The 9/11 Cross redux - honoring the dead?

[apophenia]

I'm currently reading a book by Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming, about the rise in America of a movement called Christian nationalism which aims to take over, to 'dominate', all aspects of American life with a Christ centered and Christian culture, in preparation for the Second Coming of Christ. In it, she quotes Hannah Arendt on the character of totalitarian regimes to replace the reliance of the masses on secular and traditional sources of information with a dependency on sources vetted by the regime. This is accomplished by instilling fear and paranoia and distrust of traditional sources, commonly via propaganda and the fomenting of revisionist accounts of present and past society. It has been my experience that, far from being an aberration driven by needful ideologies such as Nazism, fascism and Dominionist Christianity, this is the standard modus operandii of the species as a whole.

As atheists, we're "naturally" distrustful of histories and evidence from decidedly theistic sources ("Beware the natural sign." -- Roland Barthes, cautioning that things labeled as natural are often done so to cloak their highly unnatural and biased nature). We look upon theists as having epistemic procedures, methods of deriving truths, as strongly driven by the needs of their beliefs and ideologies. Yet, this isn't an aberration, in my view, as all ideologies, religious or not, have their choices of epistemic procedures driven by the needs of their ideology, rather than the other way around, in which we would start with an epistemic procedure and then derive our truths. We first possess our truths (or are possessed by them), and then find ways of living and thinking which accommodate them and justify them.

I myself have noticed this in my own life, as a Taoist of many years, though I was apostatic for 12-13 years, I have never abandoned my Taoism. In recent months, I have had an epiphany which should lead me to hold my Taoist beliefs at arm's length, as suspect until further examined and vetted by conscious inspection. Yet Taoism, is what I know. I continue to live a Taoist life, in spite of these revelations. And also in spite of the fact that I recognize that, as a result of family dynamics, I became an under-achiever and gravitate towards "loser behaviors", and, that it is this dynamic which as much as anything makes Taoism an appealing ideology. Taoism is a philosophy that provides plenty of opportunity for the under-achiever, the loser, or the poorly equipped, to comfort and console themselves that everything is in its proper orbits, and their behaviors need not be amended -- if anything, it encourages them. The epistemic, the texts accepted, the voices allowed, serve to perpetuate the truths of Taoism rather than provide a picture of "reality" (whatever that is).

So what does this have to do with 9/11 and the cross at the memorial? Well, it occurred to me that, despite atheists and others who don't believe in an afterlife believing that a person simply ceases to exist at death, we have this curious ritual, and language, of honoring the dead. What, specifically do we mean, or what are we trying to achieve in "honoring the dead"? The erection of a cross at the 9/11 site, to me, seemed less an outcry against entanglement between government and religion, than it was an outrage that such a monument would insult the memory of non-Christians who died that day. What are we doing? We commonly speak of "honoring their memory" -- but it wasn't their memory that died that day -- their memory, whatever that means, lives on. Can you dishonor a memory? Can you insult a memory? The people we want to protect no longer exist, they're dead -- so what is it that we are protecting? What do we mean by these words and these acts? Why bury our dead? Plant tombstones? Hold memorial services, dedicate days of remembrance, plant trees, organize college scholarships, etcetera, etcetera?

Epictetus famously said that, "You are a little soul carrying around a corpse." Truly the dead are no more. The soul is gone. The life extinguished. How do you honor something that does not exist? Heraclitus opined, “Corpses are more fit to be thrown out than is dung.“ When Chuang Tzu, one of the twin founders of Taoism, was asked by a friend why he was singing and drumming and not grieving after his wife died, he said: "When she died, how could I help being affected? But as I think the matter over, I realize that originally she had no life and not only no life, she had no form; not only no form, she had no material force (ch'i). In the limbo of existence and non-existence, there was transformation and the material force was evolved. The material force was transformed to be form, form was transformed to become life, and now birth has transformed to become death. This is like the rotation of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall and winter. Now she lies asleep in the great house [the universe]. For me to go about weeping and wailing would be to show my ignorance of destiny. Therefore I desist."

Why do we, as atheists, honor the dead?

[Hermit]

Have I stopped beating my wife? No, I do not honour the dead. I do go through a ritual when someone dies in order to help me cope. I discovered this when a cat died about eleven years after she wandered into my abode. I dug a hole in the backyard, lined it with her favourite towel, gently lowered her into it, added a bowl of food, a bowl of water and an envelope crumpled up into a ball (she loved playing with those) and folded the sides of the towel over the top before filling the hole. I was, childlike, pretending that she was not really dead; that she was 'on a journey to another world'. I was also aware of the pretense at the time I performed that ritual, but I was also aware that this very ritual would help me diminish and, in time, overcome my grief.

all ideologies, religious or not, have their choices of epistemic procedures driven by the needs of their ideology, rather than the other way around, in which we would start with an epistemic procedure and then derive our truths.

True to an extent, but what then prevented me from turning from a catholic to a deist, from a deist to an atheist, from a libertarian to a social democrat and then to an armchair socialist, from a believer in free will to a determinist of sorts, from a supporter of gun control to one who isn't, and so on?