Dating : “A Dialogue with Death” Part 2

(My sincere thanks for the encouragement and praise for the first part, I am extremely thankful to all the readers who offered suggestions to improve the content in this part. I am hopeful that you will enjoy this as much as the first one)

PART II

So D, there are many people who pray for long life of their loved ones. How do you like it?

Well hanan, there are a couple of things to consider first. Look, human beings haven’t always been living together, millions of years ago, there was no such concept of collectivism. Everybody was to strive for themselves. However, it became a routine to fall prey to beasts and in those times, the animals were upto three times in size as compared to present. Thus, folks in order to defend themselves, realized that a group is more powerful than an individual. So, your collective ideology is based on survival more than anything else. Secondly, your species is better than any other species when it comes to emotional aspects and on the other hand, this realization has also weakened the humans. Now to maintain the order and keep people intact, given your survival instinct, you humans tend to tender each other with various emotional catches. “Long Life”? well I have already told you that life is considered a blessing among you humans. Thus, praying for someone’s long life is just another form of blessing someone, whether a loved one or not. The logic keeps telling you that there is no such control of the length of somebody else’s life. If there would be one, I believe given the violent nature of humans, nobody will survive haha.

I was amazed and continued with my next query “Well D, you seem to know much about the human history, what makes you think humans are violent?”

Look hanan, humans didn’t learn everything at a single point of time, they have been evolving, both on physical and psychological levels. They developed their sense over the period of millenniums and have harnessed various capabilities through experience, the only difference among humans and other species is the ability to interpret anything at any time and above all, in their own way. They can twist things to facilitate their cause and that’s what keeps them going. Humans have consumed other species for nutritional purposes since ages, but it was not the same always. Initially, they relied on organic sources like fruits and leaves etc. then they started utilizing the raw flesh and once they invented the fire, they started consuming “cooked” food, that’s where the “intellect” started to develop as they started utilizing the nutrients specially the proteins in best possible way and to maximum limit. This resulted in development of their brains getting more nutrition and in-fact more development. With such an upgrade they realized that living in groups is safer as well as a combined effort can facilitate the availability of more proteins in the forms of meat extracted from other species.

Thus the numbers sore and communities came in to existence. With such a huge number, humans realized that a bifurcation of skills is important, so previously everybody could do everything, but in new model, skills were distributed and humans started getting settled as groups, the hunter/gatherer is one of the early specified skills. This called for cultural limitations to come in to play and they developed “codes of ethics”. The problem took place when to regulate the system, humans discovered the element of leadership and they started choosing their leaders because now everyone shouldn’t be doing everything. This leadership element, helped humans to realize that something called “control” is one of the perks of such a trait. If the leaders would have remained part of the community and had considered leadership as just another assignment, things would have remained normal and orerly. However, they started abusing the control trait and demanded special treatment. This happened because the skills were then being classified on the basis of individual effort instead of collective effort. Those who lead demanded more respect and a higher status than others for their efforts and justified their stance by numbering the “sacrifices” they made.

This abuse of control introduced you humans to violence in order to “make” the community do what the leader wanted. Then there were number of leaders for different communities, and the idea of being a better leader forced the communities to differ in their opinions, leaving one community to forcefully take over the other by setting aside the harmony. Thus, all the skills utilized against the natural forces to ensure sustenance were now being used against each other. To this very day, the struggle continues and this egoist attitude gives any community a self-proposed justification to subdue the other communities, as they believe that their idea of leadership is better than them or when they believe that their codes are under threat from the other communities, the survival instinct comes to play. The Romans, Egyptians, Nazis, Modern age America and Russia, Talibaan, ISIS etc are the biggest example of such a practice.

Hmmm, interesting and quite informational, as a human I may start looking at myself in a different way maybe. Anyways D, tell me something about the afterlife. Tell me what happens after we die.

D: Hanan death is also a process which brings an experience I told you before, that I am only concerned with what I do and my job is to facilitate the transition from one reality to the other, of course if there is any. I have little to no idea about the other side as it is or maybe, doesn’t concern me. Consider me a nature’s way for putting an end to something, now that end is having a new beginning or it’s a dead end, I am not relevant to it. The natural order doesn’t permit any of its functions to go beyond their specified job, in other words they stay focused on doing rather than thinking. This is where human species are different. Being crown of creation is a huge responsibility to facilitate all other species but not to eliminate them.

