Death, Dying and the Afterlife: Has the Idea of What It's like to Be Dead Become an Urban Legend?

Although death is a big part of life, not much is known about it. If "knowledge" is limited to what we have experienced, rather than including what we believe for various reasons, some would say nothing, really, is known about what it's like to be dead. Yet, even though it involves things about which we know nothing, we find ourselves having to deal with death, dying, and ideas about the afterlife as something. Often, people even make decisions about life and death (their own and others') based on what they believe that "something" is. So, hat tip to Socrates, for the sake of "an examined life," it's worth asking this question: has the idea of what it's like to be dead become an urban legend?

"He's in a better place"

According to Wikipedia, an urban legend is "a form of modern folklore consisting of stories thought to be factual by those circulating them." One of the most common stories that circulates about the afterlife is embodied in this response to death: "At least he's in a better place." Is he? If so, how do we know that? Suddenly many more questions are raised. In How Urban Legends Work, Tom Harris writes:

Generally speaking, an urban legend is any modern, fictional story, told as truth, that reaches a wide audience by being passed from person to person. Urban legends are often false, but not always. A few turn out to be largely true, and a lot of them were inspired by an actual event, but evolved into something different in their passage from person to person.

People who attend a lot of funerals --- that would be preachers --- observe that one of the most commonly stated reactions to the death of a friend or family member is some version of "He's in a better place." What is the basis for that conclusion?

The idea that death is a gateway to "a better place," and that everyone who dies (or least everyone we know who dies) passes through death to "a better place," seems to have become part of our modern folklore. That doesn't mean it's false. But it also doesn't mean it's true. It just means that the idea of death as a gateway for everybody to reach "a better place" is worth exploring.

Exploring the idea of the afterlife

Historically, the major ideas about the afterlife came from the world's monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. (Monotheism means "based on one God, not on many gods.") The afterlife, and even whether it exists as "life" or as "existence," "energy" or as some sort of nothingness --- for example, obliteration --- also often is a subject for popular discussion.

The religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, provide concepts of the afterlife that include versions of "Heaven" and "Hell." Heaven usually is a pretty popular concept; Hell, not so much. But, in popular culture, the afterlife always has been treated as a blank slate. A poster at Paranormal Forums, for example, Neptunesdream, sums up the fundamental approach that characterizes much of how people think and talk about the afterlife as an individual's blank slate.

At Psychics' Paranormal Forums, Neptunesdream writes (edited for typos): "the 'afterlife' (whatever that means, I would rather say, the bodiless life or the density-free life, etc.) becomes what you believe it to be . . . Or what you need it to be."

David Woodward, at Door of Hope, sees a similar approach at work in the ubiquity of the "He's in a better place" reaction to death. Most people, Woodward says, "would like to believe that dead people go to a better place."

The significance of the afterlife throughout history

The basic driving force behind people's desire to somehow get their minds around what happens after death is wrapped up in deep issues of human significance.

In reviewing the history of ideas about the afterlife, Andy Rau states: "If there's one constant throughout almost every human culture and religion that's ever existed, it's a sense that there's more to human existence than what we do and experience during the everyday humdrum of our lives. A suspicion that death isn't the end, but just a step towards . . . something else."

Even when people say the afterlife consists of "nothingness," they often continue to believe there is some correlation between how people act while alive and their future state. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, although some people don't want to endorse or accept a literal "life after death," they still gravitate toward ideas of heaven and hell because they want to "retain the deep personal significance of our choices."

In other words, it seems innate for humans to want it to matter, in some just and personally consequential way, whether people choose good or evil in their life.

An afterlife that is "nothingness"?

For some people, an innate human drive to "retain the deep personal significance of our choices" makes it difficult to believe in an afterlife that is a state of "nothingness." The idea of "becoming nothing" also is rejected on physical grounds by some Buddhists, for example. Similarly, the idea of "becoming nothing" is rejected by quantum physics. (I'll save a discussion of the "information paradox" and black holes for another day!)

Thich Nhat Hanh, in Nirvanna in Buddhism is The End of All Suffering, writes that the idea of becoming "nothing" cannot apply to reality. He explains that when we see a cloud go away, that does not mean the cloud has become "nothing." In Hanh's view, "it's impossible for a cloud to die. A cloud can become rain, snow or ice, but a cloud cannot become nothing."

Likewise, according to Hanh, a "someone" does not become "no one" after the process of dying is complete. Hanh states that death is a transformation and a continuation, but not a gateway to "nothingness."

A quote that is relevant to Hanh's point is circulating on the internet without attribution. It is: "We are not humans having a spiritual experience, but spirits having a human experience."

If the afterlife is not nothing, then it's something

Perhaps you have had the unfortunate experience of hearing someone say, "Well, at least he's in a better place," and, rightly or wrongly, this thought popped into your head: "If there is a God, then no. That person is not in a better place."

What this illustrates, of course, is not that people have the ability to know an individual's final state or final destiny. Rather, this experience illustrates that, when push comes to shove, people, deep down, are not naturally prepared to accept that there is no punishment, or at least some kind of consequence, linked to a person's bad behavior while alive.

Treating death as an urban legend

The words "he's in a better place" often are offered and understood as sincere words of sympathy and comfort for the loss felt by the living. Such words may even be extended as an act of compassion or simple politeness. In other words, sometimes "he's in a better place" may serve a kindly social function, rather than represent a statement of "truth." Still, it seems "an examined life" requires some examination --- beyond possibly and unwittingly buying in to an urban legend --- of death and what it may be like to be dead. The philosophical issue, then, comes in when those words, "he's in a better place," begin to reflect a view that actually equates death with "a better place."

Such an equation raises many, many questions --- if a person is inclined to explore them. Probably the most philosophically pressing question, as well as the one which raises the most follow-on questions, is this: if death is "a better place," is it "a better place" for everyone? Yes. No. Either way, many more questions appear. Which is good, if one is inclined to take the journey of living an "examined life."

The concept of death that is commonplace today, that for (just about) everybody death is a "better place," may be true or it may be an urban legend ---"a form of modern folklore consisting of stories thought to be factual by those circulating them." Either way, death, because it has to do with life, is a pretty important topic to figure out.

Sources:

David Woodward, "Dead People Go to a Better Place," Door of Hope.

Andy Rau, "The Afterlife: What happens when we die?," Gospel.

Thich Nhat Hanh, "Nirvana in Buddhism is The End of All Suffering," Spiritual Now.

Tom Harris, "How Urban Legends Work," How Stuff Works.

Neptunesdream, "Heaven/Hell, Utopian Society? What does the afterlife look like?," Paranormal Forums, Psychics.

"Heaven and Hell," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

"Socrates: Philosophical Life," Philosophy Pages.