I was thinking... Body Worlds

Yesterday I went to Body Worlds Exhibition at Antrepo 3 in Istanbul. As impressive as the whole process of plastination is, to me the exhibition felt like an advanced biology course in a single walk-around than a work of art. By saying this, I do not mean to underestimate the effort put into getting this exhibition together; however, I would assume the information that was given would already be known by people who have taken advanced biology and related courses in college (such as myself, therefore I'm being a prick about it). I would also assume that people who have studied such subjects in college would already have known the main idea of the exhibition: We are only temporarily present in this world; therefore, we should maximize our physical and mental potential by living healthy, exposing ourselves to limited stress and enjoying life as much as possible by making meaningful individuals of ourselves. However, most of the time test-taking is much easier than taking another step and applying our knowledge to practical life. Therefore, we eventually make stress-driven individuals of ourselves who live fast, feed fast, work long and sleep little (Refer to post "I was thinking... Jobs).


Although I just criticized the exhibition for being too much like an advanced bio course, I still enjoyed it. I especially liked the video at the end that explained how the plastination process worked and what Gunther von Hagens' motto in creation of this exhibition is. It simply said: "People push death to the backs of their minds in their daily life, thinking it won't happen to them." When I heard these words I let out a little "Yay!" inside (yes, I did, as morbid as that sounds.) Having just watched Mar Adentro by Alejandro Amenábar, I was thinking of life and existence (no, I'm not an emo.) and hearing these words by a respectable scientist felt as if it validated my assumptions about people's attitudes towards life and death. 


With the constant feed from religion and media in our daily lives, many of us are tricked into believing that there is in fact an afterlife, which gives us another chance to achieve and own all the great things we couldn't in our current lives (In most religions, it is not even a chance, you're directly given all the great things without a bargain.) But coming to terms with death shows us that in actuality, just like Javier Bardem's character in Mar Adentro bluntly states, there is nothing after death. We didn't know anything before we were born, we will know nothing after we die. So the title of the exhibition speaks for the life itself: This world is just Body Worlds. When your veins can no longer pump blood to your brain, and your heart stops beating, you are back to that state when you never were and never knew, which we ominously call 'death'. 

So the concept of spirit is just a remedy for your current soul; actually, it's more like a placebo.