Although I don't look at death darkly through the lens of a fanatical materialist i.e. I do think there is a good chance death is just a kind of transition for consciousness, which leaves the body - like someone stepping out of a spacesuit; I also, like Caitlin here find it curious how so many go about their business with little care about their own mortality or the mortality of others. I guess the usual answer I've heard is, well there is nothing you can do about it, so why worry about it?

But that's just it - even though personally, I lean toward consciousness as something more fundamental to reality than just a random product of electrons and chemicals - and if that makes me "spiritual" then so be it. But do I or any of us really know, 100% know for certain? Maybe death really is the annihilation of who we are forever, in a cold, random reality, that we desperately attempt to make some kind of human meaning out of, but as Emerson once wrote - is just a collection of nested boxes - chinese boxes, and when one opens the last box, it is empty - as death and reality are empty in the end. Although it does seem to be the dominant intellectual paradigm these days i.e. rationalism, existentialism - and the strong belief that there is nothing more awaiting one except the final merciless splat after falling from the jet airline, as Caitlin writes - but even that is just a *belief* that remains pretty much unproven right now - that is, the mind/body problem does remain an open question in human philosophy and our sciences, despite what others might insist is the case.

But why the rush to that unknown? It seems remarkable to me that so many have already been willing to lose their lives in Ukraine. Apparently, from what I have heard, 10s of thousands have already died in a war that could have been easily diplomatically resolved - and still can be diplomatically resolved. So many people - willing to lose their lives - maybe some could care less, a kind of suicide - but if one loves life, or loves other people - why would one be in such a rush to lose the only life you got? It is puzzling to me. Caitlin is right - we keep our mortality at a distance, and perhaps this is a mistake.