Roger Ebert: "I do not fear death"

Roger Ebert died yesterday. When I heard the news, I was a lot sadder than I usually am when I learn someone famous has died.

Ebert meant a lot to me, though I never saw him in person. He was a noted movie reviewer here in the United States. For many years watching "Siskel and Ebert" every week was a TV must.

Back in those pre-Internet days this was how I learned what movies were worth watching and which weren't. Their "two thumbs up" was all I needed to buy a ticket when a film came to town.

Ever since, Roger Ebert has been the movie reviewer I read first among the "top critics" on a Rotten Tomatoes listing. (Gene Siskel, died in 1999.) I always enjoyed how Ebert wrote reviews with such thoughtfulness and sensitivity. 

He died in the same way, apparently. 

“We were getting ready to go home today for hospice care, when he looked at us, smiled, and passed away,” said his wife, Chaz Ebert. “No struggle, no pain, just a quiet, dignified transition.”

Ebert was a noted secular humanist. Yet he didn't call himself an atheist, or even an agnostic. He didn't want any label attached to him. 

Over the high school years, my belief in the likelihood of a God continued to lessen. I kept this to myself...

Did I start calling myself an agnostic or an atheist? No, and I still don't. I avoid that because I don't want to provide a category for people to apply to me. I would not want my convictions reduced to a word. Chaz, who has a firm faith, leaves me to my beliefs. "But you know you're one or the other," she says. "I have never told you that," I say. "Maybe not in so many words, but you are," she says.

But I persist in believing I am not. During in all the endless discussions on several threads of this blog about evolution, intelligent design, God and the afterworld, now numbering altogether around 3,500 comments, I have never said, although readers have freely informed me I am an atheist, an agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist--which I am. If I were to say I don't believe God exists, that wouldn't mean I believe God doesn'texist. Nor does it mean I don't know, which implies that I could know.

Let me rule out at once any God who has personally spoken to anyone or issued instructions to men. That some men believe they have been spoken to by God, I am certain. I do not believe Moses came down from the mountain with any tablets he did not go up with. I believe mankind in general evidently has a need to believe in higher powers and an existence not limited to the physical duration of the body. But these needs are hopes, and believing them doesn't make them true. I believe mankind feels a need to gather in churches, whether physical or social.

...No, I am not a Buddhist. I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. I am still awake at night, asking how? I am more content with the question than I would be with an answer.

I really like Ebert's "I do not fear death" essay. Read the whole thing. It isn't very long. Ebert was (he wouldn't want me to say is) one fine wonderfully-human man. Some excerpts:

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

...Many readers have informed me that it is a tragic and dreary business to go into death without faith. I don’t feel that way. “Faith” is neutral. All depends on what is believed in. I have no desire to live forever. The concept frightens me. I am 69, have had cancer, will die sooner than most of those reading this. That is in the nature of things. In my plans for life after death, I say, again with Whitman:

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

And with Will, the brother in Saul Bellow’s “Herzog,” I say, “Look for me in the weather reports.”

...Someday I will no longer call out, and there will be no heartbeat. I will be dead. What happens then? From my point of view, nothing. Absolutely nothing. All the same, as I wrote to Monica Eng, whom I have known since she was six, “You’d better cry at my memorial service.”

Comments

[tucson]

Good poignant words by Ebert, but he says amongst some of his good words:

"I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state."

--I am glad Ebert did not fear death but the reason he did not fear it is the exact reason why people do fear it...eternal non-existence. Rather ironic.

I think many people would trade a miserable death followed by an eternal peaceful afterlife in heaven, or maybe even reincarnation as an organ grinder's monkey, for a painless death followed by eternal non-existence.

However, sages throughout time have told us that we already eternally do not exist as self-existent objects, objects that exist only due to an error in perception whereby we objectify what is functioning/appearing and call it 'me'.

