I’ve been asking myself that question for years. I can’t get a clear answer; neither from biologists, nor from philosophers or other scientists. As long as I can’t get a satisfactory answer, to me there is no difference. ‘In living human beings there is the spirit and not in the dead’ isn’t satisfactory to me, because there is no proof of the existence of the spirit it doesn’t exist as far as I’m concerned. The fact that mankind wants an answer to this question and consequently thinks to find the answer in all kinds of religions, is understandable but – in this day and age- also a bit naïve. Why do we want to make something up? Don’t we spend enough time consciously wandering the face of the planet?

Matter is constantly moving, both in ‘living’ and in ‘dead’ creatures. All substances constantly undergo chemical reactions, causing them to change continually, which makes it impossible to discern between life and death. There simply is no difference between life and death. All creatures are primarily concerned with survival.

Science develops techniques that are more and more able to observe details of organisms in the human body, for instance electron microscopes that a magnify a million times, endoscopes for diagnostic surgery, scanning devises using magnetic fields (MRI).

Drugs are being manufactured to suppress depression. The mapping of our genes is nearing completion and various forms of gene therapy are being executed.

Outside our bodies there are different kinds of radiation, vibrations, miniscule floating particles, many of which are undetectable and all these things influence our organisms.

I therefore see myself as a materialist.

I realise that humans have only been on this planet for 400.000 years, just a fraction of the whole. A human life therefore also only lasts a fraction compared to the whole. Humans as a species will undoubtedly eventually disappear.

This makes everything so relative, that it allows me to put everything in perspective.

I often laugh when I see how heavily and seriously everything evolves around the existence of humankind. Everything seems to have to stand aside for the continued existence of humankind. The urge to survive is so big that we are grossly overcompensating. But when the ‘living’ organism disappears from the face of the earth, the earth will just keep on turning.

Maybe the planet will be cleansed.

We should not forget that oxygen developed from seaweeds, probably 2 billion years ago, through photosynthesis. The ozone layer enabled life to develop, but that is just a coincidence. Just because a single-cell organism developed that could multiply, organisms could develop that were able to stay one step ahead of decomposition through oxygen, which is a highly destructive substance. Human beings, for instance, are capable of keeping this up for some 80 years.

I still very much enjoy life as a human and I intend to keep it up for years to come, but my body is still a collection of organisms interacting as in a chemical progress, as parts of the whole, even after my ‘death’.
This knowledge has enabled me to put everything in perspective and enjoy up the good things in life, which doesn’t prevent me from living the life of a responsible world citizen, with its inevitable problems.

In short: I feel that I am a materialist with a strong sense of perspective: a relativizing materialist.

I visualize this way of thinking by enabling organisms – in the form of creatures or parts thereof such as blood, had, bones, brain – to live on in mostly glass containers. Sometimes under the influence of chemicals or in combination with corrosive metals or radiating stones and sometimes with other organisms. The objects change under the influence of time, light, motion, and temperature.

They are in fact ‘living’ sculptures!

I can now also show this change by linking the organisms to a computer, transforming the fluctuating electric pulses into ever changing images and a musical note changing pitch (e.g. Painting and Singing Finger, 2004)