1 Thoughts on Life and Death

I've lived in the same area for my entire life and only travelled a little, but I've seen worlds of change, seen things come and go, and been involved in all sorts of different activities. When I was a kid one of my favorite things to do was solve puzzles. There are many puzzles all around us, as it turns out. Perhaps life and death is one of the biggest puzzles of all. After I found myself in this world of ours, I asked many of the common questions we all have: what am I doing here, what is this place, and what should I do with myself?

Ever since then I've spent a lot of my time trying to be observant and attempting to make sense out of life. But, of course, life is complex and difficult to understand. It seems that we all find answers to some questions, but others remain mysteries, for the time being anyways.

Science

When I was young I didn't know much about science, but now that I know more, it seems like science will explain almost everything about our lives. None of the animals we've seen have had as much ability to understand the complexities of the world as us. We humans are the most evolved, and our intellectual ability and knowledge is rapidly growing. I suppose that at first humans could only associate simple things and imaginatively invent superstitious reasonings for things, but later we began to base our observations less on imagination and superstition and more upon logic and proof.

With logic we determined that on some levels of the universe, it appears everything is made up of some basic materials and some basic laws, which themselves have nothing to do with our experience of being alive. But somehow, in the playing out of these natural laws on a large scale, we have evolved into the complex beings that we are today. And, the experience of being alive is quite astounding. How it happens that seemingly mindless particles come together to create such an experience is quite mysterious. Having a consciousness, an ability to sense and think is so real and extraordinary that man has often wondered how did he get here? And what is "he?"

To each of us all the other living things can sometimes seem robotic. We can't easily imagine what it's like to be them. But, each of them is alive just like us, and there are virtually an infinite number of living things in the world. We can only wonder what life is like for others. What is life like for animals and fish? Are plants alive? Is the universe itself alive?

It appears that our physical bodies contain a sort of explanation for everything that we are. Our minds are wildly complex, but so is the physical brain. However, it seems that a common way people conceptualize life, is that there are souls or spirits, which can travel through space and temporarily inhabit a body. Surely it feels this way sometimes, but I wonder if it is accurate. Vision and thinking are not independent of the body. They are quite dependent on it. When the body breaks down, vision, feeling and even thinking break down also. If the body contains everything we are, then when it no longer works, it seems most likely that the mind and psyche will cease to exist too. Of course that is only my feeling. No one really knows the answer for certain at this time.

Sometimes I find it interesting to consider that who I am is an energy or spirit who has inherited a body for a brief time. I feel that I didn't do anything to earn this life. And when I die, I won't owe anything. So, I imagine that any work I do doesn't really cost anything on a cosmic scale.

Another thing I've thought about it is this. Reflect on the person you were long ago. You are now not the same. You have different concerns and different philosophies and a probably a substantially different psychology. You are now a somewhat different person. Once things are separated from us in time, their significance becomes smaller, perhaps very small to us. This loss of significance often occurs gradually and slowly. By the time you are old, you will have already said goodbye to who you were in youth many times. It seems like a new "spirit" takes you over at every change, or perhaps continuously. No matter what time you are in, I suppose the present is what really matters.

I don't know if anyone is capable of explaining life and death just yet. Perhaps they will remain mysteries for a long time to come, but one thing that is certain is the natural law of "entropy" which says the order of a biological system decreases as time goes on. This law describes our eventual decline from the strength and vigor of youth to our death.

Ignoring death or believing in life after death may be mechanisms which have historically helped people. I wonder if pain helps in a way, because it's easier to accept leaving a life of difficulty than leaving a life of pleasure. But, what I've experienced is that pleasure and pain are two completely different feelings. They are superimposed like most other physical forces. Sometimes we feel one or the other or a combination of them, but it seems that one does not really affect the other. When we experience pleasure, it is not diluted by any pain that we have. Pleasure is still as good as it ever was. Perhaps in evolution, our love of pleasure became stronger than our dislike of pain. So, one reason we try to avoid death is because we don't want to leave the pleasures of life.

Pleasure and Pain and Idealism

Humans were made from nature, and as such are quite imperfect. Nature has given us two basic emotions that affect our experience, pleasure and pain. For us humans, life is inherently full of both great pleasure and great pain. Both oscillate throughout life. Neither is constant and neither is avoidable.

In time we should be improved by evolution and science. In the future we might be some crazy combination of biologically engineered life forms and computers. At that time we all might escape from pain as we now know it. But until then, we are mostly controlled by nature.

