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This Online Edition Play: Katherine's Questionable Quest for Love and Happiness, by Bo C. Klintberg [text image, no navigation]

This Play:
Katherine’s
Questionable Quest
for Love and
Happiness
(View All Plays)

This Version:
1 January 2008 (1.0)
(View All Versions)

This View Mode:
One Scene Per Page
(View All Scenes On One Page [size: 0.3 MB])

SCENE I. The Floridian Liti-Gator

SCENE II. On Battles, Wars, and Meaning

SCENE III. Maximum Happiness, Minimum Unhappiness

SCENE IV. Katherine’s Real Problem

SCENE V. The Mustachio Man

SCENE VI. Death Is Nothing Like a Toothache

SCENE VII. Not In the Hands of the Scientists

SCENE VIII. Important and Unimportant Knowledge

SCENE IX. Physicians Can’t Stop Death

SCENE X. Are Foetuses Potential Persons?

SCENE XI. The Body-Bomb

SCENE XII. The Cartesian Theatre

SCENE XIII. Radha’s Microscope

SCENE XIV. Ontology Drives Explanation

SCENE XV. Another Look at Radha

SCENE XVI. Confessions of a Satisfactionist

Philosophical Play: Katherine's Questionable Quest for Love and Happiness, by Bo C. Klintberg [text image, no navigation]

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SCENE VI. Death Is Nothing
Like a Toothache

1 CHRISTIANUS. But I am not glad that the waiter is not here yet. What in the whole world are they doing in the kitchen? Are they waiting for the pizza harvest season?

2 KATHERINE. Take it easy, Chris! Why don’t you just take another breadstick, for now? I mean, the waiter must be here any second now. And you always tell me how important it is to be patient.

3 CHRISTIANUS. OK, OK! But I am starving!

4 KATHERINE. Why don’t we just continue our little toothache-and-death discussion while we wait? After all, you said that we have a lot to talk about.

5 CHRISTIANUS. Maybe we could do a little of that before the waiter arrives — if he arrives.

6 KATHERINE. So where would we re-enter that discussion, then?

7 CHRISTIANUS. Let’s see. Perhaps we could try something like this: Since you’re not afraid of death, but still hate toothaches, you must think that death is not anything like a toothache.

8 KATHERINE. Exactly. Death is nothing like a toothache.

9 CHRISTIANUS. How do you know that?

10 KATHERINE. Well, isn’t that what everyone believes nowadays?

11 CHRISTIANUS. Well, I was talking about knowing, not believing. But, in any case, it is certainly correct to say that many people think like you do. But it is also correct to say that many people don’t think like you do; and I am one of them. So why do you believe that death is not like a toothache?

12 KATHERINE. As I see it, it’s not really about toothaches; it’s just that death is the end of everything in one’s life; nothing comes after that. So why worry about nothingness? Why not just embrace carpe diem, and live fully, right here, right now? [30]

13 CHRISTIANUS. Yes, if we were to accept some kind of nothingness as an accurate description of our individual future state, then of course we would not need to worry so much about any after-death scenarios. But why in the whole world would we accept such nothingness in the first place?

14 KATHERINE. I just think it is unscientific not to accept it. For individual consciousness obviously depends on brain activity. And since physical death certainly means the annulment of brain activity, the correct conclusion must be that everyone’s individual consciousness dissolves at the time of death. So death must be the end of consciousness, and, therefore, the start of nothingness.

15 CHRISTIANUS. Oh, is that how you think?

16 KATHERINE. Yes. And I don’t see how one can conclude anything else, if one takes the current scientific evidence into consideration.

17 CHRISTIANUS. Well, at least one thing is clear.

18 KATHERINE. What is that?

19 CHRISTIANUS. That you are in the hands of the scientists.

20 KATHERINE. What do you mean?

21 CHRISTIANUS. I mean that you do not have to be in the hands of the scientists, if you don’t want to. You are an intelligent woman, and you should try to make up your own mind about the world and, in particular, about your own situation in it.

22 KATHERINE. I am sorry, but you lost me there.

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Notes (SCENE VI)

[30] VI:12, carpe diem: Ebenezer Cobham Brewer (1810–1897) writes on the meaning of the Latin phrase carpe diem: ‘Enjoy yourself while you have the opportunity. Seize the present day’ (1898).

EBENEZER COBHAM BREWER (1898), Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. New edition, revised, corrected, and enlarged. Philadelphia, PA: Henry Altermus Co.

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HOW TO CITE: Bo C. Klintberg (2008), ‘Death Is Nothing Like a Toothache’ in Katherine’s Questionable Quest for Love and Happiness. Online edition of Philosophical Plays, 1 Jan. 2008. Retrieved [today’s date] from http://philosophicalplays.googlepages.com/pgKQQv1sc06.htm.

All published material in Philosophical Plays, both in the print edition
(ISSN 1654-6296) and in the online edition (ISSN 1654-6318), is
Copyright © 2007-2008 by Bo C. Klintberg. All rights reserved.
No part of these publications may be reproduced, or re-
published, or stored in a retrieval system, without
prior permission in writing from Bo C. Klintberg.

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SCENE VI. Death Is NothingLike a Toothache

Notes (SCENE VI)

SCENE VI. Death Is Nothing
Like a Toothache