Pursuit Of Immortality Research Articles

In the Pursuit of Immortality, Who is Sitting at the Table?

In the Pursuit of Immortality, Who is Sitting at the Table?

The Production of Human Reproduction: Impacts of Transhumanism’s Inconsistent Reproductive Policy on Classical Ethical Principles

The transhumanist movement is characterized by a shift from the traditional understanding of the “created” and “born” human to a “produced” and potentially “immortal” human. This article argues that the reproductive policy of transhumanism is inconsistent. Firstly, it underestimates the implications of reproduction, especially those related to women, such as pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing, which is considered a source of pain at every stage. Additionally, it prioritizes adult enhancement in pursuit of immortality, which is why it discards producing a new life. On the other hand, the movement utilizes new reproductive technologies to enhance human beings, thereby promising and providing unlimited individual reproductive freedom in a wide range of contexts. Furthermore, this article argues that transhumanism, which moves away from the concept of sexual human nature, not only excludes femininity and its associated nature but also converges towards a sexless human nature biologically. It also discharges sexuality from the purpose of reproduction and reduces it to the purpose of pleasure substantially. The overall attitude of the transhumanist context raises significant ethical problems, undermining traditional medical ethics and bioethics principles such as nonmaleficence, beneficence, autonomy, justice, and human dignity. Moreover, it forces ethical principles to be redefined on a new basis with its indifferent attitude that ignores the threat of authoritarian eugenics, neglects reproductive responsibility while emphasizing reproductive freedom, and fails to consider the nature of the contrast-dependency of human values. As a result, new ethical principles must be developed to address the implications of this attitude.

Envisioning postmortal futures: six archetypes on future societal approaches to seeking immortality

ABSTRACT Death is a core feature of the human experience and a main driver of civilisational endeavours. Attempts to transcend it have propelled the emergence of a postmortal society in the twenty-first century, where people have looked into the various possibilities to achieve some form of immortality. While research on the postmortal society and the futures of death have examined the social practices for death transcendence in the present and outlined some possibilities for the future, discussion remains rare on the various ways this quest for immortality can reconfigure societal worldviews, institutions and practices. By analysing data obtained from a literature review on the sociology of immortality and the futures of death, an expert roundtable and 18 semi-structured interviews, six archetypal postmortal futures were developed: Digital Recreation, Transhumanism, Memorialisation-based Postmortality, Biological Life-extension, Back to the Earthly Realm, and Unity with the Cosmos. This article argues that paradigmatic societal changes shape the immortality-seeking practices that emerge in a given spatiotemporal context. The future-oriented perspective contributes to the literature on the sociology of immortality by discussing both how some postmortal futures may increase inequalities in the pursuit of immortality and how these futures, as a whole, represent future societal attitudes towards death.

Russian Cosmism by Groys Boris (review)

