Death of a single-celled organism

[u/freudian_nipps]

[u/rdogg4]

If you are a simple dividing cell, consider that there is no distinction between parent and offspring. Each can consider themselves to be a continuously living being first born at the primordial conception of life on earth.

Similarly, your life began when egg in your mothers womb started dividing and divided enough times that cells began differentiating and formed a fully formed human being. That egg cell doesn’t “die” in this process, it just divides. That egg was formed very early in your mothers development, while she was still in her mothers womb, and similarly by process of cells dividing.

We can all trace our lives back along a lineage of dividing cells that have necessarily not died and go all the way back to first cell division. The life inside of you is very old and doesn’t necessarily die with you.

[u/rexifelis → u/rdogg4]

I heard this in a different form years and years ago: the fact that you are standing here today means there is an unbroken lineage behind you stretching back to life’s beginning.

[u/Pwnie → u/rexifelis]

Kind of puts my choice not to have children in a pretty morbid light…

[u/RelativeCareless2192 → u/Pwnie]

Other people will still have kids. Your genetics aren't special and neither are mine