What makes something alive? How do you measure that exactly? I'm alive. The tree over there is alive. Those things seem easy to label but why? You cut off a branch or my arm and at what point does the severed limb stop being alive? Maybe it's when the life's blood literally drains out of it. It could be the moment it's separated from the body that it's no longer truly alive. That only brings up the question then of how much of something would have to be cut away before the body dies as well?
Our body is just a biomechnical means to transport our consciousness around. At least that's what it seems like. We may be no better than viruses that adapt to continue their spread. They infect other lifeforms so they can keep living. I guess one could ask what's the point of living if your whole purpose is to keep living? So maybe our bodies aren't designed to carry around our minds. Maybe our minds were developed to help protect our body while it works out ways to keep spreading its own genes as much as it can before the clock runs out.
Going back to the original point, what makes something alive? Is it the same spark that animates our blood and bone as that which brings growth to a blade of grass? Are we alive in the same sense? I suppose if the answer is no then are there degrees of living? It could be argued that no life is more important than another. The life of an ant is as important as that of a blue whale. They are both holding something inside that may not be easy to quantify.
So maybe life is just energy. Somehow that energy has taken the form of something that provides a driving force for otherwise inanimate objects to move about to continue the spread of more energy. If life is just energy though wouldn't that means there are other forms of it that we may not perceive or even comprehend? When the light goes out in something where does that supposed energy go? Some believe that it's transferred to another vessel. In most cases, another person. To me that sounds a lot like a metaphysical virus, constantly jumping from host to host, using it up along the way. If that's the case then maybe the universe is using the Earth as a quarantine zone to halt the spread. It would help explain why there isn't anything else like us or the life on our planet in the immediate few hundred billion miles surrounding us. Maybe we are the infection that has evolved.
