I’ve just been listening to Wajahat Ali on Substack, talking about Lindsay Graham. “Waj”, as he likes to be called digresses into something I know something about — or think I do, anyway — death.

Let’s start with some facts. To my knowledge, I’ve never been dead. What it looks like beyond death, I have no factual knowledge of. But my faith says that, at the end of life, you meet your Maker. At this point, theologians posit three possible options: Heaven, where good people go for eternal joy; Hell, where bad people go for eternal torment; and non-existence. The last one is from theologians who want justice for bad deeds, but can’t believe in a God that punishes, and certainly not for ever, if sins were limited to a lifetime. In that case, non-existence is merciful judgement.

Most liberals I know, myself included, don’t spend a lot of time worrying about eternity one way or the other. We want to do the best we can in the life we have because a) it makes life better and b) it pleases God. We don’t worry about it any more than most human beings. We don’t generally go headlong into it. We know it happens. We know there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s new and scary, probably, because it’s unknown, but we believe we’ll be okay. Since we’ll be okay, we don’t waste a lot of time thinking about it.

What Waj said was something I’ve suspected but didn’t know, per se. Ultra-Rich people who do horrible things worry about it all the time. They invest in not dying — as though they could stop it from happening. They want to not die, they want to live forever, not in people’s hearts but in reality.

Reality is something they are not good at, so — as a byproduct of their fear— they make everyone else’s reality harder to live in. That mentality has the worst possible outcome for everyone involved. The rich sinner worries about dying and the not-rich, generally not-sinning (another theological argument for another time) have their lives ruined by the Big Bad folks.

Years ago, Ernst Becker won a Pulitzer Prize I think for linking our fight to “always be young and beautiful “ to why the world is miserable in his book, “The Denial of Death”.

I’ve always assumed he was right. It certainly explains a lot. Waj’s comments just confirm my view. The question is, of course, if everyone does this, why is this select bunch so afraid of it? Is it simple non-existence they fear or is it the judgement that might come with it? Do they just like cheating or being different or not having basic laws apply to them? Do they really like being so weird? Or are they just denying their own existential loneliness, being part of such a small cohort of rich people.

Because death is a natural thing, do they hate nature? Trees die, there are seasons in nature. Why would they think they wouldn’t have seasons of their own?

If, as Buddhists believe, “all life is suffering” are they not alive? There is no logic that makes sense of the 1%’s position on death, just as there is no moral logic in how they treat the living.

It is their delusion and yet we somehow live in it. What if we act as though it’s our lives? What if we act as if we are sane. What if we stop chasing their dreams. What if we outlaw their insanity and expect them to join the human race, and die like the rest of us?

What if they had to confront their own endings and use whatever spiritual tools they had to cope with it? This doesn’t mean kill them, it means welcome them back to human community and let them cope as best they can.

Right now, there are a whole lot of people that I would say should get use to the heat in eternity. As death draws near for them, they should probably consider that, just in case this there is some type of justice after this.

Peace,

John