The problem with this modern view is that it expresses a position of hubris—an ultimate denial of limits.  Limits are what create the possibility of balance, both personally and ecologically. When we can’t accept even the most basic limit of death, there is no end to the limits we will throw off. 

Death is necessary for life—in every way and at every level.  It is necessary for the renewal of soil, it is necessary for the balance of creatures, it is necessary for the sustenance of many animals. Yet all too often, we make every attempt to escape death, both in receiving it and in delivering it.  We want life to have no limits.  But life without limits is cancer. 

Back home in Arkansas, deer season is beginning.  Many urban people don’t like deer hunting out of some misguided desire for life without limits, some idea that people play no role in the ecosystem.  But deer hunting in North America is as crucial for conservation efforts as controlled burns and reforestation.  Deer overpopulation is a major problem for ground-nesting birds, wild ginseng is being driven to extinction because of deer, and yet many people in the green movement want no hunting.  Perhaps this is the problem of a broad tent—mixing those who care for a whole and those who care for particular parts. 

I bring up deer hunting because there is a link between the denial of limits that drove Descartes to attempt to escape death, and the denial of death more generally.  The time comes for a deer to become the food of another animal. A warbler falls to a hawk, a lamb falls to the farmer’s knife, an old bear dies in its winter cave, and it is my hope that one day I will also die within the bounds of natural limits.  Death is the beginning of life.