If There Is A Life Cycle, Can There Also Be A Death Cycle?

A Philosophical Argument that Death Cannot Possibly be a Final Sleep, Because Sleep is Part of the Life Experience.

Right?

With the caveat that I know nothing more about the subject than anyone, and my stance is wholly theoretical …

It began about twelve hours or so ago, with an innocuous Facebook post that received some unexpected and truly interesting responses:

A thought occurred to me this morning while I was walking my four-legged hairy daughter. (Note to those here, on Medium, for the avoidance of doubt: that would be my dog.)

The thought was about death.

So many of us consider death as the end, a void, nothingness.

Like sleep.

But …

Wouldn’t the death experience be indefinable, because sleep (and that void referenced) is part of the “life” experience?

We are comparing death to something that happens when we live.

Why? Does the concept of a final sleep make you more comfortable, maybe because the definition is accessible?

Anyone ..?

I received considerably more comments than expected in the first hour of posting, and considered the topic to be rife with possibilities for a Medium.com article.

And so …

We obsess over it, typically when things are not going our way. It’s an almost Pavlovian reaction. When we lose control, we contemplate. When we’re on a plane, we give up all of our control to the pilots.

And the tin can in which we fly.

But we relent control throughout our lives, and most of us infrequently pause to consider it. When we enter an elevator, or a train. Or, any moving vehicle of which you are not the driver. We typically take a loss of control for granted — when we are still in our comfort zone.

When we’re not comfortable, our thoughts turn. Likely they turn to life, and it’s storehouse of regret and other emotion. What can I do differently if I somehow survive this horrible situation? I will never again get so angry! I made the most asinine decision of my life, yesterday ... What’s next?

Or, to death. Death CANNOT be the end. There HAS TO BE something else when you die. Energy cannot be killed. The soul lives on. God is great.

Fuck it. God doesn’t exist. And if he does, what’ll I care anyway? I’m taking a dirt nap, and the Ten Commandments do not apply to detritus.

Typically what occurs following the first thoughts of death, especially if alone (or conversely, as earlier illustrated, on social media but still safe behind the confines of a keyboard) are the tougher thoughts about the death experience.

As mortals, we share a need to contemplate that experience in relatable fashion. Ask yourself this: Do you breathe after death? Do you eat? Do you swim? Do you shop?

Life experiences, one and all. But death?

If you answered “no” to the above questions, then how would we … sleep?

We’re unconscious in both sleep and death (we think), and regarding death simply as sleeping without dreaming still doesn’t quite work as with that definition we’re missing any thought of a potential process.

Life: Birth, Living, Death. A cycle. A process.

Death: Undefined, but why do so many consider it the end? Have you considered that maybe death — as opposed to dying—is also a process? Of course, views of death differ from culture to culture, from religion to religion, so consider my question to be general.

But it is well worth a discussion, if only to pass the time until you get there.

It should be noted that for the purpose of this brief exploration, I am referring metaphysically to the soul’s journey as a process, if such a thing exists, and not a process related to physical decomposition.

As the late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking famously said, “There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers. That is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

Maybe. Maybe not.

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