However, they say that there is eternal pure subjective Source which we really are. Since this Source is inconceivable they are reluctant to give it a name like "God" and stimulate all the conceptual baggage that comes with that term.

Mike Williams calls it "Something Else"...no matter what you conceive it to be, whatever you call it or attribute to it, it is something else. But it is.. Something Else.

I would suggest to those who fear death to give Something Else a try.

[Roger]

Thanks tucson,

Could you write something additional, on what is meant by an eternal pure subjective source? Would not the eternal be beyond the subjective?

[tucson]

Hi Rog,

I don't know what to say about it that wouldn't just be opening up more questions. "Eternal" "pure" "subjective" are just words, symbols, pointers. That's all. I think you know this.

The words imply 'this, here, now' which is unobjectivisable.

[Mike Williams]

Two more babies stricken with herpes after ritual ultra-orthodox Jewish oral blood sucking circumcision in New York City
April 7, 2013
Print Version

Source: Daily Mail

Two more babies stricken with herpes after ritual ultra-orthodox Jewish oral blood sucking circumcision in New York City

•Since 2000 13 known cases of herpes have been contracted from the religious practice
•Two deaths and two babies suffering brain damage have resulted
•Department of health warns there being no safe way to perform the ritual that dates back more than 5,000 years
Two more infants have been infected with a deadly herpes virus in the last three months after undergoing a controversial religious oral circumcision in New York City.

The latest cases bring the count to 13 infants since 2000, two of which suffered brain damage and two died from the virus which can rapidly spread throughout its body.

The ultra-Orthodox Jewish practice of metzitzah b'peh requires a practitioner to orally suck the baby's penis to 'cleanse' the open wound following its circumcision, making them susceptible to the virus.

The department of health says one of the latest infants to contract the virus developed a fever and a lesion on its scrotum, seven days after the procedure. The boy later tested positive for HSV-1. That virus differs from HSV-2, the genital herpes, which is contracted during sexual intercourse.
'A herpes infection in a newborn baby has the risk of leading to severe illness and death,' Jay Varma, deputy commissioner for disease control at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene told ABC News.

[Tom]

Roger, 'beyond' in what direction? Is it the same direction as the 'Else' in 'Something Else'?

[Roger]

Thanks again tucson,

The pure subjectivity could be a whole mindedness, as opposed to a divided mind.

With whole mind, there could be the awareness of here, now and this, as you mentioned.

[tucson]

Roger, yes it seems so.

But even "this" is not "it". "It" is still something else. "It" is always something else.

"That" indicates some "thing" there
"This" indicates some "thing" here
But one and all "it" is, and neither.

Being no "thing" at all, "It" isn't an it.

That's the way I see it, so to speak.

[Mike Williams]

Hi tucson and Roger,

Something Else comes from another
dimension (not an inner plane).

There is extremely little that can
be said about it.

It is contacted right here and right now
in whatever the persons condition.

It knows the future and can alter the
future in inconceivable ways. You can do
everything wrong and yet the results
turn out perfect. It can also correct
the wrong things you have done in the past
by making amends for you.

It is felt on top of the head. One
only need feel it there and all
else is accomplished automatically.

It is absolutely competent so one does
nothing.

Something Else only has one modus operandi.
To help the world for the better.

It is not a religion, nor can it be learned
or taught.

The person yields to a higher power. But,
this is not the subconscious, nor gods.

Something Else is more then capable of taking a human being and making them eternal.

It does what it wishes. No god, or force
in the universe, can stand in its way.

All it needs is your permission to operate.

If there is anything wrong with you, it can fix it without you even being aware of it.

[Tom]

"It is not a religion, nor can it be learned
or taught."

LOL. Why mention it then?

[Roger]

"It" the something else is non-knowable.

A divided mind has a need to mention it using pointers, symbols, and words. There really is No Big Deal.

[Tom]

All pointing implies division. You have to heal the division, that's all, and that is done by exploring and evaporating needs and conditions. No pointing required?