Do you know the names of your great-grandparents? I don't. I never saw them. I never think about them.
I'm sure that they took their lives seriously when they lived. But it took just three generations to wipe their names off the world. Such is the absurd humour of death.
You may say that they weren't important enough to be remembered. Great point. It reveals that there is a transactional component to legacy. Every death is therefore not equally significant. Some deaths matter more than others, and so some lives matter more than others.
The question regarding how we measure the value of life is a tricky one. My explanation is that there is no objective way. The ones we may call objective (for instance, on the basis of income or contribution to society) are just widely agreed subjective opinions of the masses.
In simple words, there are two ways we value life:
Either way, the value is completely perceptual. And the perception needn't be logical.
Here is a thought exercise: If you're an Indian (or even if not), you must know Shahrukh Khan. But how many of you know about Abhijeet Banerjee, the recent Nobel Prize winner in economic sciences for his work on poverty?
God forbid if either of them dies, the nation will demand a recurring holiday for the former and won't even know that the latter had died.
But think logically: who is more important for society? Whose work is more valuable for the consensus? You already know the answer. Yet, the perceived value in the eyes of the public says otherwise.
“A terrorist group has taken a few hostages in a foreign country.”
What if I tell you this? You might get angry, sad, or empathetic, yet you'll forget it as soon as you go about your day.
Now the same scenario, but the hostages are your family members. Now you no longer forget. Now your skin is in the game. Now you care.
Here I make my first thesis: value is completely subjective.
Absolutely not. That's my second point. The death of a hero is significant, but the death of a villain is equally significant—but in the opposite direction. You can be a bad guy and still benefit from the same marketing, just in the opposite way.
Here is what science says: Right after you die, the vital functions stop. The heart stops beating, breathing stops, and brain activity halts. Two to six hours in, your muscles stiffen. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours in, you start to decompose.
But what do these explain? Nothing. Are these the things that we want to know? No.
What we want to know is the reaction of people when we die. Especially those that we so desperately obsess over. Will they remember or will they forget?
Hilariously, we'll all agree that we don't want our loved ones hurt. We say that we genuinely want them to move on if we die. But how true is that?
There is a strong desire (often guilty, hence not admitted) to be the cause of one's tears and sorrow if that's the price of missing you.
Nobody wants their spouse to remarry after their death, no matter how reasonable it seems to do so. Possession is a guilty pleasure.
We react differently to different people's deaths because of perceived value. And so, in the eyes of important people, we want to be that person whose perceived value is the most among all.
Psychology says that it's individualistic. But let's take an average of six months. My estimates are even less. I think for most, it takes just a few weeks to stop grieving physiologically. Eventually, the heavy heart becomes lighter. Flashbacks may remain, but they subsequently become less painful.
Of course, there are exceptions, but I'll recommend you not to assume yourself to be one of them. Because if you do, and by chance there is an afterlife, probability says that you'll be disappointed.
Plenty of people work all their lives to leave a legacy behind.
Firstly, the people who are remembered—what do they gain from it? If nothing, then what's the point?
I think this desire for a legacy is more of an unconscious rebellion towards death. People want to be remembered to answer the question, “If death overpowers us all, what's the point of living?”—in an attempt to justify the meaninglessness of life.
Any reasonable person understands that death is common to all. It is bound to happen. Yet most people never accept it. Why?
Firstly, it may be the inherent mystery of death. Everybody dies, but nobody who is alive knows what it's like to die. We hate uncertainty. Secondly, from an evolutionary perspective, we are hardwired for survival.
But then, what's the explanation for suicide? If evolution has imprinted such a hardwired drive for survival, what leads some people to end their lives?
This implies that there must be a threshold of suffering for each individual beyond which he declares life to be unbearable and hence not worth living.
This also implies that for each individual, life has a perceived value that is only reasonable until they don't cross their threshold of suffering.
“We are living and so there must be a good reason for that, otherwise we all have ended ourselves by now.”
That's a ridiculous argument because you may just be ignorant.
If you're short, you may not feel insecure among short people. But that doesn't mean you're confident. It only means that you have not been made insecure.
Similarly, when you were a child, adult problems didn't make sense. Now they do. This is simply because you have been made conscious of it.
If you have never questioned the meaninglessness of life, it's possible that you were never made conscious of it either, which is why you have never contemplated whether life is worth living or not.
If you do contemplate, you'll eventually arrive at the question: If death overpowers us all, what’s the point of living?
My proposed answer is: That death does not make life meaningless—it is the thing that gives life meaning.
The very reason that things perish and they won't be around anymore makes us want to cherish them.
A flaw in this argument is the assumption that one cares about the urgency. One simply might not—which makes life still meaningless to him. In which case, the second reason to live is:
There exist some things in life that have so much perceived value that they overpower the cynicism of life. In simple words, some things just make life worth living.
The “some things” are different for everybody. For some, it's their ambitions; for some, their parents; for some, their wife or children. For a psychopath, it's their narcissism.
The thesis here is: one can only live for so long for one's own self. After a point, one needs a higher goal to care about and justify living.
“If we know exactly when we will die, would we act the same?”
My answer is no. We won't act the same at all. Here is why:
For those to whom life matters not so much, they'll find a sense of relief. Uncertainty is exhausting. Inability to estimate how long their pain will last is a major reason for their hatred towards life. But a fixed death date removes that fog. Suddenly, the end is scheduled. The suffering has a timer. And for some, that knowledge is oddly comforting.
For those to whom life matters more than anything else, It'll first be a big hit of anxiety. But the anxiety will eventually fade as they realise that they can't afford to spend the rest of their brief life stressing over its inevitable end. That'll bring a shift in priorities to only the things that matter the most.
If we knew, we'd bring an urgency, shift our priorities, and live accordingly. So even though you don't know, live like you do.
Thanks for reading