It seems that as time passes, the pleasure and pain of the past become less significant. I would say that the emotions are in effect obliterated. So it seems that if we can survive a particular pain, then there is the potential to put it behind us and move on. We all go through times where we feel great and times when we don't. Pleasure and pain seem to oscillate often and without a clear cause. So, pain is often endured in order to enjoy the pleasurable times.

The intermittent existence of pleasure in life seems to be guaranteed. But, there have been times when I was in a mental state, where I feared I could not feel the pleasure in life. I believe that at times this fear and anxiety actually caused me to not feel pleasure. But this was always temporary. Although I suppose it is possible in rare circumstances to not feel pleasure, once time passes, it is clear that pleasure definitely does exist and its presence is guaranteed. Upon realizing that pleasure always exists, one develops an appreciation for all the simple pleasures in life, how perfect they are, and that it is foolish it is to seek some kind of imagined fantasy reality, while what we define as happiness is right here all the time. It doesn't matter how much pleasure one gets in life or what kind of pleasure. It is all good. We can't have all the pleasure we can imagine, but we can have it. In fact, it is human nature to always wish for more than what we have. But we have to accept and love what life gives us.

If you define perfection as a life of all pleasure where bad things never happen, that does not appear to exist. But if you define perfection as pleasure alone, then this type of perfection does exist.

Oscillations

There are many ways for us to view things. However, what I have found is that our internal views and feelings oscillate just as often as the external world changes. Consequently, one philosophy of life can not be sustained by us all the time. The human mind wanders. We can lean toward a view. We can even form a pattern of acting according to that particular view. But, uncertainty always presents itself in time. This is often difficult or impossible to control. One might identify as some sort of warrior, or martyr or comic. Due to the complexity of life, the sustaining of one self image can not happen. We are all made up of all kinds of different constituents. There are many different ways for us to view ourselves and all are equally valid.

Good and Evil

Our minds are made up of both good and evil intentions, which appear to be two completely separate parts of the human personality. On the one hand, there is an idealistic and good side. On the other hand, there seems to be a selfish and "evil" side. Of course, these sides exist in each of us in different amounts. Balancing our pleasure with the pleasure of others and our pain with the pain of others is a balance we pursue every day.

Structures

When I was young I defined my world by what I saw around me and what I felt. I was born into the constructs of our world and I accepted them. So would any living organism.

At this time I had idealistic hopes about how the world ought to be or could be. But, as I got older, I began to realize that things were not as perfect as I'd imagined, and I started to understand ever more reasons behind things. My views became more scientific. I realized that some of the ways we interact are strange when you consider that life is actually made out of tiny particles and forces. But I realized the true pleasure comes from living in and loving the structures. They are real.

There seem to be two parts to our personalities. There is a logical part of the brain, which wants everything to be perfect. This part of the psyche wants us to live forever. It wants us to be in happiness or peace at all times. It wants our architecture to be geometric. It wants everything to be beautiful. But of course, we find that reality is in disagreement the way our logical brain thinks it should be.

The Universe

It's often been debated whether the universe will one day collapse upon itself at which time all life might be destroyed. It's an interesting question since the answer might have important implications regarding all of life.

It used to blow my mind to think about what the future might be like. I wonder, if you were given the power to design yourself and world what you design? Would you make a fantasy land where everything is good all the time? Would you make people that live forever? Would you rather life went on as it exists now? What is the reason for what you would make? It's almost as if logic outside of our own world doesn't really exist, or can't be understood by our brains.

Evolution

It seems to me that evolution is one of the most profound concepts of our world, and that the implications of it can be seen in everything we are, everything we think and every way we act. Evolution explains our emotions, our limitations, even the presence of good and evil in us.

I think that it is clear that living things have developed from natural laws and principles, and not from any other way. Something has set the rules of physics and our entire existence is due to the playing out of them. However, much is still unknown. There may be many forces at work which are unseen and uncomprehended.

Mortality

The world is full of things that we can't control. We can wish to be able to break through some solid wall, or wish to reverse events of the past, but sometimes no amount of wishing or trying is sufficient. Some forces turn out to be unstoppable, and some ideas turn out to be impossible. Of course, we can wish to live forever, but throughout history no one for sure has ever done so. This evidence implies that we will probably not be able to either. The future, however, is exciting because it is unknown to us. We can never know what will happen in it.

Some day we may harness such power that we are able to repair ourselves and defeat death and pain. In a way we've already defeated death through reproduction. We create copies of ourselves. We pass along our knowledge, literature and art and other things. However, even our children aren't exactly us of course. I guess we will have to see what happens in the future.