Opinion – Suzana Herculano-Houzel: Yes, sir. President, everybody dies, but don’t take us with them

Mr. President, I heard from the newspapers that you had, right now in the middle of your most important position in the country, the revelation that everyone dies in the end. I know what it’s like to have to deal with that weight, Mr. President.

I’m not a therapist and I don’t know him, but I deal with this issue every day in my work as a scientist. So maybe I can help a little bit, if, luckily, today is a day when you skim the papers.

Furthermore, I had this same revelation at the age of seven, also at an inopportune time, when the house was being cleaned weekly. I should have been on my way to school by now, but my mother took pity on the tears that rolled down my cheeks, at the sound of my protests of “going to school for what if everyone dies in the end?”, knelt beside me and took it in my hand.

I apologize if distance prevents me from doing the same, Mr. President, but I’ll tell you what she explained to me: that it’s the opportunities for joy in life that make the effort worthwhile.

I, now a neuroscientist, add that it is precisely our efforts to deal with life that give us pleasure — as long as we have that little bit of power over our own lives, which gives us a sense of control, and as long as, at least once in a while. when, our efforts are rewarded, even a little bit at a time.

All this, Mr. President, the work of reward and motivation circuits in the vertebrate brain, like us —you know, those with a backbone— that reward us, who knows why, when our actions have results that please us.

Thanks to this system, Mr. President, we go ahead purposefully ignorant also of that projection of astrophysicists that the sun will swallow us all in about 8 billion years (did you know that one?).

It’s so much dopamine that this system dumps us between our ears that we live by choosing to live another day, even though rationally the endeavor is ultimately useless, as you recently discovered.

We live from small pleasure to small pleasure, grateful for the possibility of another day’s effort to hope for the best, or oblivious to the little miracles of biology that keep us alive but alive nonetheless.

Now, of course, every now and then the brain has a spurt of pure rationality, as you did, and decides that all this effort is not for it, but it still has enough energy to motivate itself to put an end to it. everything and leave more energy for others. This effort at one last act is called suicide, Mr. President, possible in a variety of ways, to the liking of the customer’s sensibilities, literal and metaphorical. But it has a fundamental characteristic: by definition, the suicide extinguishes himself without causing damage to his surroundings.

Even the cells of the body alone know this. In fact, it is the daily suicide of many, who purge themselves, that keeps our bodies alive one more day.

But human beings have options, Mr. President, like calling 188, to the Life Valuation Center. If, even so, you think that everyone dies, then why so much effort with vaccines and health?

Please remember not to take us with you. We who want to continue enjoying the daily efforts of life.