I recently heard a brilliant pair of questions from James Tour, a materials scientist exploring the origin of life:
“A cell just died. All the material components are still there. What was lost? And how would we restart it?”
That’s a useful way to think about the past of teams and organizations. We had a high-performing team for a time, and then we didn’t. There were those special days in the non-profit when everyone was in sync, and somehow it came undone. At one point the project was chunking along, hitting milestones, and then we foundered and sputtered. There was a shining time, full of struggles, where trust was high, and then we collapsed into a low-trust, zero-sum set of arguments and excuses. What was lost? And how would we restart it?
The mystery of organizational dynamics is akin to the mystery of life in a single cell. Fractal!
One can see the pattern in marriages, friendships, neighborhoods, and volunteer associations, too. There are special intangibles, moments and seasons, seemingly robust and endless — and in the end you realize they’re fragile.
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One moment after a person dies, all the physical components are still there. You can recover organs from the corpse for a few hours which will be viable when transplanted into a living person. Heart, kidneys, liver, corneas, skin. I’ve been present at multiple deaths; one moment someone is there, and the next moment they’re a corpse. What was lost when the person died?
The idea that life is a meta property of the physical seems a poor fit to the observable data. Is Genesis 2:7 more reasonable? “[T]hen the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”
I make this argument for my areligious friends because we know from history what happens when you adopt the view that humans are nothing more than a transiently cohesive bunch of atoms, and we substitute the State or ourselves as an ultimate authority. I wish more people were taught the full horrors of the 20th century; what the Nazis did was a sliver of what the Communists did.
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Dennis Prager asks atheists a revealing question: “Do you hope that you’re right or you’re wrong?” An atheist who hopes he’s correct is a fool. Not all atheists are fools, just as not all religious people are wise.
When I think about heaven and what that will be like, I tend to imagine reunion with my parents and grandparents. I imagine doing creative work unconstrained by sin and bodily weakness. (As I age I resonate more with the older people arriving in Aslan’s country in The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis who remark, “I chiefly feel unstiffened.”) What I should think about most of all is being in the presence of God, the central reality of heaven. The fact I don’t think about this first tells me (1) I’m not thinking biblically enough, and (2) I am still immature.
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Loneliness is a kind of death, a separation from community which sustains us. Restarting relationships and community is difficult once loneliness becomes your primary companion. I have a friend who points out that all formation happens in the whitespace between individuals. We long for community.
Many of my readers are significantly introverted – meaning, social interactions are fine with the right people, and numbingly awkward with everyone else. They’re uncomfortable in noisy, crowded situations. They get embarrassed about things they’ve said. They recognize they should be leading in some way, and too often fearful to do so. They’re quick to see their faults and deficiencies.
Me, too.
I share this to encourage you: I am better because I put my writing out there. I am better because I share honestly and candidly. I am better because I externalize a bit of my interior, which allows me to truly see it, and get feedback from others. I am better because I force myself to articulate uncomfortable, fuzzy thoughts and ideas. I am better because I engage with people and get my rough edges chiseled and sanded off. I am better when I push past awkwardness and discomforting social situations. We are better together.
It’s accurate when God refers to His people as sheep in the Bible, but it’s not a compliment. Sheep are quite stupid, practically defenseless, and can’t clean themselves. Sheep do best in flocks and die alone. There are necessary moments of loneliness, solitude, and discomfort. But it is the enemy of all that is good that wants you truly isolated and alone.
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Perhaps what is lost at the moment of death is the togetherness connection, genuine but difficult to describe in engineering terms. What do you think?