Life (and Deat5h)
I am addicted to nature programs. Show me a herd of wildebeests eluding a pack of African hunting dogs and I’m happy. I will spend several hours watching David Attenborough lecture about the five extinctions as volcanoes explode and asteroids strike the Earth. I love the way he says “Three billlllion years agoooo…” If the world were to end tomorrow, I’d want to be with Attenborough, listening to him explain how our approaching demise was not the tragic end, but the natural conclusion of a series of events that had nothing to do with the human race. What Attenborough is actually saying is that it’s not about life, it’s about death. Life isn’t very smart and doesn’t know when to quit. It always loses out to death.
It’s commonly believed that 99 percent of the creatures that ever lived on our planet have gone extinct. Attenborough would tell you we are fostering the next extinction by despoiling the air and land, and devastating the oceans through largely uncontrolled fishing. We are not very smart either. We are reactive, often springing to action when it's too late and wringing our hands at our helplessness. The barn doors are wide open, the cows have left, and we blame everything but ourselves.
Approximately 117 billion members of our species have been born on Earth, according to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). The present global population of eight billion represents about seven percent of this total number of people. Within 110 years, all of us—including me and whoever might be reading this—will have died. Our lives represent less than the blink of an eye in the violent history of this planet. So, once again, it’s not about life, but the end of life.
None of these lives comprehend death, and most of us fear it. As youths, we believe we’re immortal, but as age brings us closer to the edge of the precipice, we often turn to religion. This explains why so many beliefs are based on the concept of a hereafter. It’s comforting to think our death is not final, but merely a transition to another existence.
It’s likely that in the not-so-distant future, humans will be the cause of the sixth extinction, but not today. In this century, the vast majority of us will die quotidian deaths. Our internal organs will wear out, we’ll fall off ladders while cleaning the gutters, eat bad food, or succumb to bicycle accidents. We’ll get hit by buses, cars, trucks, tractors, bulldozers, and cranes. Some, like Isadora Duncan, will die of strangulation, and others such as Franz Reichelt, might attempt to fly from the first floor of the Eiffel Tower with predictable results. Others still, Porcia Catonis—the second wife of Marcus Junius Brutus—comes to mind. She swallowed hot coals… Or you could die as I almost did today. An adolescent texting while driving sped his parents’ SUV through a red light and almost smoushed me.
It’s sort of interesting, really. There’s only one way to be born but there are infinite ways to die.
It’s commonly believed that 99 percent of the creatures that ever lived on our planet have gone extinct. Attenborough would tell you we are fostering the next extinction by despoiling the air and land, and devastating the oceans through largely uncontrolled fishing. We are not very smart either. We are reactive, often springing to action when it's too late and wringing our hands at our helplessness. The barn doors are wide open, the cows have left, and we blame everything but ourselves.
Approximately 117 billion members of our species have been born on Earth, according to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). The present global population of eight billion represents about seven percent of this total number of people. Within 110 years, all of us—including me and whoever might be reading this—will have died. Our lives represent less than the blink of an eye in the violent history of this planet. So, once again, it’s not about life, but the end of life.
None of these lives comprehend death, and most of us fear it. As youths, we believe we’re immortal, but as age brings us closer to the edge of the precipice, we often turn to religion. This explains why so many beliefs are based on the concept of a hereafter. It’s comforting to think our death is not final, but merely a transition to another existence.
It’s likely that in the not-so-distant future, humans will be the cause of the sixth extinction, but not today. In this century, the vast majority of us will die quotidian deaths. Our internal organs will wear out, we’ll fall off ladders while cleaning the gutters, eat bad food, or succumb to bicycle accidents. We’ll get hit by buses, cars, trucks, tractors, bulldozers, and cranes. Some, like Isadora Duncan, will die of strangulation, and others such as Franz Reichelt, might attempt to fly from the first floor of the Eiffel Tower with predictable results. Others still, Porcia Catonis—the second wife of Marcus Junius Brutus—comes to mind. She swallowed hot coals… Or you could die as I almost did today. An adolescent texting while driving sped his parents’ SUV through a red light and almost smoushed me.
It’s sort of interesting, really. There’s only one way to be born but there are infinite ways to die.
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