Life and Death

 Reading through the evening edition of the New York Times last night, it was all too painfully clear that in our world of abysmal chasms between poor and rich—some lives are seen as utterly disposable, others as infinitely precious. 

Some are born to sweet delight,

Some are born to endless night—as William Blake once put it. 

For the poor, our government yesterday chose to expand its menu of options—to include death by firing squad. 

"The additional manners of execution that B.O.P. should consider adopting include the firing squad, electrocution and lethal gas," the DOJ now recommends, in a report accompanying the department's decision to add execution by firing squad to the list of methods of state murder allowed in federal capital cases. 

And naked to the hangman’s noose

    The morning clocks will ring

A neck God made for other use

    Than strangling in a string—wrote A.E. Housman. 

Meanwhile—for the rich—our society offers the springs of perpetual youth. A lengthy New York Times essay yesterday explored the booming world of longevity research—which has attracted the keen interest of right-wing tech billionaires and American, Russian, and Saudi autocrats alike. 

All the world's worst people appear to be joining forces in the quest to perpetuate their rotten existences into perpetuity. Putin is interested; Peter Thiel is fronting cash; Saudi royals are ponying up too in the race to achieve immortality (for some). 

It's rather a contrast, isn't it? Our world of increasingly naked plutocracy promises eternal life to petro-state autocrats, dictators, and Silicon Valley oligarchs; while at the same time devising more hideous and cruel methods to choke life out of the misfortunates on federal death row. 

I think of men as innocent as I am 

Pent in a cold unjust walk between steel bars

Their trousers slit for the electrodes

And their hair cut for the cap

Because of the unconcern of men and women, [...] 

Idle-busy among the flowers of their garden... to quote Hugh MacDiarmid. 

Fortunately, as the New York Times article concludes—the tech oligarchs are not likely to succeed in their quest for the fountain of youth. The author, Mark O'Connell, concludes:

For now, though, no matter how greatly a person is enlarged by his wealth, his own power and prestige, there is no escaping the determinism of death. Bryan Johnson will die. Peter Thiel will die. Sam Altman will die. Xi Jinping will die. Donald Trump will die. Vladimir Putin will die. And so will you, and so will I, and so will all those now living and yet unborn. Not a one of us will be saved: not by 3-D-printed organs, not by artificial superintelligence, not by transfusions of plasma from our beloved and indulgent teenage sons. None of these things will intervene between even the richest and most powerful of us and our common animal end. The great and terrible democracy of death abides.

In the words of the immortal B.S. Johnson (in his House Mother Normal): "Death comes for us all, no matter who,/ No matter what we bloody do: [...] For this we should stand up and cheer."

We cheer because we know that whatever cruelties and indignities and inequities the rich heap upon the poor and suffering of this world—in the end they cannot spare themselves from the great equalizer; nor pursue the poor beyond the grave. 

They can shoot them to death with a firing squad. But they can do little beyond that. The soul retreats beyond the reach of the oppressors of this world. 

And so indeed, as O'Connell puts it: the "democracy of death abides." 

To quote Robert Burns:

"O Death! the poor man's dearest friend, 

The kindest and the best! [...]

The great, the wealthy fear thy blow 

From pomp and pleasure torn; 

But, oh! a blest relief for those 

That weary-laden mourn!"