Ahan? D don’t you think that if, the humans are aware of the “other side” or generally speaking the after life, they will thrive and the state of confusion will be over. Furthermore, what do you mean by a responsibility?

D: Is it a trick question? Haha anyways let me elaborate myself. The humans are ingrained with curiosity and that’s why they have already thrived. It’s also this curious nature that makes it difficult for them to focus on their present. Future, is yet to come and it sure will come and it always does but on its own terms. It’s the present that determines the future, thus instead of focusing more on present circumstances, humans tend to presume their future mostly. On the other hand, all the development of humans as species is based on envisioning the future and then work on their present to achieve such future state. Instead of envisioning the future, humans tend to determine it and in this way they try to “control” natural resources around them rather than utilizing them. Even on individual level, take the example of a writer, if he/she envisions becoming a prolific writer, he/she will start improving on writing and produce an impactful content by working on their present circumstances. On the other hand if he/she has already determined that they “deserve” to be a prolific author and everyone should admit to this fact, they start twisting things around them as it becomes more of an egoistic goal. Thus, if the future itself comes and starts serving them with its facets, the struggle will be over causing stagnation. Therefore, the afterlife is left upon the perception of human species, both in individual and collective terms.

Furthermore about the responsibility, with a higher understanding of the natural order, humans must ensure its preservation and make it convenient for all others. Unfortunately, human are least concerned about realizing this important responsibility and use their skills to ensure their own supremacy, initially among all the species and later, among themselves. Mind you hanan, the natural order is always the dominating force, it has it’s own self correction mechanism that triggers when the limits are pushed and in all walks of life it works the same way. The holy scriptures tell the tales of mightiest being expunged, why because they started toying with the natural order in order to twist it in their own way and once the limits were pushed, the self-correction mechanism came in to play and it cleansed itself. Thus those mighty humans turned out to be the infection and nature was cured with obliteration and the responsibility was bestowed to another group of humans and so on.

(D practically got me stunned with all this information and then I realized it’s the death I am in dialogue with)

Well then tell me something about pain? What is it and why humans try to avoid it.

D: There are two different sub categories of pain hanan, physical and cognitive. Physical pain is when you have a slightest of cut on your finger to the biggest of injuries endured. Just imagine, if you have your finger stuck in a car door and you don’t feel any pain, you may not realize the damage it is causing to your finger and if not withdrawn timely, you will ultimately lose your finger. Pain is the way your body speaks to you, it’s the mode of communication between you and your body. When your immune system detects a disturbance anywhere in the body, it starts working on it to fix it up. However, before such a process is initiated a distress call is sent through your nervous system so that further damage could be prevented. As soon as your finger gets stuck in the door, you feel sheer pain and withdraw it, that’s how the pain works on physical spectrum. Now the most important is the mental pain, it all depends on how you feel and how your emotions play their role. There are various emotions that help humans to understand and communicate their mental state with others, remember group orientation? Thus sadness, fear, happiness, joy, stress, trust etc are the impressions of humans’ mental state and that’s how they understand each other better. However, since its more of a cognitive element, thus much of the generation, identification and interpretation of such pain depends on the humans’ intellect exclusively. Mind you, like your physical immune system, there is a psychological immune system as well but it has its own limits and is lot more vulnerable to human will than its physical counterpart. Therefore, on cognitive level the pain is determined on assumptions drawn through the interpretation of psychological state i.e. the emotions……..

(The third part of this series “Dialogue with Death” will be published soon, till then your comments will be very important, and yes you can send me your questions that I could ask to death)

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By: M Hanan Iftekhar ( Author is a Corporate Trainer and Freelance writer )

Read the first part: “A Dialogue with Death”

https://.com/@hanan.iftekhar/a-dialogue-with-death-f539362b0bc1

email: hanan.iftekhar@live.com

Tel: +92 321 8654 666

Note: My views are solely based on my observation and first-hand experiences being a professional myself along with opinions of my peers and social circle. Your views and opinions will be of extreme importance to me