Our soul is what remains after us because of us
1- Death
Death can be a path to eternity or, at least, to a very long period of existence.
Death is essential to life, it is a key component to evolve and adapt.
The very first living being died.
Our most remote ancestor died but its soul is still alive, shared by all of us.
By taking advantage of Death, Life continues, improving and moving forward.
We, as living beings, believe that Death is the ultimate enemy, something to avoid at all cost but Death is also what keeps us alive.
Life is a strange kind of structure, existing on the edge of chaos, using Death to keep its balance and going further.
In fact, we don't die, not entirely;
We are part of larger entities, such as the species and, in our case, the Human Kind. The Human Kind is, in turn, part of the Earth's biosphere and part of Life. Species and, specially, Life is what continues.
If the first bacterium lived forever then there would be no "us" - there would be no evolution. If that bacterium didn't die, then it would be as insignificant as a rock.
Rocks have very small souls.
The act of being born, growing and discovering the world, once again and for the first time, breeding and, finally, dying, is needed to add something new to existence (and life).
That's why we are here: to add something new; improving our soul and making it grow, that only thing that doesn't die but keeps evolving and adapting..
The fact is, we don't just die, there is life after death:
A part of us continues, so we can call it Soul.
2- Soul
Our soul is what remains after us, because of us.
Our soul is something we share, in different proportions, with all the living beings of our species, with other species, with the biosphere, with Life and even with the inanimate world.
It presents several layers and we are on the edge of adding a new one.
3- The physical layer of the soul
Our atoms, our mater and energy remain, the very foundations of existence. We are so used to them that we don't even consider them as part of ourselves.
We are made of atoms and molecules, of mater and energy. Those are very basic components of ourselves, components we share with everything that exists.
We don't normally think of those basic elements because we are more, much more than just matter and energy.
Those physical parts remain after death, they might not be very important but yes, they are something that once was us, remaining after us.
4- The living layer of the soul
This is what allows us to transmit life: our genetic code, our children, the other human beings, our species and even other species.
Our children carry a part of our soul but there are many other carriers.
Our direct descendants carry half of our genes, they are the entities where the living part of us is more obvious but the life we pass, as DNA and genes, will be quickly diluted: our great children will be carrying, individually, a smaller part of us, as well as their children and, in less than a second of geological time, our genes will be everywhere within the population.
Because we don't even transmit all our genes to our children and they, in turn, don't even transmit all their genes to their children, more important than our direct descendants is the species as a whole, that pool likely containing all our biological code, in many occurrences, including not only the genes but even similar phenotypes.
So, biologically, our children are carriers of our living soul but the other human beings and our species, as a whole, are much more important.
It is also the species that has the potential for ADAPTING and EVOLVING, allowing souls to survive more than just a moment.
Therefore, the other human beings are much more important to us than we tend to think.
5- The human layer of the soul
Our soul is also culture, ideas, thoughts and projects.
We live in society, we have been shaped by its culture and we've been retransmitting it away, after interpreting it our own way.
We are cultural intelligent beings. Culture is behavior, ethical values, science, technology, art and laws, everything not just genetic.
All our life we have been receiving and retransmitting culture.
Thus, our human soul is propagated within culture, by the people we once meet and interacted, by our work, achievements, activities and actions.
6- The mind of the soul
The mental layer of the soul is related to the human layer when we transmit values, thinking patterns, mind sets and attitudes, either to people surrounding us or to societies.
This mental part of the soul, representing our personality, will, cognitive patterns and thought flows, leading to successful solutions, conclusions, discoveries, inventions and creations, is hardly transmitted by culture or genetics.
People tend to display only the results of their minds: Mona Lisa, the Invention of the Wheel, the Theory of Relativity.
We know the results of great individuals, such as Leonardo Da Vinci but what about his mind processes? Where are they?
People don't easily preserve their intuitive and cognitive processes, as well as their experiences, feelings and impulses leading to such great results.
Sometimes the right ground for those ideas ends up as a cultural value like, for instance, the Scientific Method.
Nowadays we live in the era of Global Knowledge, supported by the Internet.
Soon we will become a net of people and processors, permanently connected, and together addressing problems. Will be thinking together since an early age.
Therefore, in future, our soul will also influence the neural configuration of the Global Cognitive Net (the Great Mind).
Our soul will also be spread by thinking and interacting, becoming part of the network od processes and memories of the Global Mind.
