If death was Zeno’s paradox
“Death’s got an Invisibility Cloak?” Harry interrupted again. “So he can sneak up on people,” said Ron — J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
There’s a paradox in wondering whether I can perceive objects or understand notions that I have never experienced.
Can I perceive a world beyond the range of my sensory physiology, which is shaped by the guardrails of what enhanced my chances of survival and reproduction.
The fact of the matter is that what I can perceive in the external world is restricted by evolution optimizing my traits to best fit the environment it had to work with. That is the reason that my eyes respond to electromagnetic spectrum between violet (380 nanometers) and red (750 nanometers). And to those experiences I have given names — violet and red.
Can I even imagine or have the words to describe what would 4th dimension of space, if it were to exist, would be like? What would it feel like to be in it? How would I describe the direction that is other than left/right, up/down, front/back.
For that matter, would 4th space dimension even be dimensions like space I am familiar with?
If the 4th space dimension does exist, and since I do not have words to describe it, perhaps I will invent words nadri and sadri to mimic left/right in the world of my current familiarity. Those words sound like a good choice as any. How else left & right themselves would have originated? In the beginning, they might have sounded silly.
A positive aspect of the things I cannot experience is that generally they do not generate the emotion of unease or fear. How can I be afraid of things that I cannot sense?
What I love, hate, fear, starts with what my senses deliver to my brain, where based on past experiences, the sensory input gets processed into an emotion, and then, into actions.
Among the class of objects that I have no firsthand experience with, and thus, have no prior frame of reference under which to categorize them and discuss, the notion of death and cognizance of my own mortality holds a unique position.
I have no firsthand idea what the moment of death feels like, and I will never know. While alive, by definition, I have not felt death, and as long I am alive, I will not feel it either.
And yet, the thought that at some moment in time my ‘self’ will cease to exist, while I have not a shred of clue what would happen to the self beyond that point, death has been an unsettling thought that keeps recurring.
It is a thought that has modulated my (and humanity’s) behavior in so many ways.
What is death anyway? I do know that it is a point of transition when I step from the realm of conscious self to a different realm. I have observed that happen round me. [Note — In that way death is somewhat different from say the 4th space dimension I do not even know if it exists. I have seen handiwork of death everywhere even though I have no personal experience of it.]
I saw death happen with my father lying in the hospital bed and watching him take his last breath. I have watched his unconscious body trying to hold on to this realm but eventually let go. When the breathing finally stopped, I was still around but he was either in a different world or he just was not anymore.
That is what is the fear and unease of death — knowing that it exists and also knowing that the act entails destruction of self and what it has been (without a phenomenological evidence that it continues on).
Would it not be wonderful if the moment of death was something like Zeno’s paradox? It would be exquisite to feel the experience the moment of death getting nearer and nearer but never arrive.
The moment of death as an asymptote. One by one layers of onion peeling away but never revealing the central core.
The thought becomes a poem in mind:
Could death’s moment
mirror Zeno’s paradox?
How exquisite — forever nearing the void,
yet never gone.
Ciao, and thanks for reading.
