Death, Distraction, and Modern Liberal Tastes

Last week I had to deliver a guest lecture at a liberal arts college entitled ‘”Each day dies with sleep;” Literary and Theological Reflections upon Mortality.’ As I thought through the topic, two things struck me, on neither of which I have yet reached a firm conclusion. Why is it that commitment to causes such as abortion, LGBTQ etc. rights, and assisted suicide often go together? And why do abortion advicates frequently see it not simply as a necessary evil but as a positive good.

As to the first question, that the same people often (though not always) hold this cluster of views would suggest that there is something deeper underlying the specific positions which gives them a unity. As to the second, I am pro-life and see abortion as heinous and a source of national shame; But I can understand the internal logic of the pro-abortion case, even while having no sympathy for it. What I cannot understand is the way the issue functions as a badge of honor and a source of pride and joy for so many of its proponents.

The theory I tentatively proposed on Friday was really an extension of insights I have learned from reading Augustine and Pascal: Death is the one insurmountable reminder of the power, or the tyranny, of our bodies. Our bodies have become highly malleable over recent years. You can have surgery that allows you to pretend to be younger or to pretend to be a man or a woman; But sooner or later you are going to die. 

How do we distract ourselves from our mortality? Well, most of the time entertainment is quite sufficient, and the most powerful forms of entertainment are typically those associated with free-for-all sexuality. Hence the rise of pan-sexuality and sexual hedonism in a culture that has pushed death to the periphery.   Bodies do not count other than as tools of pleasure.  But bodies still grow old and die.  How to distract from that?

Surely the ultimate distracting buzz is to try to take control of death itself. We kill children in the womb, we kill the old and the infirm with surgical cleanliness and precision, and if we cannot deny our own mortality by living forever, we can at least take control of the time and circumstances of our own deaths. In each case, we attempt to assert our sovereignty over life.

This is all speculative. But it seems to me that the excessive passion, pride, and enthusiasm involved in being pro-choice on life issues, whether life at its start or at its end, cannot simply be explained by talking about unwanted pregnancies or preventing unnecessary end-of-life suffering. Some people seem to take a delight in such things which cannot be explained by merely pragmatic criteria. Something deeper, something more spiritual, is at work here.