“The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living”.
- Damien Hirst
The overwhelming majority of humans are afraid of dying.
Why?
There is a deep sickness in the human psyche. A sickness which afflicts most people. It is the belief, incorrect as it were, that humanity is somehow special, exempt from simple death and extinction by virtue of…what, exactly?
Humans are the only animals on the planet which have developed an entire field of science devoted to extending their lifespan. And, not because they are particularly intelligent. The rapacious despoliation of Earth for nothing other than monetary gain is a testament to that. But, because man is clever. Cleverer than most animals. But, not all animals.
Further proof of humanity’s exceptionalist delusion are the deities that have been imagined out of whole cloth, so to speak, to prove, if one likes, the superiority of man over all the other animals. As an aside, and coincidentally surely, all of the “gods” of men look like men, or are almost exclusively men, with the occasional female “goddess”, thrown in for good measure. This is no accident. Human history, invented religions included, have a bias towards men. And, this includes men as gods.
