Preserving the Essence of Human Life

Preserving the Essence of Human Life is small book, about 80 pages. It presents and explores how people alive today in this perilous and technological age can preserve the essence of their life. In a nutshell, now, as never before in human history, it is within our power to preserve for the future our genetic code (the physical essence of our being), and the history of our individual existence (the essence of who we were). And if we do so, the potential is beyond our imagination.

We all die. This fact has driven the development of our religions and our cultures for many thousands of years. We now know that a human life is molded by the inherited genetic code that forms us, working in concert with the physical and social environment in which we develop. In the past, and also in the present, we were and still are, captive to the misunderstanding that the human species is above all other forms of life and that somehow we alone have a special, supernatural spirit. Actually humans are biological beings with exceptional self awareness and intellect, and nothing more, although many hold a different opinion. We are just beginning to recognize that however long or short, however ordinary or extraordinary, however rich or poor, and wherever we live in time, place, and culture–every individual human life has the potential to be meaningful and significant to the future of humanity in ways large and small. The life environment that happenstance selects for us greatly determines the nature of the individual formed from each genetic code. In other times and other places, this same genetic code could produce a very different individual with a potential that far exceeds what is expressed in this life.

However, despite the current technological capability to preserve the very essence of a human life, our genetic code and our experiential history, we discard our unique genetic code, the foundation of our existence, and the history of who we were and what we did on the trash pile of ephemeral cemeteries and cultural mores. After death our genetic code deteriorates and reenters the biological dance of the elements, and our individual history is lost in the shadows of time and the instability of our cultures

Our individual future is also uncertain. Every day, the lives of people with much life yet to live are cut short by disease, unexpected violence, and accident. Most had no thought or premonition that they had just eaten their last breakfast, and they had made no preparations for those that follow them in life to remember and know who and what they were. But now, almost beyond imaginative possibility only a few decades ago, it is possible for individuals to preserve the story of their lives, their unique genetic code, and even an analysis of the DNA that forms that code and the ancestry that it reveals. Thus we can preserve for the near and far future the very essence of our time on Earth, the genetic code that created our unique individuality and and the story of our life. We have but to make it happen. Preserving the Essence of Human Life explores this concept in nine chapters; Time, Life, Heredity, Human Evolution, Thoughts on Humanity, Death, Immortality, Religion, and The Future, The appendices discuss how the life history and personal profile might be developed and the foundation that establishes the program might be structured.