M-art-ality
A Discussion: Can you live forever through your work?
Note
The following article is formatted as a theatrical DISCUSSION, and imitates a conversation between parties representing different sides of a debate ensuing from the given prompt, with dramatic depth.
How to Read | Read (optionally) the Event to understand the background; then proceed with the Question, or the main subject of the Discussion, and substantiate the Discussion with the Context should it become unclear.
This article focuses on the first question, and is the first of a series of three main questions, in the form of articles, as part of the discussion.
The Event
A man, thinned with age and weathered down by time, raised his shaking arm to dip his brush into paint. His bones cracked and his joints creaked, and he wondered how long it’d been since he’d oiled them. Rust-colored spots, splattered across his mussy scalp and creased face, matched the glob of acrylic paint now coating the tousled bristles. He raised the brush timidly, as if its handle – or his hand itself – would snap with too sudden a movement. He was dying, but he must complete his painting before he finally set his tools down. This was the final touch. A small dot bled into the canvas. He raised his brush again, placed it into his potholder, and welcomed Death, thanking it for its patience.
Later, his three children would find his creation would be placed in a local gallery, through which he could “live on”. They visited his artwork, and then sat by his grave; moss softened the engraving of his name.
The Question
Can one achieve immortality through their work?
The Table of Context
This Discussion will focus on the following three questions, defining along the way Immortality, Memory, Conscience, Body, and Reality:
- Is Memory equal to immortality?
- Prelude
- Defining Memory
- Memory’s Definition (Importance)
- Communal Memory vs Reality
- Can we immortalize ourselves in the physical world? Can immortality exist
- Should we attempt one or the other, to immortalize any part of ourselves?
The three characters represent Romanticism, Realism, and a Critic’s point of view (emblematic of more of a “modern” trend of thought).
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M-art-ality, part one
I. Prelude
The ROMANTIC, REALIST, and CRITIC gather around their father’s grave.
ROMANTIC: Although he is dead, we ultimately will die before he does, won’t we?
REALIST : How can he live past his death?
ROMANTIC : As Da Vinci, Einstein, and Austen have – through their words and drawings; works, I think, that embody their beings, and their transcendence through time carries with it their writers’ essences.
REALIST : But if the words were to be lost, then so would their author.
ROMANTIC : But so long as a person were to remember the words or the writer, the writer lives on, as our father does through us, and doesn’t through those who haven’t experienced his work or his life.
CRITIC : I find multiple issues with these statements. Firstly, what of the work itself? How can it recall an entire being?
ROMANTIC : The work itself shouldn’t matter; it is a work of the artist, emblematic in all variations. To those that knew him, he is preserved in our memory. To those that did not, the others, they are introduced to his memory through his art. He is alive, and dead. Those unaware of his death may even see him alive; it depends on what is remembered.
REALIST : This comparison between us, those that knew him, and “the others” – one can’t possibly be dead and alive at the same time to different people. It’s a matter not of what is remembered, but what is known; we know he is dead, and that is the reality. A mark is left through his art, but it is a mark, not a tire. The machine itself has ceased to function.
CRITIC : And what immaterial aspect of a person, to you, appears through the marks they leave?
ROMANTIC : Whatever message they attempted to convey through the work – even an autobiography – reflects to the viewer a light into the authors themselves; I cannot say yet what that light shines on. And if one person’s knowledge excludes the death or life of a given person, that person may be alive or dead at the same time to different people. It is all subjective; but does that mean that Life, or even Reality, lies in the hands of Memory?
II. Defining Memory
REALIST : Let us define Memory, and progress accordingly. It is of a Humeaic inspiration that I draw this explanation; feel free to amend or refute it: I believe Memory to stand as the collection of recollections derived from the interpretation of the input of the senses from Reality.*
CRITIC : But this definition does not explain the variation of Memories that could justify, or, in my opinion, absolve, the statement that life may lie in the hands of diverging Memory.
REALIST : The senses – sight, touch, feel, taste, smell – are what register the external world, and the Mind interprets these registrations from the senses; the result, should the Mind retain it, is (both a part and the whole of) Memory.
ROMANTIC : And it is these differences in interpretations that yield variations in Memory, and the array of memories in one’s Memory that results in an affected interpretation, and so on, the product of which I define as individuality.
CRITIC : If both unique Memory and individuality are mutually reliant and a result of one another, how is individuality achieved at the start? When does a person begin to tailor their interpretations of what they see around them – when does a person begin to interpret their senses altogether? – but I am straying from the subject; I am ranting. Let us return to Memory, rather than the Mind.
III. Memory's Definition
REALIST : With this definition, we must realize that Memory, as you have realized, is integral to a person’s personality and Self. And to further our defining process, I say a Person, rather than man; the man is the vessel, the Mind and its immaterial affiliates we shall consider as a Person – a notion similar to Locke’s. Therefore, a person with a given Memory is a given Person; and a person without the ability to remember is only a Person in the moment, despite its body (man) remaining externally unchanged.
