Browsing by Subject "death"

This thesis joins the eternal process of reaching for the unreachable, mysterious space of non-existence. Instead of defining anything or offering any answers, it makes portraits of a particular phenomenon: the question of remembrance and death in a context of today. What kind of scenarios have been offered for our digital afterlife? How do we want to be remembered after death as our lives become more difficult to grasp physically? We will meet a man who travels around the world with an uncanny robot, and listen to an artist in the process of inventing an interactive form for expressing grief through metaphysical dialogue. We will explore ideas of an entrepreneur who offers you a chance to live (symbolically) forever as an avatar, and we will focus on a hybrid eternity project, transforming rituals of memorising into forms that may speak more accurately to the mortals of the digital world. We will imagine a never-ending conversation between two lovers. Behind this curiosity towards the immortal enigma, there lies a wider question of whether our ’less physical’ lives could make us re-imagine, and possibly even notice changes in our beliefs and thoughts about death and remembering. The methodology of this work trusts in the power of human conversation. Through semi-structured, qualitative interviews with a limited amount of people, the thesis searches for scenarios of alternative futures for the culturally shifting rites of passage. Inspired by narrative approach to research and life, stories are valued as ever-changing material through which we construct our realities – and ourselves. What kind of narratives do the present-day technologies encourage us to create? How might our increasingly digital lives be changing the way we memorise and mourn? This work offers a speculative theoretical meditation to a few alternative futures of remembering: apocalyptic self-narratives that make the border between fiction and fact seem obscure. 

Assuming that living is not always categorically good or categorically bad for the life’s subject, ‘wellbeing’ must be a value that is measured on a non-ratio scale. This entails that there is no significant zero point on the wellbeing level scale. The arbitrary zero point on a non-ratio scale does not signify a lack. Thus, the states of living and non-living are incomparable from the perspective of wellbeing-related interests, for a subject does not have any wellbeing level while not alive. A similar argument was put forward already by Epicurus and Lucretius. The concepts of ‘a life worth living’ and ‘a life not worth living’ are flawed. Birth and death, as coming into existence and ceasing to exist, can never either harm or benefit a life’s subject wellbeing-wise. This is true a priori. As wellbeing levels are non-ratio values, they do not cumulate. Hence, it makes little sense in trying to compare the wellbeing values of wholes, like complete lives, especially if they are of different duration. The thesis starts from a premise of ‘wellbeing’ relating to moments of time, this being the undisputed part of the different interpretations of the term. Only after carefully examining the concept of a ‘wellbeing level’ and its features, a theory is built to address the question of how to compare values of temporal wholes. In the process, all of the possible symmetrical and asymmetrical theories of the personal value of birth and death are laid out, and their relationship with the concept of ‘wellbeing’ is analyzed. The term ‘biosignificantism’ is introduced to refer to a theory according to which birth and death may both be either beneficial or detrimental to a subject from a wellbeing-point-of-view. The claims of biosignificantism are refuted by demonstrating why a significant zero point on a non-ratio scale cannot be defined. The type of non- cumulative wellbeing that a non-ratio scale entails is logically combined with features that pose some limitations on how wellbeing may be affected either causally or non-causally. These limitations are outlined. Finally, the broad implications of a theory that is named ‘bioindifferentism’ and that reduces personal value on non-ratio wellbeing are formulated. The relevant literature that is utilized in the research is largely divided: mostly separate fields of research have been devoted to the relationship of birth and wellbeing, and, on the other hand, the relationship of death and wellbeing. This master’s thesis brings the issues together. Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons (1984) and Ben Bradley’s Well-Being & Death (2009) are central references. Past research has been largely conducted in terms of moral philosophy which seems to have led to a lot of confusions. The thesis’s axiological focus is intended to bring the discussion back to the atom level to lay down the groundwork for also ethics.

Tiivistelmä - Referat - Abstract The purpose of this bachelor´s thesis is to illustrate the lives of the concentration camp prisoners in Auschwitz and the changes in their morality, using memoirs of the prisoners as the main source of information. The morality of the prisoners is observed in relation to themselves, to their peers and also to the system. The aim is to portray the psychological defense mechanisms that the prisoners were able to resort to in the extreme conditions of the concentration camps. Besides categorizing the psychological defense mechanisms, the thesis analyzes how those mechanisms affected the prisoners and their community. Objectives: This research aims to exhibit the events and circumstances of the holocaust that affected the lives of the concentration camp prisoners. It also intends to find out what kind of an impact the extreme conditions had on the minds of the prisoners and how the human mind defends itself in such circumstances. Methods: The research is based on narrative literature overview. Research material from original sources consists mainly of memoirs of the prisoners that lived on the Auschwitz concentration camp during Third Reich. The phenomena that come up in the research material are then explained and observed in the light of existing literature in the field of moral philosophy. The purpose of this literature overview is to compile a cohesive overview of the processes of the human mind in the extreme conditions of the concentration camps by studying original literature sources. Results and conclusions: The extreme conditions of concentration camps changed the prisoners´ mindscapes. The prisoners were robbed of their identity and left with nothing to remind of their former lives on the outside, which led to a chaos that affected the whole community. The established morale changed completely. The only way stay alive was to accommodate to the rules and practices of the concentration camp. On the other hand, the prisoners had to try to hold on to their morale to not lose themselves and their will to live. Besides maintaining the shreds of one´s morality, survival on the death camps also demanded immense mental strength. Each prisoner had their own ways of gathering mental strength. It was essential for the prisoners to find a reason to keep fighting for their lives. To endure the horrors of the camp and stay sane, the inmates had to resort to an illusion created by the defense mechanisms of the mind. They had to hide away mentally from the reality that would haunt their everyday lives even long after surviving Auschwitz. No one came out a winner from the camp. The Third Reich destroyed all its prisoners - either physically or mentally. The survivors would have to suffer from their mental scars for the rest of their lives. According to my interpretation, the roots of the holocaust were in upbringing, learning and socialization. The oppression of a group of humans was justified by irrational dehumanizing. With its systematic actions, Authoritarian Germany made the horrors of the holocaust appear normal and justifiable. The SS soldiers were made to compete for attention at the expense of the wellbeing – and even life – of the persecuted. As the SS soldiers enjoyed the rewards of their actions, the victims were fighting for their lives.

This thesis explores what can be learned from the literary features and choices made by authors in their post-terminal diagnosis writing. The author argues that terminal diagnosis impacts the work of authors and can be studied in comparison to works produced before they received their terminal diagnosis. The research aims to reveal commonalities among multiple authors in response to terminal diagnosis and to determine a shared conceptual understanding of how authors respond to terminal diagnosis. The study focuses on the writing of George Orwell, Katherine Mansfield, and Bruce Chatwin, and analyzes their works using Wayne C. Booth’s implied author theory to reveal how the rhetorical and literary choices they made in their post-terminal diagnosis works were deliberate attempts to adjust their legacy in their final writings. The findings of this research provide insights into how authors approach the creative process after being diagnosed with a terminal illness and could enrich future readings of the works of these authors and authors in general by exploring the connection between the authors’ biographical and historical backgrounds and the implied authorial “second selves” depicted in their works. The study highlights the literary significance of authors’ last words and how they tackle the problem of achieving a linguistically meaningful death.