Genes were the most important vehicle of the soul, before Human Kind. Then culture became important.
At the Great Mind era the Soul uses new technologies to reach the future.
We are close to add a brand new layer to the soul: our mind.
7- Taking care of the Soul
The worst thing we can do to ourselves and to our Soul is to accept what we consider wrong (the Evil), without fighting it, without trying to change it.
This means giving away our own Soul, perhaps in exchange it for immediate comforts, a transaction where we always loose.
As individual living beings, we only have one chance in this world. This one.
As intelligent beings we can use our skills to perform the right choices and tasks, becoming more than just a mayfly.
We can choose to practice GOOD and fight EVIL.
To practice GOOD means to help Live, the World and Ourselves. EVIL is what pushes us the other way, against Ourselves, against Life and against Existence.
To practice good we must comprehend what we are, who we are, where we are going.
We are much more than just an individual.
We didn't start here and we will not end up here but, as this particular living being, we only exist once.
We can make the best of this unique chance: we can use it to make a better world.
It's our turn to play the game.
8- You are much more than you think
You represent the efforts and the souls of billions of living beings preceding you.
Imagine all your ancestors, since the first cell.
Do you have an idea of all the efforts they did for you to exist now?
You are the soul of all of them.
You were the result of all of them.
You aren't just yourself; you are billions of proud and successful winners.
You and me are a selection of what really was meaningful and deserving continuity from all those billions individuals.
You ought to value this fact, making the best use of your capabilities,,, never limiting yourself to vegetate.
Don't throw away your most precious belonging: the chance of reaching the future, by discovering new paths, by using your intelligence, your feelings and your personality to help creating a better world.
This is what's really worth; this is our main and unique fight: To make the world better.
9- Death and Soul
Without Death there would be no Evolution. Without Death there would be no Future. Without Death there would be no chances of Getting Better. In fact, without Death... our world would be static and we would be less than a rock, always there, slowly eroding, until vanishing forever.
Without Death there wouldn't be Life.
Life is an amazing act of organization and chaos in dynamic balance, the greatest challenge to the Unknown, ever made.
It's an act of magic.
We die so we can live. Our strategy has been to make use of Death to continue existing, in way: as a Soul.
By dying we make space for the improving of the Soul.
Our Soul is that part of us, continuing living, sometimes just a little, sometimes for a very long time, maybe until the end of days.
Some of us have small souls, even destructive souls, affecting and endangering Life: suicidal souls.
Most of us have great souls,bright spots of life, enlighten and creating their ways to the Future.
10- What should we say to the children when someone dies?
The truth:
In a way.
- Someone who died is still here.
That particular face or personal story is unique, it will never be repeated again.
But that person still lives in all of us, because we all share something special, we call it the soul.
He or she will continue living, as long as we and our children do the right choices.
Yes, this is little comfort.
Death is and it will always be tremendously traumatic.
On facing death we compreend that Evil does exist.
There is no easy way: It is terrible.
Those staying alive are fighting an enormous battle:
Yes, me should cry for our comrades - but, because of them and because of us, we must be strong.
- Our existence and the existence of multi-billion beings, before and after us.
Life goes on.
People die to give the new generations a chance for improving the world, correcting what it is wrong, making the life better.
People die to give their souls a chance of reaching further.
And, yet, none of us, wants to die. We die because we have to.
11- The two stages of Death
We face Death in two stages:
- Stage 1: By changing: growing, learning, adapting, getting older
- Stage 2: By stop living.
I've died many times by changing.
I'm now 42 years old, where is that 11 year old boy I once was? Some of him is still me, but it's just a small part, like a soul. Most of that 11 year old boy doesn't exist now; even most of his atoms have changed.
Something remained, something inside an entity that is now very different.
We don't call this dying. We call this living, even if we know that we change to something else, very very different, during this process.
Death is the final change.
For a soul, Death after a full life, is part of growing:
As natural as growing, we have it deeply programmed on ourselves:
- It caries the necessary change to challenge complete Death.
- A biological clock is telling us when it is time to enter stage 2, it we didn’t encounter it before.
12- We must die
The existence of a biological clock is one of the best clues we have about how Death is important for survival.
Ensuring that living beings do not live too much is crucial:
- Old generations must die at the right time, making space for new generations.
- Each species tunes its own generation rate, getting the right balance between the energy spent in breeding and growing and the ability to adapt to an altered environment.
