Death. Some of us fear it, some of us long for it - all of us know it is inevitable.
Yet, when is the moment that death actually occurs?
A most compelling column from the New York Times magazine that addresses the question "when is the moment of death?"
Moving past a binary concept of life and death is, for most of us, an uncomfortable process. It’s worth considering how various cultures think about the beginning of life. Tibetan monks believe a new life begins around the time of a mating couple’s orgasm; many Catholics posit that it starts at the union of an egg and sperm; Roe v. Wade effectively established a legal threshold of life at 24 weeks of fetal gestation; some consider meaningful life to begin at birth; the Navajo think a baby is fully human when it laughs for the first time. If the emergence of life occurs on a continuum, perhaps the same is true of life’s recession.
Still, preserving the notion that the transition from life to death can be clearly defined may be a fundamentally necessary fiction.
Likely, we will never all agree about when these boundaries begin and end. All we can do is ultimately judge with what overall consensus we can live - and die.
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