SEER, 97, 3, JULY 2019 540 Helfant surmises that it was a practical solution to an intractable issue, provoked by the peasants’ frustration against landowners, who only organized wolf-hunts in certain months — leaving them vulnerable to wolf attacks for the rest of the year. Helfant’s monograph draws on recent work on animals in Russian literature by Amy Nelson, Jane Costlow and Henrietta Mondry, as well as key ecocritical researchers like Erica Fudge. Garry Marvin’s work on English foxhunting helps Helfant to demonstrate the vast semiotic difference between pursuing wolves across wild, untamed Russian land and chasing foxes in the tidy English (and European) countryside. S. K. Robisch, in his recent and expansive study, Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature (which, oddly, Helfant ignores), concludes that the ways in which we read the wolf, whether through fiction or folklore, are important because they shape our real-life interactions with the animal and its environment. Minutely researched and grippingly presented, with vivid illustrations, That Savage Gaze is a fine example of ecocriticism: as representations of wolves lend us insight into the context of nineteenth-century Russian society, we follow Russian writers’ struggles to see the world through lupine eyes. It’s time to reintroduce the wolf, and other threatened species, to Russian Studies. Department of Modern Languages Muireann Maguire University of Exeter Groys, Boris (ed.). Russian Cosmism. e-flux, Inc. and MIT Press, New York and Cambridge, MA, 2018. ix + 249 pp. Figures. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Author biographies. Index. $27.95: £22.00. The new anthology, Russian Cosmism, contributes to a growing engagement with the holistic and anthropocentric views of this movement, whose adherents endeavoured to redefine the role of mankind in the universe by blending occult traditions and the sciences of the future. In the founding text of this tradition, Philosophy of the Common Task (Filosofiia obshchego dela, 1906), the Orthodox Christian philosopher and librarian Nikolai Fedorov (1829–1903) called for the unification of the whole of humankind with the goal of overcoming disease and death, the resurrection of the deceased and the coming immortal human race, which would colonize space. After Russian Cosmism remerged as a broad intellectual movement in Russia at the end of the 1980s, artists and scholars in the West have turned to Fedorov’s view of the universe and the work of scholars he inspired, drawing on his belief in progress and unity in the face of contemporary ecologic, economic and social chaos and disintegration. REVIEWS 541 This volume presents a single text from Fedorov alongside twelve others from revolutionary anarchists and Marxist thinkers who expanded on his philosophy following the October Revolution. Most of these writings are here translated into English for the first time, having only recently been published in Russia after being suppressed since the 1930s. Bibliographic information about the writings and short biographies about each of the authors are included at the end of the volume. Boris Groys’s introductory essay contextualizes the collected texts by focusing on how Russian Cosmism conceived of technology as a messianic force, which would preserve the living and restore the dead, leading to a profound transformation of human society and culture. In pursuit of immortality, the restorative and preservation work of museums was held up as a model for overcoming the limits of death. Working toward the highest goal also entailed that human beings would continue to evolve, utilizing reason to reconstruct a society in which human relations as individuals would no longer be separated by death and private time. Without temporal and spatial limits, humanity would come to know true social solidarity. This pursuit required individuals to be united by a central, powerful state, which could guarantee the new basic right to exist and the freedom to move through space. Presenting various strands of Russian Cosmism, the writings included in this volume coalesce around the notion of human development and progress as it relates to man’s struggle with nature and mortality, and humanity’s relationship to space. The two texts by Aleksandr Chizhevskii connect human beings directly to cosmic activity, as he asserts a causal relationship between an increasing number of sunspots and the sociological characteristics of mass behaviour...

DOLOKHOV, TOLSTOY AND HARRY POTTER

The article undertakes to find out what it is that Leo Tolstoy shares with the War and Peace [Voyna i Mir] character Fedor Dolokhov. Opening with a discussion of the 2016 BBC dramatization of the novel, which pushes secondary characters like Dolokhov straight into the limelight and promotes him specifically to a major actor in the drama, the article proceeds to examine his real-life prototypes, and especially the writer’s relative, Fedor ‘the American’ Tolstoy, arguably the biggest inspiration behind Dolokhov. He may have endowed the latter with the traits of a callous duelist and adventurer. Every time Dolokhov makes an appearance in the novel, it becomes clear that he, rather than Prince Andrey or Pierre, is Tolstoy’s kindred spirit. J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books feature a character named Antonin Dolohov, a borrowing from Tolstoy. In their pursuit of immortality, Rowling’s dark wizards would split up their soul and keep the fragments in several magical objects called horcruxes. In a way, Dolokhov is such a vessel for Tolstoy’s alter ego, something already noted by his younger English fellow writer Somerset Maugham.

Gateways to Power and Paradise

Twin gate towers (que) were a characteristic feature of urban and palatial architecture in Chinese cities from the Warring States period onward. Although they initially served the practical military purpose of strengthening the defensive characteristics of gates in the city walls, they rapidly acquired symbolic significance through their association with political power. This article examines the development of twin towers from the Warring States period to the Eastern Han dynasty, showing how their ability to define political or sacred space was adapted to a variety of different social, political, and religious contexts, from city walls and palaces to imperial shrines and tombs. After the First Qin Emperor and Emperor Wu of the Han erected twin towers at the palaces they built in their pursuit of immortality, twin towers also became signifiers of the celestial realm. Finally, in the Eastern Han dynasty, the newly prominent merchant and local gentry classes who rose to assume political and administrative roles in the government adopted the architectural vocabulary of twin towers by constructing smaller-scale stone mimics at their own family tombs, appropriating the imperial prestige of this form to flaunt their social and financial success and construct their own identities as local elites. By examining this long historical development, I show how a functional element of urban architecture could acquire new symbolic meanings as different social and political actors adapted it to serve a wide variety of ends.

