CHAPTER 1

Kurt Vonnegut on Death

Dylan Lynch

Utilizing Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano, this chapteraddresses the concepts of human mortality, itswidespread denial in our everyday lives, and thesubsequent difficulty human beings find in livinga fulfilling life while crippled by the omnipresentfear of death. Technological society's inclination todehumanize its population leads to an absence ofhuman connectedness and thus to the pervasivenessof mechanical versus organic and emotional thoughtsand actions. The acceptance of human mortalityenables those who acknowledge it to live a life thatproduces a sense of immortality; the impact we haveon others, our community and our society as a wholewhile we are alive can ensure that our actions are notlost to history.

As a nation, America has been comfortably living in a state of denialfor the better part of its existence. This shadowy reliance on denialis multi-faceted, and exists to varying degrees in many aspects of dailylife – from one's day job to a night on the town. In recent years, it canbe seen on the national stage with the handling of enemy combatantdetainees, or in the microcosm of a parent turning a blind eye to theirchild's obvious substance abuse problems. This state of denial hasthe highest demand and the widest acceptance when dealing withthe inescapable and supreme end for which all human beings aredestined – death.

The defiantly inspirational Hallmark-esque sayings known andadored by most people about there never being sunshine withoutrain nor joy without pain are rarely taken to their logical end – thatwe couldn't truly appreciate the beauty and wonder of life withoutdeath's resolution. Because of their overwhelming fear of death, manypeople live wholly unfulfilling lives. For reasons of convenience wenaively force a connection between accepting our mortality and livinga meaningless life, though no connection exists and this notion couldnot be further from reality. Social Psychologists such as Ernest Beckerwrite – with much popularity – on seeking immortality, which hedescribes as an inevitable part of people's lives. Becker claims that thedenial of death is both natural and unavoidable. But Becker and hislike-minded followers – henceforth referred to as Denialists – fail torealize the full effect that disregard for death has on humanity.

When people fail to recognize their physical ephemerality, theyare denying the foundation of their vulnerability as well as the fullspectrum of emotions that come with it – all of which are essential tobeing human in the fullest sense of the term. To forsake these emotionsis to turn away from what makes life beautiful, worthwhile, andinfinitely precious. To acknowledge and exist in harmony with theseemotions – including a full acceptance of mortality – is what it meansto truly live. Denialists are only repudiating their own humanity, andin turn they are missing out on life.

Kurt Vonnegut – black-humorist, satirist, and a humanist with aunique worldview – recognized what could happen to a society thatattempted to take human emotion completely out of a human-inhabitedworld. In his novel Player Piano, written while working at a GeneralElectric plant in Ilium, New York, Vonnegut created an America run bymanagers and engineers obsessed with efficiency above all else. PlayerPiano was published in 1952, but due to his foresight and humanistleanings, Vonnegut's novel inches closer to social reality with everyadvance in technology. The managers and engineers brought victoryto America during a great war with their industrial ability, theirunfailing efficiency, and their knack for building machines capable ofdoing previously human tasks faster and for less money. Because of itseffectiveness during the war, the system of having various machinesdo every human enterprise – breathing, sleeping, eating, and sex aside– was kept in place after the war. America's democratically electedgovernment became a figurehead, a puppet mouthpiece assentingto whatever production, employment, and legislative decision thehuman-created machines made. The proponents of this system usedas their justification the undeniable practicality of having machineswork production lines instead of humans (waste and cost were bothdown...