‘You Can Close Your Eyes’—A Number Of Issues

We first have to talk about the George Floyd killing in Minnesota, and the riots that followed.  Accurate information is difficult to get, but I have yet to see any reason for why this policeman took the actions he did.  Meanwhile, there are rumors that the rioting and looting was led by people from outside Minnesota.  I condemn police brutality, and the repeated instances of Police using deadly force, and certainly unnecessary force, on blacks who are unarmed.

The number of COVID deaths has passed the 100,000 mark, and as many news commentators point out, the nation must mourn without official recognition.

Donald Trump was the Republican nominee for many reasons.  For one thing, he had a powerful GOP Fringe following that was impossible to oppose, and which marginalized the slightly more mainstream candidates in 2016: Cruse and Bush and company.  Once the core GOP folks saw that Trump had a strong campaign, they sat back and let it happen, because (1) there was always a suspicion that the country could be better run with a businessman in the White House.  I’ve written about this before.  (2) There has also been a theory that with a really great economy, and with a President and a Senate that has its knee on the neck of what they call the Democrat Entitlements, life would be better for the members of the GOP and those in Big Business, who paid “Too much Taxes.”  Be that as it may, the GOP is now discovering that the peculiar kind of brute force methods that Trump adopts: bullying, lying, demeaning the opposition, hollowing out the Department of Justice and the law courts; are prices that decent Republicans are not willing to pay.

Trump’s dissembling includes posturing as a religious man.  It seems that a vast majority of his followers are easily satisfied with a token show of religiosity and/or faith.  As a non-religious person, I am not so easily satisfied.  Many people I know are not; those among them who are Republicans are willing—have been willing thus far, anyway—to let it slide, in order to allow the larger Trump agenda to continue.  However, there are consequences.  The cause of honest religion has been harmed for a generation; leaders of Mega Churches who take Trump’s part will be tainted for a long time.

But Republicans are now realizing that much more is expected of the president than merely shepherding the economy along, and watching the stock market go up higher and higher.  Many Democrats desperately want a moral leader; other Democrats want a leader who will re-create a social safety-net (something Republicans think of as too expensive, and encouraging laziness among the poor, completely ignoring that most wealthy businessmen lead quite indolent lives) in case of a sequence of crises such as COVID-19 in the future.

As most of my readers know, I am an atheist.  I have many moral principles in common with most liberal Christians; in fact, I consider myself a follower of Jesus, except that most followers of Jesus are very narrow in their definitions of what other followers they will permit to label themselves thus!

Of late, I have been thinking of death.  What music will they play at my funeral; will there be a funeral?  What literature will be read?  What consolation will be offered to the bereaved, to those who survive me?  I will leave them a few dollars, and lots of CDs and books, but it seems to me that there will not be the comforting words of the scriptures.  Maybe they will all get together and decide to pretend that I was a Christian anyway, just to listen to the poetry of the bible.

I’m sure many authors have written inspirational prose and verse just for this purpose, but I don’t know where to look for it!  We atheists are not an ‘organized church’ of any kind; the closest thing to an organized church is The Rationalists Society, which flourished in the sixties, but may still be around.  It is difficult to find what those who were once called Rationalists are doing now.  There were a couple of articles written in Australia, one of which was called Rationalism: a 21st Century World View, to which I provide a link.

There is a twisted kind of rationalism—which the author of the previous link refers to—which he calls economic rationalism, which (like it does in the US today) supports economic principles which are argued to be the only public good, without references to human or moral values.  I am not happy with Rationalism of this variety, and if that dooms me to be criticized as inconsistent or irrational, so be it.

When a Christian family loses a member, they have no right to mourn, because it ought to be their belief that that deceased goes on to a more blessed state, with less pain, and fewer cares.  But when an atheist family loses a member, we have every right to mourn and rail, because that friend or lover or partner or spouse or child is gone, leaving only mortal remains from which we can obtain no consolation.  Religious folk view the corpse and think: the essential person is gone.  This is just the dross matter, from which the divinity has been taken away.  But for us, the mortal remains only remind us of the wonder of the living person, with all their faults and their genius.  It is a machine that is irreparably broken.  It was not an unanticipated failure of health, possibly; but we know that life is a condition that must be supported by a myriad things working together perfectly.

It appears that this lady from the Harvard Divinity School is interested in what atheists do to find meaning as they approach death: Facing Death.

There is a Web page that focuses on writings and quotes appropriates for eulogies and epitaphs.  How utilitarian!!  Some of the items listed there are merely flippant and trite, while others are thought-provoking and heart-warming.  Here is a selection.

Death is much simpler than birth; it is merely a continuation. Birth is the mystery, not death.
--Stewart Edward White

The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and irretrievably lost.
--Arthur Schopenhauer

Quite by accident, I came upon a performance of a song, by James Taylor, by the two-person team of Kami Maltz, and Josh Turner.  Miss Maltz has a lovely voice, and plays an autoharp, an instrument commonly used in folk music in the sixties.  Josh Turner is a personality well known on You Tube, and is a skilled guitarist.  The song was You can close your eyes.

I have known James Taylor’s music for decades; the first song I knew was you’ve got a friend, the Carole King song which was his first hit.  Many other songs followed: fire and rain, and so forth; in fact James Taylor’s songs were ubiquitous while I was in grad school, but I had never heard this one.  Apparently it has great significance for James Taylor, and Joni Mitchell, who was with him when he wrote it.  There is a video on YouTube about the writing of the song.

The chorus of the song goes as follows:

I don’t know no love songs,
and I don’t sing the blues anymore;
But I can sing this song,
or you can sing this song, when I’m gone

What does it mean?  I’m almost certain that the phrase ‘when I’m gone’ does not have any connotation of death; the song is essentially a lullaby, but to an adult.  It says: ‘You can close your eyes, it's alright.’  It is safe to close your eyes, the song says; tomorrow is going to be a good day; we’re going to have a good time; nobody can take that away from us.

Having ambiguous meaning is the hallmark of the lyrics of a good song, and so we cannot insist on a clear interpretation of these words.  But to use this song in a funeral gathering might be to tag it with the aura of death, and spoil it for other uses.

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