**DisclaimerI am only giving my opinion, and please feel free to disagree. Please don"t hate/bully/dislike the "novel" just because of my opinions. The purpose of the Q/A is to prompt YOUR thinking. Thank for reading this. (I"m, by all means, just an amateur. I don"t study psychology nor philosophy. I"m just giving my point of views on these broad, undefined questions.)
What is the purpose of death? In other words, why do we die? I, of course, am not referring to the actual science behind death, but I question the purpose of death. Scientifically, we simply disappear from the world because our cells have stopped functioning. Instead of taking in perspectives from the Bible or other religions, today I"m just going to focus on my own thoughts on this matter. (We can save the whole idea of religion for a later chapter.)
For the majority of us, death is unwanted. Death is a topic that will always be skipped in family gatherings, as it"s commonly seen as "bad luck". We don"t like discussing this topic for a variety of reasons. Maybe it"s because we are terrified of death, maybe it"s because death sounds negative, for whatever reason. Yet, it is inevitable. We don"t have a choice. Death is a natural phenomenon and we can"t forcefully bypa.s.s it. At least, in human history, we have still not discovered any human who can live forever. So, it"s fair to say that death will be experienced by all of us, at some points in their lives. Some people see death as the "end" of their lives, some don"t. Some religions believe that death is merely a part of the reincarnation cycle, and it"s the start of a new life. For me, I personally see death as the end of our lives. We go unconscious, and we"re out of the world. Heaven and souls may be real, but they"re never proofed. As a logical person, I choose to believe the science of death - we just lose our consciousness.
(I"m not an atheist neither, but I won"t talk about my beliefs in religions in this chapter)
Now that we have explored what "death" can be, we can talk more about the reason for "Death" to exist. Even now, I still question the purpose of death and I have no firm opinions on this. I have yet found a logic that can persuade myself to believe. (Prior to this, I have done almost zero research on the topic, as I wanted to note down my initial opinions before I get influenced by others - I am willing to change my opinion as it"s always good to hear others. So please comment if you disagree.) I have come to a few conclusions, but they are all hypothecal.
Maybe we are all fated to die because it"s the only way we can exit life. Imagine if we can never die, and we are doomed to stay alive. Would that be a good thing? Well, that"s for you to decide. I was tempted to say that I would prefer to live forever, but I have yet to make a proper decision. If we can never escape life and we can NEVER die, it may not be a good thing. I just wish that I have a choice to decide. I want to have the choice myself, unlike right now. My decision? I have yet to decide. Certainly, staying alive forever may seem perfect. At least, we don"t have to part with the world, family, friends, and so on. We get to see the future, and knowledge will continue to pa.s.s down. As a result, our society should benefit from this. We will be more developed than ever, and we will have infinite time to tackle global problems. Actually, if we will never die, a lot of global concerns will be gone as well. We no longer have to worry about the decrease in the food supply as we can"t die from starvation anyway. Well, skipping death certainly sounds appealing, but I"m not entirely convinced. Maybe never dying isn"t a good thing neither. That"s my first point and perhaps you should stop and think about this before you move on. (Live forever? Good or bad? - Your call.)
Maybe the purpose of death is, just like the first chapter, a trial. Maybe we CAN control whether to live or not. Again, this is just another hypothesis, and it"s my opinion. Maybe we are meant to somehow find a way to become immortal, and the whole purpose of it is to test and make us better as a race. Of course, overcoming death seems impossible; but we still aren"t sure. Cells may die, but what if we can repair that? In fact, humans are still working on the method to live forever. Scientists are spending hours and hours on this topic, and maybe one day - we will discover the method towards immortality.
I have yet to make a conclusion on whether death is part of the reincarnation cycle or not. Maybe there are souls in the world, and reincarnation is real. Who knows? Some, however, would definitely disagree with that by looking at the statistics. The population is steadily increasing, but surely the number of souls would stay constant. This doesn"t add up. This point is valid, but I have some opinions/hypothesis to refute that. Every living organism should have a soul, and the number of souls is consistent. It"s just that there are more humans, and less of every other living organism. According to the law of conservation of energy, energy can never be created or destroyed. The amount of energy on Earth (I think) has never been changed. (As I said, it"s purely a hypothesis and I have no idea if that"s true or not). That surely should mean that the number of living organisms haven"t changed at all as well. However, I do understand that the energy transfer between trophic levels is not 100% efficient. So the living organisms can, arguably, be decreasing as well. As I said, I have yet to make a conclusion on this.
Death, to me right now, seems a bit pointless. I still can"t understand why death exists, besides the limitations of our bodies. Please comment and let me know what you think! Just stating this AGAIN - everything above is only my opinions, and they can be wrong. I hope that this interested you, and it gave you some new insights.
^Please credit me if you happen to use my opinions in writing/a.s.sessments/published material.
Thanks!