The Last Darkness

What is The Last Darkness? It's what you experience when the light goes out of your eyes. When your heart stops pumping. When your brain has been exhausted of oxygenated blood for so long, it dies.

Technically you are your brain. Your mind and consciousness is a construct of a physical organ. Different parts of the brain work together to construct this consciousness. For instance, your language centre is not where your pre-frontal cortex is. But your pre-frontal cortex is where the execution functioning happens. Where you make logical and rational decisions. Like, how it's a good idea to get into the habit of jogging every morning and not breaking that cycle; mostly because you know if it isn't constantly reinforced you'll fall out of that habit.

Yet, it's impossible for you to have this conversation with yourself without language. Language is, to a large extent, the equivalent of coding software for computer operating systems. In a sense, your language is a significant aspect of your brain's own operating system. Without language, there can be no thoughts above the primal. Language provides you with a way to interact with your "hardware". Like by telling yourself today is a good day to go jogging.

But, it relies on the executive functioning part of the brain and in this way, two parts coordinate to give you options, choices, possible futures. The more well-developed the pre-frontal cortex, the better the rationality. It has been, apparently, studied that the brain's blood flow largely redirects to the limbic system when you're experiencing extreme emotions. Such as anger. Your executive functioning is impaired and you're no longer thinking logically. Or maybe you are in crafting that devilishly hurtful email to someone you care about in your rage. But you're not thinking clearly about the consequences. There's obviously some blood that goes through the pre-frontal cortex, or that part would quickly atrophy and you would be brain damaged every time you lost your temper.

In any case, the point is, multiple parts of the brain that have specific functions, which they have been uniquely designed for (through the process of evolution, not through a Grand Designer), work together to create you. You are a construct of your brain. When the brain is severely damaged, it damages the construct that is you, perhaps making you unrecognisable to your loved ones in terms of personality.

So, we come to the soul. Many people believe we have one. In essence, a belief in a soul is a belief that our unique character, that is partly personality, will transcend death. But the brain does not transcend death. In fact, you may be technically dead when your heart stops, but you can be revived in time to maintain the functions of living. But when your brain dies, through what is known as catastrophic organ failure, you cannot be revived. You, as a construct, has ceased to exist. If the so-called soul can be altered and affected by alcohol, turning a Dr Jekyll into a Mr Hyde, or if a spike through your brain leaves your personality forever changed, as has been observed many times, what hope then for your soul surviving the complete obliteration of the brain?

The First Darkness is when before you are born, your awareness then. There is none. There's non-existence. But you are born, you live through life, and then suddenly or eventually, however death takes you, you're obliterated, a brain that is dead and decaying, all information lost, any ability to resuscitate impossible, every second that passes more massive destruction to the cells containing your memories... your life experiences.

You are no more.

You have succumbed to The Last Darkness, and what made you You will never exist again, in the entirety of the timeline of the universe.