Timor Mortis Conturbat Me

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks of 2001 I was asked to take part in a panel discussion about them at St. John's-Kilmarnock School in Breslau. This place is obviously designed to teach children of wealthy families so they can move forward to take their place as elite members of the community. As such, the people organizing the event were able to find a really broad mix of important people to talk about the subject. There was a protestant minister, a catholic priest, a cabinet minister, someone giving the Israeli perspective, several others I've forgotten---and even me to give the strange, "odd man out" viewpoint.

Sitting on that stage with a lot of people who represented "conventional wisdom", watching teenage students in the audience who were obviously quite conscious that they were being groomed to become future leaders; I was intrigued, then surprised, and, finally horrified by what the other members of the panel discussion were saying. They all harped on a single theme: how awful, horrible, unprecedented, and, totally unexpected the attacks had been. I remember the cabinet minister going on and on about how she was overcome with waves of violent emotion as she watched the attacks.

In effect, everyone else on that stage with me was doing their best to whip the audience into an emotional panic. 

From Fox television's "The Simpsons"

Used under the "Fair Use" copyright provision

Luckily, I had brought my well-worn translation of Dao De Jing, so I opened it up to chapter five and quoted from it: 

1. Heaven and earth are not humane (jen), 

They treat the ten thousand beings as straw dogs (ch'u kou).

The sage is not humane (jen),

He treats the hundred families as straw dogs (ch' kou).

(Ellen Chen trans.)

I explained to the students that "heaven and earth" are the way the ancient Chinese described the laws and forces that govern the universe, "straw dogs" are cheap ritual offerings that are used once and discarded, and, that "the hundred families" are all the individuals in the human race. In effect, that the universe is totally unconcerned with the suffering of individuals, and, that wise people (ie: "the sage") understand this fact and act accordingly. 

I went on to talk about how they should think about this insight. First, I said that every single person in the room was going to die. (You could have heard a pin drop. I don't think that anyone had ever told any of these teens this obvious fact.) I also said that they shouldn't pay attention to the mere fact that 3,000 people died on 9/11 without putting that number into a context. I didn't have the numbers at hand, but I told them to remember that 3,000 deaths would have been considered a very slow day in WW2. (A conservative estimate places the deaths then at 55 million, over 5 years equals over 30,000/day.) I also might have pointed out that more people die from car crashes every year (37,500 in the USA---over 100/day and 2,000 under 16), but I don't remember for sure.

I then said that I was mentioning this fact because it was tremendously important to not get too emotional when something like this happens. That's because if you act out of fear or anger the possibility arises that you will support policies that would involve flailing around like a wounded bear that would make things much, much worse. I said that if people get emotionally freaked out, they could support policies that will result in the death of innocent people in far, far greater numbers as "collateral damage" of an aggressive foreign policy. (I seem to recall the cabinet minister turning and looking at me when I said that---but memory plays tricks.)

Looking back since then it's pretty obvious that my most dire predictions have come true. America flailed around like a wounded bear, and dragged a lot of its allies with them. (All praise to Jean Chretien for refusing to attack Iraq.) Many, many more people have died from "collateral damage" in the "war on terror" than on 9/11 (a "credible" estimate" of 461,000 in Iraq alone) but they weren't white, and, it was "accidental"---so who cares?

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I suspect most readers haven't a clue about what the title of this op-ed means. It's medieval Latin for "the fear of death disturbs me", primarily a reference to the following line in a church ritual: 

Peccantem me quotidie, et non poenitentem, timor mortis conturbat me. Quia in inferno nulla est redemptio, miserere mei, Deus, et salva me.

Sinning daily, and not repenting, the fear of death disturbs me. For there is no redemption in Hell, have mercy on me, o God, and save me.

I came across the line when I studied English literature during the first year of my undergrad degree. It was a line that was used repeatedly in medieval Scottish and English literature. In effect, it was a meme---much like the angry cat one that people trade around today. 

Does copyright apply to memes?
If so, fair use, from this website devoted to them.

Like any other meme, this one was used to spread a fragment of culture among people, namely, that we should think about death. This is similar to the quote from the Dao De Jing that I tossed out at St. John's-Kilmarnock. Our days are numbered and the universe is profoundly indifferent to our mortality. The important point that people used to remember, however, was that this meant that we should always try to live our lives knowing that the next thing you do could be the last thing that you can do. Moreover, that action could well be what we are remembered for and what defines our brief life on earth.

This was considered a very important idea through much of human history and was continued through the Renaissance with the use of another meme: the "memento mori" (ie:  "remember you will die".) What this often consisted of was the inclusion of a human skull in the pieces of art. 

"Young man with a skull", Frans Hals, 1626.
National Gallery, London.
Image c/o Wiki Commons

The memento mori even went further than art. Often educated people would have a skull on their desk, in their studio, or, workshop to remind themselves that they were going to die and that they should live each day as if it was their last.

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The emotion that I felt the most after that school assembly was sadness that the people who should have felt obligated to help these young teens control their fear and anger instead helped whip them up into a greater sense of emotional outrage. I'm afraid that this is what politics has come to in this day-and-age. Even if you don't think it's a good idea to push people to panic, I suspect many politicians believe that they have to at least pay lip service to people's "pain" in order to keep their votes. Unfortunately, there are lots of folks---we call them "populists"---who have no qualms at all about stoking people's anger and/or fear. 

As in so many things, the great author George Orwell was able to articulate this stream in politics. In his novel about totalitarianism, 1984, he described a tactic that the government used to keep the citizens whipped up into a frenzy: the "two minutes of hate".  It was specifically designed to make sure that people don't think but instead feel.

Just to give you a feel for what I'm talking about, take the time to look at these two video clips. The first is from a movie adaptation of Orwell's novel where the two minutes of hate are shown.

 

Next, here's the same clip that has been used to create a video "mashup"---in case the  obvious takeaway from this op-ed isn't clear enough.  ;-)

Emotions are important parts of being a human being. But they need to be tempered by reason. And politicians who genuinely care about the country shouldn't be playing to emotions in order to gain power. And voters should be extremely careful to recognize when they are being "played" by sleazy leaders who are trying manipulate them. One way of doing this that has worked for pretty much all of human history has been for people to remember their own mortality so they can think about how future generations will view their actions.

"The Dance of Death" from the National Gallery of Slovenia
image c/o Wiki Commons