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Saturday, January 6, 2007

The Army of the Dead

posted by on January 6 at 19:17 PM

The desperate U.S. Army orders dead officers to return to the war that killed them, Iraq. How many deaths will it take for the army to finally let them rest in peace? Thinking of death, while waiting in a long line in a supermarket, the Red Apple with the soul music, a headline for a tabloid took me by surprise: “Death Is Cured! One shot of this miracle drug and you will live forever.” As the construction reveals, death is always seen as a person, a someone whose illness can be cured.

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1

Death is a human construct. The scientists say that energy is neither created nor destroyed and we are only a complex combination of atoms in space and time. That combination is preserved in DNA. Our obsession with death is only another mechanism for humans to separate themselves from beasts. Other species regenerate themselves over time through the selfish gene theory. Each individual only exists to ensure the save passage of their genetic content to their offspring, and that their survival and reproduction only serve that final purpose: DNA transfer to the next generation. And that is all there is... So let's keep dancing. Let's break out the booze and have a ball...

Posted by Morgan | January 6, 2007 10:09 PM
2

"Cure" is often used with either a disease/ailment or a person as its object, e.g. "cure cancer," "cure AIDS," and "cure the patient." So the construction doesn't reveal that death is necessarily seen as a person.

Posted by Gabriel | January 7, 2007 7:44 AM
3

#1 so if we don't have kids to pass on DNA we relativaly are going to cease to be. Death does exist for those that do not produce offspring? Right? is that what the scientists are saying?
Can't have kids so fuck it all right....

Posted by sputnik | January 8, 2007 12:38 PM
4

Actually, several species reproduce at the community level to some extent. Some individuals don't reproduce successfully, but their very existence tends to improve the survival of other individual's offspring. This may no longer apply to humans now that we have surpassed the Earth's carrying capacity and global warming has begun to accelerate. And since collaborative child rearing seems to have gone by the wayside in modern society, non-producing members may no longer provide the same benefits to the next generation in terms of survival that they once did (unless, of course you're capable of solving world hunger or curing disease). But since siblings and cousins share so much of our genetic material, the bulk of our DNA is transmitted to the next generation even if we don't have offspring. In fact, at this point, the best thing most people can do to improve the long term survival of our species, and thus our collective DNA, is to not reproduce at all.

Posted by #1 | January 9, 2007 10:32 PM

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