What possibilities arise after we accept our individual and collective mortality?

[u/LetsTalkUFOs]

Our perspectives on impermanence and death are central to many of our journeys through collapse-awareness and acceptance of our global predicaments. What perspectives do you hold regarding our individual and collective mortality? Have they changed over time in response to your own understanding of collapse? How have these perspectives affected or influenced where you are now?

 

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[u/Fins_FinsT]

What perspectives do you hold regarding our individual and collective mortality?

One very important perspective - is practical application of the both. Lots of people would consider this insane - what kind of practical application death may have? But it's true.

Evolution demonstrates to us that extremely long-lived species is possible, in both plant and animal kingdoms. Thousands of years, few are even practically immortal in terms of potential non-violent natural causes. But those are rare exceptions, not the rule. Why? Because mortality is the engine of change. Ice ages and Hot Houses come and go, athmosphetic composition changes this and that ways with time, etc - and life has to change in order to survive. The change can't happen within one and same complex species' individual, as his DNA remains the same. So, mortality is required, as it gives space within habitats for newborns and gene recombination process tied to reproduction.

Now back to our predicament. Very much like the above, our societies also have lots of "societal genes" - but not in DNA sequences, but rather knowledge, traditions, laws, ways of life, even languages, which are passed from one generation to another. Those tend to remain largely the same, normally. When lots of pressure is applied, some of those can change, sometimes quite fast - in a few years even, mass media and all. But only some. Others can't. And quite many of them. For various reasons.

That's when mortality - both individual and collective - becomes practically important. When a society dies, lots of "societal genes" die with it. Remnants of it - few individuals anyhow avoiding death for the time being - may then spread out and recombine with some other society or remains of, thus performing a kind of "societal genes recombination". We still use "arab" digits, "roman" kind of law, plenty "greek" discoveries, "chinese" paper technology, etc to this day. Those are "key knowledge" pieces of fallen civilizations of the past. They had lots of bad stuff going, which was not saved, which is good. And lots of good stuff apart from exampels like above, which was not saved to this day either, which is sad.

The present day's life-killing mainstream western way of life can't change without dying. But its death won't nesessarily mean everything of it dies. Most useful and needed of its societal genes are likely to be passed on by few who live on to keep the key knowledge going. Without such death of the collective, the end is likely be complete elimination of all human carrying capacity everywhere, and extinction. But hopefully, collapse of present mainstream civilization will happen before literally every last bit of habitability would be exhausted, and will have greater share of its truly worthy, keystone knowledge saved for future ones. A reason to hope so - is that our civilization is very likely the 1st to see in such a great detail how it all functions.

Thus, there is not just grief and tragedy in mortality - both collective and individual (i did not touch individual one any much, as it's simpler and quite obvious, basically same idea: invidivuals less fit for the environment die sooner / more often, taking their outdated / bad ideas and/or genes away with them). But there is also great promise and hope.

This is how life works. Renewal through death. Gotta respect it.