Death & Plastic

a postscript on (im)mortality

A Tribute: I wrote this piece yesterday morning, several hours before the active + probing mind, the giddy + expansive heart, and the vibrant + mischievous soul of Eviatar Frankel left this world. Initially I hesitated to post what I’d written, but later realized that Eviatar (ever philosophical, playful, irreverent, curious) is precisely the person with whom I’d share these sorts of ideas. Eviatar: you are Love, Personified. To use your words: the “game of life” is about “alleviating human suffering, experiencing joy, connecting, and creating. Remember, it’s supposed to be fun.” You unquestionably succeeded in that mission. Thank you for leaving this world better than you found it. Bless your life.

“Bristol Whales” by Sue Lipscombe

I’m relishing the irony involved in:

1.     Writing a post about endings, and then…

2.     Deciding not to end.

Whoops. Death is back, bébé! She. Hath. Risen.

While reading your beautiful messages about Death, I began thinking about plastic.

All naturally occurring matter dissolves. Yet humans have created a material that never dies. Here’s a Freudian reading of humanity: does our dormant desire for immortality drive our production of this indissoluble substance? If so, more irony awaits: our suppressed desire for immortality— manifested in the production of enduring plastic— is in fact killing us.

Can making our peace with Death keep the planet alive?

… I’m not sure, but I do believe that our efforts to combat climate change must involve a reckoning with human nature.

Many anti-racist initiatives insist upon an acknowledgement of whiteness as crucial to the fight against systemic racism. This critical shift in consciousness recognizes whiteness as an explicitly marked entity rather than a supposedly “neutral” one. Sustainability initiatives require a similar shift in consciousness: our solutions must encompass a treatment of the human oppressor alongside our attempts to aid “the natural world.” (Spoiler alert: we are the natural world.)

In a recent piece for The New Yorker, Bill McKibben writes that this summer’s record-breaking temperatures are not “enough to really change the political dynamic, which remains dominated by the fossil-fuel industry.” McKibben observes that public campaigns, while essential, “aren’t producing enough pressure to change the calculations that Presidents and C.E.O.s are making.”

… Here’s where things get spicy. I want to fight for urgent climate-saving measures, but I also want to get our best psychologists, philosophers, and (let’s face it) psychedelic plants into the minds of those Presidents and C.E.O.s. I want to get subterranean, by employing the Socratic method of a precocious toddler:

All-Powerful-President-C.E.O.: “We’re making a few concessions to the oil industry.”

Me: “Why?”

APPC: “Because we need their votes.”

Me: “Why?”

APPC: “Because they have a lot of money and power.”

Me: “Why?”

APPC: “Because long ago someone decided money = power.”

Me: “Why?”

APPC: “Because resources are scarce and having them helps people to belong, and therefore to survive.”

Me: “Why?”

APPC: “Because people want to survive.”

Me: “Why?”

… WELL, WELL, WELL, IF WE AREN’T RIGHT BACK AT YE OLDE DEATH!

I’m curious about this sense of belonging. Why do we choose to become hedge fund managers and fossil fuel lobbyists and haughty oil barons (are those still a thing)? Does the quest for power, money, and influence obscure our deeper and more fundamental quest for safety, acceptance, and love?

I want to take this All-Powerful-President-C.E.O. by the laptop-weary hand and whisper:

“Kyle (or Brad or Nick or Hunter or Logan),

You will die someday.

No amount of money or fame or significance will ever eclipse that inevitability. You have one ‘wild and precious life,’ according to our patron saint Mary Oliver. You have one chance to live you fully, to discover who and what you love, and to leave this earth better than you found it.

This is the only immortality we can ever achieve: a world slightly improved by our fleeting existence. So, what do you love, Tanner?! How does your perishable-meatsuit-plus-burnished-soul want to express itself? Are you aching— like the rest of us— to belong, to be loved, to be simultaneously expanded and diminished by the grandeur of this world?

Your quest for Worthiness, Belonging, and Purpose by way of Status, Money, and Influence… it feels circuitous. Why not cut out the middle man (see: aforementioned haughty oil baron) and get right to the heart of the matter, otherwise known as matters of the heart?”

(How Brett would receive this unsolicited speech is another matter entirely.)

My personal philosophy is that we are capable of creating heaven here on earth. Like the parable of the long spoons, our reality mirrors the extent of our ability to give and receive love (for “there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”).

I’ll conclude with a hearty serving of that which is cheesy, corny, and true:

I believe, from the core of my being, that Love is the answer. Love has startled us for centuries by emerging just when we least expect her— she is the lotus springing from mud, the rose blooming in concrete.

Love throws down her gauntlet in the face of all that we think we know about power, victory, survival, and immortality. She is a legacy unto herself; a presence as enduring as… well, plastic.

So, what shall we leave the world for its eternal inheritance?

An emblem of our collective stuff: the totality of all we have consumed, discarded, and perhaps feared to let decompose?

Or the ineffable yet utterly central force that binds everything on this earth? The Love that outwits Death every time; lacing itself through Death as we dissolve back into earth and become something infinitely vaster than our human forms allow?

Take pity on plastic for its lonely immortality. Plastic will never experience the grand mystery— the inclusive coalescence— of Death. Let’s put plastic out of its misery with the strength of our enduring Love: for the planet, for one another, and for the Great Unknown.

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