| Death - relative or absolute ? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| I was drived to write this essay few weeks after I watched on T.V. people falling down by their own free decision (as has been reported by the media), from the burning Twin Towers in New-York after the barbaric attack of terrorism on the September 11th, 2001. The thought that those average innocent citizens were suddenly compelled to face such vicious reality which finally led them to take the most desperate and hopeless decision about their own lives while being completely sober, is highly shocking and frustrating. Our subjective human perception refuses to reconcile with such abrupt and senseless termination of the most precious thing we possess. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the thought that from an objective and universal point of view, such subjectively significant and mind-bothering incident of abrupt termination of life, is of no impact - not a noteworthy. I personally found these two extreme and sharply contradictory poles - our human subjective point of view compared to the universal objective point of view - related to the same incident, very enigmatic. These contradictory poles exist simultaneously all the time with each case of death. But watching this particular incident of an abrupt termination of life almost live on the September 11th, brought onto the surface with the highest degree of contrast the dreadful ease of shifting a normal path of life into a hopeless path of death. This revelation made me ponder about the measure of certainty by which we can consider the death as an absolute termination of life. In other words, how much absolute is the death from an objective (universal) point of view ? Later in this essay, I use the example of death, brought upon by jumping down from a tall building. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| First I would like to phrase here a kind of an axiom. The final goal of phrasing the axiom is to use it for reaching some rational conclusions concerning the death. One very essential requirement from the reader is to pause after reading the axiom and consider whether he\she accepts it. Most probably the readers will not find, at least at the immediate level, any hard proofs to support or to refute the axiom. What will be required from them is to use their common sense, their instinctive hunch.............. and a very, very careful approach. We all have heard the terms "relative" and "absolute". To make it clear for our intention here I will say that anything really absolute must be also ultimate. It must be ultimately final. There should not be anything beyond the absolute. What is termed as absolute, also cannot be given to ANY alterations or given under influence of ANY process. It must be ultimately changeless. On the other hand, the "relative" by definition, MUST be susceptible to some kind of change. Also there always should be something existing beyond the "relative", as the scale which is used to define the "relative" in relation with, must be more stable and more lasting than the entity it measures. The axiom I wish to phrase says that from anything relative or from any manipulation carried out on anything relative, CANNOT EVER come out anything absolute. In other words, the relative or any other combination of relative entities will forever produce ONLY the same or other relative entities. The outcome of the relative or any tricks done with the relative, will be ALWAYS relative and NEVER absolute. The reader is advised to pause here and to consider what has been said until now. If the reader agrees with this ad hoc axiom, he\she may proceed further. ***************************************************************** Keeping the above axiom in mind, it can be very simple and even trivial to show that the death, or to put it more precisely, the termination of life as we know\see it, is NOT absolute, but relative. Let's take two terms: short and tall. I think we all would agree that these terms are definitely relative. Suppose we have a short building of 1 floor and a tall building of 100 floors. Relatively to our planet where we live, there is no doubt that the 100 floor building is ALWAYS taller than the 1 floor building. But also it is clear that from an objective, independent and universal point of view, one never can attatch the terms "tall" or "short" to either one of them. A person who jumps from the top of the "short" building down to the road, wouldn't die most probably. Now the same person goes to the top of the "tall" building and jumps from there down to the road. No doubt he will die. In other words, his life will be terminated. But if the above axiom is correct, this termination of life cannot ever be absolute. It must be relative. Because as we have seen, the termination occurred only due to a relative change (from short to tall). Indeed his death will be absolute to whatever concerned to our earthly perception. This is coherent with the above distinction that the tall building is indeed tall from our life-on-earth perspective. But by some independent, objective point of view, the termination of his life is NOT absolute because it is merely a consequence of a relative manipulation - from short to tall in our case. Some essence (???) of the life, whatever it might be, must remain there (???), although relatively to our earthly point of view, the physical and all other known earthly aspects of his life are definitely terminated. However, whatever essence of life which may remain somewhere (???), it will continue to exist and will be given to changes and transformations from some "unknown" point of view. In other words, the death of this person as we observe it, is relative and not absolute. |
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