Honorable death?

[CrispyQ]

Is there such a thing?

Or is death, death? Doesn't matter how one gets there, it's still the same -- you're dead, you're gone, no more input/output.

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My take would be: It's how you live your life that counts, not how you exit it. (however, how you live your life may define how you exit it.) ???

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I wish I lived in simpler times.

Do simpler times really exist?

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Thoughts?

[Igel]

1. It's like death with dignity.

I could see how someone could believe there's no such thing: you die, your sphincter loosens, your bladder drains. At that point, it doesn't matter how you died; you're dead, and your personal impressions of the event are pointless.

Same with death with honor. You're dead.

On the other hand, many people believe that how they die is important: there are good causes to die for that make them more at peace with the idea, and methods and circumstances that make the prospect more palatable. Hence an honorable death or death with dignity.

Then there are the survivors: in many cultures honor and dignity inhere not only in the individual, but in the family, clan, or tribe. If you die a death in which you have been stripped of dignity, or did not act honorably, you shame your social unit. They have to bear the consequences.

The extreme downside is when the culture of one's social unit is such that you can go out and seek death for honor, or impose death on somebody else for the sake of your honor.

We're humans. It's been claimed (but is probably unprovable, and easily wrong) that all human languages are equally complex. Human societies are also complex, and we seem to like making them so.

So probably no simpler times. I watch my 18-month-old kid, and thing from time to time that his life is simpler. Then I realize he's working on running, producing his first complete words, and struggling to figure out why mommy and daddy sometimes abandon him, or don't answer him in the middle of the night. Even his life isn't simpler. Just differently difficult.