The name Deadman Wash is inspired by an actual place. A "wash" is the term we use in the American Southwest to describe a creek bed that is normally mostly dry until a rare rainfall, at which it can swell large enough to sweep a car away. There are a couple of Deadman Washes in Arizona and Utah, but the one I found captivating was north of Phoenix. Well, it used to be north of Phoenix, but now it is hard to tell where Phoenix ends. So now, Deadman wash winds its way through a major development called Anthem, where for centuries stood the most beautiful and remarkable grove of Palo Verde trees. So although Deadman wash started out decades ago for me as a really cool name that I dreamt of being the namesake of one of my rock bands, the actual wash has become to me a living symbol of human kind’s arrogance.
Deadman Wash has always appealed to me because of what the term connotes. Did someone die in that wash during a flood? Was it a description of what many see in the old volcanic mountain peak in front that looks like an old cowboy or native lying on his/her back? When I was really creative, I could picture a macabre old West medicine show where some old charlatan who wet by the name “Doc” sold an elixir that claimed to raise the dead. But ultimately it makes me think of something we tend to fear.
I don't think I am alone in believing that organized religion has long resulted in some of the ugliest behavior humans can exhibit. We tend to be so narrow-minded that we refuse to acknowledge the evidence around us. Our Western religions teach us that we were given our ability to reason as some kind of Satanic trick, and that we need to accept everything on faith. Our culture has long used this faith as an excuse to exploit land and peoples, so much now that many scientists believe that we are actually making our planet unlivable for us humans.
Well, despite all the lack of evidence, I still believe in some form of Spirituality or God, if you will, because I often feel its presence so keenly in my life. Still, I am a scientist myself, and I cannot be fooled into accepting somebody else's mythology, especially if it denies other possibilities that other very intelligent people believe and hold so dearly. I believe there are morals to be gleaned from all mythologies. As Joseph Campbell said, the older cultures had mythologies that merely alluded to God through stories, because those cultures knew that they could never really understand what God was because the concept was too big for any of us to really grasp. When he compared those older religions to our Western religions and their impact for our modern world, he said that we needed to develop a new mythology; one that would actually further our civilization and not destroy it.
When in college, I had very famous professors who were studying why conflict was so inherent among human beings between in-groups and out-groups, which some of them applied directly to intervening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One of them posited the idea that it all happened because of a fear of death. My initial reaction to that was that it was far too simplified to be true. But over the years it has come to seem more valid. I now believe that much of what we use to justify the denigration of out-groups is our own fear of mortality which causes us to adhere more closely to our own in-groups. So we cling more dearly to our ethnic groups and their corresponding religions because 1) the continuity of generations in some ways does allow us to be immortal and 2) these religions tell us that we are somehow special and that others are not and so will not receive their eternal reward. But anybody who thinks that they know who and/or what God is, especially to the exclusion of others is just fooling themselves. Guess what, those people think the same about you.
So, I have decided to not be afraid of death, but to use my impending earthly departure instead as motivation to do great things while I walk this Earth. I do open myself to spiritual guidance to help point me in the right direction, and I often receive that guidance. But I don’t try to define it. I just listen to it and try to follow it. Like many things in this world I don’t have control over, I know I truly have no control over what happens after I die. So I don’t worry about it – I think of it as a Deadman Wash. And that is absolutely the most freeing concept in my life philosophy. That is because I definitely have control over how I live and what kind of legacy I leave behind. So do you. And I know I’m going to die someday and never be heard from again, so I am going to make the best of the blessed gift I’ve been given. Scientifically and spiritually speaking, life is a miracle. Death is a very small price to pay.
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