Transcending Death

Hope

Hope is as integral to death transcendence as to survival in life itself. It affirms the worthwhileness of existence and looks to future goals that may not be apparent in the present. Hope generates the ongoing success of community life and, in the context of death, depends on being widely shared by a group that is able to sustain individual members who may have, temporarily, lost hope and are in despair. Hope infuses the human imagination when it constructs myths, and religious, philosophical, and political theories about existence and the nature of death. While such a picture of the meaning of life can assume an order of reality that denies the validity of the schemes of other groups, its success depends upon the affinity individuals feel toward them, and this may change over time. As emotional beings, we are encouraged to pattern our feelings in particular ways and to share expressions of our moods. This management of human emotion is a fundamental task of society and has traditionally been undertaken by what we call religion, especially as far as death is concerned. An allied issue is that of morality, the sense of values a society prizes and applauds in its members. This moral aspect is of profound importance for death transcendence because hope is not simply an optimistic energy but is grounded in this moral domain [Page 968]of commended values, ensuring that hope is given some degree of substance by making it integral to the relationships that constitute human communities. It is this moral value, born of daily reciprocal relationships, that drives religious ideas of death transcendence and the ongoing worth of human existence despite the constraints of death.

Reciprocity, Merit, and Identity

At the foundation of much human life are ideas of reciprocity, of mutual giving and taking and giving again, that build up a society. In traditional sociological terms, such a society is a moral community, and it is the reciprocity that makes a moral community that also serves as the basis for transcending that community and for transcending death itself, the ultimate constraint upon community values.

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