Does new life replace the dead?
In a cemetery the other day, I saw a child playing around near the graves.
This was odd to me, because the image made me wonder:
Does new life replace the dead?
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, he makes the case that man’s form of immortality is through his children. Heirs breed timelessness. The question is, though, is this truly a form of immortality?
It would seem to be at first glance, because humankind could last nearly forever by reproducing continually. The odd thing is though, so could all other species. In fact, so long as man enjoys the taste of apples, we will likely continue to breed them. And in one sense, each apple is more alike to another apple then each man is to another man.
This is because apples are all grafted off of just a few different trees. In the wild, most apple trees bear disgusting get tasting apples. However, when one happens to grow in just the right way to create a tasty treat, we carve off parts of that tree and clone it so that we can have more of the delicious red fruit that it bears.
So in this case, it would seem that if we admit that man can be immortalized through his offspring, then apple trees have even more of a claim to it.
But this seems off base, apple trees are not immortal.
They live, and they die, just like us.
Perhaps instead of trying to craft for ourselves false immortality, we should simply enjoy our time here, die well, and then hope for eternity in a truer sense.










