The Mystery of Life and Death

As a person who is fascinated by both the beauty and the mechanism of the world around us, I have vacillated between the passivity of simply accepting and trying to enjoy my life and the universe I inhabit, and the struggle of questioning and investigating the first principles and the mystery of that existence.

What is a human being?  We grow ever more sophisticated in our understanding of the body, our genetic code, our physical existence, our maladies, our aging.  It is true that our understanding of the brain lags somewhat.  Scientists have begun to link our thoughts, emotions and consciousness to various parts of that mysterious organ, but the question remains:   Is there more to us than biology?  Is there a soul, a spirit that is immortal?  Is there something that will remain after the heart stops beating and the brain function has ceased?

The question of whether I am more than simply some energy configured in human form is one I have grappled with frequently in my life.  There were times when I was almost willing to fully embrace Christian theology.  And I still am sympathetic to the fervent desire of so many to be adherents to a specific faith and find comfort in their tenets.

But even in my most ardent religious moments a nagging doubt was present.  The exclusive nature of most religions was the first crack in the wall for me.  How could God consider any sincere search for truth to be sacrilege?  And once that small crack emerges, the entire structure of religious certainty becomes very shaky.

As my skepticism about organized religion grew, I found myself jettisoning all specific theologies and veering toward agnosticism.  Some part of me wants to believe that there is an eternal soul or spirit that will endure beyond this mortal coil.  Given how little we understand even today the true nature of the matter and energy that we embody, I see no reason not to wish for some sort of lasting consciousness and existence once my physical body has died.

And isn’t religion ultimately very focused on death and our fear of it?  Religion uses the mirrored prospects of either a hellish or heavenly afterlife to justify its existence and to control behavior.  It promises a reunion with lost loved ones, a rejuvenation of a worn and aged body, a continuation of life without toil, pain or grief.  No wonder it has had such success!

Some great thinkers and scientists seem content to believe that their deaths will be the end for them, and it is hard to refute this type of thinking from a scientific point of view.  Let’s face it, the religious texts are pretty terse on their descriptions of the life hereafter (many mansions in my Father’s house?) and any serious pondering of the possible details of heaven, hell or other post-Earth modalities becomes absurd pretty quickly.

But I find no solace in the idea that my ‘energy’ will simply dissipate and become part of something new in the universe.  I don’t want to cease to exist. I’m neither a fan of growing old nor of disappearing, and the offered platitudes of being remembered by family and friends are only slightly reassuring.

As I draw ever nearer to the end of my physical being, the mystery of life and death becomes much less an abstraction and more a topic to seriously ponder.  But I have no illusions that I will find any answers before my demise.  Perhaps I will hedge my bets and do a deathbed conversion to every possible religion.  But more likely I will simply hope for the best, as I have done in so many aspects of my life, and accept whatever comes.

Space Dreams

Yesterday, the NASA expedition Artemis II successfully launched, initiating a new era in US lunar exploration by humans rather than unmanned missions.  What are we to make of this new phase?  

I was 15 years old when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.  It was super exciting watching it on TV.  Two years later I was in Florida at Cape Canaveral with my father to watch the liftoff of the Apollo 16 mission.  My father was intimately involved in space missions as a director of the National Reconnaissance Organization, a top-secret group that built spy satellites starting in the 60’s.

I had two experiences with the subsequent Space Shuttle program.  The first was when my wife’s uncle, Karl Henize, an astronomy professor astronaut, flew as the mission specialist on Challenger in 1985, at that time the oldest person to go into space. The second was watching in horror from the roof of my company in Melbourne, Florida, as the Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch in 1986.

The history of human exploration is a fascinating one - the challenges and risks, the technology, the courage.  To the extent it embodies a quest for knowledge and experience, it is a wonderful and admirable human quality.  But, of course, it has also been strongly associated with some of the worst human traits – greed, violence and conquest.

This new phase of lunar exploration and potential colonization comes over 50 years after the first visits to the moon.  The motivation seems to be primarily competition and fear of losing ground to other nations.  In recent years China, Russia and India have all announced their lunar projects.  These include establishing lunar bases (China has termed it an International Lunar Research Station) at the South Pole to take advantage of water sources and extended sunlight.  China and Russia will potentially partner to install a nuclear power plant.

There is real potential for conflict as nations jockey for position on the moon.  Can competing nations conduct their operations without resorting to violence?  If history is any judge, then the answer is no.  Every past exploration saw nations battling endlessly to gain advantage.  The only exception has been the exploration of the Antarctica, which is presumably because to date there has been little material advantage in that exploration.

But aside from the potential future conflicts between increasingly antagonistic nations, there is the nagging question of whether we earth inhabitants can justify reaching for the stars when we have so many problems to solve on our own planet.  The resources and riches required to conduct space missions are prodigious.  Can we in good conscience dedicate that wealth to our space dreams when disease and poverty hover over billions of earthlings and climate change and pollution threaten the lives of everyone?

Alas, that question will never be seriously pondered, because space conquest, like war, AI and the re-invigorated arms race, is inevitable.  Fear and hubris, in equal measure, are the inertial drivers that no force of good will or love seems to be able to counteract.  

I admire the ingenuity and curiosity that enable us to explore our universe, and I will be fascinated by the various stages of accomplishment and the new discoveries that occur, regardless of which nation succeeds.  If we could only abandon warfare and the wasteful arms race and work together in these endeavors, I would be doubly proud of their successes.  But I cannot unreservedly praise our space quest when it must ultimately divert attention and resources away from much more urgent human needs on this earth.