Death

We explain what death is, its biological function and cultural meaning. Also, the conceptions about what happens after death.

What is death?

death It is the end of life, or its interruption, or the opposite of lifedepending on how you see it. It is something inevitable that human beings have in common with absolutely all forms of life, although each one has its own periods of existence. However, only human beings are aware that, one day, we will die.

death It is the final experience of all living organismsalthough it can occur earlier or later. Sometimes it is due to vital accidents (encounters with predators, participation in natural disasters) and other times it is simply due to illness and wear and tear.

It is so universal that we also take it as a metaphor for the end of things: the death of an empire, the death of civilization, the death of the Sun. Death, seen this way, is nothing other than the end, the end.

Although it may seem easy to differentiate life and death, that dividing line is not always clear. In fact, the starting point of death sparks debate among doctors, philosophers and scientists alike. Is someone dead who is immersed in an eternal coma? Is someone dead whose heart stops for a few moments on an operating table? When exactly does death begin?

Importance of death

Death is something extremely natural. If death were not inevitable, organisms would be subject to fierce competition for resources, or perhaps there would not even be life at all. From a scientific point of view, life is a self-sustaining point of balance in which creatures remain as long as they are able to take what they need from the environment.

Death is the increase in entropy or disorder gradient within living systems. Eventually, the disorder grows, and the system collapses. It happens in all thermodynamic systems that physics is capable of describing, and it also happens with living beings: eventually, they decay and die, and they return to the cycle of nature all the chemical energy and matter that was accumulated in their bodies.

A large predator will eventually die as well, handing over its wild, fibrous body to more primitive life forms, which will decompose it and recycle its biochemical components. So, Death allows the circulation of matter and energy in the natural cycle.

Although the prospect of future death can be a source of melancholy, anguish or sadness, it is also true that, without it, life would be meaningless, since it would have no limits, and everything that happens in it would matter to us.

This is what many stories about vampires and other immortal beings try to tell: Without the future presence of death, life can become agonyin an infinite desert of time, and therefore the very motivations that make us love life could be lost.

The meaning of death

Death has been both a cause of anguish and a source of imagination. The consciousness of death, which philosophers call “tragic consciousness”, has since ancient times led to the most diverse explanations regarding why we die, what happens when we die or why we came into the world, if in the end we are going to die.

In fact, awareness of future death is considered part of the maturation of the psyche human: all young people feel immortal.

Death is often represented under mysterious figureslike dark or bright angels, beautiful but terrible women, hourglasses about to run out. The most common image is a skull or human skeleton, sometimes wrapped in a black cape and carrying a scythe (with which it supposedly reaped the recently deceased souls, to take them to the “other world”).

This image It is a reason for veneration and worship in many cultural traditionslike the Catrinas in Mexico, popular during the celebration of the Day of the Dead, or Saint Death in other Latin American nations.

The idea of ​​death, on the other hand, is symbolically associated with change. This is the meaning, for example, of the Death card in the Tarot, and dreams of death are often interpreted in that same sense. Death inspires rites and commemorations, some of a patriotic nature, others religious and, above all, family, depending on who the deceased is.

Death too has inspired numerous artistic, literary and cultural representationslike the Phaedrus by Plato (c. 427-347 BC), and the paintings The triumph of death (1562) by the Flemish Pieter Brueghel, “the Elder” (1525-1569); or also Self-portrait with death (1872) by the Swiss Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901), to name just a few examples. Its presence can be traced throughout human civilization.

What is there after death?

This is the big question to which no one has found a scientific answer. That is, no one who has experienced death can “come back” to tell us what it is, and those of us who witness it from “outside” simply see the cessation of vital functions, the loss of consciousness (if any) and the slow but unstoppable decomposition of the body.

Religions try to provide an explanation for deathand at the same time in some comfort, something that allows us to live life in peace, knowing that death is, simply, unpredictable and inevitable. In fact, some of the answers regarding the main mystical or paranormal traditions are:

• According to the monotheistic tradition. Shared by the religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, death is the moment of separation of the body and soul, the former being perishable and ephemeral, but the latter eternal and elevated. However, these religions also share the idea that souls, stripped of their bodies, will be subjected to judgment by God, who will evaluate whether they are worthy of eternal salvation, described in very different ways as a space of grace and plenitude alongside God. ; or of eternal punishment, and therefore of hell, where they will be subjected to suffering to compensate for the evil they did during their time on Earth. The criteria by which souls must be judged, however, vary from one religion to another and even from one church to another, within the sects of the same religion.
• According to Buddhist tradition. Also called Vedic, life would be a wheel of reincarnations in which one is constantly returning, although not necessarily in human form: those who live their lives in a profane and brutal way, would descend on the ladder of life, incarnating in creatures each increasingly basic; But those who pursue enlightenment and seek to transcend their emotional limitations, detaching themselves from the world and their worldly appetites, will rise on the wheel until they reach nirvana, the state of grace that the Buddha achieved, and will be able to escape the eternal repetition of suffering. vital.
• According to the religious tradition of Classical Greece. The souls of the deceased traveled to the Underworld, also called Hades, a place where they were mere walking shadows on a journey towards reincarnation, known to the Greeks as the “Transmigration of souls.” In the underworld, souls could drink the waters of Lethe or Lethe, the river of oblivion, and leave their past life behind, and then be reborn as another person.
• According to paranormal speculation. There would be a “world of the dead” to which all mortals will go, but in which some could rest in peace and let go of their past life, and others would instead cling to it, tormented by a violent or premature death, or because of an irrepressible love for a person still living. And thus ghosts, specters or apparitions, also known as “souls in pain,” would be born.

Continue with: Belief

References

• “Death” on Wikipedia.
• “Death” in the Language Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy.
• “The meaning of death” by Flor Hernández Arellano in the Digital University Magazine of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
• “Medical Definition of Death” on MedicineNet.
• “Death” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.