Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Rest in Peace
There is a big worldwide campaign against so-called pseudoscience. Pseudoscience acts in an analogous manner to hypocrisy as defined by La Rochefoucauld; that is, it is stupidity which pays tribute to intelligence. In fact, it only survives due to that tribute payment. Nobody would buy naked stupidity -- one without that veneer of wisdom. Nobody? Think again.
Religion has never paid any tribute to reason. And it survives quite well. In fact, we seldom see campaigns against religion. The consensus is that it's better to respect it.
Thus, we live this contradiction: enormous noise because of badly done science which attempts to seduce reason, but complete silence before utterly absurd notions which openly mock reason. I think the reason behind this is the death taboo.
Death is an unpleasant phenomenon. I think no one would disagree about it, but the tacit assumption is that it is unpleasant for others. For the dead, how to know it? Sure, we can infer something about the process preceding it, which is usually unpleasant. In that broader sense, it is indeed unpleasant to all.
One of the consequences of this unease with death is that no one talks about it. The ultimate pest would be someone who, during a session of condolences, interjected, each time someone said "May God keep his soul", his opinion that "God does not exist."
I've always held pests in high account, though, to be honest, I've never met one. People are very well behaved. The problem is that they accumulate certain doubts and opinions in their minds which, with time, weigh more and more...
For example, most religious people, ones who believe in eternal life, express their homage to someone who has died with the words "Rest in peace". But what's the meaning of that? Don't they believe in a renewal after death? A starting over? Then, why "rest in peace"? It's as if they were admitting, in a disguised manner, that they don't really believe any of that. Resting is just an euphemism for dying, disappearing. And peace is another euphemism -- for nothingness, absolute quiet.
Think about it: what does an "eternal rest" mean? It mustn't be very efficient, because tiredness apparently never ends, always needing further repose. It's not my idea of paradise.
