Putting aside spiritual issues such as the afterlife and the doctrine of Christian resurrection, death is, by definition, permanent.
This may strike as obvious, but I was prompted to make this declaration by yet another person interviewed on TV who said she had “died” on the operating table and was then “brought back to life” by doctors.
Although I shouldn’t presume, I guess, since I didn’t have her experience, I would assume she had a “near-death” experience. (Also, as they say, when we “presume”, we make a “pres” out of “u” and “me.”) Having one’s heart stop for a time isn’t death. It’s a rather, uh, serious matter which I wouldn’t recommend, but it’s not death. Once one has a multi-system shut down from which one cannot return, one is then dead. And only then.
Actually, I almost was. I’m sure I’ve told this story, because I’ve reached the age at which men have about a half-dozen stories they tell over and over again, but I was eating in a restaurant across from Graceland when the ambulance pulled out. Of course, it was some hours later when we learned it was ol’ dead Elvis up in that ECNALUBMA.
I am a great fan of morbid taxonomy, and can amuse myself for hours defining such words as death, maim, or apoplexy. In this specific case the definition has to do with the distinction between cardiac arrest and a cessation of brain activity. It’s no exaggeration to say that death isn’t what it used to be. But, on the other hand, under the modern view, doctors who “harvest” the organs of “dead” organ donors at least aren’t murderers. This opens the door to transient death, I fear. The interesting thing about apoplexy is whether it covers sudden heart attacks as well as cerebral aneurysm, or whether there is some sense to the modern sense which is confined to brain hemorrhages. Technically, it just means being struck down. I won’t go into “maim” except to quote Shelly Berman: “It sounds so permanent and ugly.”
This forum has existed for quite a few years now but no better sentence has been posted her than “I am a great fan of morbid taxonomy, and can amuse myself for hours defining such words as death, maim, or apoplexy.”
I am a great fan of Morbid Taxonomy, too, but I don’t think they’ve had a good album since “Death, Maim, or Apoplexy.”
I’m not convinced, although I also don’t mean to suggest that it’s easy to determine the point of death or to precisely define it. I admit there’s a grey area. If someone has no brain activity, but is kept “alive” long enough to harvest viable organs, that’s a problem with the use of the term “alive” as much as there’s a problem use of the word “death” to mean a temporary cessation of the heartbeat.
I’m just suggesting that, even conceding a transient state, that state ought to be called something other than “death.” And, even if we mistakenly believe that a person has died, if that person is later walking around and being interviewed on TV, can’t we agree that they didn’t die on account of the fact that they’re not dead?
As someone exactly as wise as I am once said, this kind of rumination on my part is a needless thing in this age of fine anti-obsessive medications.
I submit that trying to define “death” is like trying to define “cold;” they are both the absence, rather than the presence of something.
You don’t “add” cold; you remove heat.
Similarly, you don’t “die”; you cease to live. Death is the absence of life, and I think that’s one thing that makes defining the exact point of “death” very hard–because you are really trying to pinpoint where life is essentially absent.
You are trying to define something by its absence, and as has been mentioned before, that’s a very difficult thing for some folks to do.
Don’t forget Ted Williams and Walt Disney. I believe they and many others are on ice waiting for technology to advance far enough to bring them back, or at least their memories.
There is also the popular science fiction about downloading a person’s memories into a chip. If their memories survive in a moving form are they truly dead? There may come a time when a good many wealthy people have this option. Worried about the demand on resources? Maybe they can be avatars in some kind of virtual world, but with all their downloadable memories intact.
That story has always had overtones of nightmare to me.
If you’re going to try to bring me back, please do not let me begin to rot first!!!
A more reasonable explanation for the Lazarus story is that the fellow was never dead. Even in our own time people are occasionally believed to be dead, when suddenly they wake up or begin to move.
Probably the bit about him getting smelly was added after-the-fact, simply because burial of the living was probably quite common then, as it was even as late as the 18th and 19th centuries.
