Born to Die, part two

It was the movie Contact that introduced me to Occam’s Razor, the proposition that the simplest explanation for something is usually the best. When applied to the topic of death, I suppose this means that to acknowledge that it is simply “the end” is perhaps correct. No afterlife. No heaven. No nothing. What was is no longer, and that is the end of it. This is a rather sobering notion, and if accepted as true, hedonism’s “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die” makes good sense. With all due respect to my literalist friends, there is no empirical evidence to support anything other than the objective observation that when death occurs, life ends. Again, reports of near-death experiences don’t really count, because the reporter is not actually dead. It is depressing, at best, to contemplate such an unceremonious end to that which is held so dear, reminiscent of Kansas’ Dust in the Wind, but it is the simplest explanation.