloquently of course
    and that is one of the many problems associated with death ....

    It was never alluded to that it becomes less than inevitable

    family and friends, along with so many other things, place death in the background, and unfortunately it doesn't make the nature of death or dying any more palatable.
    As for making friends, no doubt you are recommending the atheistic variety eh?

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    Of course its a whole separate issue explored numerous times before with a complete lack of resolution (namely what processes an atheist advocates to make a positive statement regarding the non-existence of god and associated phenomena, ie the after life) - but yes, obviously an atheist functions on the principle that god and the next life are not existent

    for many relgious people death is a joyous experience - in fact the hairline fractures in my previous atheistic outlook (maybe 14 years ago) first appeared
    when I observed how a particular gross materialist left their body and how a highly spiritual person left theirs.
     
  19. zenbabelfish autonomous hyperreal sophist Registered Senior Member

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    With respect, can you draw a generalization from specific experiential instances?
     
  20. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    not really, but such experiences can inspire a person to apply the required processes that can generate specific experiences (like for instance a person may meet a physicist who they are very impressed by and later on go on to become a qualified physicist themselves, by dint of being inspired to go through the austerity of further education, etc to come to such a position)
     
  21. zenbabelfish autonomous hyperreal sophist Registered Senior Member

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    Potentially - but not in this instance which is why I commented.
     
  22. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    Of course if an atheist thought any less they wouldn't be an atheist

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  23. Warrior61 I saw the Light Registered Senior Member

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    How does God give your life meaning?
     

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