Abstract
The articles argues that due to the rapid development of new technology the boundaries of life and death, as well as the different phases of our physical, social and spiritual life are getting less clear-cut and evident than they have been before in the Western, traditionally dualistic cultural and historical experience. Thus, at the moment we are in a transitional stage in our understanding of “human life” is gaining new dimensions in form of “post-humanism” and “trans-humanism”. The current neo-holistic view of the universe and the human place in it requires us to consider the “existential risks” and seriously ponder the effects of the technological evolution to our social, cultural, ethical and metaphysical frameworks and normative principles.
Highlights
This special issue of the Journal of Anthropology focuses on the anthropology of transition in relation to birth and death at the beginning of the 21st Century
As noted earlier the ethical questions we have presented in dealing with the issues of life and death in relation to the new technologies have focused around such questions as “when does life begin and when does it end” or “what is the value of human life: what are the/minimum standards for a good life.”
With the emergence of neoholism, our current ethical thinking that is still at least partly based on the physical, biological existence of individual humans as moral agents whose choices are affected by our will for self-preservation, our general fear and distaste for physical and emotional pain and to the limits of our life span, that is, our mortality, is gradually challenged to consider alternative metaphysical frameworks
Summary
This special issue of the Journal of Anthropology focuses on the anthropology of transition in relation to birth and death at the beginning of the 21st Century. And somewhat ironically, the culture traditionally promoting individual choices produces collective decisions as people tend to “independently” choose the same trends, fashions, products, commodities, and so forth that takes them closer to the “human ideal” that we have defined for ourselves and enforced by our philosophical, ethical and social frameworks This emerging neoholism transcends the modern dualism and the fragmentation of the Western worldview during postmodernism but it creates new challenges to our traditional ethical reasoning by producing a whole new understanding of the relationship between humanity and ethics as it questions our traditional understanding of “birth” and “death,” and the very concept of “life” in a wider sense.. An individual choice becomes illusionary as our collectivist ideals of human life are more and more identical and enforced by biosciences and technology, as well as by fashion and market trends
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