death categorical syllogismness

PancakeSushi

The Ride

a syllogism is an argument that takes two premises and deductively infers a conclusion.

a categorical proposition is a proposition that asserts or denies that some or all of the members of one category are included in another.

a categorical syllogism is a syllogism where the premises and conclusion are categorical propositions.

the first premise is called the major premise, and the second premise is called the minor premise.

each of the premises have one term in common with the conclusion.

in a major premise, this is the major term, and in a minor premise, this is the minor term.

each of the premises also have one term in common with each other, called the middle term.

the canonical example of a categorical syllogism is,

all men are mortal.

socrates is a man.

therefore, socrates is mortal.

here, ‘mortal’ is the major term, ‘socrates’ is the minor term, and ‘men’ is the middle term.

mortality salience is the awareness that one’s death is inevitable and undeferrable.

mortality salience develops during one’s childhood in three steps,

i

around two years of age, one understands the concept of the self, and gains self-awareness.

ii

between the ages of five and ten, one understands the concept of dying, which is made up of,

i

irreversibility

the understanding that death cannot be undone.

ii

non-functionality

the understanding that all biological functions cease upon death.

iii

universality

the understanding that all organisms eventually die.

iii

after understanding the concept of self and dying, one understands the concept of mortality by applying death to oneself as follows,

all organisms are mortal.

i am an organism.

therefore, i am mortal.

⠀

the above is a categorical syllogism.

‘mortal’ is the major term, ‘i’ is the minor term, and ‘organism’ is the middle term.

the conclusion corresponds to death anxiety, which is the anxiety caused by thoughts of one’s death.

the mechanism used to avoid death anxiety is denial.

in terms of the categorical syllogism, it corresponds to denying the antecedent, which is a formal fallacy which states that,

if p, then q.

not p.

therefore, not q.

for example,

if you are a barber, then you have a job.

you are not a barber.

therefore, you have no job.

it is a fallacy because p is necessary for q, not sufficient, i.e. there can be other reasons that make q true.

mortality salience has two antecedents: the major premise and the minor premise.

i

major premise

the ‘all’ in ‘all organisms are mortal’ is a universal quantifier.

and because organisms are a posteriori, the premise is inductive.

inductive reasoning infers a universal rule–with universal referring to a population–from a set of observations, called a sample.

the major premise starts with observations of organisms dying, for example,

a squirrel died.

my grandma died.

after the sample is representative of the population e.g. it is random or diverse enough, one infers that all organisms die.

there are two ways to deny this premise.

i

denying observations of death

this method hides examples.

examples are burying corpses, moving sick and dying people into hospital wards and nursing homes, and using sanitized language for death e.g. “passed away”, “went to a better place”, “unalive”.

ii

denying induction

this method uses counterexamples.

examples are parents telling their children not to worry about dying from a disease because some people have had it and survived, and making appeals to technological and medical progress to state that current enviromental factors will not affect one as it did people in the past.

ii

minor premise

this premise is also inductive.

i

one observes their bodily functions and products, e.g. blood, saliva, hunger, excretion, sickness, aging, sex etc.

ii

one observes that organisms have the same bodily functions and products as them, i.e. creatureliness, e.g. a dog getting hunger, a crow excreting, an infected plant, pigeons having sex.

iii

with this, one infers that they are an organism as well.

some examples are medical students’ disease, cyberchondria, and secure couples going through the motions of daily life.

there are two ways to deny this premise.

i

denying observations of creatureliness

this method hides examples.

culture e.g. clothing, hygiene, rituals, hides creatureliness when one is a subject.

disgust e.g. being disgusted on looking at drool, stool, is used hides creatureliness when one is an object.

ii

denying one has the same bodily functions and products

this method uses counterexamples.

denying the former corresponds to self-esteem.

for example, accumulating wealth, discovering knowledge, creating art.

denying the latter corresponds to symbolic immortality.

for example, treating one’s body as a container for their soul, treating inputs and outputs to one’s body in terms of positive and negative energy as opposed to e.g. food and excretion.

⠀

overall, this property of death can be called, death categorical syllogismness.

‘The Ride: A Memory’ is a poem about the causes and effects of the desire to flirt with death to feel alive.

A pile of planks, six stories tall

Warped wood absorbing rains and winds

Groaning silently, slouching on itself

Leaning inward in tired defeat

Time has rendered its loss complete

And now its ghostly

As Chernobyl

the speaker is looking at an old, wooden roller coaster.

it is completely abandoned and rotting from weather, and comparing it to chernobyl shows how empty and haunting the place is now.

