Browsing by Subject "death"
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(2017)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.
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(2020)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.
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(2024)The changing nature of companion animal and human relations has gained increased attention following the ‘animal turn’ in anthropology. Experiences of companion animal death may invoke similar feelings of grief and engender rituals commonly associated with the death of a human loved one. This master’s thesis aims to study the experiences of urban companion animal owners in Finland following the death of their companion, and the processes and rituals associated with such mourning. Fieldwork was conducted at a peer support group for bereaved pet owners, alongside in-depth interviews, as well ethnographic fieldwork at a pet cemetery located in Central Park in Helsinki. The aim of the thesis is to investigate what rituals and processes of grief following the death of a companion animal are practiced in Finland, and how the pet cemetery functions as an ethnographic location in the material dimension of remembrance and memorialization concerning companion animals. To do this, the changing nature of animal-human relations in Finnish society is studied to some extent, to situate the changing reactions to companion animal deaths in the larger discourse on the role of companion animals in society. Companion animal deaths tie into larger debates on medicine, and local and global economies via the industrialization of “pet-keeping” as a practice in Western societies. The thesis will also add on to the growing anthropological literature on human-companion animal relations and the deep, interpersonal relationships people share with their companion animals, even following their deaths. Exploring a gap in the anthropology of death by examining multispecies grief and grief for companion animals, the research produces fruitful new literature on the human-animal entanglements found in urban, Western societies. Findings of the research indicate that companion animal owners in Finland experience disenfranchised grief, where they feel like their possibilities of expressing their grief towards their deceased companion animals is severely restricted and even denied. Nevertheless, continuing bonds are maintained and companion animals are reintegrated into human kinship relations even after their deaths, with material and sensory practices. Owners emphasize the importance of the relationships they shared with their companion animals, comparing the grief after their loss to grief following human deaths, and even suggesting that grief for a companion animal could, depending on the circumstances, be greater than the grief for a lost human loved one. Mourners call for their “right to grieve” their companion animals in safe spaces, and for opportunities for expressing this grief more openly and to wider societal acceptance.
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