A Discussion on Despair, Grief, and Death

It kinda reminds me of this story in the Bible. David, the king of Israel, had a son who was dying as a newborn. While the kid was still alive, David prayed and fasted, etc. But when the son died, he stopped and went on his way. When asked why he doesn't mourn, he basically responds that mourning constantly won't change anything. If he wants to honor his son, he will live the life his son could not have. As my mom just recently passed away, this post could not have been timed better. Thanks, mate.

 

I would not applaud someone who did not feel grief when their children died. However, in the case of an elderly person, the transition can seem more natural and right. Some deaths are harder to bear than others, and that's the way it should be.

It is far from selfish for a mother and father to grieve their dead child. That "selfishness" is called parental concern and it exists solely for the benefit of others, it's evolution.

Now, allowing yourself to be crippled by grief is very different to not feeling it. Locking yourself in your room weeping is selfish insofar as you are neglecting other duties, but people should be "affected", that is living.

Another point, if we want people to value their own lives, normalising indifference in the face of family members' deaths does not encourage that.

 

The worth of the whole universe and the concepts of right and wrong can be reduced to nothing if looked at with cold reason alone, that's nihilism, right? I think that's what we call it these days.

What is selfishness? If selfishness amounts to simply feeling emotion, I'd call it a virtue.

A vice is an indulgence that causes harm in the longer-term, ultimately to others. If this is what you mean by selfishness, a vice, then not feeling is more selfish than feeling.

 

"Everything ends. Even if we assume that the universe itself will remain habitable for eternity, if the chances of human extinction are non-zero, then it is a mathematical certainty to happen eventually. Once we are all dead, our descendants, our legacies, everything, what does it matter what we did in our lives? What was right? What was wrong?" That's called staring into the abyss.

Zhuangzi is staring into something else, instead of an empty abyss it's a dispassionate flux, and it's equally nullifying of virtue and vice.

My point was that selfishness/self-centeredness/X/Y/Z, whatever name you wish to label the thing we are talking about, that thing is not bad but good. I'm not arguing over linguistics. I might disagree with your choice of label, it is unremarkable, I am giving my opinion on the thing you have described.

 

Is love reasonable? Is sadness reasonable? Have you ever heard the term “I’m so angry I can’t think straight?” If we were robots then reason would be the ultimate source of all our actions but we’re not. Feelings come and go and the idea one is selfish simply for having certain feelings like grief is ridiculous. Plus I think calling grief “the most selfish thing you’ve heard” is a crazy over exaggeration.

 

I think the point here is that grief should not inhibit you from the rest of your life. You look on the person's life with fondness, and yes you are sad because you lost them, but, in the case of my mom, I look on all the lives she touched and how many people she influenced. Do i wish she was still here on earth? Yeah. But, honestly, she wrote a note to me before she died and she said not to cry too much. She wanted me to live my life to the fullest, and not be held back by my grief and emotions. Instead I use them to inspire me to continue living and I think that was kind of Zhuangzi's point in it all. Yes, he was saddened by his wife's death, but he knew there was nothing he could do to change the fact that she was gone, so he lived his life in honor of her. There may be rough days where the sadness is overwhelming, but overall , life should be led to the fullest.

 

I disagree with that theory, a lot of people aren’t as self centered as you think they are. Perhaps your professor’s words resonated with you because that’s how your mind works.

 

Thank you. I think the confusion comes from your presentation of Zhauanzi’s epiphany about his wife’s death. His realization is deeper than the change of the physical form. It seems he ceases to be grieved because he believes his wife and all of us have always existed in a sense in the “featureless indistinguishable mass”. His reply to his friend is:

"You misjudge me," said Zhuangzi. "When she died, I was in despair, as any man well might be. But soon, pondering on what had happened, I told myself that in death no strange new fate befalls us. In the beginning, we lack not life only, but form. Not form only, but spirit. We are blended in one great featureless indistinguishable mass. Then a time came when the mass evolved spirit, spirit evolved form, form evolved life. And now life in its turn has evolved death. For not nature only but man's being has its seasons, its sequence of spring and autumn, summer and winter. If someone is tired and has gone to lie down, we do not pursue him with shouting and bawling. She whom I have lost has lain down to sleep for a while in the Great Inner Room. To break in upon her rest with the noise of lamentation would but show that I knew nothing of nature's Sovereign Law. That is why I ceased to mourn."
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So it sounds like he’s consoled by the belief that his wife has returned back to the One Great Festurless Mass aka The Great Inner Room from whence she came. He refers to her as “sleeping” so I’m going to conclude that Zhauanzi neither believes in life or death or even in the existence of self? Basically beleives we are all one power, one energy, and that when we die the Dao will take us and then give us back. Not like in reincarnation but rather a recycling of energy?