Wee Bit of Philosophizing

Sometimes You Just Have To Think About This Stuff

(I.e. blurt it out on social media.) 

The profound difference between alive and dead poses the impenetrable question, not 'what is consciousness,?' but 'what is life?'

The most mysterious moment is just after death, whether human, pet or tiny bug. Like a clock that stops (never to go again), everything seems the same as it was a moment before death, but the magic of life is gone.

Much pondering over the millennia has produced many theories, dogmas and irrational speculations, but we are still in the dark. If when one dies "the soul departs," then is the soul life? Does it retain coherence or blend into all undifferentiated life like a drop of ink into the ocean? The heaven/purgatory/hell idea demands retained coherence, including individual memory (So we can enjoy/regret our final reward). The reincarnation idea doesn't require memory. If you are reincarnated as a gnat or an elephant, you probably don't remember your time as a human (Just guessing). The turn-out-the-lights annihilation idea of death dismisses life and consciousness as a passing natural emergence, like flowers blooming and fading.

Meanwhile our life and consciousness is lucky to be in a well-evolved brain-body "machine," alive on this amazing planet, capable of asking -- but not answering -- all these questions.