Now, Mostly Dead is Slightly Alive, All Dead... Well, With All Dead, There's Usually Only One Thing That You Can Do

Two things happened that have me writing this post.

First, Val Thomas died and came back to life.

Second I received a veiled death threat in which a commenter suggested death is very objective.

I guess as the headline suggests (if you check the link), we're saying she woke up from whatever she was doing. Dead people don't wake up. Sleeping people wake up. So she was not dead. Still, she met the criteria for being dead, and as the article says, rigor mortis, had begun to set in when she woke up from whatever it was she was doing... or not doing for 17 hours.

The history of how we declare someone is dead, and who gets to do the declaring, reveals that it is not so clear-cut as we might think it is. It was only towards the very end of the last millennium that criteria for declaring someone dead were developed to compensate for the fact that we can restart someone's heart to get their blood circulating again or can keep them breathing even when their brain has quit.

Crazy, huh?*

If you've ever been in the presence of a dying something- not plants or bugs- I mean those hierarchically/pedagogically more familiar things like pets and people- then you know something happens when one goes from what we call living to dead. But it's a strange something. EEGs are just finer measures than needles in the eye, mirrors under the nostrils, hot irons on feet- variations on checking to see if one is still doing the things that living things do. From the information in the article, Val Thomas was clinically dead, and apparently brain dead, so as far as we know- dead.

But dead people are dead. Dead people don't wake up. Maybe something is missing from our criteria for how we declare one dead. Or maybe there was a screw up; something was misread, overlooked, or forgotten. She was given her Stygian fare too soon, and now doctors are out that and the looming malpractice settlement. Or maybe she's a zombie.

As a tangent, one of the things Haters say to debunk Jesus is the fact that people don't come back from the dead. Ironically it's also one of the points apologists raise to say, "See, Jesus must be someone great, because he did come back from the dead and lots of people believe he did to the point they are willing to die for that belief, so there." Just so we don't do anything dumb with this- miracles, by virtue of being miraculous are not like anything else that can be explained. We probably don't want to say this is anything like what we say Jesus did. Not if what we say Jesus did is meant to be miraculous anyway. Also, even if every other person on the planet believes something that is a matter of faith, even to the point that they would die for it, your own personal commitment to that belief is still no more a matter of certainty.

Anyway, for its universality, death is strange. This isn't to say death doesn't happen or that one cannot observe death. There is a lack of knowledge about death that can be overcome by further investigation into or observation of it. Finer measures and more criteria may let us state more clearly, "Val Thomas is dead." That may not make it any clearer or easier to know whether to plug people into machines or to cut out their organs to give to someone else, but we can make observations about chemical reactions causing electrical impulses in the brain, cardiovascular function, catabolic and anabolic actions and what all else I don't know. Those are the kinds of things about which we can say something. Just like, the book is on the shelf. (Guess what, I'm sitting in a room full of books.) That's the kind of thing that can be said. And if we come some day to find that there is something we were overlooking, one more thing of difference between living and dead, we can add it- if it belongs in the category. If that's what we're saying death is.

Whatever.

As for being very objective... like my problem with saying something is inherently evil, I don't know that something can be more or less objective, more or less certain if it is an experienced kind of thing. I will die, but, apart from the observations we might make about one we say is dead, it seems like the kind of thing I will know very subjectively when I am able to say, "Oh, so this is death"... But then, if I am really dead, I won't be able to say anything about it at all.

So does that mean then that no one ever experiences death? I guess so, if we say it is the end of life. Of course people die, so what I mean is death is not the kind of thing that is experienced, maybe it's the end of experience. I don't know.

* "Huh," again, pronounced here as that sound one makes when they mean "Am I right?" or "Isn't it?".

Go Through His Clothes and Look for Loose Change
Mr. Tambourine Man- Bob Dylan
The Harder they Come- Jimmy Cliff
Catching on Fire- They Might Be Giants
I Wish- Stevie Wonder
Dunque lo Son...- Rossini
Collapse- Soul Coughing
On Green Dalphin Street- Tito Puente