Sports writer kills himself, leaves behind website describing how and why

There is no aspect of humanity that is truly unique to humans with the possible exception of written language. What we have done however, is refine and manipulate these aspects to a much finer degree than most other forms of life on the planet.

In fact, we have so thoroughly dominated all exogenous threats to our survival, that now, human activity itself poses some of the most substantial threats. There are plenty of dangers that still exist no matter what we decide to do with our time, but many of these are outside of our current scope of influence. In time, who knows, maybe those will be dominated as well.

Our world, and the events that shaped that world, along with stresses and dangers posed by that world, shaped us into the creatures we are today. This planet made us savage long before it opened the door to become civilized. We still carry the memories of our ancestor's fears and triumphs, of their struggles, defeats and victories. Every event removed or ensured that certain genes would be passed on and thereby changed us forever

Eventually our world became so prone to change that the only trait that truly mattered was the ability to adapt. To evolve, not over the course of many generations, but over the course of years, months, days. To be able to change and adapt within hours. To be able to perceive the minuscule details of our world that we might find more secure and better quality sources to sustain us. This concentration on observing our world was the fire that forged our cognitive abilities.

And with this, our dependence on one another also increased. Our physical prowess and development in youth is stunted due to the taxing of our biological resources for the development of our seat of cognitive ability, the brain. We are born, blind, weak, vulnerable and useless. We must be protected longer than any other mammalian species before we can truly fend for ourselves. This need to protect our young, more than any other species, caused us to develop deeper and more complex social structures than any other group.

Deep social connections, and advanced information processing allowed us to begin to unravel the mysteries of the world that made us and share these discoveries. This environment created the space in which the technologies that would lead to civilization, would be developed. Now, instead of our genes communicating the realities of the world and determining what worked and what failed, our minds and bodies did. The rate of change in our world had eventually increased by a magnitude.

And so, with such things in place, the rest of human development passes like a blur. The stones become metals and then plastics. The subtle body language becomes incredibly precise spoken word and then text. The world sees us reach every clime and corner and we re-invent what being a human entails in order to survive there. We left on a journey, each finding a different path, and now it seems humanity is approaching consensus once again.

But there is a negative space that gives all of this action and effort such dark contrast. And that is our mortality. None of these achievements would be if not for death. If every human lived forever, then death would be the only achievement of note.

And so we come finally to a point of slightly more relevance to the discussion at hand. Should humans strive to attain a much finer manipulation of their own deaths, similar in fashion to the level of control they strive to achieve over every aspect of their lives? Or should our deaths be the final vestige of the unpredictable and brutal world from which we owe our existence, leaving to fate or chance the time of our demise? To have struggled for millennia to postpone the inevitability of death, to then promote the hastening of such a thing would seem counter to what being human is.

But being human is not about just surviving, it's about adapting. As our manipulation of the world becomes finer and more precise, the ability to die, without the express desire to do so, may become an impossibility. In such a world, death might only occur as a conscious decision. We are not there yet, but someday we may be.

I think given the current state of the world and the rate of technological advances, to assume that ones life has reached it's maximum potential and therefore is no longer worthy of continuance, is a very large assumption indeed. Those without the desire to live, should be encouraged to live for others. If that sounds selfish, it's because it is. It is the epitome of selfish desire, to wish that others will work for one's own benefit. And yet that is how we have survived long enough as a species to have such a conversation. However, when we ourselves engage in such an activity, the selfless work for the benefit of others, it becomes the epitome of altruistic behavior; which is also credited for many of the advances that allow our species to survive.

If we do not strike a balance between these two powerful aspects of the human psyche, then destruction is sure to follow. It always has.