Death: "Nobody knows it better..."

         I read somewhere that humans are the next step in the universe/evolution becoming self aware. This is great if you are a human, but I think this is kind of an arrogant perspective. I may have misunderstood the saying also. I am a little more cynical on what we really know about the universe especially from our limited perspective. Shakespeare said it best, and again I'm paraphrasing: "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Our perspective is limited to our human condition and is this really a bad thing? We can never know what it is like to be a cat, or a tree, or a star, or a rock, but we know what it is like to be human. Being human of course means to wonder what it might be like to be a cat, or a tree, etc, but since we are human we must accept that perspective and strive to understand it.

         There is an issue here in that I seem to be delineating being human and understanding what it means to be human. It is easy, and probably correct, to think that being human and understanding what it means to be human is one in the same thing. The human condition is to wonder and try to understand and this can be accepted as face value. Also other things can be accepted as just the way things are and that is death.

         We are the only known species, from the human perspective, that is aware of its inevitable of its death. This knowledge normally brings about fear to anyone thinking about it. This fear response is natural to being human, but irrational when realizing that we all die. The knowledge of death makes us unique in that we are aware of something and then have the motivation to prevent it. Maybe we are the universes way of becoming self aware in that we can find a way from preventing death. The universe, as far as we know, doesn't or hasn't died, so why would being aware of human death help it. I digress. Being aware of death is depressing, but accepting our death may allow us to live happier lives.

         My grandma is dying. She was the only grandparent I was close to. She and I didn't talk much about death in a metaphysical way, but I think I know her well enough to attempt to explain what she might think of death. Like anyone else she is probably afraid, but she might also welcome it from the pain she is in. Death is a release from pain, at least from the livings perspective, since no a dead person no longer responds to pain. The hardest part for her about death is probably the unknown. There is no guarantees that there is a heaven, or a hell, and the only thing worse than good and evil is nothing. I think she is probable more afraid that when she is gone there will be nothing. From the living perspective there is nothing, just the memory of the person. That was the scariest thing for me, the possibility of ceasing to exist. As we grow and develop many of us cannot even fathom the finality of non-existence. However it is a strong possibility that every dead person no longer exists. It is true that they aren't a living person anymore, and this finality like death maybe something that we need to accept just like death. To the living dead is dead, and to the dead... well we don't know what the dead think, if they think at all. Thank you.