Observing the death process in the garden, on the roads, because of a natural disaster, or in a war zone, does not help the individual extrapolate to an appreciation of their own. Death is an inconceivable place... beyond life's flights of imagination... were experience has ceased. A place with no location and from which awareness has been voided.

In spite of what the various travel brochures claim about afterlife entertainment and accommodation, every arrival at Death is to the same unpopulated terminal. For individuals on a pre-planned itinerary, whilst it is often presented as an unplanned diversionary stop-over, it manifests itself as the ultimate inextricable dead-end. The reception area is always empty. The luggage never arrives. There is no departure schedule. There is no arrivals schedule. There are no announcements. There are no exits or external transport links. No means of communication are available or planned. The periodicity of the only souvenir clock has ceased forever. There is no-one there to record who you are or where you are from, so that none of the documents in the wallet of your identity will ever be required.

The realities of death to the living are obvious. The memory structures of a life object are disintegrated, and the individual propagation-structure of a species is recycled. To the living, the death of an individual can be the source of significant stress and even unhappiness for remaining living individuals, if the interaction of that individual with those remaining has formed a significant portion of their memories. Thus whilst a specific individual has no continuity as an entity after death, never the less the memories of the living are able to sustain a form of existence in recollection for that individual... which may even last several generations. Promulgation of the delusion that there is life after death however, or that human individual life-sequence objects have immortal souls... is specious nonsense.

The individual only experienced life whilst it was living. Before an individual is conceived it does not experience existence. After an individual is dead it does not experience existence. The non-existing individual has no way of telling whether it is dead or hasn't been born yet. Death is beyond experience... and consequently ideal for the promotion of religious absurdities.

When an individual is obliterated by death, their web of social participations is disconnected and their quasi-gravitational field of ownership and acquisition is neutralized. As far as the social communication network is concerned, the degree to which the linked individuals are effected depends entirely on the role that the deceased individual played in the connections. The death of an enlightened and respected community elder may be felt as an irreplaceable absence, but the extinction of a political tyrant may be celebrated as a welcome release. As far as the ownership field is concerned, once its influence ceases then all the now un-bound equipment is attracted outwards towards other fields of acquisition. Property is redistributed, financial assets are partitioned and credited elsewhere, mementos are claimed and then all the residual accumulations are designated as junk and disposed of accordingly.

Whilst death is quite naturally and appropriately viewed in many cases as a tragic misfortune, it is never-the-less also a pragmatic reality that it also confers the tranquillity of a disengagement from the multitude of feedback loops that maintain the precarious balance of life systems. All the biological and sociological cyclic requirements of nutrition, sex, sleep, finance, maintenance, certifications, authorizations, etc. may well be dealt with and accepted as the normal circumstances of life in the absence of any significant disturbance, but the moment a major health, emotional or financial perturbation is encountered, the continuing demands of having to sustain the equilibrium of life can become intolerable. All the necessary renewal repetitions that are delighted in by inquisitive youth frequently become relentless cycles of bondage as diverse difficulties present themselves. Death is a condition where procrastination and unconcern are beyond reproach.

...sure...you may well miss the light and warmth of the sun...but too bad... you never felt it before you were born either...