Melancholia, Death & Infinity

The other day I went to see Lars von Trier’s latest movie ‘Melancholia’. I don’t remember when I last felt so out of sorts leaving the cinema.
The movie’s tagline goes: “A beautiful movie about the end of the world.” The story revolves around the dispute between two sisters while life on earth is being threatened by another approaching planet ultimately resulting in a deadly collision.

As opposed to fiction movies like ‘Armageddon’ or ’2012′ this actually has a beauty and dare I say reality factor to it. Be it that our existence on this planet ends due to an unexpected collision with a larger object in space or because our planet Earth simply can’t handle us humans treating it like sh*t anymore…there were moments when I let go of my awareness as an observer and slipped into the plot on the screen. It really scared the living bejesus out of me.  My mother, who sat next to me – one of the coolest, least emotionally-affected people I know – started cold-sweating at one point and later admitted that she had felt close to fainting while in the theatre.

Why is it that the idea of death scares us so much? Throughout my life, when I’ve heard the news about the death of someone – be it that the person was closely related to me or not – I’ve always reacted in an undisturbed way, never shedding tears or being really sad, which was and still is surprising to me at times. The only way I can justify that behaviour is that, in theory, I’ve always looked at death as something natural and nothing I could ever prevent from happening. To the contrary, if someone – on a very deep level – felt they had to go and leave life on plane earth then I could only respect that choice.

‘Melancholia’ got me thinking about our attitude towards life and death, about how much we take for granted and how we think we’ll be around for eternity – it most certainly got me into “Carpe Diem” mode – reminding me of how I need to live life to the fullest and be grateful, for all of it. The movie touches upon other very interesting issues, like our over-reliance on science and rational thinking (interesting given the current predictions for environmental destruction) and how a “sick” person (Kirsten Dunst’s character in the movie suffers from depression) has an easier time coping with the end of the world than her supposedly sane sister – it adds a clever twist as to who’s really the (in)sane one.

Going back to the topic of life and death, I can’t help but acknowledge that I seem to be suffering from a type ‘human hubris’ syndrome. The idea of human civilization on Earth being wiped out one day makes me…sad. Yes, I’m incredibly saddened by the mere thought of not being able to be alive.
At this stage however I’m going to cut myself some slack. After all, fear of death (especially my own) is only natural. In theory and when looking at the BIG picture I know death is part of the cycle of life.

Speaking of cycles and life, I came to think of something I learned about in one of my classes on sustainable development at the Stockholm University. Crawford Holling is considered to be one of the conceptual founders of ecological economics and after doing research on ecological systems he came up with something called ‘The Adaptive Cycle’, a model to explain complex systems – be it the cells of a plant or the nature of society’s development. The different phases depicted in this adaptive cycle show the course of every natural system – take a look at the image below and you’ll notice it’s the same as the infinity sign, hence an ongoing process. One could, for instance, apply the idea of the adaptive cycle to the financial system, which is fundamentally made up of a series of cycles – starting out with growth/accumulation, moving into a phase of conservation/maintenance to a bubble burst resulting in a release/crash and ending with the necessary need for reorganization (on a side note and with regards to the last financial crash, I believe we’ve done a lousy job in reorganizing!).

Holling's 'Adaptive Cycle'

Concluding, if you mess with the dynamics of the system (any system), you’re f*cked.

Trying to prevent any of these stages from happening, e.g. the release (same as destruction) is working against the flow…the flow that is life itself…and linking this notion to my original question of life and death and our relation to it, there is no point in us withstanding the flow – death is part of the natural cycle of life.

Finally and most importantly, remember that when something dies (be it a part of ourselves, a plant or a stock market crashing), the system reorganizes and gives rise to a new and healthier reality.

Now imagine how our behaviours and consequentially our systems would change if we incorporated this type of thinking into our daily lives…

Advertisement

~ by choicesoflife on July 11, 2011.