Posted 5/17/2010
Don't freak out or anything--seriously, don't.
But for quite some time I've been thinking about death. Or rather, what happens after wards.
A part of me believes that when the time comes, we will simply cease to exist. And that's it. But another part of me also doesn't want to believe that--and I'm not saying that I want to believe in some kind of fate that depends on how many good deeds you've done in this world, either.
I want to believe in something else, but I'm not sure what.
Transduction in the nervous system is defined as, "the conversion of a stimulus from one form to another." More specifically, it refers to the conversion of energy from the external environment to action potentials which are then transmitted along axons towards the central nervous system, where it is integrated.
From this, we can transform energy from the external environment, attach our subjective meanings to it, and have it stored in memory.
This runs parallel with Physics' basic law of conservation of mass: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be transformed from one state to another.
If this is true, then all of the energy stored in our brains--our minds, our consciousness--when we die they can't just "disappear". It can't just sit there and rot along with the degradation of our physical body. It needs go somewhere , or be converted into something else--but what ? And how?--or where?
All of our senses act to convert the energy of the external environment:
touch: mechanical, tactile stimuli
hearing: auditory, fluctuations in air pressure
taste: gustation
smell: olfactory
sight: electromagnetic energy
All of this energy is stored (or rather, the ones that are most subjectively relevant to us), and I want to believe that it doesn't just disappear when we die.
Okay, I'll put an end to my silly intellect now.
Dubby
