Death in Scandinavia

I embrace death and when the Reaper comes for me I shall not feel fear but rather like welcoming an old friend. You will get to meet him during your existence, he will come for your loved ones but their passing should only help you to familiarize yourself with him. And then when he finally comes for you, you will be ready and at peace no matter how suddenly it happens. 

Us Scandinavians have a reputation for being very grim and dark when discussing these matters, and I guess I am making a great example of that right now. Thinking back, hearing some of Hans Christian Andersen’s more darker stories like Den Lille Pige med Svovlstikkerne (The Little Match Girl) and Historien om en Moder (The Story of a Mother) were some of my first encounters with death. They both tell the story of dying children and immense tragedy, but hey, this stuff actually happens. Especially so during the time of Hans Christian Andersen. But even then people would rather pretend, they want the happy ending, instead of facing reality which seldom ends like that. These fairytales greatly influenced me as a child triggering both sadness and fear, but also hope and love. They also prepared me for and gave me a sense of death, which greatly helped me once my grandparents started passing away. 

Since H.C. Andersen is arguably the most famous Dane and a cornerstone in our cultural legacy, maybe there is an integrated familiarity with the darker sides of life within us. Lord knows, our humor is SUPER dark, even I can see that. I sometimes struggle to find the humor in it myself, but then again, I am not that Danish. Not to say we do not know how to enjoy the brighter sides of life. After all, all Scandinavian countries consistently rank high in the World Happiness Surveys, making our attitude towards serious subjects such as death all the more paradoxical or maybe symptomatic. Perhaps due to our dark winters and cold weather Scandinavians have been forced to make light out of darkness, resulting in our – to some – warped sense of humor. For whatever reason, we do seem to share a higher degree of familiarity with death than other nationalities. I know I do, and honestly I encourage everyone to do the same; make death your friend and he will no longer scare you and you can then start to enjoy life to its fullest potential. 

Responsible Hedonism and Pursuing Your Own Happiness

Despite what religions teach, YOU are the master of your micro-universe. Thus it is up to YOU to make it a bright and happy place. Don’t close your eyes to the darkness in our world. Like stated before, use it as an impetus to make your existence better. Indulge yourself. Hedonism, like sociopathy has also acquired an overused negative connotation in modern times. But similar to the other term, I believe hedonism comes in many forms, some more serious than others. My dictionary app simply defines it as: “the belief that pleasure or happiness is the most important goal in life.” What the hell is so horrible about that? If religion has a problem with this, then I really don’t understand why people waste their time with it. (I don’t anyway…) The pursuit of happiness. What can be more important than this? The Founding Fathers even included it in their Declaration of Independence as an unalienable human right. Above, I have repeatedly established what a cold, dark and harsh environment the world is. So why not do whatever you can to make your own existence more enjoyable. 

I practice hedonism every day. Not in excess, but in small micro-choices that make me happy and does not interfere with other people’s happiness or affect my own health or wellbeing. After all, why shouldn’t I try and make myself happy? Nobody else is necessarily going to. And you know what? I am generally a pretty happy person. The negative sense of hedonism is that when you make yourself happy you are simultaneously doing so at the cost of others. (This is also a very Danish notion as I will discuss in another post) But this should not take anything away from hedonism as a concept. It is only as good as the people practicing it. Thus, if a pretender practices hedonism, it could potentially involve hurting others, not because hedonism is a bad thing, but because it is being practiced by a bad person. A famous preacher of hedonism, Oscar Wilde, gave an example of this in his novel The Portrait of Dorian Gray where the practitioners of hedonism in that novel do specifically cause hurt to others, but also eventually pay the price. Learning from that example, it is obviously important to practice hedonism within reason and consider the consequences of your actions, not only to others but to yourself as well. Dying young because of a bad diet, lung cancer or excessive substance abuse is not going to make you happy in the long run, although it might give you a short period of happiness, so of course being a hedonist does not mean shutting off your reason altogether. After all, sometimes what makes you happy might not be good for you, so a little restraint is necessary as well. The point is; you should not abstain from doing something you want to do, just because some archaic text, societal pressure or cultural prejudice says otherwise. As long as you are not hurting anyone, including yourself, why not have a little fun? You certainly should not prevent yourself from taking pleasure in life, which is seemingly what major religions preach.

Major religions are sometimes downright anti-hedonistic by ordering people to keep all their desires in check and live their life piously and without any temptation. What a buzzkill. It is perfectly acceptable to be a hedonist in the appropriate doses. I was once told off for offering a Muslim girl a beer on her 19^th birthday because I could see she wanted one, in other words for tempting her. Obviously, this could be interpreted as culturally insensitive, but seriously, I am not Muslim. In my culture, girls who turn 19 drink lots of beer and have a great time. Being in a Muslim country I should of course respect the local culture, but what kind of ambassador would I be if I did not try to spread my own. And how can you blame the tempter when he is not Muslim and not the tempted that is. But extending this point, maybe this girl is not Muslim by choice. Maybe she wants to taste beer and enjoy herself on her 19^th birthday. God forbid people should have some f***ing fun. (Pun intended, and by the way she gladly accepted the beer and drank it!)

