What would life be like without death? Would there even be such a thing as ‘life’ without death? And why do we die? What’s the purpose of it? Is there even a purpose of it? Is there some kind of masochistic creator who likes to hurt us? And if so, wouldn’t making people die contradict its notion of creating? Or maybe even the creator became confused about the notions of life and death, and in the end decided just to go with it? Whatever the explanation is, death remains a mysterious, yet inescapable, destination we all share.
Let’s see: what causes us to die? Well, death might just come about because of a flaw in our biological make-up; an unintended by-product of the designer of humanity. It might only be due to physical decay that our bodies will – eventually – perish. Death is just another obstacle to overcome in our human struggle with nature, a struggle that we will inevitably come to win. Within a couple of decades from now, people will be able to change their cancerous limbs for platinum replicas. Plastic surgery will be outdated; instead of getting a face-lift at the age of 55, people will get an entirely new face. That’s how we will fight nature. We know after all from history that humans are prepared to do anything in order for them to stay alive; even if their opponent is Mother Nature herself.
Thoughts of death scare us. We long for certainty, for beliefs upon which we can build the rest of our lives. However, all of our intellectual powers fall short of explaining what will happen after we have exhaled our final breath. But although we will never be able to know it, we simply cannot live with the idea that we are destined to enter an unknown world for an unknown amount of time (given that there even would be such a thing as ‘time’ in ‘the afterlife’). And there are many stories we came up with to lighten our sense of despair about death. The issue of death is the prime reason so many religions have come into existence. After all, the idea of a cozy afterlife doesn’t really seem something to worry about, right? But even non-religious people have tried to come up with ‘reasonable’ positions within this debate. Atheists proclaim that no deity exists, which is just claiming the opposite of what religious people do. And even agnostics, although their position might seem more ‘humble’ than the atheists’, find themselves to be justified in making a judgement about the afterlife by saying that ‘we cannot decide whether or not a deity exists’; thereby assuming that, although none of the others are capable of doing so, they can close this debate in a reasonable manner.
Yeah right….Well, let’s look at the counterpart of death: life. Because what would life be like without death? The obvious answer would be: there would be nothing left to call ‘life’, since life can only exist in conjunction with death. But let’s approach this issue from another angle; an experiential angle. Given that we would be immortal, which might be something different than being either dead or alive, how would we then come to value our ‘lives’? Would we still be able to appreciate the beauty of things? Would we even be capable of experiencing emotions in any sense? After all: how happy or sad would we feel if we would come to experience an event that we had experienced an infinite number of times already? Wouldn’t that downgrade the relative value of each moment of – let’s say – sadness? How sad would it for example be to experience your son dying, given that you are destined to experience countless instances of this ‘drama’ again? Or how joyful would it be to experience your son attending his first day of school, given that you’ve experienced this a thousand times already?
There is no life without death; and that not only goes for life in the biological sense of the word, but just as much in the emotional or experiential sense. The notion of value would be non-existent if we wouldn’t face death. Hence we can say that death is a beautiful invention of life. So let’s be grateful for its existence.
But what do you think?
Note: this article has been published at Shaun Rosenberg’s self improvement and motivation blog.
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Hey this is really good! We are actually making a book with the same name. It also is about the same thing. Great inspiration!
Hey Tina,
Thank you very much. Can you tell me a bit more about your book. I am interested :).
This must not be a new idea. Can you comment on the history of this argument – “There is no life without death”?
Hey John,
I indeed doubt that this is an entirely new argument. However, I must admit I have not stolen it from anyone else. I came to it by introspection; by asking myself the question: what would life be like without death? The conclusion I derived was that, without death, any experience will lose its value.
What do you think about this argument?
Ok. Imagine this. If I could prove 100% that your death would be better than living? That this ‘life’ does not end. And when you pass? You actually meet your love ones, there is no pain, etc. Not religion. An absolute that you will survive ‘body death’. A better option. Then if this was the case? Why would you carry on living? A prisoner clings to their system. They understand their role. Outside will seem daunting. Even though they are imprisoned as a punishment.
My point? If you actually understood death. If you knew for certain? Then life would end. Why would you want to take the worse option?
Food for thought…
Some of us were born ‘old’. I deeply believe that this is not my first Attempt at ‘life’. Do you? I actually have noticed that I still retain previous skills from previous lives. And unfortunately I also have fears that are hard to explain. Look at your life like a prisoner looks at their cell.
And Good luck. I will see you on the other side.
I do think that this is my first attempt at this life, in the sense that I see no reason to believe that the ‘me’ as it currently exists has ever existed before. Furthermore, one could say that even if you believe that this is not your first attempt at life, the ‘you’ that that you are now has never existed before, because it is one instance of you that succeeds other instances of you (assuming that this succession isn’t circular, so that you cannot live the same life twice). Hence it might not be you’re first attempt of life in general, but still your first attempt at this life. Do you agree with this view?
This is a great article and really made the wheels turn in my head. An enjoyable read.
Thank You
I completely agree. In fact, I answered in one of my self discovery journals that asked if I would want to live forever, that even if all my loved ones could love forever as well and I could remain young/healthy forever, I still wouldn’t want to. Death gives meaning to life. If you no longer thought your life would never end, how could you appreciated your experiences? They would no longer be unique because you would begin to experience very similar ones more often than unique ones, until unique experience almost die out. Just like a very repetitive job gets so mind-numbingly boring (at least to me), life would lose its excitement and novelty.
Also if life were everlasting, most of us would keep putting off experiences with excuses for why now is not the time until we end up stuck in a cycle where we only live a boring life because taking the time to have an experience in not pressing, whereas something else always is.
How much more beautiful are the flowers on a tree in spring that die so soon? Don’t you think because it’s a sight we don’t see every day?
Granted, even if I knew that when we died so did our consciousness, I would still not want to live forever.
The fact that we don’t know when we will die or become too unhealthy to do things, is why people create bucket list and adds spice to our experiences.