Bauman, Z (1992) Mortality, immortality and other life strategies (Living with death, chapter 1). ____: Polity Press

 

Humans are conscious of having a conscious.

Knowledge that cannot be believed (14).

 

‘So death – an unadorned death, death in all its stark, uncompromised bluntness, a death that would induce consciousness to stop – is the ultimate absurdity, while being at the same time the ultimate truth! Death reveals that truth and absurdity are one’(14-15).

 

‘It is the belief in non-death (misnamed as ‘disbelief in death’) which is ‘given’, self-evident, taken for granted’…’We live as if we were not going to die. By all standards, this is a remarkable achievement, a triumph of will over reason’ (16).

The battle cries of modern versions of tribalism – ‘For the Homeland’, ‘For the glory of our Nation’, ‘For our beloved Leader’- are but thinly disguised metaphors for the species way of securing survival through the extinction of its members… (27)’

Love relationship has replaced god. We want transcendence, in a lover, and our ideal selves reflected. Ernest Becker.

 

UNFINISHED