Most, if not all religions in the world, suggest in some or other way that there is life beyond the dark curtain of initial death. We either “go to heaven” or come back as another human or component of life, perhaps wiser and better equipped than before, ever improving as individuals. (An interesting thought to evolutionists… how do the reincarnates contribute to increasing vigor or value of the species?)
Being with Matobo, and seeing its processes and transitions and the flow of life in many different forms and mutations, death becomes more of a continuous process rather than a single event, often challenging my understanding or perception of death, which was primarily formed as part of my Christian upbringing. Death as the end of life becomes a little more muddled when one looks at nature and how death is manifested in other beings.
While I may have seen many dead trees, the actual death of a tree may take many years to complete, a slow process that reduces the elaborate branches to mere wood, which remains a wooden skeleton for decades, as if it created its own tombstone, the final tribute to many years and cycles of life and death itself.
In the case of deciduous trees, large parts of the tree die off each year, the bark and leaves peel off and fall to the ground and they are incorporated in the soil beneath the tree, turned into nutrient-harboring compost which the plant may absorb in an absurd form of auto-cannibalism (which is a completely different subject - lets contain our focus to death!). Trees, or at least, parts of trees die off every year, something higher organisms such as humans and other mammals do not experience. The skin is said to be the largest organ of the human, and therefore snakes and other reptiles who lose their skins each year, shedding it to sport an entirely new fresh skin, therefore also suffer some limited form of an annual death cycle!
Like the tree, that grows new leaves all the time, or in annual bursts every spring, colonies of termites and bees, may grow new individuals who can not survive on their own, and therefore form part of what is often referred to as a single organism, the colony. The “castes” represent different organs - the breeders are likened to the reproductive organs, and those growing mushrooms from lignin and other plant material are said to be the gastrointestinal system of the larger being etc. Here the death of an individual is nothing more than shedding an epithelial cell or two in the digestive tract of the larger organism. So, how do we define death in this case where the death of an individual is simply an unimportant process of recycling as fresh beings contribute to the larger whole?
While an individual tree may experience many years of cyclic deaths or deaths of smaller parts of itself, some vegetatively reproducing plants, like certain grasses, may actually never really die! The clones or new shoots grow from parent material and although seen as “new youngsters” they are actually the parent plant itself, at least genetically. While other parts of the plant, other clones may die off, the actual individual may end up as many individuals and while some of these may die, the actual plant survives many deaths! The original remains intact and alive in many places all at once! Bizarre.
My beloved lichens may undergo a similar process, though it is even more complex, considering the fact that they are made up of two species merged into one morphological being that grows clonally for many thousands of years, separating from itself and creating “new” colonies (yeah, not even individuals, cause the individual is made of at least two species!!!). So for them, and we may not be able to fathom it, death as we know and understand it - may actually never come! Great, is it not?!
What would be catastrophic is the death of an entire species, extinction, the ultimate death. That would constitute the passing of what could be a critical component of the complex system. As long as the deaths are countered by births and clones and seeds emerge to replace adults with young then its all ok. But too many deaths of critical components may lead to the death or collapse of the entire system as we know it. Meta death, if there is such a thing!
Incredible as nature is, this has happened many times before, and may happen again. We can only hope that a new order may emerge from what is left and evolve to initiate another revolution of evolution around the axis of life itself.
