Saturday 15 March 2008

Life- its Absence and Presence

Death is the inability of the self to derive sustenance from air. If man can conquer this simple biological deficiency, which has conquered so many of our number, mortal immortality will be his. Which is admittedly a gruesome thought.
Some smart-arse may attempt to counter that many deaths are caused directly by processes other than the inability to derive sustenance from air, but it is clear that were they still deriving sustenance from air, then they would be still in the land of the physically living. One may admittedly be unable to derive sustenance from air for a shortened duration, such as when immersed in a liquid, but be still in a state of life, but were this state to extend beyond a very limited period, then the consquence will be mortal cessation.
Many humans have pondered the nature of life and death, each being apparently the absence of the other, but my definition is assuredly an improvement on all previous efforts in this noble art-form: that life in the physical encasement of the body is the ability of the self to derive sustenance from air, while death is the inability of same. Here kinetic potential is inextricably married to actual application. None that is capable of life is dead, while none incapable of life is alive.

6 comments:

Gar said...

What about the living dead then?

Andrew said...

But that point demonstrates the particular genius of my description, which raises it above all other previous definitions. The living dead are those who are failing to derive sustenance from air, and all that air contains. The sustenance that air provides includes all that life contains; the entire gamut of the human spiritual arena. The living dead are immersed in unrealities of their own imaginings, rather than the nourishing realities of reality.
Such subtleties of understanding of life and death are wholly beyond the scope of previous definitions. Though I am not particularly well read, so I may be doing an injustice to earlier philosophical gobshites.

Gar said...

Such philosophical piffle would be of little use with your house surrounded on all sides by the feasting armies of the undead. A good shoe up the hole you'd want!

Anonymous said...

As long as you are still deriving sustenance from air, there's hope. The feasting armies of the undead are without such hope.

Anonymous said...

"a good shoe up the hole"

why would the shoe have to be a good one, ecco, clarks, dubarry, etc. Wouldn't your typical steel-toe-capped boot from any builders-supply store be a more appropriate shoe for the purpose of burying it up someones hole.

Gar said...

The predicate is more in the foot of the kicker than in the quality of the boot.