Being-unto-death

I once knew a guy who supplied drugs to much of the North West of England. He was arrested because he had 'form' and because the police had received a tip-off that a shipment was coming in. (Every time I watch the French Connection I think of this guy. Remember the scene when they pull in the car and take it to bits?) The cops had been tipped off that this guy was bringing in drugs hidden in a car. Unlike the French Connection, they didn't find what they were looking for because someone tipped him off that the cops had been tipped off.

We had an understanding that what was said in class went no further. It was Psychology. How could I get these guys to talk if every time they said something incriminating I told the authorities? It was a moral decision I had to make but, having just come out of seminary and as a Catholic, the seal of the Confessional was not a difficult choice.

The point being that a 'pusher' is someone who supplies drugs. 'Pusher' is a classic X File because, as usual, it up-ends normality. Robert Patrick Model refuses the drugs, or medical treatment, that could save his life. It is his illness that gives him the ability to do what he does.

We fear illness. We know hospitals are necessary but who likes having to go during visiting hours? I used to deliver the Blessed Sacrament to Catholics in hospital on Sundays and always returned home, to the local parish church, with a splitting headache. There is something about illness that makes us reluctant to face it. It is, of course, nothing more than our fear of death. This is why Pusher becomes an assassin. Illness kills.

Whether it is Pusher using his newly acquired skills or just the natural end of human life makes no difference. We die. But we don't like the thought. Yet it truly is the one thing all human beings have in common.

I wonder how different the world would be if, instead of thinking what can we get out of life, we thought about what we can do before we die.

Strangely, I think, if we accepted death we'd be more inclined to value life.

I am not the first to think so. Heidegger, in 'Being and Time' made existentialism a matter of 'being-unto-death:

This results in a hugely important and seemingly paradoxical thought: freedom is not the absence of necessity, in the form of death. On the contrary, freedom consists in the affirmation of the necessity of one's mortality.

It is unlikely to be coincidental that the longest lasting civilization in history, the Ancient Egyptians, can be described as a culture of death. 

We are not supposed to sympathize with Robert Patrick Model’s character, per se. But he is a useful metaphor for Heidegger’s philosophy. Only because he accepts the inevitability of his death is Model able to tap into the gifts that make him a bigger man than he was otherwise. As liberating at his view is, Heidegger had a rather too selfish view of death, akin to that of the Egyptian Pharaoh. What are the pyramids, after all, but glorified tombstones? Ultimately, this selfish view of death produces nothing of consequence. The pyramids may well be technological marvels but, in truth, they are little more than piles of rocks, contributing nothing to the advancement of human well-being. Heidegger claimed, oddly, that, to die for another person is simply to ‘sacrifice my life’ for no productive reason. My death is the primary death, the only one with which I need be concerned. It’s an aspect of his ‘being-unto-death’ that is questioned and criticized, though his general idea be respected. 

Think of Model as a ‘model’ of Heideggerian existentialism. He accepts his own death and by doing so taps into his inner strength which he then uses to influence others. Obviously, in reality, such ‘power’ should be employed to benefit and improve the human condition. 

Those who live as if to escape death, whether they be Presidents or members of a Syndicate, hide from history - after all, we only appear in the history books after our death. And we all know what they say about those ignorant of history!