Today's New York Times notes the passing of David Lewis and Joseph Slowinski and contains interesting stories regarding Sandra Miranda and Abdurrahman Wahid.
David Lewis was a professor of philosophy at Princeton University. He championed the idea that all conceivable worlds actually exist. According to the Times, "He believed, for instance, that there was a world with talking donkeys." I like the Times statement for its suggestion through the use of past tense that the world of talking donkeys was obliterated with Lewis's passing.
Joseph Slowinski was an expert on venomous snakes. He died at age 38 as a result of krait (relative of the cobra) bite in a remote region of Myanmar. It was his 11th trip to the country.
Sandra Miranda stole the credit card of a friend killed in the World Trade Center collapse and went on a shopping spree with it September 15 through 18. The theft was discovered by the victim's mother when the bill came with charges after the 11th. Mirandra's $5000 nefarious purchases included $2000 in religious figurines from a gift shop in Bensonhurst.
Abdurrahn Wahid was removed from office as the President of Indonesia by legislative action on July 23. Interviewed this week "alone in his tiny office..., his hands folded quietly before him on his desktop. Blind from two strokes, he stared straight ahead, unmoving. But within his mind, behind his placid expression the world was clearly swirling with activity, scenes as extraordinary and subtle and perhaps as fantastic, as the shadow puppet shows he loves." (Seth Mydans, the Times reporter, writes flamboyantly for a newspaperman.) Despite universal celebration of his passing from the scene, Wahid expects to be returned to office by popular demand at any moment.
All of these people live or lived in states of their own creation. Slowinski's life must have been a pyramid scheme, based on the idea that if he had not died from tempting the snakes of the United States that he must seek rarer species further removed from medical care. Did he believe in his own invincibility or did he not care. Fascination with death and danger must have been intoxicating.
Reflected in Slowinski's glorious tempation of fate, Miranda's ignomious dash is strange and ugly. I know very little of any of these people. What can have possesed Slowinski to to buy religious items? She must have know she would be caught. She must have felt the horror of her actions. Was she praying for herself, for her friend or for the planet?
Wahid, President of one of the great nations, is now a simple broken man. Is he actually living in one of Lewis's worlds?
There is no significance to Lewis's theory. He, the believer in unreality, may be the most realistic of all these people because he died with the fullest most accomplished life. Slowinski died to young, Miranda sold her soul for kitch, Wahid is further from life alive than Lewis dead. Lewis's belief in other worlds brought him fame in this world. But there is no there in these other worlds. Whether they exist or not is more than beyond our sphere, it is beyond significance to our sphere. The postulate is fatuous. How ironic that the most unreal is the most real.
I admire Slowinski best. Certainly our world must crush us, but let us choose the nature of our being and the manner of our death.