The subject of death is taboo. We feel, perhaps only subconsciously, that to be in contact with death in any way, even indirectly, somehow confronts us with the prospect of our own deaths, draws our own deaths closer and makes them more real and thinkable.
Interpretation
Discussing death is often avoided due to its unsettling nature and the reflection it incites on our own mortality.
Raymond Moody's quote highlights society's discomfort with the topic of death, suggesting that this taboo is rooted in a subconscious fear of facing our own mortality. The idea is that even indirect engagement with the concept of death can serve as a stark reminder of our inevitable end, making it a challenging subject to approach.
In practice
In a conversation about life and its purpose, this quote can serve as a profound reflection on our understanding of mortality.
People into hard sciences, neurophysiology, often ignore a core philosophical question: 'What is the relationship between our unique, inner experience of conscious awareness and material substance?' The answer is: We don't know, and some people are so terrified to say, 'I don't know.'
I have absolutely no fear of death. From my near-death research and my personal experiences, death is, in my judgment, simply a transition into another kind of reality.
No doubt many people have the feeling that to talk about death at all is, in effect, to conjure it up mentally, to bring it closer in such a way that one has to face up to the inevitability of one's own eventual demise. So, to spare ourselves this psychological trauma, we decide just to try to avoid the topic as much as possible.
If you withdraw into yourself, you run the risk of becoming egocentric. And stagnant water becomes putrid.
Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that you toast in champagne. On the contrary, it's hard graft and a long-distance run, all alone, very exhausting. Alone in a dreary room, alone in the dock before the judges, and alone to make up your mind, before yourself and before the judgement of others. At the end of every freedom there is a sentence, which is why freedom is too heavy to bear.
And perhaps beyond those shrouded swells another man did walk with another child on the dead gray sands. Slept but a sea apart on another beach among the bitter ashes of the world or stood in their rags lost to the same indifferent sun.
Normality is a fine ideal for those who have no imagination.
We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.
If nothing were substituted for everything, it would still be too much and too little.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.