What’s wrong with death? What’s so terrible about being one with the universe?
We usually think of evolution as a climb towards greatness, and that is a good thing that we survive and carry on through our progeny. But what if evolution is the single biggest mistake the universe has ever made?
What if to lose the game of survival is a blessing? What if to return to dust and particles strewn throughout nature is a return to a state of peace and reconciliation with the universe. What if those things which do not evolve–for example, rocks, air, dirt, etc.–have it right, and it is that more complex phenomena we call life that, at one time or another, strayed from this place of quiet contentment, aiming instead to individuate itself from the rest of nature, to be a sort of microcosm operating independently (but still within) the greater macrocosm.
So desperate is life to stand apart from the rest of nature, to be an island self-sufficient in and of itself, that even when death inevitably overtakes it, it cheats by way of reproducing itself so that another generation, a copy of itself, may go on even after it dies.
Is this struggle, to become individuated and separate from the universe, however futile, not worth the pain? Let’s not kid ourselves. Life is painful. There is so much more in life to avoid and be afraid of than there is to be happy with. I’m not talking so much about our conscious experience with life (for that, though hardly always the case, can actually be quite enjoyable), but about the process of life and how it sustains itself. Life fights so much against the constant and immanent threat of death. There is always very simple and innumerable ways of dying, at every moment and everywhere we go, should one simple thing go wrong in the delicate balance which is the ongoing homeostasis of our bodies.
We have become, through our evolution, enormously complex–why?–because that is the lengths which our evolution has gone in order desperately to avoid disintegrating back into nature and its simplicity. We need to do so much–or our bodies do–in order just to keep going as individuate organisms. It’s almost like closing oneself into ever tighter quarters such that 90% of the avenues we could otherwise move around in lead to death. It almost seems as though 90% of what we do–or what our bodies do–about 90% of our biological hardware and functionality, is there with the purpose of preventing or avoiding death. The fact that we have become so complex in this is a sign of how much is required to survive.
Is life fighting a losing battle? It’s gone on for an incredibly long time, but will the universe eventually catch up with us? What will happen at that point? Will that constitute a trajedy, or the end of an eons-long struggle between a small part of the universe fighting to be separated from the rest of itself?
DISCLAIMER: usually, I’m quite fond of life and look at it through rosy-colored spectacles, and usually not a champion of death, but I also have a sort of “fetish” for views or arguments that challenge, not only the status quo, but my own attitudes and values.