A Sharp Blade - The Evolution of Grief and the Understanding of Consciousness

Some weeks ago I was putting away some flatware in my kitchen when I inadvertently slid my fingertip across the very sharpest edge of one of my blades.

It stung like the devil, and shortly there followed the blooming crimson of a very curved line of my red blood. I did what a lot of others probably do, and that’s immediately utter a few four-letter words before shoving the fingertip in my mouth and heading off to treat it with cream and a small bandage.

But the immediate sting of the wound did not compare to the throbbing ache into which it grew over the course of next several hours. Any time my hand was in use, that entire finger pulsed with a heartbeat all its own, and the soreness was still there for two days after the incident. I vowed to be much more careful when putting away my utensils in the future, and stocked up on Band-aids just in case.

It was some days later, however, that I realized that the wound on my finger was very much like the shock and grief felt at the death of a loved one. There is an initial sting, followed generally by a period of shock, and then later a dull, throbbing ache left in the wake of the hollowed-out feeling of loss. My finger, like my heart before it, would throb with a heartbeat for several days after the offense against it. Grief is just like that cut from the sharp edge of that blade.

Grief leaves its mark. But what will it look like in the future, as 
we move forward with a better understanding of consciousness and 
what happens at biomechanical death? 

In all of my thinking and wondering over death and consciousness, this is the one element that I cannot seem to negotiate with any reasonable attempt: I cannot fully determine what grief in our future will become once we fully understand all of the elements of living and dying. When we dismantle the mystery of consciousness and the perpetuation of life, will we still view death as death? Once we fully understand the implications the ubiquity of consciousness, or embrace the fundamental nature of it as a building block of life, will we mourn and grieve?

As my finger healed from its cut, it left a mark on my finger. The mark is still there. It’s a solid white line; the legacy of my encounter with the sharp edge of the blade. There isn’t pain there now, but the mark remains. And this, too, is my grief: the pain of loss has subsided, but the nostalgic longing remains. It is likely that I - we - will be subject to the confines of our tactile senses for as long as we remain biologically tethered. We will miss seeing and hearing the ones we have loved - even if we know fundamentally that they have gone nowhere at all. We will miss the physical details of their life even when we know for certain that their death was not a death at all. But if science describes for us the method/process/event of biological death more efficiently, we may come to realize that the sting of the initial wound - that deep sense of loss - is less about the loss itself, and more about the loss of tactility.

When we can no longer experience the love we once knew through sensory data, we feel loss and grief. Even religious beliefs - no matter how devout - generally do not stem the tide of grief. But we are closer than ever to understanding or unlocking the mysteries of life and consciousness - and more and more people (even in science and academics) are asking the questions that may lead us to answers: what is life, exactly? What is consciousness? What happens when we die?

And what’s even better? More and more people are seeking the answers to these same questions. We have to keep pushing the envelope - keep asking, keep seeking. Eventually, we will be able to redefine death, and by default, we may render moot the idea of grief, and trade it for something that acknowledges the transcendence from one stage of the journey to another.