ARTICLES: The influence of creation and pursuit of immortality on human status in Mesopotamia

ARTICLES: The influence of creation and pursuit of immortality on human status in Mesopotamia

Articles: The influence of creation and pursuit of immortality on human status in Mesopotamia

Articles: The influence of creation and pursuit of immortality on human status in Mesopotamia

Cellular Reprogramming in Pursuit of Immortality

The discovery that phenotypic diversity among differentiated cells results from epigenetic and not genetic differences, and can be reset to restore pluripotency, promises revolutionary advances in medicine. I discuss how this and related seminal discoveries have brought us to an exciting future.

To Die and Not Decay: Autobiography and the Pursuit of Immortality in Early China. By Matthew V. Wells. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Association for Asian Studies, 2009. x, 190 pp. $25.00 (paper).

To Die and Not Decay: Autobiography and the Pursuit of Immortality in Early China. By Matthew V. Wells. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Association for Asian Studies, 2009. x, 190 pp. $25.00 (paper). - Volume 70 Issue 4

The pursuit of immortality: From the ego to the soul

Moderated by Lisa Miller from Newsweek, evolutionary biologist Kenneth Miller (Brown University) and theologians John Haught (Georgetown University) and Nancey Murphy (Fuller Theological Seminary) discuss the questions Are we immortal? Do our souls exist beyond our bodies? and What scientific evidence is there for mystical experience? from a cultural, historical, and scientific perspective. The following is an edited transcript of the discussion that occurred March 23, 2011, 7:00-8:15 PM, at the New York Academy of Sciences in New York City.

To Die and Not Decay: Autobiography and the Pursuit of Immortality in Early China – By Matthew V. Wells

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 37, Issue 2 p. 151-152 To Die and Not Decay: Autobiography and the Pursuit of Immortality in Early China – By Matthew V. Wells Philip Clart, Philip Clart University of LeipzigSearch for more papers by this author Philip Clart, Philip Clart University of LeipzigSearch for more papers by this author First published: 10 June 2011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-0922.2011.01520_6.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume37, Issue2June 2011Pages 151-152 RelatedInformation

Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China (review)

Reviewed by: Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China Philip Clart (bio) Robert Ford Campany. Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009. xviii, 300 pp. Hardcover $48.00, ISBN 978-0-8248-3333-6. Robert Campany is indisputably the foremost current expert on the hagiographic literature of early medieval China, having published numerous articles and a complete annotated translation of Ge Hong’s 葛洪 (283–343) Traditions of Divine Transcendents (Shenxian zhuan 神仙傳).1 In the present volume, he utilizes his profound knowledge of this literature to engage in a close reading of hagiographic texts and a sophisticated exploration of the methodological and theoretical issues involved in their reading. He limits his temporal focus to the period between the beginning of the Han dynasty (220 b.c.e.) and shortly after the death of Ge Hong (ca. 350 c.e.), and his thematic focus to the socially constructed nature of notions of transcendence or xian-hood. Much ink has been spilled about the pursuit of immortality or transcendence (the latter term preferred by Campany), including by Campany himself; thus, he makes a decisive shift in the present work by not emphasizing the intrinsic justifications and elaborations of techniques and cosmologies conducive to reaching the goal of xian-hood, but instead focusing on the extrinsic aspects of the social role(s) of the transcendent or the seeker after transcendence. The main text sources for this endeavor are the hagiographic collections Campany knows so well. Since they are usually not autobiographical, hagiographic accounts present third-party views of holy persons; by its nature, hagiography gives primary access not to the self-understanding of seekers after transcendence, but to outsiders’ views of these figures. There are two kinds of outsiders involved: first, of course, the author(s) of the hagiographic account, but second, the persons depicted in the account as interacting with the holy person. The role of the author is potentially problematic, as it could be argued that the image of transcendence-seekers in the Shenxian zhuan was created by Ge Hong himself in the service of an intrinsically religious agenda of his own and thus does not represent a widely shared cultural imaginaire. In that case, depictions of the social interactions of xian or xian-to-be would not provide us with reliable information on the social contexts of such persons. However, Campany reiterates his longstanding argument that writers such as Ge Hong saw themselves as compilers and transmitters, not as literary creators; their stories were gleaned from various sources regarded as trustworthy and, therefore, are collective representations. [End Page 163] Campany proves this point by means of cases where we can find corroborating evidence for the hagiographic accounts in other sources, including sources not sympathetic to the spiritual agenda of transcendence. Chapter 1 contains a detailed and sophisticated justification of hagiographies as sources of social and cultural history, which partly draws on studies of saints’ stories beyond China, as well as on theoretical works on the relationship of experience, memory, and narrative. The points made here are of cross-cultural relevance and should help Campany achieve one of the goals he set for this book, namely, that the wider study of religion and culture, which sometimes relegates sinological scholarship to the hyperspecialized margins, may finally begin to admit the premodern China case to its dossier. Both the broader study of religion and the more specialized study of premodern China stand only to gain thereby. (p. xv) In an exemplary effort at methodological transparency, chapter 1 also contains a very useful list of definitions of key concepts central to Campany’s project, among them imaginaire, asceticism, narrative, (cultural) repertoire, and collective memory (pp. 28–38). Chapter 2 proceeds to assemble from the sources the cultural repertoire “of features that constituted the role of xian and of adepts seeking to become xian” (p. xvii). Campany insists that this repertoire is structured both by intrinsic and by extrinsic rationales; the latter delineate this social role by “likening or contrasting it . . . to other roles in Chinese culture” (p. xvii). In chapter 3, the author successfully applies this approach to one element in the...

