 
                         20060123.03

     I think death must remain a great mystery.  Those who
have died cannot tell us what it is like because they cannot
talk, and those who are living cannot tell us what it is like
because they have not experienced it.  As for myself, I am
certain that I will never, to use the Biblical phrase "see
death", because when I am dead, I will not know that I am
dead; and so long as I am able to anticipate or to fear
death, it is self-evident that I am still alive.  Only that
which I experience is real for me.  To experience my death I
have to be alive.  Therefore, since I cannot experience my
death, it is incontrovertible that my death cannot be real
for me.  It is (subjectively) impossible that I should die,
and Kierkegaard assures me that subjectivity is the truth. 
For me, it's immortality on the cheap, no tithes or other
church contributions are required, no priest, no rabbi, no
preacher, no pastor, no confessions of sins or of faith. I
don't even need to bother Jesus or God about it; they must
have more important matters to attend to.  All that I need
for immortality is logic or reason, and maybe not even very
much of that.  In fact, all it takes to be immortal is a
little common sense.

     Now as for mortal matters, I can readily extrapolate
from your exegesis of Kipling's "Take Up the White Man's
Burden."  I hear you explaining to your students the pros and
cons of "nation building."  I sense your students' discomfort
as you destabilize their Kiwanis Club geopolitics, letting
them in on Kipling's understanding that an empire is a pain
in the neck.  I doubt, however, that his poem was responsible
for its dismantling.  I rather suspect that it made its
readers feel just a little bit better, and even more self-
righteous about their manifest destiny than they were
already.

     I am handicapped by ignorance.  I am unfamiliar with
Kipling's other poetry or with his prose.  I am ignorant to
what extent Kipling's exhortations reflect the actual
humanitarian and philanthropic achievements of colonial
policies, and to what extent they were self-righteous
platitudes that made the colonialists comfortable with their
inhumanity, cruelty and exploitation.

     My own perspective on colonialism is limited to the
medical missionary efforts in French Equatorial Africa of
Albert Schweitzer, whose work, when I was a child, was much
admired by my family.

     I read history as recurring conquests, as the clash of
cultures, wars which are won not by those who are better
painters, musicians, poets or philosophers, but by those who
have the more powerful weapons.  One would think that given
our missiles and hydrogen bombs, the infidels wouldn't have a
chance.  They probably don't.  But I am also impressed by a
psychology that makes suicide bombing by our adversaries an
almost daily event, while we panic at the deaths of two
thousand soldiers, meanwhile bankrupting our economy by
senselessly insisting on prolonging the lives of "senior
citizens", myself not excepted, who would probably be better
off dead.

                      * * * * *
Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
