Life and Death

Read the rest of the 5-panel webcomic at constructionpaperandtears.tumblr

Of course I don’t agree, Death is The Enemy. But there’s some resonance in the poetic feeling that deserves unpacking. Death is not the eternal archive of remembrance; Iain M. Banks, Sagan, Feynman, Heinlein, Asimov, they don’t look down upon us from any kind of afterlife, they’re fucking gone, annihilated. Cherishing their memory, legacy, and ideals mitigates the tragedy somewhat, but the keen agony of loss is still real and every bit justified.

We who honor the dead, we are all there is that stands between history and oblivion. If humanity were wiped out, the ecosystem woudn’t care a whit for our legacy, as vines grow over our works. Socrates, Einstein, all would have been for nothing.