Fates Worse Than Death (lecture)

Cathedral of St. John the Divine

"Fates Worse Than Death" was a lecture delivered at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City on May 23, 1982. The second half of it was published in the New York Times on June 13, 1982 under the title "Avoiding the Big Bang". It was later printed complete, with its official title, as No. 80 of the Spokesman Pamphlet series by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation as well as in the North American Review in December 1982. A version was also presented at the Ivy League conference "Issues of Nuclear Arms" at Dartmouth in May 1983.

In 1984, it was published with "The Worst Addiction of Them All" as the collection Nothing Is Lost Save Honor: Two Essays by Nouveau Press for the Mississippi Civil Liberties Union. It was later reprinted in the collection of the same name in 1991 and the third volume of the Library of America's Vonnegut set in 2014.

Summary

Despite all the fear of hydrogen bombs, they can do nothing more than kill their victims, which is a fate that all human beings ultimately face. Science still has not discovered a way to make people more dead than dead, but are there fates worse than death? The Reverend Jim Jones thought he and his followers would soon face such a fate so he gave them Kool-Aid laced with cyanide. The American government is ready to bomb the whole world into oblivion should its people face a fate worse than death. Perhaps a conquering enemy could threaten us with destroying the economic system, throwing millions out of work. Or they could be "too cheap to take good care of children and old people", or only spend money on military preparations. However, Americans could probably survive that, if they had to. Crucifixion, that supremely painful fate used by the ancient Romans, might be a fate worse than death and if it happened to any of us, we might in response wish that life everywhere would come to an end. While the most well-known victim of crucifixion in human history, who supposedly also had the power to end life everywhere, chose to suffer the agony instead, Jesus is not really a fair example of what most humans are expected to endure. Of course, America's bombing of the world would kill not only its national enemies but other forms of life, such as the blue-footed boobies of the Galapagos Island, whom Vonnegut recently saw on a visit with Paul Moore, Jr., the bishop of the cathedral.

Slavery, being bought and sold like appliances, would perhaps also be worse than death. Although Vonnegut's never seen a slave, his four great-grandfathers did when they first immigrated. The song "Rule, Britannia", which is over a quarter of a century older than the United States, proclaimed that a powerful navy would prevent the British from being slaves and instead allow them to enslave others. Americans and Russians have both been enslaved before and "displayed astonishing spiritual strengths and resourcefulness", finding satisfaction in simple pleasures of life and believing better days were coming. So slavery does not seem to be a fate worse than death, but what if invaders pushed Americans off their ancestral lands into swamps and deserts and tried to destroy their religious beliefs? Again, millions of Americans have already endured and continue to endure this while maintaining self-respect, still preferring that life to death. No one, however, seems about to treat white Americans as they have treated African and Native Americans. Many white groups, including Russians, Britons, Armenians, and Jews, have faced horrible treatment and continued to desire survival. In modern economies, maybe life without petroleum would be worse than death. In melodramas a century ago, a woman's loss of virginity outside marriage was spoken of this way.

Interior, Cathedral of St. John the Divine

Soldiers, however, have been trained to be willing to die. Many in history have embraced the motto "death before dishonor", although military death now means more than the soldiers themselves and encompasses the death of everything on Earth, including, again, the blue-footed boobies of the Galapagos Islands. The many strange creatures on those islands encourage humans to reflect, as Charles Darwin did, on how nature can produce nearly anything given time. If humans destroy all life on the planet, it seems likely nature will start it up again in a few million years. It's only the human species specifically that is running out of time since we seem unlikely to disarm or stop committing horrible atrocities. It could be that the purpose of humanity is to continually improve our weaponry, by believing death is better than dishonor, and blow the place up as a means for nature to create new galaxies.

We could pray that some divine force take away our technological inventiveness, but it may turn out also be the source of our salvation, specifically through television sets. Modern communication has unmasked the horror of war to everyone in industrialized nations. Veterans of the Vietnam War never had the illusion that warfare was anything but meaningless butchery of the powerless, due to their near constant exposure to battles, both actual and staged. Young soldiers of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan likewise were already sick of war before they got there, as are those of Argentina and Great Britain fighting a pointless war in the Falkland Islands. The New York Post calls them "Argies" and "Brits" as if it were merely a soccer match, but modern communication let's every know it's far more horrible than that.

When Vonnegut was a child, Americans knew almost nothing about foreigners unless they were specialists, usually of a specific culture. Now with modern travel and communication, people can see sights, hear sounds, and have experiences from around the world in places that once seemed impossibly exotic like Katmandu, Timbuktu, Fiji, and the Galapagos Islands. Everyone is now absolutely certain that their enemies are nothing but other human beings who, like themselves, eat, procreate, obey their leaders, and think like their neighbors. Humans now have reason to mourn the death of any other person or the destruction of cities on any side of a war. Lousy communication bred ignorance, which allowed past humans to react with glee to the killing of others, but people have changed and can no longer be as bloodthirsty. Vonnegut dreamed last night of humanity's descendants a thousand years in the future, some rich, others poor, some likable, others insufferable. When he asked how they survived the past millennium, they told him it's because they always preferred life over death, even at the cost of dishonor. They endured insults and humiliations from other human beings to survive. Vonnegut endeared himself to them by offering a motto based on a quote by Jim Fisk, a nineteenth century robber baron, who after a disgraceful episode involving the Erie Railroad reflected afterward: "Nothing is lost save honor."

Aftermath

A letter to the editor by Edward Green of New York dated June 15, 1982 was printed in the New York Times on June 24. It accused Vonnegut of overstating the importance of humanity within the universe, particularly in terms of galaxy creation. Saying that the detonation of every nuclear weapon on the planet would at most only lead to "a new asteroid belt between the orbits of Venus and Mars", Green notes that this would have no galactic consequences.

Vonnegut contributed the text of this lecture to the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation when they requested a message of support for the first convention of European Nuclear Disarmament to be held in Brussels in July of 1982. He replied in early June that he would be unable to attend but that the world "seems to be one big city now" anyway since he had just that day met in his neighborhood the mayor of Nagasaki, whose mother was pregnant with him when the atomic bomb was dropped. Vonnegut found him, unsurprisingly, to be a supporter of peace. Describing himself as "a druid" who gave a lecture in a cathedral, Vonnegut offered this text for publication, noting that the copyright was owned by the cathedral, which paid him nothing, but that "[t]hey wouldn't have the balls to sue" if it were reprinted.