The Burden And Blessing Of Mortality - 1327 Words

Mortality has always been a difficult subject to discuss within the public sphere. People, more often than anything else, fear death so greatly that they avoid this topic all together. Perhaps it is the unknown factor about the afterlife (or lack thereof) that so petrifies people, causing them to distract themselves from a serious debate on the effects of mortality to our earth. Hans Jonas writes in The Burden and Blessing of Mortality about the universal advantage of human mortality and the perceived burdens of it as well. Like Jonas, I will argue that mortality is a beneficial concept in the realm of external issues like preserving our earth’s resources, and internal issues like existential meaning and motivation. Diametrical†¦show more content†¦There is one interesting consequence to the potential execution of this idea, and it deals mainly with psychosis. When it’s phrased as â€Å"immortality† people see it as a remarkable idea that would reve rse depression and emotional pain. On the contrary, this is likely to bolster elements like this. If we are constantly, figuratively standing still it is going to lead to far greater mental disabilities and issues than the ones we see today. Jonas believes that the concept of defeating death is wrong from the beginning, and it comes from a palpable confusion of what life is. Living and dying are interwoven together, he thinks. Each is a different side to the same procedure. Life reiterates itself as important, but can only do this since it is contested. The whole nature of value enters into the world through living and dying (Jonas, p. 36). Another point outlines how evolution would be impossible without death. Neither component would progress in any way. The process of death plays an inventive role. It celebrates uniqueness and variety, and the greater type of life’s subjectivity. Jonas asserts that with dying we allow room for future life. Birth exists because dying exists, and the arrival of fresh life has significant value in itself. It permits us to â€Å"see the world for the first time, see things with new eyes, wonder where others are dulled by habit, and start out from where they had