Born to Die, part eighteen

The human’s prescient perception of its own death may be arrogantly considered exclusive to the species. Whether or not other creatures comprehend their own mortality is really not the point. That we are able is. I’ve noticed from the site meter that this current series is gradually losing the interest of readers which makes sense when one considers the taboo on death. Our protective society defers the encounter with death to later and later in our development, to the point that when one is confronted by it, it seems ghastly because there has been no reasonable preparation for it. Because humans think, reason, and interpret, I daresay that there is not one of functional intelligence that has not contemplated its own death, but culture and society quickly dictate the flow of thought. Enter explanation. From the dawn of human consciousness a plethora of explanations of what death is, what afterlife consists of, and what it means have been offered by those who assume the theological role. In the stillness of solitude, quietly ponder your own understanding of death. Where did this understanding come from? I suggest that for many of us it came from what we were told. Where we associated a degree of authority to the source, so did we accept the explanation’s veracity. So, when the priest bedecked in liturgical garb proclaims that when I die I’m going to hell (or heaven), I begin to assimilate that point of view into my own. Thus do traditions emerge.