Ethica — diei et noctis — ordine geometrico demonstrata
This article is concerned with the relationship between suicide and choking as two of the three leading causes of unnatural death, demonstrated in geometrical order.
POSTULATUM — Postulate; axiomatic data provided by official bodies:
Choking is the second leading cause of unnatural death (or the third, depending on the source) in Spain. The first is — understandably — suicide. These figures make perfect sense, although I haven’t seen anyone interpret them the way I’m going to do below.
PROPOSITIO — Compound proposition, first thesis, or explanation for the postulate or axiom:
You plan to commit suicide, neglect your oral hygiene, end up not committing suicide, lose teeth, chew out of habit for the same amount of time it took you your entire life (with all your teeth), swallow food that wasn’t chewed enough, choke, and die.
SCHOLIUM — In response to possible objections to the proposition:
You might have the money and get implants immediately, but this is less likely — among other things, because financial leeway makes contemplating suicide more unlikely.
DEMONSTRATIO — Proof or demonstration of the proposition from the scholium, ‘financial leeway makes contemplating suicide more unlikely’:
(See: ‘7. If the level of suffering were not high enough’, in Hope as evidence — Not about feelings.)
COROLLARIUM — Corollary to the first proposition, thesis or explanation for the postulate:
Normally, you’ll be poor, time will pass, you might save up for implants, but perhaps by then you would have lost so much bone and gum tissue that you wouldn’t be able to get implants even if you could afford them.
In the best-case scenario, it will take a while — with fewer teeth in your mouth — until you get any kind of prosthesis, and, during that time, you’ll probably continue eating the same things as before, chewing for the same amount of time, swallowing food that hasn’t been chewed enough, and choking.
APPENDIX — With practical consequences:
In one scene in Papillon (1973), guards hand out water for what appears to be a very short time. All the prisoners try to shower except for Dustin Hoffman’s farsighted character, who opts to brush his teeth.
— The important thing is to brush your teeth. The rest could be fixed, perhaps.
Whether you’re planning to die or kill yourself, do not neglect your teeth. Imagine that you’re still alive in the end.
SCHOLIUM II — In response to possible objections (to the advice in the appendix) that might denounce the paradox or contradiction, and therefore, the impossibility of carrying out the advice of ‘brushing your teeth even if you think you will die soon or you are determined to end your life’ and, in that state, you do not mind losing your teeth.
The objection in quotation marks belongs to the post hyperlinked below:
Nigh nothing important depends on one’s own will: that ‘nigh’ was not idle.
Almost nothing that is normally important (nothing that happens in the valley of tears) depends on one’s will, but among the most important things would be the salvation of one’s soul, and that would depend on one’s free will.
(See: ‘5. Some — mysterious — voluntary element in embracing hope’, in Hope as evidence — Not about feelings.)
One can choose almost nothing, but can choose precisely what is decisive in the eyes of the only competent Judge one may have in his entire life: can choose between good and evil.
As for the bidirectional relationship that exists, within the individual, between his free will and his infused virtues, we can do little more in this article than mention it.
In previous articles, especially Hope as evidence — Not about feelings, we saw that infused or theological virtues are not feelings, nor conscious great expectations, nor rational convictions, nor dreams, nor a mood. The action, the evidence of such virtues can occur — and in fact I myself can attest that it does — without being accompanied by any of those positive or pleasant emotions and thoughts. They are gifts one receives from beyond oneself and all empirical evidence, and they prove decisive when one is faced with the most dramatic moments of truth — regarding life and death.
Hope, for instance, is not something one feels, but just something that acts — and with a full sovereignty which operates, however, in conjunction with one’s free will. There is actually, let us repeat it, a paradoxical tension in the advice of the appendix, which was also the advice of Pascal. And there is also tension between the idea of hope (for instance) as a theological virtue that is received but, at the same time, is nourished by the free will of an individual.
Q.E.D.
CODA
Homo liber de nulla re minus quam de morte cogitat, et ejus sapientia non mortis sed vitæ meditatio est.
(A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.)
— Spinoza, Ethics, Part IV, Proposition 67.