Suicide, death, and the destruction of the world:

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Cat’s Cradle illustrates through Bokononism the idea that one’s concept of the world is limited to the experiences of the individual, and not based on a real-world objective reality. When Bokononists commit suicide, they say “Now I will destroy the whole world.” This refers to the fact that by committing suicide, the whole world from the perspective of one’s self is destroyed. In being born, one creates the world (insofar as the fact that despite the propaganda, we are all biased toward a self-centred world-view because of the problem of other minds). In suicide, one destroys the world.

I should note here, that I'm not talking about subjective idealism, but rather, an individualist frame of mind in which the universe's beginning and end relative to one's own experience is equal to birth and death.

As I have written in earlier works, suicide is an act, merely an event. There is intention, there is movement in it.

An alternative reading is that when one thing changes all things are changed in totality. This is a challenge to common conceptions of conservation of identity. For example, in death, one’s consciousness leaves this world, and the result is a changed and remade world. If one conceives of the universe as a unity, then the removal or addition of any part is a complete remaking; a complete destruction and reconstruction.

Every individual’s own birth and death is their own personal experience of world destruction and remaking. (Granted, if the Universe is an infinite unity, nothing can ever be truly added or removed from it, but that is not to say that its contents cannot be rearranged).

The universe is, of course, in a state of constant flux, and committing suicide is a conscious way of taking control of that constant change. It is exerting the will in such a way as to cause a remaking of the universe that is free of you. However, this is neglectful of one’s responsibility to remain in the world, and use the will to exact smaller changes than killing oneself. Using the will to remove one’s own will is counter-intuitive.

On the experience of death and dying:

“Every one regardeth dying as a great matter: but as yet death is not a festival.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

The claim that every man dies alone is accurate in as much as none but he who is dying can experience it. While a person can die surrounded by family and friends, the experience of that death cannot be shared with anybody – not even those who are dying simultaneously. The death of each person is their own to experience, and each is intrinsically unique by virtue of the individuality of each human being.

Heidegger suggests that death is not even available as an experience, because experience requires life. I do not presume to suggest that death is the end of all experience, but Heidegger’s position underlines the uncompromising finality of death in terms of experience and sharing that experience with others.

In death, none can recount that experience to the living. Even as we lie on our death beds explaining the experience to others, those others have only the experience of our death from their perspective. More accurately, others have the experience of watching someone dying; the process and not the result.

To further that idea of sharing in dying, Heidegger represented dying as what really matters, rather than death (by virtue of its possibility for experience), going so far as to point out that the process of living is synonymous with the process of dying, saying that as soon as we are born, we are old enough to die. This is what he called being-towards-death.

From this perspective, it is necessary to orient oneself towards death such that dying is an emotional investment in possible ways of being; one with a necessary agency and awareness – an authentic way of being-toward-death (note that ‘dying’ is the same as living, by this interpretation). More on this later.

As I said, dying and life cannot be mutual, identical experiences between individuals. Each person’s death and dying are his or her ownmost experience, but through reflection, communication, and shared experience – a state of what I call intersubjectivity - the living can share in a facsimile of another’s life, albeit a flawed and incomplete one.

“To many men life is a failure; a poison-worm gnaweth at their heart. Then let them see to it that their dying is all the more a success.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

**I should probably note that those Nietzsche quotes were taken out of context and I'm using them in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way to illustrate my points.**