Concerning Death

I could say, most of this entry will just a retelling of my older post from my old blog. I have already wrote a similar entry, concerning death, regarding the death of my cat. Well let’s just not talk about my pet. In the conclusion of that entry I conclude that, regarding death and the memories concerning the dead that we should remember the moment when the dead was still a living being. So it goes, wherever I have someone I knew found dead, I tried not to concern the death itself, instead, I will try to recall the memories of the living moments of the dead one.

There is a theory of selfness, individuality, once been told to me from my lecturer during one of the lectures. It is Hume’s, he is an empiricist and you can say I’m against empiricism but that’s not the matter right now, where he said that our individuality, our selfness, was just a bundle of perception. The perception he proposed here should be considered as something sensible, as perception to be seen as a product of senses. Well, of course I have simplified, heavily, his thought but let’s just not discuss that for now. Departing from Hume’s “bundle theory” maybe we can also apply this not only to our selfness but also the others selfness, other person’s selfness. But as I recall from Kant’s saying that there is no possibility for us to understand, to get the knowledge from something outside of us, in this case the other person, our sibling, parents, friends, etc, we should say that our understanding of other person’s selfness is also a bundle of perception we perceive through our senses. So in practice we can say that, I know nothing about my cat, but I know from I can perceive with my senses that it is like that*. Then if we apply this theory back to my concerns of death, my thought is that our memories concerning certain person is what makes us perceive that person as is and when that person was dead  that bundle of perception we used to perceive and understand that person as someone** there should be possibility for us to classify from which memories should we class as which memory. Therefore I chose to classify some memories is in fact worthy*** enough to be remembered, in this case the memory of the living moment. If I go as far as I can say that the memory of the death was not worthy enough, then I assume there is a possibility for me not to acknowledge the death. If I was not to acknowledge the death, is there a possibility for me to acknowledge the eternity of that certain mortal being?

I’m not here to concern eternity, which is quite the opposite of death, but we can recall the cliche catchphrase of many literature or we can also say a common phrase. That when someone dies that certain person still lives in our heart. For me, this can be said a proof of Kant’s though and its relation to Hume’s “Bundle Theory” I said before. Well of course there is also a disprove of physical eternity if we should refer to my state of disacknowledging death. Me myself, I don’t believe physical eternity in state that during those eternity someone remain human. So if Kant’s thoughts of representation of things inside our mind and that the knowledge we ought to say is that comes from that representation inside ourselves not from the exact, actual object itself. This is where there is a relation to the eternity of someone inside someone’s mind.

But there is a moment where I should acknowledge death though. This may be a little off topic but my stand concerning death, remains somewhat the same. I still stand to the thought that there is no point in remembering death. There is a reason, which has relation to the thought where I have to acknowledge death in order to move. Back to Hume’s “Bundle Theory”, and Kant’s theory of knowledge, maybe I can infer that perceiving perception were only available during the object was still alive. So when the object was dead, perish, gone, it is no longer available. When we are not to acknowledge death so there will be no end to the memory, it’s like a book, a thesis, dissertation without epilogue or conclusion. Cliche it is but the point is like when we are perceiving someone in order to know him, understand him, as from Fromm’s Art of Loving it is said that this is the stage of loving where understanding is one of the essential aspect, when that certain person is still alive it is only possible during that time. So when we acknowledge the death of that certain person it is when we can say that, “this is that person I can perceive, this is enough of him/her, there will be no more (or less) of him/her”. So when we acknowledge death is possibly the moment where we can finally conclude our final perception regarding that certain person. So in case of we were to understand, perceive someone alive in order to love that certain person, it can be said that there is no possibility for us to fully understand that certain person (not until the death of that certain person even though there is still other impossibility if we were to subject secrets or else).

So in the end, this my thought concerning death. Like I have stated before, my stand concerning death still somewhat remain the same. But there is an opening where I don’t have any other option but to accept death. The conclusion is like I already inferred from the whole entry.

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*like that I said here is that my cat is something furry, it has four legs, a tail, pointy ears, flat nose, just cat as we know it. I just simplify it since it is unimportant to perceive my pet here, it’s just an example though.

**You should get the point that the fact I’m using the word someone is in universal meaning, my cat is also someone even though it is a cat not a human or anything alike. Also as someone here I also infer that we perceive that certain person as either brother or else. For example on our first day of school we met someone new and then we perceive him or her and through the time we perceive that person from many activities, dialogues, or anything then we can perceive that person as friend, best friend, lover, or even brother if you’ve made some oath or something. Note that in the end it is our perception that states someone as someone, our perception may infer that someone attractive and that person pays our attention and then we state that person as our lover, even though we can also ask that why we state that person as lover is it because that perception or due the fact that other person says that you two are in fact lover (not to mention you have announce it publicly or not before).

***The worthy I said here is not to be perceived materialistically. I just can’t come up with the right word to say it. Things are worthy from our subjective view that when a certain memory we found ourselves fond of that is when we can say that memory is worthy to be remembered or acknowledged. There is a case that when we have a bad memories we have the tendency not to remember it, it is when I thought we found that certain memory is not worthy to be remembered or acknowledged. So worthy here is not to be meant that I value something economically.

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I dedicate this entry for my friend Xaliber von Reginhild, Pradipa P. Rasidi, I can’t say much but truly I didn’t mean anything bad from this writing. My intention was purely rational, I didn;t mean to hurt you or anything. As I already said in the beginning, this is my thought of death and I just hope that you can understand. So should I say sympathy is yours to decide, truly.

Fill in the air next time~LSS

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