Rant 066 / iPod Middle East Edition: iRaq

All these deaths in our movies, TV shows, music and books, all these unnecessary mindless violence, do the audience understand the significance of Death. To them, does Death only mean the departure of a person from our world?

Isn't there more to Death than this?

I do not believe in the afterlife. Neither should I. If the Afterlife is so damn good like some religions describe it as, why does no one rush towards it? Why don't everyone just die? Why do we have this natural tendency to avoid Death? Why do we fear, hate or even think about Death?

If the Afterlife is as good as some think it is, why is it that the same people also fear Death?

You cannot explain it as fearing the unknown, since it is already "known" for milleniums.

You cannot explain it as fearing change, since you have to be expecting this day from the time you learnt about Death.

And if the Afterlife is as bad as some claim it to be, let us not think about that for now.

Therefore, let us assume there is no Afterlife in the following monologue.


Death must be the most permanent concept in this world. It is the only subject in which the usage of "never" is always completely true. Probabilities in any other matters can only reach infinitesimally small degrees, but in death, things hit the absolute 0%.

Even "impossible" imaginary events have the incredibly small chance of happening like, say, your father flies to Tibet tomorrow and swears into monkhood for the rest of his life. After 15 years of celibacy he decides to slip to China for a whore or two. What's the chance of this? Not 0%, just negligible.

But in death, it can only be 0%. There is 0% probability that he will be in his couch reading from then on. There is 0% probability that she will be cooking in the kitchen. Etc.

Death is permanent. Things disappear forever. Even diamonds, as "forever" as they are claimed to be, cannot outlast the consequences of Death.

With Death, there is not that little voice in your mind that tells you that it is still possible, though it is almost not. There is not that minuscule possibility that a miracle may happen.

There is only that cold emptiness left in that void that was once occupied by the person. The horrifying permanence of the departure. The distressing knowledge that from then on, no one will ever fit into that space quite as well as that person did.

For a living person closely related to the dead, it must be as if a piece of his/her soul was forcibly ripped off, leaving the insides exposed to the freezing winds of the aftermath.

But to Live, one must accept Death. In life, there is no Reset, no re-Load after the Game Over screen, no respawn, no re-join the game in the next round, and no Invulnerability cheat. There is no Save, no Pause, no Rewind, no Replay, and no Backup copy.

Every step is forever, no matter how you convince yourself otherwise. Every death is a tragedy, no matter how you dismiss it as a trivial matter. Every funeral, is for real.

In WW I, Serbia lost 58% of its male population, or a more than a quarter of all Serbs.


Now, how can people dismiss a war as trivial, when everyone knows the true motivation behind the war is greed? How can no one pity the people? How can no one feel for the living? No, not the dead. Dead is dead. Only the living who mourn the dead deserves sympathy.

All wars are horrible, inhumane, obscene, natural.

This is what I mean by Death must be accepted, to Live. Death must be accepted, no matter which facet of it you happen to think of.

Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes Viet Cong Captain Nguyen Van Lem: February 1, 1968. This Associated Press photograph, "General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon," won a 1969 Pulitzer prize for its photographer Eddie Adams. Film also exists of this event, but owing to the more graphic nature of the film, the photograph is more widely known.

Got Death?

PS this photo will be removed if anyone raises any objections.