Religion is the greatest buzzkiller of all time with its guilt tripping anti-hedonistic preaching that only allows people to be happy after they are dead. Hedonists embrace temptation and acknowledge it as a natural part of life. Like Oscar Wilde said: 

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”

This is very true yet does not mean you should not consider the consequences of your actions. But how can drinking a beer on your 19^th birthday be considered a sin that will send you to hell? Does that mean they serve beer in hell? Hedonism is only encouraged by the onset of death, not hindered. Like another fictional hedonist, Don Draper of Mad Men, preached early on:

“I am living like there’s no tomorrow, because there isn’t one.”

Death should not be an excuse not to live a happy life. Au contraire, it should encourage you to do so, and as much and strongly as possible, but of course not at the cost of other people’s happiness. Don Draper caused a lot of havoc in his surroundings, as did the characters in The Portrait of Dorian Gray so always be mindful of the people around you. But a healthy appetite for life and allowing yourself to be happy should certainly not be considered sinful. It should be considered encouraged.

Living your Afterlife Today

To continue a theme from previous posts, their stance on death is one thing that particularly troubles me about major religions. Many of them preach morals and rules that you need to abide by to ensure happiness in the AFTERlife. (Cue: Record scratch sound effect!) What!? I should inhibit myself during my entire existence, holding back all my desires, spend hours and hours to save up for a nice retirement when my life is over, wasting time while my life is actually going on? What sense is there in that?

Death is not the beginning. It is THE end. This does not make it your enemy. It is merely the end of your life. But after all what is a good story without an ending. Any good tale has to have an ending. The ending is what gives the story value. The fact that death is lying at the end of the Road Taken should not make you afraid. Instead it should help you in your navigation on the Infinite Freeway, choosing your route more carefully because you will eventually run out of fuel making every mile you drive all the more important. In that sense, death is what gives life meaning, what gives it purpose. There can be no light without darkness and thus there can be no life without death. Like Tyler Durden says; “you have to realize that one day you will die, until you know this you are useless."

Death gives meaning to life. It shouldn’t make you afraid to live. Lying at the end of your path, it should rather propel you forward to achieve as much as possible during your time here and make your own micro-universe as pleasant and rich as possible. That responsibility is yours and yours alone, you are the master of your own micro-universe, no one else. Not some celestial being who is going to reward you after you are dead. 

Unfortunately, religion is very well thought out. The popes of the Middle Ages made fortunes selling prime seats to heaven after you die because they knew nobody ever came back for a refund. Why? Because when you are dead, you are dead. There is no afterlife, at least not in any form preached by religions. How do I know? Being a transcender or not, like them I try to maintain the humility to not think I have the ultimate answer to any question. But I still have the sense to only base my decisions on the evidence and knowledge available to me in my given lifetime. 

So answer me this: How many do you know who have been to Heaven or Hell? Experience, people. Let your rationale answer the question. Nobody has ever been there, because it does not exist. But this is the typical trait of religions, it is based solely on the preachings of certain individuals who told people what they wanted to hear, and even if these prophets themselves believed it to be true, they did not have a shred of evidence. This lack of evidence is what really set believers apart from transcenders. Religion works only on faith, it requires no proof of anything, rather it dares transcenders and scientists to DISprove all their claims.

Dawkins touched upon this in The God Delusion. Of course, no one can disprove that God exists somewhere, but at the same time no one can disprove that ghosts, werewolves, Santa Claus, Odin, the Loch Ness Monster, Extra Terrestrials, the Tooth Fairy, or as Dawkins lists; the Spaghetti Monster, exist. The point is that it is very easy to make up stories and then ask someone to disprove it. Transcenders never deal in absolutes. But at the same time they look at the information available and make the soundest judgment based on this cold, hard evidence. This is as close to truth as we can get. And sometimes the truth is harsh, but that does not make it any less true.

Based on the evidence available, here is what I think happens after death. Nothing. When you die, you simply cease to exist, your actions in life will only matter while you are alive. After you are gone they will have no consequences for your micro-universe, because it will no longer be. It begins and ends with you, because it only exists in your brain. Once your brain is dead, so is your micro-universe. Transcenders and pretenders are very aware of this. That is why they can accomplish so much more than thedancers on the Dancefloor, working unrestricted and more time-efficient not wasting time praying or attending this and that religious gathering because so-and-so told me to. Religions are sending the completely opposite message that they should be. They are basically telling people to die in order to be happy. This makes the believers more docile and easier to control. The false prophets of yesteryear did their job well. Religion really is, like Marx called it, “opium des volkes”, the keystone in the Trinity of Control, it lulls people into apathy and gives all initiative to the false prophets or pretenders ready to prey on the sedated masses in order to promote their own agenda. It takes initiative away from their believers and turns them into mindless slaves easy to bend in any direction. Of course there was a time when such control was beneficial to unify and thus evolve our species, but as history has shown, it has time and time again also been misused to perpetuate selfish agendas just like some fanatics are doing today, so I remain wondering whether or not it has much benefit in the 21^st century. Certainly not as a system of control. We ought to be smarter than that today.