This might take long but here's my opinion that leads up to my strange answer.
“The cosmos is within us... ...The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” - Author, Astronomer, Astrophysicist, Carl Sagan
The lightest of gases, were produced in the big bang. The chemical elements up to iron - carbon, oxygen, neon, silicon and iron - are produced in ordinary stellar neucleosynthesis (Created by stellar fusion inside cores of stars under immense pressure and temperatures). Anything heavier than Iron (i.e Gold, Titanium etc.) are only created by death of stellar mass stars that shoot out massive quantities of elements light years across the space. All of these elements, however miniscule, has role to play in function of the human body.
Why do we live? Humans are, what I believe, are the product of universe itself, trying to make sense of itself. Therefore just trying to make sense of what's around you, even if its something as innocuous or simple as understanding 1+1=2, is enough of a purpose.
Another way to look at it is that we're born purposeless, without a direction and discover our own purpose. In an objective sense, the purpose of life is to create more life.
Go to school, get a degree, get a job, find love, have kids and help them succeed in life, retire and eventually pass away. That's the norm that most people expect. Some of us abhor this prosaic formula like we were destined for something greater, others find purpose and direction from this and do not mind following the script to a tee, yet there are some that dream to achieve this 'bland' life. Whichever of these broad categories you fall into, the thing is, according to evolution and life itself, as long as you passed on your genes, (your children) technically, you've already won the game of life. Everything after that is just gravy. For humans, evolution decided that after we grow old, we can still help our children, which in turned helped them succeed and pass on their genes hence our comparatively lengthy lifespan, to life its just more winning.
But you can find your own purpose, even if its stupid as becoming the king of intergalactic house of pancakes. No one's stopping you.
People imagine death as eternal darkness or unending agony after or during the process of dying but that is not something you can experience. If you were dead, you wouldn't know what the concept of feeling something even is. Death in many ways are similar to falling asleep or being put under by a medication during surgery, you have no awareness that surgeons just opened up your chest cavity and swapped out your heart. Just like that you'll have no idea that you're even dead. In death, instead of tiredness or morphine its something in your body failing be it heart, the brain or some other vital organ that's needed that puts you to your eternal rest. In that sense unless you fear going to sleep, both you and I do not fear death, we fear the idea of never waking up again. An end to our journey, losing our consciousness, our being forever. But because you know you'll wake up in the morning you may not have an existential dread trying to sleep. The same can not be said for sure for death, and maybe that is where the fear and anxiety of death comes from. We don't know for sure if there's something more for us after death.
Reincarnation is a huge part of Buddhism and Hinduism among other religions. In those belief, the idea of ascending after death into higher godlike entity or falling into lower being exists, often with extremely little or no recollection of your past life. Despite that, depending on the interpretation, the goal of human life is to escape the cycle of life and death itself, not become god, even though you have the choice. The goal is to become one with the cosmos or the universe itself. Basically, you can't die and suffer if you haven't lived in the first place, a very unga bunga simplification that glosses over a lot of their teachings.
Though I believe those beliefs are not without their merits. After death, your body shuts down and gets broken down by bacteria to its constituent elements and become nourishment for the earth. From that earth may bloom flowers, grass or a tree. Some livestock may come and take nibble of those plants, going up the food chain, let's say that a cow ate grass, who gets slaughtered and its meat consumed by a soon to be a mother and the nutrients found their way into feeding the growing fetus. From that process in which part do you think you will live on? Hopefully the fetus since you might have a chance to live again, isn't that great? But most likely you are part of everything that led up to the fetus. You are the earth, the grass, the cattle, the mother and the child all at once. Now at this point I don't think you would want to be conscious. I don't think it will be a very good to feel that you have been broken down into decillions of little pieces all being part of some other organism. But it is an afterlife of sorts.
I think I would very much so like unaging body rather than an immortal one.
“The end of biological aging would not mean the end of death in any way. It’s more like a Summer evening when you were a kid, and your mom called you inside. You just wanted to keep playing, have a little more fun during sunset before you went to sleep. It’s not about playing forever, just a little longer, until we feel tired.” - Kurzgesagt
Why age?
I believe humanity could have achieved a heck of a lot more if people lived longer, or maybe not that is an alternative reality. But imagine where we would be scientifically and technologically if great scientists, inventors and engineers of past were alive today. Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, Galileo Galilei. Would the stress and pressure of life still be the same if we consistently lived up to the age of 200? Would we still retire at around our 50s and 60s then? Would we stop learning? What would our education system be? Highschools that takes 10 years to graduate?
Given a simple choice of Living for ten additional years or dying then and there, I think we would all pick living multiple times over. We will all find something to want for, a slightly better home, a nicer looking car, a first place in some competitive game's leaderboard, finishing up our a gacha game's characters collection. And for that, we would have to work for, and to do that, you need to be alive and have time to spend, like that ten years I mentioned. After that why not something grander? Why not save up and try to own a habitable planet just for yourself? Wanna see what's beyond the ever expanding observable universe, go for it. Commission a ring world project even if it's ridiculously costly and stupidly unfeasible? You have plenty of time to figure it out and get it done.
It's just like what the game Little Inferno told its players that played it to its end.
"But what happens when you have achieved your dreams? Well, then it's time to get bigger dreams."
Why would you want to die? When there's so much you could do, and then some in life.
But you might say that's too optimistic, nothing you'll do will matter and everyone will forget about you. That's nihilism speaking. But nothing says you can't be an
optimistic nihilist.
"Entropy, the steady decline into disorder that’s a fundamental part of the universe… …entropy will get us all in the end.
The White Cliffs of Dover are a symbol of Britain, they are this imposing barrier, but they’re just chalk. Time and tide will wash them away, a long time in the future. This, too, shall pass. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t build things anyway. Just because something is going to break in the end, doesn’t mean that it can’t have an effect that lasts into the future. The world can be better because of what you built in the past... ...So until then: try and make sure the things you’re working on push us in the right direction. They don’t have to be big projects, they might just have an audience of one. And even if they don’t last: try to make sure they leave something positive behind." - Tom Scott (
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Not everything we will leave behind will be of material nature. Others will be more intangible, like our beliefs and stupid messages we left behind the dms of some discord server. Sure, what you do may not have any meaning to anyone now, or later, but it might do something long long after you're gone, you'll never know, as if you'll be there tell anyway, right? Right?