Twilight and philosophy: vampires, vegetarians, and the pursuit of immortality

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Supernatural Humans We Can't Live Without. Introduction: Undead Wisdom. PART ONE TWILIGHT. 1 You Look Good Enough to Eat: Love, Madness, and the Food Analogy (George A. Dunn). 2 Dying to Eat: The Vegetarian Ethics of Twilight (Jean Kazez). 3 Can a Vampire Be a Person? (Nicolas Michaud). 4 Carlisle: More Compassionate Than a Speeding Bullet? (Andrew Terjesen and Jenny Terjesen). PART TWO NEW MOON. 5 Vampire-Dammerung: What Can Twilight Tell Us about God? (Peter S. Fosl and Eli Fosl). 6 To Bite or Not to Bite: Twilight , Immortality, and the Meaning of Life (Brendan Shea). 7 Mind Reading and Morality: The Moral Hazards of Being Edward (Eric Silverman). 8 Love and Authority among Wolves (Sara Worley). PART THREE ECLIPSE. 9 Bella Swan and Sarah Palin: All the Old Myths Are Not True (Naomi Zack). 10 Vampire Love: The Second Sex Negotiates the Twenty-first Century (Bonnie Mann). 11 Edward Cullen and Bella Swan: Byronic and Feminist Heroes ... or Not (Abigail E. Myers). 12 Undead Patriarchy and the Possibility of Love (Leah McClimans and J. Jeremy Wisnewski). 13 The Real Danger: Fact vs. Fiction for the Girl Audience (Rebecca Housel). PART FOUR BREAKING DAWN. 14 Twilight of an Idol: Our Fatal Attraction to Vampires (Jennifer L. McMahon). 15 Bella's Vampire Semiotics (Dennis Knepp). 16 Space, Time, and Vampire Ontology (Philip Puszczalowski). 17 For the Strength of Bella? Meyer, Vampires, and Mormonism (Marc E. Shaw). 18 The Tao of Jacob (Rebecca Housel). CONTRIBUTORS: Ladies and Gentlemen, Introducing the Stars of Our Show, Humans, Vampires, and Shape-Shifters Alike. INDEX: For Those Who Can't Read Minds.

