Death and love

Child mortality

Historical rates of child mortality are abysmal. Before 1900 almost half the people born died before they were 15. Almost a third of them died before they were one year old:

This has gotten a lot better lately, with now “only” 4% of children dying before they are five years old. In developed countries it’s gotten so well that while I’m guessing that most people know someone who lost a child family member, they might not have known the child. Off the top of my mind I can think of 3 such families that I know - one child died when I was an infant (so I didn’t know her), one died soon after being born (I heard from/about the parents, but didn’t see the child) and one died when she was 4 (whom I met). While each such event is a tragedy, it’s frankly amazing that it happens so seldom! I wonder how many people living 300 years ago would believe it?

Habituation

For some reason, I was under the impression that seeing that death was such a common occurrence, people didn’t use to care about it so much. It was just something that happened. To everyone eventually. Some welcome it, some don’t, but in general it’s just a change of state, where if you were a good person (massively and scandalously oversimplifying loads of various theologies), you’d go to a better place. Of course there is the odd sinner who’s terrified of death and his (as it was usually a he) inevitable torments (which is such an irrational stance - why sin in the first place if that’s what’s awaiting you?!), but one gets the impression that death is something that will simply happen so no point in worrying about it.

The above might be true. But my mistake seems to have been confusing anticipation of ones own death with that of mourning the deaths of others. Which is (obviously, once I think about it) a totally different kettle of fish. Of course people will mourn the death of those they love. And of course it will be a massively tragic event for them. People are people, and have hardly changed over the last 50k years. It’s a bit arrogant of me to assume that today’s people are different. Not every death will be equivalently tragic - not everyone loves or is loved equally. But just because something happens regularly doesn’t make it easier to handle. To a certain extent maybe. I often think of Grandma Fontaine, from Gone with the Wind, who wasn’t afraid of anything, since it didn’t compare to having her family killed and scalped in front of her. I get the impression that it’s not the absolute scale of events that matter, only their intensity relative to what you’ve already gone through. But it seems like losing a child is one of the most traumatic things that can happen (with caveats, of course).

I was rereading Emily the other day. Generalizing from fictional evidence, I was struck by how many of the characters were broken by the death of a loved one. For example there’s the old man who’s been wandering for 40 years looking for his wife who died young, or there’s the lady who doesn’t feel anything since her son died. Both were damaged by mourning. Then there are all the stories of people going mad with grief (again, from older fiction, but still). Then there are all the archaeological finding of child graves. I was recently in Rome, where in one museum there was the grave of a child filled with various treasures. That pretty much implies that the child was valued. Which in turn says that the loss was a tragedy. (I find it amusing that this post is saying pretty much the same thing). Another such example is the basilica of Santi Cosma e Damiano, which was originally dedicated to the dead son of the emperor Maxentius. Or the context in which dead children appear in the Bible - they tend to be shown as the final punishment for sins, or to show how evil an enemy is, as what could be worse?

Historical mortality

In older books (e.g. Dickens or Austin) it’s quite unusual if no one dies in them. Traditional children books are astounding in their mortality. If Anderson or the Grimm brothers decided to publish a book nowadays, there’s no way they’d be allowed to. My knowledge of 19th century childrens stories is very secondhand, but lots of books quote quite gruesome stories for the edification of young children. I take them with a large grain of salt, seeing as the authors (e.g. Mark Twain) are playing them up for comical effect, but they point to A Thing. Then there are stories in which the whole point is what happens to a child after they die. The Water Babies start with the main character drowning. Peter Pan is pretty much about dead boy who wants Wendy to die.

Not only children died. Explorers, missionaries and soldiers die like flies when they go to the tropics. I don’t have a proper reference, but I recall that the West Indies were a particularly bad posting - it was a coin toss whether you’d return. One gets the impressions that men would go to India or Africa to seek their fortune, and return rich or not at all.

Then there was childbirth. Though I’m surprised to see that it was less deadly than I expected. Around Coronavirus levels. I was under the impression that it was like 20%-30% percent. Though thinking about it, that doesn’t seem sustainable… Reading older books, it seems like the safest lifestyle was that of an old maid.

Ignorance

Nowadays it seems like death doesn’t exist. Or at least it only happens to very old people, soldiers and African children. It’s not talked about. You can discuss health problems, but not what their result is. It doesn’t seem like it’s actively tabooed, it’s more of an antimeme, albeit nothing that serious. I’m guessing this stems from a certain amount from the advancements of medicine - it’s unusual for someone to die before they are at least 60, which is quite old if one looks at historical rates. I have a suspicion that a side effect of this is the modern obsession with safety. There is a real tradeoff to be made between safety and freedom (or cost, or convenience, or whatever). Which is often ignored, since everyone knows that safety is the most important. Think of the children! If you have nothing to hide, you won’t mind us checking to keep you safe?

Loss

I’ve never really understood why people fear death. First I thought that you then go to heaven, and so is something desirable. Now I’m in the nothingness camp, and so while it’s not something to actively want, at least it’s in no way bad. How can something that isn’t, be? Though this once again focuses on the person dying, rather than those that are left behind. That is bad (at least usually). The obvious reason is the emotional one. Losing someone is bad. Very. That being said, there’s not that many people whom I care about that much. Certainly not in the context of the whole of humanity. My main issue with death is that of waste. Often in anime there are swordsmen who train their whole lives, but who are then killed in their prime. This is such a waste! All those years of backbreaking work. And for what? Of course one can always look at the long term perspectives of the universe pull out entropy and heat death. But that’s so far out that it doesn’t seem real. But a humans hard work being wasted? Now that’s a travesty. And the worst thing is that this applies to everyone. Study for 50 years and become the expert in some domain? No worries, you’ll soon die, along with all that knowledge. Ars longa, vita brevis and all that. In the Malazan book of the dead there’s a bit where a group of fighters merge into a massive tiger to attack, during which damage to the tiger resulted in dead soldiers falling off. This is sort of how I view progress - the beast is moving forward, but at the cost of individual workers. Imagine how much more could have been achieved if Archimedes was still alive (and healthy, sane, etc.).