Metaphysical considerations

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I still insist that there is no ontological qualitative hiatus between man and other animals. Consciousness of inevitable death, like relying on artifice, accumulated tecnology, dependence on culture are all ways to cope with survival. Dependence on culture is uniquely human (like art, religion and philosophy) like the proboscis in unique of an elephant, and sonar is unique of the whale and other marine mammals. They are all ways to cope with the environment and survive in it (also psychologically). Consciousness of inevitable death is the product of a rationalistic calculating approach to time and environment.

Many humans are not even conscious of the inevitability od death until a physician tells them that they have a fatal sickness. For the rest of their life they have thought that death was like Mount Everest or the moon, something there but not regarding them.

This is very well described in Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Illich and in Kurosawa To live (Ikiru)

So, everyone knows that they will die, but pretends to him/herself otherwise. Why is this? I have tried to talk to people about this subject and have been told not to be so morbid...so death is a great 'no-no' a subject too frightening to talk about. Of course I think that I will live forever, other people will die, but not me.
But how are we to live? As though we were going to live forever? Or as though we were going to die tomorrow?

Limits create value; context creates meaning.

Copper is prettier than gold or silver, but there's too much of it.

My life is a finite sequence of days. There's a limited number of them. Death is significant only as the limit, the frame around the painting, the goal line where the running ends.