Necrology is the study of how death, and avoidance of it, impact human decisions. The premise, in its purest form, is that all decisions root from survival, and that the decisions we can choose are dependent upon the power that we have. Similarly, to expand our decisions, we also attempt to expand our power. Nothing else has any major influence in this equation.
Survival: The process by which we continue our presence in a chosen environment.
Power: What we can influence in order to proceed with our search for survival.
If you’re driving comfortably, and the sun is blaring into your eye so vibrantly that you can’t see anything but it’s unforgiving rays, you’re likely to bring down a device, be it a cover or a set of sunglasses, to mitigate its pressure. What are you likely to do if the person next to you is shining a light into your eye? I can’t say the details, but in some manner the person there, usually described in unkind terms, would quickly see that they are at least on similar levels of power to you, if not lesser.
To this end, it’s useful to understand nature itself as an authoritarian. The acts of nature have nothing to do with our survival, and natural disasters, changes in clime, and simple weather mishaps have deposed billions of their lives. The earth and the sun, as physical objects, have an amount of power over us we cannot ever hope to compete with, beyond the point where we’ve developed Matryoshka Brains and can actively terraform. Not dealing with if something will happen, but instead trying to reallocate our own resources to compensate for the damage it will cause, is a precise clue of how power is functioning.
We interact in environments based on how much power we have, or how much we think we have. Notable that a misimpression of how much power we have is usually a good sign that an authority is in influence, but no matter how much power we think we have, the power we actually have comes forth no matter what.
This is important as a pretense in relation to culture. Culture does not influence decisions to any reasonable degree. Survival dictates to what extent we follow culture, and power determines it’s form. Active solutions, active creations, in a personal or political environment, always involve disposing of cultural elements in favor of actually looking at survival elements. One need only inspect the way we solve interpersonal social problems, usually caused by misapplication of cultural elements, involve boiling down to base survival needs.
We act, we learn, and we move forth by the principle of survival, backed with power. We develop our cultures, understand moralities, and do what we can because of these principles. It’s almost disappointingly simple.