“Nothing is certain but death and taxes”, so the saying goes, and while much has been written about taxes, death is my topic under consideration. The concept or subject of death (and closely related subjects) has (much like taxes) spawned billions of words (and conversations), millions of documents, multi-thousands of texts – and for all of that, we’re still none the wiser when it comes to death, or at least post-death! [Taxes we understand!]
Continued from yesterday’s blog…
Anyway, back to the question as what is or results in death, I offer the following which is pure speculation on my part and probably shouldn’t be taken seriously – probably. My basic premise is that death is the result of the irrevocable lose of “The Inner You” – “The Inner You” being that part of the physical you that defines or is your personality, wisdom, emotions, memory, ‘soul’ (if you will), sense of self, and all other traits that make you an individual; the individual that you are. That’s the loss of your mind in other words.
I suspect that a clue to death is to be found in those unfortunate individuals who do survive after having suffered a prolonged lack of oxygen to the brain. These ‘living vegetables’ (as it were), while maybe having perfectly functioning body organs or systems, have lost most of their mind – the “The Inner You” - facets, like memory, personality, knowledge, etc. and as such, usually hence require round the clock, 24/7, care for the rest of their natural lives as the ability to somehow get those essentials back is apparently lost. The hardware is still there, but the software has been largely deleted or at least severely corrupted.
Notice I said immediately above that most of “The Inner You” is gone in these surviving individuals, but not all. Death is the total inability of your brain to further store, process, or add to those “The Inner You” elements. I surmise that lack of oxygen causes those bio-molecules (in the brain) that are part and parcel of housing and processing the inner you -“The Inner You” - to break down, presumably into much simpler bio-chemicals which don’t have the ability to store and process those “The Inner You” elements. Therefore, you lose your abilities and processes essential to such operations, and the longer oxygen starvation goes on, the greater the loss, until “The Inner You” is totally lost, and you die. Now while that’s pretty simplistic, and there’s probably much more to the death process I’m sure, it’s also pretty probable that lose of “The Inner You” is an essential part of the death process and what death is. Why?
It’s clear that you have an automatic nervous system that functions independently of your conscious mind – you breathe in your sleep; you don’t have to think about keeping your heart beating, and lots of other body processes are on automatic pilot. But, “The Inner You” has a lot of mastery over your physical body too. “The Inner You” (call it the conscious mind) can dictate to your body to walk across the room, or do unnatural acts like very rapidly blink your eyelids for no apparent reason – just because you want to. If 100% of “The Inner You” is lost , the physical body has lost too much of the software (including ultimately the automatic piloting) that’s in charge of regulating or controlling it, and thus the physical body, albeit there’s a lag time or delay, follows the death process that’s already been legally and medically verified. Perhaps all this is an example of ‘mind over matter’ – lose the mind, and the matter goes to pot! [Or, if there’s no mind, then it doesn’t matter anymore!]
All of this may be just a very long-winded way of saying that with lack of oxygen, higher brain function areas are the first to feel the effects and the first to go. And while your physical body could, in theory, be kept on artificial life support for years, what’s the point if there is no longer any of “The Inner You” left in that physical body?
All of the above equally applies to other ‘higher multi-cellular’ animals that also have a “The Inner You” component in them. (Since plants don’t have minds, or a “The Inner You” aspect to them, I exclude them from this rambling.) Anyone who has ever had pets or observed wild animals close up knows they, as humans, are individually unique – with all the traits that humans have, even though they be to a lesser degree. I don’t expect my cats to learn and do calculus though every cat I’ve owned has been unique in his/her own way(s)!
Apart from organic death, there are two other types of death I can think of, but both invoke you not having the reality you think you have. Firstly, if you are just a figment of someone’s dream (or imagination), and they wake up! Secondly, you are part and parcel of someone’s computer software, say as in a video game, and then that someone hits the delete key, or kills you off (if its one of those types of video games), exits the program or turns the PC off. Should the physical you be an illusion, that is, you’re actually a virtual person, a product of computer software (never mind who’s computer), then concepts central to an afterlife, reincarnation and/or immortality are just other software routines that you can be routed towards at the programmer’s whim when the software program that runs the physical you and your environment terminates! The saving grace is that in either case (wetware dreams or software video games) there’s the possibility of a resurrection!
If death is final, no afterlife, no reincarnation, no prospect of immortality before you’re a goner, then the big regret, at least in my case, is never having been able to find out an answer, or the answer(s), to all those questions that’s been bugging me for all (or at least most) of my life! Phooey!
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