November 16, 2007

• Death is never the answer

  One of my favorite exchanges in any story is this one:
  ————-
  Goliath: No! Killing her won’t solve anything. Death never does.
  Phoebe: He’s right, MacBeth.
  Selene: Duncan was afraid that your father would make you king.
  Luna: Did your father’s death stop you from becoming king?
  MacBeth: No!
  Selene: You wanted revenge for your father. Did Gillecomgain’s death settle that score?
  MacBeth: No.
  Phoebe: Did your own death save your son Luoch from Canmore?
  MacBeth: No.
  Goliath: Death is never the answer. Life is.
  —————-

  This is from the masterpiece of animation Gargoyles and is one of the most profound scenes in the entire series. The voice acting here is superb. You hear MacBeth’s voice change with each “no” as realization dawns on him of the truth of his entire life of attempting to use ‘death’ to solve his problems, even his own. And that last defeated ‘no’ is filled with all the pain and regret that only a lifetime of sorrow can bring.

  Goliath’s message is a powerful one. Death really doesn’t solve any problems. It usually exacerbates them. This isn’t even a hard thing to see theoretically for all that we so often forget it. Death limits possibilities. Life enables them. How can problems be solved if you limit the tools you can use the solve them?

  I think about this message when I think about the concept of suicide. I think we sometimes come to think that by killing ourselves we can cause something to happen. We can fix something or save someone or win an argument or make someone acknowledge us or miss us or whatever. It just doesn’t work that way. Although there’s a chance your death will have an impact on people, it won’t be one you can predict or control. People don’t react in rational predictable patterns to death and grief. It isn’t likely that someone would change their mind about something because somebody died. If anything in their anger and sorrow they would reject it all the more. Similary if we are hoping that others will understand us better after we are gone we are surely delusional since the people we know will just find our decision to end our lives so wholly irrational and incomprehensible that we will become all the more the mystery to them.

  So the only remaining reason why most people seem to contemplate their own end is because they are afraid that they don’t matter and might as well not exist because nobody cares about them or because they are so insignificant. Again the ‘death is never the answer’ message makes sense here. If you die, you won’t suddenly start to matter more. Nobody will care about you any more or miss you any more. But if you live, you can change that. You can forge connections and create lasting impressions that make you matter to the lives of others. You can become significant only by being alive. Death doesn’t get you anywhere.

  But even more important than that, we are virtually always always wrong when we think that we are insignificant.  There are always a lot more people who we have influenced and who would be deeply effected and hurt by our death than we think. Human beings are social entities and we can’t help but influence each other greatly. Even the most severe recluse will almost certainly find themselves deeply missed by someone, and most of the people who contemplate suicide are far from that. Indeed, it’s the opposite. Usually it is the people who are deeply connected to a lot of people who can be hurt enough to consider the prospect. They just don’t realize the depth of their own significance.

  So what we really need is a suicide test chamber. It would work like this. You have this sort of virtual reality world into which anyone contemplating suicide can go in and create their own death as a sort of trial run. Then they could watch from a distance and see exactly what happens. They’d see how deeply they are missed. Moreover, they’d see how their death causes real harm to real people. And they’d see all the opportunities that they could have intervened in to help people but can’t because they aren’t alive to do it.  I really believe that most of the people who would consider killing themselves would reconsider after having had this experience. Better, I think they would change the way they lead their lives knowing that there are people out there worth living for.

  Again, instead of death, its life and knowledge and understanding and possibilities. That’s what people need. That’s how save the world and ourselves.

  By the way, the rest of that scene in gargoyles was also pretty poignant:

  —–
  

  Xanatos: Normally, I’d be fascinated by all this. But I need that access code to save my city.

  Demona: I will have vengeance for the betrayal of my clan, vengeance for my pain. Selene: But who betrayed your clan? Luna: And who caused this pain? Demona: The Vikings destroyed my clan. Selene: Who betrayed the castle to the Vikings? Demona: The Hunter hunted us down. Phoebe: Who created the Hunter? Demona: Canmore destroyed the last of us. Selene: Who betrayed MacBeth to Canmore? Goliath: Your thirst for vengeance has only created more sorrow.

  Demona: The access code is alone.

  Demona: You tricked me! You had me under a spell! None of this was my fault. It was the humans, always the humans!

  ——————-

  MacBeth and Demona such a pair. Both haunted by loneliness for all those years. MacBeth’s leads him to ever seek death as a means of salvation ever ignorant of the harm it causes. Demona’s always leading her to seek revenge similarly unawares of the darkness hurt pursuit of vengeance unleashes.

  They are a sad pair but there is a little of them both in all of us I think. When we are hurt it is natural to want to lash out and hurt in return, to get our vengeance. When we are in sorrow, we often try extreme methods to try and remove our sadness.  It never works though. We just have to suffer through it, get past it and learn and live to fight another day.

  • 1:50 am
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