Death: The Final Frontier

Baudelaire Jones

Since the first man breathed his first breath, men have been obsessed with the concept of death--the permanent end of the life of a biological organism. "As soon as one is born," Luigi Pirandello once lamented, "one starts dying."

Man's musings on death have ranged from the philosophical:

Who knows but life be that which men call death,

And death what men call life? (EURIPIDES, Phrixus)

To the comical:

There are more dead people than living. And their numbers are increasing. The living are getting rarer. (EUGENE IONESCO, Rhinoceros)

To the downright depressing:

A man dies ... only a few circles in the water prove that he was ever there. And even they quickly disappear. And when they're gone, he's forgotten, without a trace, as if he'd never even existed. And that's all. (WOLFGANG BORCHERT, The Outsider)

Traditions and beliefs related to death have had profound influences on the development of human culture, and especially the development of religions and the concept of the afterlife. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that religion itself was "invented" as a means of coping with the idea of death--that the concept of an afterlife is nothing more than a fairy tale intended to make the bitter pill of death a little easier to swallow. Perhaps this same fear of death is what prompted legends of the Fountain of youth, a legendary spring that reputedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks from its waters. Today, researchers in the field of "life extension" pursue a similar goal. They seek to understand the nature of aging and develop treatments to reverse the process, or at least slow it down. Many of these researchers quietly suggest that future breakthroughs in stem cell research, tissue rejuvenation, and molecular repair will one day eliminate the aging process altogether and cheat Death of his bounty.

To this end, some true believers such as Major League Baseball player Ted Williams (and, according to legend, Walt Disney) go so far as to have themselves cryonically preserved when they die, frozen in the hopes that future scientists will one day revive them, bring them back to life like Lazarus from the tomb.

Any skeptic will tell you that our best efforts are in vain--that death is a part of life, the unavoidable conclusion. The truth is, no one knows for sure. And there's only one way to find out.

As J.M. Barrie declared in Peter Pan, "To die will be an awfully big adventure."

About the Author:



Baudelaire Jones is the author of 'Dialogues of the Dead.' If you enjoyed this article, he recommends http://www.notable-quotes.com/d/death_quotes.html

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