Death's advocate: part 1

I mentioned in the last post that people have come up with many ways of justifying their mortality; most of us, when we become adults, have thought about the meaning of our own lives and deaths. But there are some who openly promote death and the idea that death has intrinsic value. I'll try to refute these Death's advocates as best I can.

Today's Dinosaur Comics (a hilarious and well-written web comic by Ryan North) gives a solid example of a more general argument: death is necessary for progress. There's an image of old people lounging on their porches, reminiscing and clinging onto the good-old-days. What if that's what society becomes?

That's unfair, of course. People can change; each and every person has potential to remake themselves. Ideas and beliefs are not carved into our brains. We can learn and understand new concepts. The religious can become atheist, and skeptics can discover faith. Innovation and growth can move us no matter what age we are.

On the converse, new generations do not guarantee changes in social mores. "Young" and "new" are not necessarily synonyms. Every generation has its own prejudices, selfishness, and cruelty. Those faults are part cultural momentum and part human nature. Biological reproduction is not progress.

I hope that the misguided ideas from Death's advocates never turn into public policy. They target our worship of youth, and blame the older generations for racism, sexism, and all that's wrong with society. We mock the right-wing delusion of death panels, but the T-rex in the comic is talking about the real deal: condemning people to death for the sake of social progress. Not just old people, but ourselves, and our future children too.

Yes, I am taking a web comic too seriously.