Survival in an Indifferent Universe

#cancer #grief #disaster #god #tragedy

John J. Hohn – Writer, Reviewer, Storyteller,     Commentator

My  mother, my sister-in-law, my best friend, and my ex-wife died of cancer. Universe

Cancer is evil. Like anything else, it wants to thrive. Growth, normally, is regarded as a good. Cancer is uncontrolled growth. It thrives by destroying the cells that support life, love, and thought. Nothing continues to grow in absolute darkness unless it is connected in some way with another being that is exposed to light.

It may have been time for my mother. She was 81. She had lived a full life. I do not know why she had to suffer before passing. My ex-wife and my sister-in-law were in their mid-forties, the prime of life. I fail to see how any good came from their premature departures. My best friend, Roy, was growing in wisdom as he neared the end of his sixth decade. His presence in the life of those who knew and loved him was a positive thing. His harvest season was upon us all but we were denied it.

People say things happen for a reason, especially when they do not know why. People say that God works in mysterious ways, especially when they can’t understand why misfortune strikes.

Perhaps I am to God as my dog is to me. My dog, Jessie, doesn’t understand anything about human nature. She doesn’t believe in me. But she knows I exist. We communicate with words like “stay,” “car,” and “walk.” And sounds like “bark” (let me out) “bark-bark-bark” (there’s some at the door), or “whine” (I need to relieve myself.)  Otherwise we know little about one another. It isn’t necessary. We love one another.

Jessie enjoys my protection and nurturance. She does what her limited nature permits to attend to my well-being. Thus the barking as others approach the house, the licking of my cheek when she perceives I am sad, etc. She is not endowed with self-conscious intelligence. She can’t anticipate death, although she seems to know when it is time to eat each day. She would not do anything to hurt me nor I her. It would take an intervening third force.

My choices . . .

I don’t understand anything about the nature of God. I have been asked to believe a lot of things, but I don’t know that God exists in the same way my dog knows I exist.  My choices include to live in doubt, deny God’s existence, or believe in it. Men differ on the subject because nobody knows for sure. They fight over their differences in belief.

Jessie. Her eyes Bespeak an Undeniable Intelligence at the Canine Level

I am capable of belief. I have self-conscious intelligence. I never hear the divine say anything to me. No burning bushes in my backyard. I am leery of those who claim that God speaks to them. If God has an important message, why not let a few more of us in on it. Shepherd children without recording devices is hardly an efficient choice. Why word-of-mouth as the preferred medium for the divine?

Nobody knows for sure whether God hears humans, as far as that goes. When good fortune befalls some see it as evidence of God’s love. So that’s me being good to Jessie? Let’s say it is.

Tragedy, however, is another matter. Tragedy is usually not taken as a sign of God’s disfavor, at least not these days. We are asked instead to look for a third force. There’s always evil, of course, but it means recognizing that God chose not to intercede or was perhaps not all powerful enough.  Often our reaction is directed at seeing the good that comes from a disaster. It’s a deflection, of course. But then who really wants to know the bottom line for slaughter, maiming, and ruining people’s lives.

The good to come from Chernobyl will not be a better design for nuclear power plants. The new design will fail one day for a different reason. It is in the nature of machines to fail—a fact that escapes everyone’s foresight in the efforts to quell the emotional and spiritual discomfort at the randomness of a disaster.

Any good to come from a tragedy could just as well have come about without the suffering, pain, and death. What good came from 9/11, Oklahoma City, Katrina, the Holocaust, Sandy Hook, or in any other disaster that was outrageously disproportionate to the losses families suffered and the pain endured by the survivors. Everyone involved would have been much better off if nothing had happened—if life had gone on as usual.

As the Dinosaur was . . .

Man will never eliminate the suffering resulting from acts of nature. He is defenseless against his own annihilation just as the dinosaur was. He, himself, may one day be responsible for exterminating his own kind from the face of the earth. If he is successful, which will be the ultimate failure of his species, nobody will be around to argue what role God played.

When I love another creature, as I do my dog, I strive to promote its well-being. As a man, however, I live in a universe that doesn’t give a damn whether I live or die, and in fact, pits other forms of life against me, both inside and outside of my body, in a competition to see who survives—as in cancer, or tigers in the jungle, or snakes on the walking trail, or storms in the night.

If I believe in life after death, then all of these terrible truths are minimized. My belief helps me induce contentment. Further, believing in life after death lets all of us say that nothing matters much after all. Why grieve over the thousands of innocents slaughtered in civil wars They all go to heaven, don’t they. Some murdering warriors are so convinced of the good life awaiting hereafter they destroy themselves.

Things matter, in other words, as much as we will allow them to matter.

Grieving, no matter how bitter, is not evidence of loss. Not all losses are tragic. The death of a child is always tragic . The death of a corrupt, war-mongering, pedophile congressman is tragic only to the extent he was denied the time to  change his ways while the rest of the world endures his noxious existence.

Call it love . . .

As with my dog and me, humans are capable of attachment. We like to call it love. A lot of psychological conditions masquerade as love. O. J. Simpson was possessed by a powerful feeling that he thought was love. He killed his wife in the grips of his obsession. The rather complex state called “codependent” is experienced as love, but it isn’t. Sometimes what is experienced as loss is simply the abrupt breaking of a neurotic, unhealthy attachment to another.  When nothing is there to replace the object of obsession, jealousy, dependency, whatever, the yearning persists. It hurts. The pain a person feels is real enough. It will be relieved when a new object is found. But the cure is not reestablishing the same life-defeating dynamics with someone else. The pain is as with any other injury. It’s there to prompt the afflicted to seek aid and work to recover emotional health.

The Grim Reaper

Natural and man-made disasters are indifferent to the humans who become victims. For all the wrenching anguish thousands experience, the pain endured is human. It results from the severing of human attachment, healthy or otherwise. No evidence exists that the collective sorrow, regardless of how prolonged or traumatic, registers in the universe as an event of consequence. The landscape of the planet may be changed, but the suffering all takes place on the plain of human existence. Efforts to interpret tragedy in any theological or cosmological dimension are simply sentiment. It is impossible to find God’s hand in it one way or the other, either as the savior of those who were spared or the executioner of those who were not. Universe

Given everything, three choices remain. I can accept my uncertainty, deny there is a life after death, or believe in life hereafter although I can’t prove it. The choice ultimately comes down to acceding to the power of one belief or another or adhering to an unflinching commitment to seek the truth. Both cannot coexistence in my life of thought. The truth for me begins with the acceptance that I don’t know. Nothing I believe will change what will happen to me when my life ends.  I see the inhumanity of mankind against its own in the name of one belief or another. I’ve seen the truth shock people painfully to reconsider their perspective on life and their treatment of others, but the pain is not lasting. It delivers rather than destroys. Contentment for me resides in accepting that I don’t know, that it may be beyond me to know, and it is far better for me to accept the limitations of my own nature, just as Jessie does, remain committed to the truth were it is knowable, and get on with it. Universe

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