Twilight and Philosophy: Vampires, Vegetarians, and the Pursuit of Immortality. Eds. by Rebecca Housel and J. Jeremy Wisnewski

The Journal of Popular CultureVolume 43, Issue 2 p. 414-416 Twilight and Philosophy: Vampires, Vegetarians, and the Pursuit of Immortality. Eds. by Rebecca Housel and J. Jeremy Wisnewski Shanna Flaschka, Shanna Flaschka University of MississippiSearch for more papers by this author Shanna Flaschka, Shanna Flaschka University of MississippiSearch for more papers by this author First published: 05 April 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2010.00748_4.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume43, Issue2April 2010Pages 414-416 RelatedInformation

Bovine Anxieties, Virgin Births, and the Secret of Life

Bovine Anxieties, Virgin Births, and the Secret of Life

Jihad and Political Violence

Jihad is neither simply a blind and bloody-minded scrabble for temporal power nor solely a door through which to pass into the hereafter. Rather it is a form of political action in which … the pursuit of immortality is inextricably linked to a profoundly this-worldly endeavor—the founding or re-creation of a just community on earth.

Are we losing objectivity?

Some women are not afraid of dying as much as they are afraid of dying wrinkled, a plastic surgeon once said. It is probably safe to say that loss of objectivity seems to affect us often. This human frailty has afflicted society since time immemorial and has resulted on occasion in the pursuit of unworthy and even disastrous causes. Our society currently appears to be obsessed with a number of issues that suggest we are losing objectivity with regard to important matters. We seem to be fascinated with the pursuit of immortality in this world, though we know that it is unattainable. The obsessions with unlimited profit, perennial youth, physical beauty, and the fear of aging are manifested in the widespread emphasis on working longer hours in order to make more money, exercising to exhaustion, voluntary starvation diets, and multiple plastic surgery procedures1. A personal confrontation with my own lack of objectivity made me examine in earnest the meaning of many of the things that we do in our daily lives. I was visiting my mother, who at the time was celebrating her ninety-seventh birthday. Prior to this visit, a concerned relative complained to me that my mother was not walking She suggested that I use persuasion to convince my mother to change her ways. Without giving any thought to this request I said, Mother, they tell me that you are not walking You should walk more; it is good for you. Good for what? she replied. Embarrassed by my inability to find the right words to respond to her wise and pithy remark, I stuttered, Well, it is good for you. She smiled mischievously and said, Son, I have walked for ninety-seven years and think I have walked enough. She died in her bed two …

Borges, immortality and the circular ruins

The author explores ideas surrounding immortality and death focusing on the interplay between their development in two stories by Borges (‘The circular ruins’ and ‘The immortal’) and their manifestation in a patient. With the help of Borges's stories, the author addr-linees the desperate necessity experienced by some individuals to search for immortality. This is not just an expression of the universal wish to live forever but, at a deeper level, arises from the impossibility of bearing the mental pain of experiencing ordinary human vulnerability and loss ‐ death being the ultimate expression of such vulnerability. It is suggested that the relentless pursuit of immortality in such individuals expresses an omnipotent phantasy of ridding the self of the emotional pain and fear that arises through being alive. It leads to a denial of the emotional significance of passage of time, of separation and sexual differences. In actuality, the individual's state of not feeling approximates to a complete loss of human identity and emotional death, with no place for any meaningful others. The individual him/herself becomes a ‘mere image’, living in a delusional world peopled by him/herself and his/ her projections, and ending up trapped inside the circular ruins he/she has generated. The horror experienced at the stark awareness of the individual's emotional death and the wish to re‐establish contact with the good internal objects that have been attacked sets in motion the long process of searching for the recovery of a sense of temporality (that would still include the wish for immortality) and, with it, a sense of identity.

The pursuit of immortality: a new approach beyond the competitiveness paradigm

Discusses the death of inter‐firm and intra‐firm competition as we know it and propose an approach beyond competition – “the pursuit of immortality”. Our digital age offers immense and unprecedented opportunities to bring forth the latent potential of organizations, by allowing individual employees scope for the expression of their capacity for learning and creativity. To help in this process, recommends that companies revive and imbibe pre‐industrial society value systems that allowed the free expression of what we call the “divinery” instincts in individuals while maintaining focus and coordination through the use of information technology. Proposes a 3ems path to immortality: embarkation, emulation and emancipation. Companies and individuals should quickly get over the first two phases and get on to the emancipation phase where they concentrate on setting their own standards rather than frittering away their energy in outsmarting competition.