Anyone who has mourned the loss of a loved one knows that the single thought that offers the most comfort in times of bereavement, which gives us the strength to go on in the midst of almost unbearable and seemingly unending grief, is the possibility--more than that,
the promise--of an afterlife, the continuation of our existence beyond the world as we know it, in a kind of existence we as yet cannot understand--one, however, that will allow us to be with our loved ones again, in a place with no more pain, no more tears, no more parting, no more death. Even atheists can--and perhaps do--believe in a greater consciousness that governs existence in its different planes, maybe not that god preached by Christianity and the other major religions, but a consciousness and intelligence way beyond our comprehension.
But what if there is no afterlife? Or god or that supreme intelligence governing the universe? What if god or that supreme intelligence, if it actually exists, sees us in the same way we see a cockroach, just a pest to be stepped on?
Put a different way, if we do not believe that the life we extinguish with hardly any thought--the cockroach, the mouse, the pig--continue to exist beyond their death in some way, perhaps as some higher existence, why should we believe that our own life, our own consciousness continues after we die?
It is the pinnacle of human arrogance and self-importance to claim an afterlife but at the same time dismiss its possibility for nonhuman life. After all, what makes us different from a cockroach?
In the play "Inherit the Wind,"
Drummon says, "Mr. Brady, why do you deny the one faculty of man [that] raises him above the other creatures of the earth: the power of his brain to reason? What other merit have we? The elephant is larger; the horse is swifter and stronger; the butterfly is far more beautiful; the mosquito is more prolific. Even the simple sponge is more durable. Or does a sponge think?"The power to reason. Some would add the ability to empathize: the fact that, unlike most animals (chimpanzees, though, like humans, have been found to be capable of empathy), we can appreciate the fact that another living creature is experiencing pain. Others would add creativity. Perhaps imagination. But they all go back to Drummond's argument on thought, the power to reason, to remember, to create, the very power that makes us believe that we are higher than and separate from nonhuman life ("the one faculty of man [that] raises him above the other creatures of the earth")--the very thing that, unlike nonhuman life, gives us souls, we who have been made "in the image of God."
But think about it. What if there is something, some aspect of existence, that is far higher than the power to reason or to create or to remember? We cannot fathom it because we do not have the ability to do so. What if there is something beyond the power to reason that we, because of our small minds and limited perspectives, cannot even begin to comprehend?
What if, in the grand scheme of things, we were but cockroaches to a far greater intelligence, as much able to understand the language and thought of such intelligence as a cockroach is able to understand or appreciate the poetry of Yeats?
What if all the things we are so proud of, such as our thought and reason and creativity, are simply the crawling movements of a pesky cockroach to some greater intelligence that is capable of far, far more than we can even imagine?
Such greater intelligence would probably find it laughable, that we in our arrogance and unmitigated sense of self-importance would think ourselves worthy of the sympathy and appreciation of an intelligence responsible for the birth and death of planets and galaxies, or for the birth and death of countless lives for billions of years on our one planet alone. To such greater intelligence, it would be laughable for us to believe in an afterlife just as it would be laughable to many of us to think that cockroaches would actually believe in an afterlife for themselves, a place and time where every dead cockroach would gather in a paradise of their own--no more stepping feet or foul insecticides, just a free-roaming cockroach paradise.
Funny? So perhaps would our aspiration for an afterlife be to an intelligence that sees us in the same way we see cockroaches.
The thought itself can be distressing. If it were so, there would be no point to life. There would be no point to law or morality or ethics or decency. There would be no point to order, no point at all to kindness or mercy, no point even to beauty. After all, it all goes to naught. No reunions after this life, no paradise, no meeting of lovers and loved ones after death.
Ashes to ashes, nothing more. Like a dead cockroach being thrown into a waste basket and eventually being eaten up by ants.
When we pray to "God" or to that higher consciousness, why doesn't "God" or that higher consciousness answer? "Do you not hear me?" Pharoah asks in "The Ten Commandments." Indeed, does "God" not hear? Then again, do we hear the cockroach? Is there perhaps a cry for help every time we move to step on a cockroach?
This thought, however, distressing as it may be, should also be humbling. Shorn of the human arrogance promoted by the world's major religions, which places human beings at the pinnacle of existence, the thought of ourselves as some greater intelligence's cockroach might help us find the humility to co-exist with other inhabitants of this planet, to treat their lives and death with respect, knowing all to well that there is no difference between the death of a cockroach and the death of a human being, both instances being the end of life for something that had once been alive, and in the end being of no consequence to the higher beings with greater power and intelligence in a universe and existence we know very, very little of.
Are we made in the image of God, or are we just cockroaches to a higher intelligence?
Put a different way: If you were God, would you reflect yourself as a cockroach?
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This beautiful card was made by my daughter Cristine and was given to me on Father's Day, June 15, 2003.
