Friday, October 28, 2005

People don't often die...

The title is not meant to be ironic or sarcastic. Every second someone or the other dies around the world for some reason. If you look at the title with this perspective you might feel it is kind of negative, but it is not. It is actually something interesting. Look at it from another angle.

Have you ever heard of any living species committing mass suicide?

Well, lemming rats are known to die in unison; they are reported to simply jump into the ocean. But even that has a reason:



Humans have actually observed this phenomenon so long ago and it has been handed down to many generations as a legend: The Pied Piper of Hamelin. But people might be more familiar with this tv commercial which is based on that legend:



The point is its rare to see any species commit suicide in large numbers. However, if you have heard of such a case, I bet it is infrequent and, the numbers of individuals who die form an insignificant percentage of the whole population. You probably would have heard of the phrase "survival of the fittest"; this whole post revolves around one word in that - "survival".

The question you should be asking is why are we designed to survive?

For human beings although death is an inevitable part of life, no one lives life thinking they will die the next day. But a less observed fact is that our body is a fortress in itself to a degree. There are so many mechanisms which are kind of pre-wired without which our "survival" would have otherwise a challenge in an evolutionary sense. Humans have come a long way on the road of evolution...each turn has had its impacts as a result of which we are alive today. It may be misleading to believe it was merely because of "those impacts", but the inevitable fact is we still survive today.

I'll leave you to figure out the answer to the question I've opened. After all that is the point of this whole blog...

Last updated: 19th March 2013

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