Design for Dying Study Guide

Design for Dying was published in the United States in 1997, a year after Timothy Leary died. Although most of the book is written from Leary’s point of view, R. U. Sirius played a major part in editing it, shaping various essays and notes of Leary’s into a coherent text. Sirius’s voice is as prominent as Leary’s. The book resembles a casebook in form, with three major sections labeled ‘‘Living,’’ ‘‘Dying,’’ and ‘‘Designer Dying,’’ and an addendum. Each section is further broken down into short chapters with headings such as ‘‘Drugs,’’ ‘‘Death is the Ultimate Trip,’’ ‘‘The Cryonics Option,’’ and so forth. Leary expounds on his theories, reflects on his experiences, and offers advice on independent living and dying. The addendum contains Leary’s friends’ and acquaintances’ reflections on Leary, including their favorite memories of him. These eulogizers constitute a veritable index of the American counterculture of the last thirty years.

The book is most productively read as Leary’s theoretical autobiography. Although Leary includes anecdotes and a discussion of the events in his life, the bulk of the writing comprises Leary’s iconoclastic reading of the meaning and art of existence. The themes he addresses are the ones that have occupied him for most of his life: drugs, sex, individual freedom, psychology, death, and technology. A complement to his website, which tracked Leary’s movements and condition during his last days, Design for Dying offers the thoughts of one of the twentieth-century’s most controversial thinkers and cultural figures.

Design for Dying Summary

Introductions
Design for Dying contains two introductions: one by Leary and one by R. U. Sirius. Leary introduces readers to the event that incited the book: his 1995 diagnosis of prostate cancer. This led him to think more thoroughly and more practically about how he wanted to die. ‘‘Even if you’ve lived your life like a complete slob,’’ Leary writes, ‘‘you can die with terrific style. I call it ‘Designer Dying.’’’ Leary poses a handful of questions related to main taining a life of ‘‘self-reliance and personal growth,’’ which he addresses in the rest of the book.

Sirius’s introduction discusses Leary’s original plan, to die on the Internet, and fantasizes about what such a death might have looked like. He praises Leary for his honesty and his unrelenting critique of dishonest discourse and claims that Leary’s dying ‘‘performance’’ was successful.

Chapter 1
Leary recounts ‘‘making a pact’’ with his DNA in 1962, promising to probe the meaning of life as deeply as possible. His conclusions were that the future is unpredictable and that the true meaning of life is recursive, that is, the purpose of life is to seek the purpose of life. Leary makes comparisons between the human body and computers and suggests that people should ‘‘see the goal of humankind as mutation,’’ requiring human participation. Using the language of physics, he thinks through many of the same questions that philosophers and theorists address, examining human identity in relation to dichotomies such as time and space and matter and energy. A typical Leary question and answer from the chapter: ‘‘Is the universe fundamentally continuous or discrete? One can only answer ‘yes.’’’

Chapter 2
In this chapter, Leary draws parallels between alchemy and computer technology, claiming that both involve symbolic systems largely unknown to the general public. He calls the field resulting from the evolution of cybernetics—the field which uses the details of systems to divine their organizational principles—‘‘cybernautics,’’ to describe its exploratory and magical nature. Leary claims that abstract mathematics, the ultimate theoretical system, is becoming more important in helping human beings learn about themselves.

Chapter 3–5
In these chapters, Leary discusses what he calls the ‘‘tools of human evolution and self-definition,’’ topics he has explored throughout his life. These tools are language, drugs, and psychology. Language, Leary claims, enslaves human thought. It is a system of self-referentiality that can never really describe the world outside of itself. In his chapter on drugs, Leary cites Terence... » Complete Design for Dying Summary