death
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One word that has had moratals shivering with fear. In fact unintelligent amoeba is all the more aware of its survival. Survival is the key word. If you live you must survive.This seems to be the only purpose of life - defeat of death. SO long as we know life is winning.Given the powers of adaptation & evolution-life seema to survive any where.Indivisuals may not but life wins.In a sense we all are the image of the first element that ever reprodused...forming a continum...life is not giving up.Last ice age wiped jurrasic age creatures-life survived.In fact some virii are know to survive vaccum.New form of life feeding on methane has been found in hot volcanic lava.In fact if the universe were a living thing life seems to be more of a disease-sort of canceric growth that cannot be stopped.
But what about death - what is death?
absence of life from a living being.
Simple but not adequate.OK.Death is phenomenon that a living being faces when it stops to grow.So because a Banyan grows for more than a human being it beats death longer than men do.May be! U see one life survives by means of evolution(natural selection)- for an indidivisual it is adaptation.This property ceases when an entity is 'grown'.
So there is another question why does growth have to stop.Meaning is we can grow for ever we might beat all 'natural' reasons of death.Literally '18 tii i die' situation can be achieved.Frankly no one has answere to this quesion.May be the first living cell had such a instruction encrypted in its DNA code. Or may be DNA-RNA arrangements of living beings are intrisically unstable- no one knows for sure.
This phenomenon is termed as aging......and happens rather early in all the animal kingdom----> planta do have some exceptions!!
having written all this stuff at this poin of time i certainly realise that my knowledge in this area is limited.It should be the basic question of all intelligent species...why age to die???But as it seems it is not.....i'll add more as soon as i get something more on it.