Thai Lite

I recently wrote a column praising the benefits of old age, so I thought I'd do the same for death. The title of this page is "Alternatives", right? Well, death is the ultimate alternative. No matter what choices you may face in life, death is always an option.

Death has received a very bad press. Everybody fears it, nobody has a good word to say about it, and most people don't even want to think about it. Fairness requires that somebody should point out the good points of this much-maligned condition.

I believe that death can significantly impact your life.  Indeed, I can think of no better way to spoil your day.  Here you are, drinking your morning coffee and eating your toast and enjoying the witty musings of S Tsow in Weekend, when wham! Death pounces and crushes you like a bug. That can be a bummer, especially if it happens before you've had a chance to read the comics page and see what Dilbert and Poncho have been up to.

Death is a tricky topic to write about, because none of us have been there yet - at least, not in our lifetime.  What's it like? We don't know, but it seems a fair bet to say that it's probably one big long sleep. We get a foretaste of it every night. Nobody is afraid of sleep. Most of us enjoy it. I certainly do. I sleep all the time. I am sleeping as I write this. (You can probably tell.) So why do we fear death?

Well, it's because death, so far as we know, lasts forever. We don't fear sleep because we know we'll wake up.  We don't wake up from death. I wouldn't mind being dead for a few days, or even a few weeks. It would be a nice vacation. But to keep me dead for all eternity seems an unreasonable imposition on my time.

Many people believe in an afterlife, but empirically verifiable evidence of such a state is hard to come by. The afterlife taught by some religions sounds idyllic - an eternal frolic in the gardens of paradise - but unfortunately it goes on forever. Most people would be bored silly after two weeks.

The idea of reincarnation, too, is a dreary prospect. If you remembered the lessons you'd learned in this life so that you could do better in the next life, there might be some chance of making progress. But you don't. You forget everything and have to start all over again from scratch. The whole business is pointless, especially because it's an unending cycle.

The idea of death as an eternal sleep makes sense, and it has advantages that nobody thinks of. You don't have to get up in the morning. You don't have to shave. You don't have to go to work. You don't even have to mow the lawn. It's true that you don't get to enjoy the witty musings of S Tsow in Weekend, but you're dead, so you don't need them. (Some cynics will sneer that you don't need them even when you're alive, but I think we may safely attribute such misanthropy to the churlish pettiness of diseased minds.)

The main advantage of being dead is that you don't need anything. Some people might want to phone out for a pizza, but hey. You're dead. You don't have a mouth, you don't have a stomach. What would you do with a pizza?  There would also be the awkwardness of paying the deliveryman, because you don't have a wallet, either.

Some people might want to see a movie.  With what eyeballs, pray?  They might want to listen to music. With what ears? You don't have a body, so you can't do anything. You don't have a brain, so you can't WANT to do anything. It's an ideal setup.

In fact, death is such a splendid condition that I can't understand why everybody isn't eager to embrace it immediately.

Aside from the personal advantages, there's an altruistic motivation. The planet is overpopulated; there are too many of us.

We'd be doing the rest of our species a favour by selflessly sacrificing ourselves and getting out of the way. Nowadays it's fashionable to reduce our carbon footprints. We can eliminate them completely if we stop existing. You first.

S Tsow  

S Tsow confesses that he'll probably want to phone out for a pizza even after he's dead. You can scold him for this inconsistency at stsow@yahoo.com.