Metaphysics anyone?

[STM1993]

so lets figure out what life is.

Living things avoid decay into disorder and equilibrium

...
they(mitochondria) still have their own dna and can multiply on their own but they are not alive anymore, they're dead. they basically traded their own life for the survival of their dna

which means living things can evolve into dead things as long as its beneficial to their genetic code. so is life just information that manages to ensure its continued existence?
...
life in summary is just things, processes, dna, and information?
one thing is for sure, life is not fundamentally different from nonliving things.

we don't contain some nonphysical element or are governed by different principles in inanimate objects to be alive like we once thought thousands of years ago. there's nothing special or magical about us. we are like every living being, a product of evolution. we're learning more about what computers can do and how life works so the closer we get to creating the first machine that fits our description of life the more of our image of ourselves is in danger again. im sure it'll happen sooner or later. when we get to that point and mind upload our consciousness (if thats possible) or build complicated machines to replace every cell in our body we'll basically be like automated gods.

if everything in the universe is made up of the same stuff does this mean everything in the universe is dead or alive? is it a question of complexity? does this mean we can never die because we were never alive in the first place? is life and death an irrelevant question and we haven't noticed it yet? is it possible we are much more part of the universe around us than we thought?

Or perhaps the mitochondria aren't dead, but have simply merged with other cells to become a whole new other organism. Which brings me to the idea that living things are not merely individuals, but an entire collective organism that originally started as just one cell or even less. By this scientific definition, we indeed aren't actually much different from non-living matter and it seems to make this whole thing irrelevant as you said.

What I do want to address however, is more of the human definition of living. A vegetative person is considered scientifically alive - he still breathes, can breed etc, but he can't be considered in human terms to be "living" as he is unconscious; he has no power to really exert control over his surroundings.

Now, I'm fairly confident that a person will retain his own sense of consciousness throughout his life whenever he wakes up from sleep etc. If consciousness is a product of the brain, then if the brain is suddenly destroyed and then replaced with a clone, then wouldn't the original conscience be lost while the clone is an entirely new conscience? At the same time, our body constantly undergoes cell division to replace lost cells, and within 7-10 years all our old cells have been replaced, yet we still retain the same conscience. Doesn't this raise the question of what conscience really is? Is it possible to retain this conscience and thus live forever in human terms? Or perhaps conscience is really just an illusion to facilitate the invisible logic that goes behind our every action?

If there is a metaphysical reality, then there is the possibility of a philosophical zombie - a being that has no soul, yet is physically exactly the same and acts exactly the same in response to pain even if it doesn't actually experience pain. Of course, this raises even more questions and I'm not sure how I can dwell into it.