{"id":2415,"date":"2024-01-18T13:02:14","date_gmt":"2024-01-18T21:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shhhinsidevoice.com\/?p=2415"},"modified":"2024-01-18T13:02:16","modified_gmt":"2024-01-18T21:02:16","slug":"life-and-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shhhinsidevoice.com\/?p=2415","title":{"rendered":"Life and Death"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Death is always close to us; if we don\u2019t breathe for an extended period of time, we\u2019ll die; if you get shot, you’re dead; if a tree falls on you, it is highly likely you\u2019ll die, etc. That begs the question: if death wasn\u2019t always there, then would there be life? In a way, without death, there is no meaning to life because you would have forever to do whatever you wanted, and at some point everything would be boring, and I don\u2019t mean that kind of boring when you are laying in bed, and you can\u2019t go do anything because you’re grounded or something. I\u2019m talking about the kind of boring where you\u2019ve literally done everything you could and couldn\u2019t do until it got boring.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is about death and life and whether life has meaning without death and if death has meaning without life. Taking that into consideration, my first question was, does life have meaning without death? Some of my interviewee\u2019s thought that life would have no meaning without death, but others thought that even if you were immortal, if you did enough good things, that would be memorable; life would have meaning because you could watch how something you did could affect people for a long time in the future. Noah Gold (Athletic Director of Mendocino High School) said, \u201cI think that they are as entwined as they can be; you cannot have one without the other. If death is inevitable, then life better have some meaning. If we were immortal beings, then life could be pretty pointless.\u201d Jack Herbert-Graves said, “I feel like you can still find meaningful things to do in life, but then comes the question that if you\u2019re never going to die, you can wait however long to do things. But if you\u2019re immortal, I still feel like you can do good things that will last as long as you can.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also wanted to know if our mortality affects our morals. This was my second question, and I had very different answers from the interviewees, two of them saying that it doesn\u2019t while one of them said that it could. Noah said, \u201cLet’s put it this way, if I know I only have one lifetime I wouldn\u2019t want to be incarcerated or locked up where I couldn’t appreciate it.\u201d But he also had another view to the question of which was \u201cIf you want to play the game that I\u2019m immortal, well then I think that morality could become gray in the sense that if you\u2019ve been on the planet 200 years, playing it safe for that long might get boring, and because your immortal, I could see how you might morally do things that you otherwise would never do because of boredom.\u201d Ozzie Koubek said, \u201cI feel like it wouldn\u2019t change your moral compass; I mean it\u2019s kind of hard to imagine a society where no one\u2019s dead because you can’t comprehend it. It\u2019s kind of a weird thing to imagine as a mortal being immortal.\u201d Even if we were immortal, the fact of it is that you will probably keep your moral compass and since everyone wouldn\u2019t age with you, so everyone was immortal, it would be easier to cope with the fact that you can\u2019t die because you\u2019ll never be alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My last and most important question is, do you fear death? And they all agreed that they fear death. I think Noah Gold had a very personal answer to this question and here it is: \u201cReally honestly yes, I am not in a place where I feel as if we are all just beings of light, and when it’s my time to go into the light that I\u2019m gonna be fine with that; I\u2019m still at a point in my life where I try not think about it that much. The idea of not being here anymore I don\u2019t like, and I\u2019m not comfortable dwelling on it. It is scary to me, and I\u2019m hoping that changes.\u201d Noah makes a really good point in what he said, and I think most people can agree with him. I did some research and I came across this little article by Fred Feildman on a Philosophy site that gave me a bit of insight on why most of the population believe in Religion, and it says this \u201cA number of thinkers have suggested that there is some important connection between death and \u2018the meaning of life\u2019. A person who thinks that death is not followed by any sort of afterlife may think that death makes life meaningless. Schopenhauer sometimes seems to have expressed this view. Others who believe in God and immortality may see it this way: God placed us here on earth in order that we may either sin or achieve our salvation. If we sin, we are punished with eternal damnation. If we achieve salvation, we are rewarded with eternal bliss. A person who accepts this picture might say that if there were no God and no afterlife in which to receive reward or punishment, then life would be (to quote Shakespeare) \u2018a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.\u2019”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end I would say that life doesn\u2019t have meaning without death and vice versa, because if you can do everything you want forever then you wouldn\u2019t want to do anything. I do in fact think that our mortality does affect our morals because we don\u2019t have that long to live, so there’s a limitation of “I don\u2019t want to waste my life away in prison or jail, I would rather live my life to the fullest without being confined by walls.” Lastly, I do fear death and as I said I think it\u2019s a fully natural thing to fear it because we have no way of knowing what comes after it, and there’s no way to ever find out until we finally reach the finish line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works cited <\/p>\n\n\n\n