A mouse lives up to two years and, since it has a high generation rate, it quickly adapts to environmental changes and diseases.
Cockroaches may adapt even better, having higher generation rates and shorter lives: just a few months, for a typical specimen.
Sea turtles follow a different strategy; their clock allows them to live for many years, sometimes more than one hundred years. They don't need to have a tight timer, older generations don't normally bare the way to new generations, because their environment is vast, full of dangers and predators. They don't normally occupy the space of the next generations and they rely on a stable and proven design, without the need of frequent adjustments.
For a sea turtle, living for a century is perfectly ok.
Big and complex living beings mean greater investments made on each individual, so they tend to leave longer.
Large mammals might live tens of years. Elephants and great primates are among the mammals that live longer. They can live more than 40 years. Since they rely on learning, memory and experience, living for so long becomes useful - although, to live much longer, for instance, 80 years, would leave no space for the new generations and improvement, it would endanger the species.
13- Human beings should live longer
Human beings are the primates that live longer and probably they are also the terrestrial mammals that live longer.
We need to live longer to learn, to make use of our knowledge and to transmit it. In fact, to live longer is so useful in our species that Nature created mechanisms to increase our life spam.
This is the case of woman's menopause. A woman can easily live 20 years after the menopause. What's the use of living such a long time even after becoming unfertile?
This extra time allows women to make use of the accumulated experience, to transmit knowledge and culture and, especially, to help the new generations.
Menopause is a strategy allowing women to live more time, in our species, Nature didn't have enough time to change the clock of all cells, tissues and organs. A pregnancy at fifties or sixties would be either unsuccessful or fatal.
Like other large mammals, our body used to be scheduled to die at forties but the recent evolutionary pressure is pushing us to live longer, in order to have time to learn, to use that knowledge, to spread it and to help new generations. Currently, it is not unusual for adults to become independent from their parents at thirty. After requiring such a long maturing time, a longer life is also need.
In fact, human beings are always learning and many of them always remain interested in playing and exploring. Mammal childish features are part our adulthood. We remain children all our life: We need more time to use our brain.
14- Living enough, not too much
The human kind, therefore, would benefit from having a longer life spam but how longer?
This is hard to tell. It depends on the environment but our environment is quickly changing.
If "to live longer" means be around more time with reduced capabilities and no contribution to society, then it could cause severe social and economical tensions. We don't need to live longer this way.
Even to live with full adult capabilities might, after a certain period of time, endanger our chances to adapt. How easily would an adult, born in the 17th century, adapt to the nowadays technological society?
In fact, if people could live 400 years, our current social structure wouldn't exist: the mentalities would have evolve more slowly.
There would still be slavery, women would not vote and we would still have the inquisition.
On the other hand, to live longer would allow us to have more time making use of our skills and intelligence, to learn more, to have more experience and to better teach the new generations. It would allow very long term projects and perspectives.
Right now, at our present environment, 400 years are certainly too much but 80 years are also too short. The right live spam for our species, nowadays, would lay somewhere in between.
The need for longer human life only became obvious in the last hundred thousand years. Natural selection didn't have time to push our life spam much further but we are doing that now and, in many societies, people live now more than 80 years and our life spam tends to grow, more and more.
Perhaps, in future, we might eventually live too long. Let's not forget that, biologically, only one thing lives forever: the cancer cells.
15- The Great Mind
A new factor is rising, although. The Great Mind: the set of human reasoning, data and cognitive processes, over the global Network.
Human Kind will be closer, acting more like a single entity. It will become the Great Human Kind.
This development can lead us to a dead end.
The Great Human Kind can also be our Greatest Human Mistake.
We must not forget important lessons of life:
To born, to grow up, to breed and to die, counting on the new generations and diversity to reach the future.
16- Avoiding Dead Ends
Once we become a single entity, our fade will be the same; if the entity dies we all die.
The Great Human Kind might even change over time, either adapting to new environments or internally, reaching to new conclusions.
What if, after one of these changes, it arrives to a Dead End? It might conclude, for instance, there is no point in existing.
So, the future of the Great Human Kind is uncertain and unknown, as it should be, but we must prevent dead ends.
Nature has taught us how to do it: To breed, to spread, to become diverse, generating new entities.
The universe is there, ready for an adaptive radiation. The greatest ever recorded: the Great Expansion. Let's go there. Let's go to the stars.
Increase, multiply and diversify