ROMANTIC : So, should a person have their Memory fail them, it is their Person – which I will re-define as their consciousness, if you will – which is “dying”. Should a person be dying physically, but their Memory intact, what occurs?
CRITIC : It is a vessel sinking with a live passenger. And the opposite?
ROMANTIC : It is the light fading from an untouched candle.
REALIST : But, really, are they really so separate? A Mind without a body may not, as of today, survive; and a body without a Mind is a corpse.
CRITIC : A corpse? What of the existence of a Soul? You cannot suggest that an entire being lies in the Mind? Descartes too was a substance dualist, dividing the body versus the Mind, the “Self”, but even then, the Mind only exists with a body, as you yourself have affirmed. They are different, sure, but they are part of the same entity.
REALIST : That last phrase calls for property dualism, and to discuss the Soul further, we must delve into theology, and down a path which would span an arguably-infinite number of pages, which I neither wish to discuss nor condemn our reader to lumber through. At a later time, we may dedicate an entire discussion to its existence, but for now, let us acknowledge it simply as that element which would answer your dilemma as to your purportedly impenetrable cycle of importation-(of the senses)-interpretation, or a simple je-ne-sais-quoi of that latter process.
CRITIC : You cannot possibly be satisfied with this definition!
ROMANTIC : I, however, am ready to accept it. I believe a lengthy discussion is needed to analyze it – and even then I doubt we shall reach a decisive point, rather than a mere nuance of conclusion – which we would most likely resolve with a variable statement. I do not consider a distinguishable weight to be attributed to its existence in this conversation, and I am therefore amenable – despite my own views on its existence and importance, which correspond to Gilbert Ryle’s term “ghost in the machine” – to neglect it for the sake of simplifying the elements that we juggle while we converse.
REALIST : Then let us accept a body with no Mind as a corpse, and the Soul as an extension to the Mind as such that one cannot exist without the other, therefore validating my prior statement. We have established the variability of Memory, and its resulting leeway for a quasi-contradiction (I say quasi because the phrase “He is dead and he is alive” is not, in our case, a contradiction, as we implicitly add “to a person, to another person” intermittently); but can we say that, like importation-interpretation, Reality can lie in the hands of Memory, and vice versa?
CRITIC : I believe that conclusion to be the result of an err in the perception of a given Person’s views on the world “as a result of their Memory”; that is their reality, not objective Reality. Therefore, our father is really dead, but to us, if we accept the idea that a Person may continue to exist through material objects emblematic of them, he is alive.
IV. Communal Memory, Reality
ROMANTIC : Let us explore that notion further. If, for the sake of argument, everyone in the world knew our father, and thought him still alive – through his art or even falsely, in Mind as well as in body – and I am of the opinion that one’s perception is one’s reality, and so all’s perception concludes into “objective Reality” – our father would be alive.
REALIST : If “all’s perception concludes into Reality”, as you say, then it is the fact that those perceptions are – and have to be – all divergent that clears the path for a more “objective” Reality. If our father were still alive to everyone, that wouldn’t be “objective” at all, but entirely subjective – we all would just happen to agree. If you imagine all perceptions or Persons as color-lenses, it is only the accumulation of a quasi-infinite (here I go again) number of varied color-lenses that leads to a “white”, or clear, lens to see the “real” world with.
CRITIC : You are both neglecting the idea of the existence of an independent Reality, which doesn’t need any view on the part of anyone to exist, and will continue to exist after all our deaths. Our father is dead. No matter who believes he is alive, his body – his corpse, with a Mind gone elsewhere – lies in this coffin, and his Person is distilled in his work. His memory, as those who have known him and see him in his work keep in their Minds, does not equal Reality.
ROMANTIC : But if everyone were to forget his death, would he not live a “second life” through, if you will, “our” respective realities? And if his Person is distilled in his work, his Person continues to exist – is that not immortality?
REALIST : I’d like to address this second question later; as for the thought of a “second life”, I must divide the impression from the external, and agree with the critical analysis on independent Reality. That doesn’t negate the hypothesis that, potentially, all the views of the world could define our Reality, but it is altogether a notion too fragmented to discuss without proper foundation.
If everyone were to forget our father’s death, I would argue he would suffer a “second death” rather than life; but I should stray from such a term, as the fact that he – as a man and a Person – is dead has not changed. Therefore, Memory may immortalize the Person, but not an entire being.
ROMANTIC : Then immortality of the Person may exist in Memory alone, or the Memories of others. I will start painting right away.
CRITIC : I still reserve my concerns as to the viability – no, the possibility – of “immortalizing” oneself, or, one’s person, through material objects. They implicate the perception of the object by the viewer, and the object’s initial (or aimed, if you will) perception through its creator. How can these align? If they do, is that immortality or survival in Memory? Can immortality really exist in the physical world? And how can a Person – whom we have agreed is composed of a Mind and Memories – be entirely encompassed in an object?
