Law of Obsoleteness
8 December 2004
There are a great many unanswered questions for the asking human here on earth and in the cosmos. Whether we are the only living organisms in the universe and all other dimensions (if these dimensions support our way of living and our forms of knowledge) is one of them. Another is the phenomenon of death. An experience described by science as the permanent cessation of normal biological functions in a biological entity rendering it suspended permanently from its usual functioning (as compared with other living forms the same as the dead entity) in its environment. A phenomenon also realized and described by all relatively civilized peoples in myth, legends and folklore.
It is the one experience all living creatures on the planet share however short or protracted their lives may be and it is the one experience all humans share. Another of these experiences shared by all living creatures on the planet is the one commonly referred to as birth – the point where life begins (and importantly grows and learns). Nothing living on the planet has not a beginning at some fixed point in time and space. Something not shared by experience but shared by trait is the fact that all living creatures possess an ancestry – parents, grand- parents, and so forth in all living creatures.
Why then not live permanently, why should a creature die? The answer might lie in obsoleteness. As the previous generation realized that it needed to adapt and carry the adaptation over to the next generation for the survival of the species and once the actual survival of the species is assured there is no treason for the outdated models to stay around. This raises the question is the human species rising to such a level of survival certainty that the species might in the near future start looking for ways not to expire and hence reduce reproduction which in terms over population of earth is becoming such a big problem.
Written by Omar Fourie