fear of irrelevance

we are a cognitive and a literary society.

even if a large percentage of us don't actively "think" or "read," our consciousness seems structured in cognitive and literary ways. for example, our greatest societal and individual fears have more to do with cognitive and literary "breakdowns" than with "real" material concerns.

here's a list of fears that i have, which i believe most people nowadays share:

fear of forgetting (alzheimer's), greater than that other debilitating disease, parkinson's (inability to control motor functions)

fear of being forgotten

fear of being humiliated

fear of being irrelevant

and my greatest fear: that my children will experience meaningless suffering, or pass on before i do...

these are some of the fears that I have. and you can consider them all, in one form or another, related to thinking or "stories" (issues which are themselves intimately tied together).

death in itself, for me anyway, ceases to have as much stigma as it used to. sure, there are grotesque and awful and drawn out ways to die, but in the end, well, it's just the end, isn't it? and, face it, FACE IT, no, really! FACE IT! we all go in the end. no one's found the immortality pill yet. the best they've done is botox or cosmetic surgery to make your skin stretch over your dying insides.

but the loss of meaning or honor, why, issues like that seem less easy to stomach. which is my point. i am, and maybe we are, a society that lives and breathes a "storybook life." and in stories, people suffer and die all the time. but a good story needs to retain a semblance of meaning, and draw a certain degree of interest from its readers, or it becomes unread and forgotten. and so, what i fear, and maybe what others fear, is that the story (our lives), with all its plot twists, doesn't make sense, is unconvincing, or is unreadable, and hence only worthy of being forgotten, irrelevant, etc.

arguably, the issue of children is also related to meaning, although i'm not so selfish as all that. my fear for my children is a much more visceral thing. i would gladly die if i could spare my kids real suffering... they are, quite frankly, the only reason i am alive...

...(doubting my own statements)...

... hmmm... actually, i think that most of the fears i cited above are just re-incarnations of the death fear. it's just that we imagine that if we "survive" in memory (whether in the memory of individuals we've known, or in "cultural memory"), then we've achieved a degree of immortality (in the sense that we become relevant so long as someone remembers us)... BUT in actuality, that too will come to an end.

ultimately, we will all be forgotten and irrelevant. ALL OF US.

... so what's the use of crying? or being afraid?

... (more reflection)...

i come back to my children. i look upon them, see how each new thought forms spontaneously within them, how their expressions and gestures explode unbidden, ignited by that spark within their eyes...

this is what i fear for. the loss of children (mine in particular). the end of the possibility for other possibilities. death can cancel ME out, and the world could forget me completely. who cares, i'm old hat... but spare the children. let them live a story of their own, let their stories at least come to the same point where i am now, having lived long enough to have the equanimity to face my own individual end in peace.