Quid tibi tanto operest, mortalis?

   

   There is a wonderful passage in Lucretius in which Nature speaks to the old dying man who wails aloud, over-complaining about his own death: What troubles you so much, oh mortal? The passage is part of a long funerary advice for those who do not practice the dreams of an afterlife, a consolation before death that follows the principles of the human law.

   If you lived well, what is all this groan and moan about? Why don’t you, like a banqueter fed full of life retire, and rest in peace forever, you greedy?

   But if you lived a miserable life, if all you once had is now spilt and lost, why do you lament the end of your pains, why would you like to add more, you fool?

   The one who lived gathering blessings develops greed, a condition of the dopaminic emotional system in which the neurotransmitters responsible for the movement and search functions of the organism cannot be turned off. It is curious how such a lack of balance has been favored in relation to economic matters and discourage in relation to thinking, precisely the ground where it would find its own limits: the dopamine cause.

   The fool who lives a miserable life and still wants to continue is showing a condition of extreme fear, an unhealthy response to the enculturation myths of death, the metaphysical morphine provided by religions which extends checks of immortality wrapped in the uncertainties of a trial controlled by a long list of (difficult to avoid) superstitions in relation to family and group.

   The manipulation of these matters is the technology of immortality, a way of life and a profession since the times of the myths of Osiris. It was the counterpart to the development of a genuine private sphere of emotion, of self-identity and self-consciousness, i.e. a narrative of a person in me, in you, which is independent of the economic personae which we have to perform within our human group. The lyrical citizen claims his/her immortality as the logical development of a conscious life, for we feel that what we are is not limited to our particular body or circumstances (part of the Aeschillus Paradox).

   Fear of death is only overcome by a better understanding of life, and by this I mean an understanding of its processes through the modern myths of astrobiology, contrasting them with the Ancient myths, and developing our own understanding. The art of dying on time, neither becoming a zombie not a priest of senseless early deaths, is an art to be developed by each one of us. Grow up: nobody can tell you what is your life or your death, nobody! Think-live by yourself, from this amazing here and now.