Homo mortalis
By the time we develop enough cognitive awareness, to recognize and internalize that we are here once and will die in the end, the particularities of our own lives are already well and truly underway. We have no conscious memories of our own beginnings and cannot start again. There are no golden dawns. We are already here and cannot erase our formative experiences.
Our mortal condition raises multiple existential questions:
Consciousness, or self-awareness, seems to arrive like a ship coming out of the fog during our formative years. How much of what informs our knowledge is innate (a priori) and what, based on our life experience, do we need to learn?
To what extent are we determined by our genes and the linguistic and social milieu of our formative years? Where do our character traits and emotional dispositions come from and how do they influence our opinions and beliefs?
None of us asked to be born and we all face certain death. How might a better a appreciation of this inescapable reality inform our everyday thinking and actions?
Homo mortalis refers to questions arising from our brief sojourn in a vast and intricately connected universe...
What are the implications of our finitude with regard to:
AN ASTONISHING PREDICAMENT...
We are only once in the world, thrown into a situation that we have not chosen.
We are left in the lurch, so to speak. We can only do our utmost, with the hand we have been dealt, during the finite span between emergent selfhood and certain death.