Immortality, personally and otherwise

[Paul Mackin]

On Wed, 31 Jan 1996, Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt wrote:

> 	 But what do others make of the many voices from the 'other side' 
> present in GR, and the Thanatoids in Vineland? I have always 
> considered them metaphors, at most pesonifications of rather Freudian 
> suppressions, rather than some superficial claim of _personal_ 
> immortality....
>  

Personally, I don't think TRP is trying to start a new religion or
anything. No offers of resurrection, redemption, victory over death.
The voices are not _real_ (by which I mean physical, corporeal). 
Possibly, they are sprirtual/moral, offering some kind of "moral
victory", which to my way of thinking is no victory at all.

The GR world is a pretty bleak place (if it weren't so funny, that is). I 
will take my inspiration today from the Hades episode, which I have just
been inspired to reread as the result of another p-lister's post of a few 
days ago.

It seems that until recently the orthodox, received, religious
faith in GR world was death, death, death--pure and simple, with out
regard for race, social status, or whatever. Father Rapier sums it up
thusly:

"Death has been the source of Their power. It was easy enough for us to
see that. If we are here once, only once, then clearly we are here to take
what we can while we may. If They have taken much more, and taken not
only from Earth but also from us--well, why begrudge Them, when they're
just as doomed to die as we are? All in the same boat, all under the same
shadow . . ."

And "[t]o believe that each of Them _will_ personally die is also to
believe that Their system will die--that some chance of renewal, some
dialectic, is still operating in History. To affirm Their mortality is to
affirm Return. . . "

But, that was _then_ and this is _now_. Father Rapier, now acting in his
role as "Devil's Advocate", questions whether what we have all believed 
is really true.

"I think there is a terrible possiblity now, in the World. We may not
brush it away, we must look at it. It is possible that They will not die.
That it is now within the state of Their art to go on forever--though we,
of course, will keep dying as we always have."

And so, Father continues, " . . . perhaps we will choose instead to 
turn, to fight: to demand, from those for whom we die, our own 
immortality. They may not be dying in bed any more, but maybe They can 
still die from violence. If not, at least we can learn to withhold from 
Them our fear of Death. For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of 
cross. And at least the physical things They have taken, from Earth and 
from us, can be dismantled, demolished--returned to where it all came from."

Ah ha! Is this the long promised Counterforce, for which all have 
been waiting, hoping . . ? Only trouble is, it's another one of
those darned spiritual happenings. The "immortality" promised is again
only a "moral victory" over death. It is a kind of _getting even_, may
be environmentally beneficial, but we all still die.

Don't look for solace in GR. But it's a damn good read.

				P.