Previously we discussed how accepting our own historical nature can help us understand that others are products of forces they can’t entirely control, just like we are. As Thanatists, however, our grounds for understanding and empathy don’t end there. What we also know, is that for each of us, our greatest project–the building up of ourselves–will someday come to an end that only we shall face.
Some faiths, like Buddhism, also accept that we shall one day die, but they will tell you that there is nothing inherently tragic about it. Rather, it’s the holding onto our notion of immortality or an “I” at all that causes us to suffer. As indebted to these teachings Thanatism is, on this point, we shall disagree. Our minds, our hopes, and our destinies–that which we build up throughout our lifetimes–are greater than than bodies from which they come. They are sacred and long for immortality. Our rage when they are taken away from us or those we love is not an arbitrary or broken reaction. It is the fully just and righteous rage of the immortal fighting against its mortality.
As such, it is right to mourn this loss. It is our deeply human right to reject and flee from this unfair juxtaposition of the eternal and the unfathomably trivial. Understanding this gives us yet another, and perhaps the most uniquely Thanatist, common cause with those who surround us–we are all struggling through an existence that is, at some deep level, inherently unfair. Accepting this tragedy as a tragedy, helps us not only to better understand our own misguided attempts to hide from it, but also to empathize with the defenses that others have built up to do the same. Often these defenses are at the root of the hurtful acts of others. They reject us to protect themselves. They lash out because our words expose that which they fear. They treat us unfairly because they feel defenseless in this world and so act selfishly to protect that little which they have.
This world is indifferent to our survival or happiness. The only surety it offers is that at some point it will eliminate each and every one of us. As such, we must suffer with each other and collectively mourn the tragedy of human life on this earth. Rather than rejecting others because of their frailty, we must celebrate that we have become strong. We must use this strength of the real to resist being hurt and rather turn that hurt into a compassion that transforms us into agents that heal.
We, as humans, should all marvel at each other. We should marvel at the apes who have developed the ability to see our own inevitable end, and yet still, through the creation of fantastic myths, both global and personal, manage to carry on with our day-to-day duties as we march toward our end. We all participate in this collective myth making, and it is as close as we shall come in this life to a miracle that, in spite of what we know about this world and ourselves, together, we find a way to endure.