Death is a Necessity

By Hassan Rasheed

Death is a necessary part of life on the planet Earth. There is no escaping it without hardship for millions of species that share this beautiful globe. It provides for a balance that maintains diversity and sustainability in ecosystems. At present there is a fly in the ointment and it is our addiction to technology that is pushing us to the brink of a mass extinction. This publication explains why death is required on Earth, the reason for our addiction to technology, and what can be done about it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9781304737793

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Copyright © 2024 by Hassan Rasheed

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the author’s written permission—contact [e-mail].

ISBN

978-1-304-73779-3

Printed in the United States of America

By Lulu.com

Introduction

Our technologies have obscured the roles of birth and death.  But the fact is that both birth and death go hand in hand in making the Earth's species diverse and sustainable. Due to our misguided concepts of birth and death, the planet is overpopulated by humans and the cause is that the birth rate is greater than the death rate. For example, the human population has exploded from a few tribes in Africa 300,000 years ago to a global population count of 8 billion today, predominantly due to our technical achievements. Today, 96% of the biomass of mammals on Earth consists of humans, their pets, and farm animals.  Only 4% consists of all the wild mammals like elephants and chimps. 

To the author, this appears to be the opposite of what Nature had intended and the reason being for a major part the avoidance of death at any cost through the use of technology in general and the medical fields in particular. I am not saying that the avoidance of death is not natural but that technology has made it possible to cheat Nature out of the necessity of death to guarantee a diverse and flourishing community of species.  Ultimately, it is a battle between Nature and human ingenuity. 

The Prime Directive

The prime directive is a biological concept and designates the process that all life follows to reproduce. There would be no life without it because everything wears out and stops working after some time. Examples of reproduction are mitosis in single-celled species, egg laying, and giving live births in multi-celled species.  It is a process of self-preservation, seeking shelter, gathering resources, and constructing new individuals to take over when the original one deteriorates or is about to do so.

But resources such as shelter and food are not uniformly available on Earth.  This meant that the individual had to find them first to make any benefit of them.  The scattered resources put limits on the individual's abilities and required some plan or strategy.  Through evolution, there were many ways or strategies by which this was accomplished in different species. The following is a short discussion of some of these strategies:

---------Physical

Physical characteristics help the species find the right resources to affect reproduction.  Size is a good example of a physical characteristic to help a species do that.  If the resource of the species is large then the species needs to have a large mouth or large strong teeth to tear it apart to get into its mouth.  Another physical characteristic is the species configuration. For example, a tree has roots underground to absorb nutrients and water while its leaves are above ground to absorb air and sunlight.

Another physical characteristic is the rate of giving birth or laying eggs.  That would seem like a no-brainer since that is what the prime directive is trying to achieve.  But in reality, it is not as simple as that.  For example, you can’t give birth or lay eggs faster than the availability of resources. In addition, a species that is more efficient with its resources will give more births given the available resources than a species that is not. 

Then there is the death rate of a species.