How to talk about life and death with children?
Tan Li Wen for New York Times's Chinese network, Tan Li Wen worked in the media, wrote articles about international politics, published "cool news paper", "adventure of thought," and so on.
mom, I suddenly thought of a very horrible thing. The long stocking skin is lying on the bed waiting for me to read her the story of "star girl", a novel by Jerry Spinelli (Jerry Spinelli). "Star girl" is a young girl in a common middle school, singing like a fairy, dancing, and doing good to all people every day, because of this, annoying the mediocrity. Pipi likes "star girl", which makes the process of going to bed less sad.
I think children don't like sleeping, want to wake up forever, because they want to play, talk, laugh, run, eat ice cream, take risks, find out what everyone is doing and think about, and use the endless "why?" What does it mean? " Such a problem drives the adults crazy.
but I will soon find that there is another reason why children do not like sleeping.
"what is that?" I asked quietly, quietly hoping that I would hypnotic and work at once so that she would not have nightmares tonight.
"if I die, there will be no me in the world. All my everything is gone!"
aha, death. When her daughter was 4 or 5, she asked, at that time, she was comforted by the theory of material immortality. Now she is 11 years old. Maybe she forgot.
do you remember the lion king? The father of Simba, the lion, said that the life cycle was not resting, the lion died into the soil, the grass was raised, the grass was fed to the sheep, the sheep had entered the lion's stomach, and it became a part of the lion. Think about it. The tip of your finger is probably the dinosaur's toenail millions of years ago. It's so funny. "
Pipi looks at her fingertips and smiles lightly, but it does not digest her worries.
"but I die, my mind is gone, my mind!" It's not a toenail or anything. My mind is gone. I can't see or hear anything. I don't know anything about it. It's awful. " After half a year in international school, she did not know that mind's Chinese was "consciousness". But she already knows that matter is replaceable, but "consciousness" is the only sign of her being a unique life.
this is the real reason why she doesn't like sleeping. The 11 year old child has challenged her parents' intelligence challenge. She has had more than 4000 sleep problems. Eventually, such problems will be raised before bedtime. Escaping sleep is an instinctive response to a vigorous life: daily sleep is like a small death, abandoning the autonomy of consciousness, falling into the dark tunnel in the unknown space, losing control, and losing everything. In turn, longing for sleep is the first sign of a decline in vitality.
If I am religious, this question will be very good, but I have only reached the agnostic zone between atheism and theism. It is uncertain whether people's consciousness will completely disappear with substance. Science is still at a loss in this field, and contradictory evidence makes people even more confused.
I had to ask, "how do you know that human consciousness will disappear?"
"certainly will disappear!" She cried excitedly. This is probably the conclusion she has drawn from her atheist education for many years. In spite of the immortality of the soul, the fairy tale mythology Hollywood animations have all said, but the modern society tells her who is too naive to believe that the mermaid is doing a good thing for the soul to ascend.
to quell the instinctive fear of modern children, it seems that science fairy tales can only be used.
"do you know a sci-fi writer named Asimov?" I asked.
in Asimov's most optimistic and calm imagination of the future of human beings, his favorite work is a short story called the last question.
with the progress of science and technology, the demand of human society has consumed a lot of energy, and the energy of the solar system has been exhausted. People began to colonize in outer space, and stars in the universe were excavated and utilized one by one, but according to the principle of entropy, energy was always exhausted. From generation to generation, they ask their computer, the body of human wisdom, "can the direction of entropy be reversed?" From generation to generation, more and more advanced computers wring brain juice, but they can only give the same answer: "insufficient information, no comment."
one hundred million megabytes in the past, human beings have evolved into a more advanced stage. They give up their bodies, leaving only the mind, that is, consciousness, which become invisible, interconnected waves in the universe, a huge "computer", silent, thinking of the only, final problem. . The stars in the universe die one by one, and all things fall into the final darkness, but the idea has not disappeared, and the information they accumulate for billions of years is silently processing and reestablishing the procedure of the universe.
after a long time, this idea says, "there must be light." So there was light.
I explained to pipi, who was not familiar with the Bible, "to have light" is what the Bible says when God created the world. "Perhaps the universe will take the wisdom of human beings, and perhaps we now have the world recreated by the wisdom of human brain waves, an upgraded version of the world that had disappeared before!"
she laughed. 'yes! The guide for the galaxy hitchhiker also said that the earth was built to make experiments. It's also a good book. We have seen the film it adapted, but the night is deep. It's time to go to bed.
after good night, she fell asleep. Now it's my turn to open my eyes in the dark and think, "if the world is upgraded, how bad the old world would be!" Moreover, Asimov will unite with mankind to preserve the happiness of the race with common wisdom. Perhaps mankind will kill each other first and destroy the race? Alas, the question of the limitation of human morality is still to be discussed when she is 15 years old.
for life, the most important thing is to create light first.