Deathly Aware – Most fear death, it is almost an universal axiom of human life and likely all sentient beings. The exceptions, while not proving the rule, are generally viewed, whether rightly or wrongly, as insane. There is not the same terror at nonexistence before life, which while we are on the topic does certainly need a word to describe this period of not existing. It is only natural I suppose to not care of the time before we lived for after all it is already over and wasn’t so bad. I’m of the thought that the nonexistence before life is key to coming to terms with our own mortality. For if not existing wasn’t so bad before it won’t be so bad after. It may be no comfort, but we can at least destigmatize the fear of it. Rather, I think fear should be of life. If one was paradoxically and oxymoronically sentient in one’s pre-life, then the fear would be at becoming alive and all the pain, suffering, sadness, disappointment, disillusionment, weaknesses, and ephemerality that inevitably comes along with it. Brump in this comic comes to the epiphany that before life there was no consciousness, something that all creatures of at least moderate intelligence are probably subconsciously aware of. It can still come as a startling realization when one consciously contemplates it. Even more shocking is the connection that before life and after death are the same thing, or rather lack thereof. This leads us to what I will neologize as ‘Stoke’s Epistemological Barrier’ defined as the phenomena where because death is the end of consciousness a sentient being will never know that it is dead. The closest one can come to knowing they are dead is to know they are dying. The moment of death though is an unpassable divide. Stoke knows this, Brump knows this, you know this, I know this, damn well everyone knows this and we all know ‘Stoke’s Epistemological Barrier’ even if we didn’t know the name and we even know of death and what it was like, simply what before our life was. What we can’t ever know is that we are dead. – Zachary