A stray shoe left on a carousel

Purgatory, for the praxis of quietus

they notice leftover trash, like a lost shoe, which reminds them of the people who used to be here.

“Purgatory, for the praxis of quietus” implies that an amusement park is like a waiting room (purgatory) where people go to practice (praxis) being close to death or silence (quietus).

In the distance, the din of the thrill

A shrill shriek of panic

Shock, at confronting the face of death

Of a straining chain, in the past

A rickety click-clack

A rattletrack cackling as the chain cranks

And hoists the weight of

Twenty souls skyward

they remember the loud noises (din), the screams, and the sound of the metal chain (”rickety click-clack”) pulling 20 riders (”souls”) up to the top of the roller coaster’s first big drop.

Plastic cracking and straining

Broken molds and joists complaining

Sullen joints and tired timbers settling

Tolerances loose

The play

and leeway

adding to the fun

Our ride sounds like it’s breaking on the run

this describes how scary an old wooden coaster feels.

the parts feel loose, as if the ride is literally falling apart while moving, but this danger (”sounds like it’s breaking”) is actually what makes it exciting.

Every twist, a bit more slipped

Away from our path

The intimacy

Of gravity

Pressing hips together at each turn

as the coaster slams through sharp turns, gravity throws the riders against each other, creating a shared moment of closeness (intimacy).

Each shift bleeding a jot more impulse

From a runaway train

Whose passengers seek

A whisper of death

Across their breath

as the train loses speed (impulse) along the track, they realize why people ride it: they want to feel close to danger.

they are seeking a “whisper of death”—a thrill that reminds them they are alive.

Nought to stop your fall

But a lap bar that may catch

A knee, before you tumble free

To strike the ground, on your broken crown

the safety features are very weak, and it adds to the thrill.

At most a harness

Compressed against a chest

Fighting to swallow air

While tempting fate

With wild, banshee screams

Delighting in the scare

As much for the dare

As a possibility of injury

Or a brush with mortality

while the safety harness squeezes the riders’ chest so hard it’s hard to breathe, they still enjoy the experience because while it is probable that they could get hurt or die (”brush with mortality”), it is almost certain that they will get out alive.

Down another fall, so the train won’t stall

To keep the kinetic momentum

From our initial plunge

To tease a little more speed

For a few final thrills

just before stopping, the riders’ might feel that they are safe, so the coaster probably speeds up to violate expectations for one more thrill before stopping.

Before the compressed air hisses

And the clamps tighten

The vice that cements us back in reality

And arrests death, for a time

the end of the ride brings the riders out of their terrifying fantasy and forcefully pulls them “back in reality”, with the brakes i.e. a key safety feature, stopping the danger (”arrests death”).

Then we’re right back where we started

None too soon, a few scares wise

Our invitation to the thrills of simulated demise

Having completed its tour

Wobbly legs planted firmly on the platform

the riders are relieved it’s over (”none too soon”), having gained a few scares.

A barbarian horde, thumping its chest

Defiant, of the end it came to spy

With its own eyes

And having rode to war, ready to decamp

Once more

the relief in the previous stanza contradicts the pride in this one, because this is the point that they feel they were a counterexample to their creatureliness.

an irony here is this counterexample is sort of annulled by the riders acting like barbarians i.e. like creatures.

To the confines of the nearby eatery

For cardboard pizzas and pre-packaged frippery

At the nearby stall

And a novelty, to recall

The epic quest to conquer fear

With laugh and cheer

the creatureliness continues as the riders go eat cheap, terrible (”cardboard”) pizza and buy useless trinkets (”frippery”) at gift shops to remember the day they ‘conquered’ death.

Great hearty gladness, at our triumph

The roar, both defiant and mechanical

Gone now

A shade of the past

the speaker snaps back to the present day, and the grand feeling of triumph, and the loud roaring noise of the coaster, are completely gone now.

this is the point at which the speaker realises that they had never really defeated death back then, but instead, they just thought they did at that point in time.

And the joy that haunts it

Mere memory

Ghosts of your own voice

Calling you back to the past

Where you cheated death

the speaker looks at the ruins, hears their young voice screaming on the ride, and it reminds them of a time in their now-dead youth when they felt brave enough to “cheat death”.