As far as I can observe, humans are the only animal who think about death. Most animals have the “fight or flight” instinct baked in but I don’t believe they consider the possibility that they may die. That said, I know my dog knows when something is dead. I just don’t think she projects that possible state onto herself. Thanks to our intelligence, we have figured out that we as well as other animals die. And, that idea of ending tends to drive a lot of us crazy.
One of the ways we try to salve our fear of dying is to believe that there is something external to our bodies that continues after we die. We give it a name – “soul.” It inhabits our bodies while we’re alive, and departs our bodies when we die. This allows us to observe a dead person and not see finality. The dead body is simply the container in which the soul resided for a while. Now, with the soul gone, the body is just a husk.
I don’t believe any of that. I believe that what we call consciousness is a manifestation of our brain, eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin. While we are alive, our eyes, for example, react to light by conveying nerve impulses from our retinas via our optic nerves to our brain. The same with our other senses. When we die, the process ceases. To the best of my knowledge, nothing scientifically based has ever demonstrated some aspect of consciousness that is separate from our brain and nervous system.
But, it is frightening to so many of us to consider that we simply end, that our consciousness fades to black, that our sense of self dissipates. So, we invent a soul and mythology about life after death to allay the fear a bit. We seek comfort that after death, there will be some kind of consciousness that remains, albeit divorced from that corpse left behind.
Part of the fear is that we see animate matter arise, living, then dying but we don’t see a similar cycle with inanimate matter. And, we’re wrong. Shortly after the Big Bang, and the cessation of expansion, the ener-matter that remained has, I believe, remained constant. By that I mean that if we sum up the energy and matter that exists and convert it into an energy or matter term, that term is a constant. What varies are the proportions of energy and matter at any moment in time.
Relatively early after the Big Bang, atoms and ions existed. Clouds of hydrogen atoms, in selected cases, due to asymmetry, began to coalesce due to gravity. Thus, a star was born. During its life it was a balanced system in which gravitational contraction and fusion energy expansion were essentially interacting to give the star a particular size and brightness. At various points in time, the fusion changed from one of hydrogen yielding helium to fusion of larger atoms. Gravitational forces ultimately fell out of balance with nuclear expansion, and the star shrunk into a white dwarf. It effectively died. Here on Earth we see mountains and sandy beaches. In the course of one human lifetime, or even the total lifetime of all humanity, the nature of those mountains and beaches may have seemed unchanged. But, over time, wind and rain gradually reduce that mountain and the pieces removed ultimately end up smaller rocks or sand. A volcano is born spewing lava and rock fragments into the air but ultimately it becomes dormant, and weathered. So, even things comprised of inanimate matter change over time and “die.” By “die” I mean that it is no longer a mountain, or an active volcano. Something remains behind, just like our bodily remains, but its nature has changed.
In essence, nothing is immortal. Stars, galaxies, mountains, and cliffs form, exist in some form for a while, and then change form. The only constant is the total of ener-matter in our universe. But the things that are constructed of that matter all have life cycles in which they ultimately transform into some other combination of matter.
So, does knowing that not only animate matter lives and dies, but so do stars and mountains, offer us some kind of relief for our fear of dying? Probably not. But, that’s the hand we’ve been dealt. We can kid ourselves into believing that there is consciousness after death, or that behaving in certain ways will ensure that we go to heaven instead of hell after we die, but I don’t buy it. For some number of years, the combination of inanimate and animate matter that constitutes “me” will be sensitive to light, heat, sound, flavor and touch. That combination will think, act, enjoy pleasure and endure pain. But, once the system stops, so does the consciousness.
We can choose to be bitter about the nature of our universe, and of life and death, but that won’t change it. Or, we can see however many years we live as a blessing whereby that combination of inanimate and animate matter gets to see some stars, maybe a galaxy, blue skies dotted with white clouds, an ocean and its waves; and hears the sounds of birds, and music, and thunder; inhales the fragrance of a flower; touches the skin of a newborn baby; tastes the sweetness of a grape.