Experiencing the Death of the Other is an experience that causes a massive reversal. The mind is not accustomed to fathom the permanence of death and the absence it introduces. Life and death are opposites that parallel white and black, full and empty, positive and negative, on and off. While we can objectively observe each of these phenomena and develop a metaphor delineating the nature of death, we can never experience death. Death is the end of experience, whereas life is the subjection to inescapable experience. What is death? When contemplating this question, our mind immediately grows stiff and our reason begins to voluntarily suspend.
The first real experience with death is when we encounter the Other. The clash of the subject object relationship creates a just relationship. While we desire to overcome this objectification, we simultaneously maintain a respect for the humanity that is mutually shared. When the Other dies, a piece of our humanity that is seen in him dies. This causes a crisis to our justification for being. We are helpless to objectify the Other and almost wish to be the subject of the Other again.
My first experience with death was when I was thirteen years old and my best friend committed suicide. The notion of Death pierced through the rational consciousness, forcing my puerile mind into an original reaction formation as an attempt to defend life through disbelief. His death was a threat to my life. It forced my mind to reestablish itself as living by considering what it meant to die
If one never contemplates death, one never confronts the reality of void. To live is to grow, flourish, think, reflect, act, feel, etc. These roughly encapsulate the metaphysics that the mental life contains. In this context life has forward momentum which makes room for hope. Hope is where our imaginative fantasies spawn to fill in the cracks of desperation, apprehension and angst that form when death appears.
Contemplating the consequences of death is analogous to holding your breath. We can willfully hold our breath until our bodies natural need for oxygen causes us to slip into unconsciousness. It is then our bodies natural processes take over to restore our condition. In the same way, death can only be contemplated for so long until our reason is suspended and is overrun by the innate processes that keep us living. It runs so contrary to human thought that our mind eventually manufactures delusions of fantastical after-lives in order to resume the ‘life’ is was designed to survive. The question of death is never resolved, however, but perpetually postponed. Currently, death is not something we need to confront on a regular basis. As long as the bodies are out of sight, we will never be forced to consider this void. Space is not the final frontier. Death is.
William Dare 