The Social Struggle Against Death: Human Strategies for Immortality
The Social Struggle Against Death: Human Strategies for Immortality

Summary/Abstract: Death is an infallible part of the human life, and what makes human different from all other beings is fact that he knows that he is going to die. Knowing this, human beings are spending their whole life knowing that the day of their end is going to come. It is clear that death has its biological part, also as a huge event in the existence of all life forms, including human, death has its philosophical point of view, and finally, unlike some may disagree, death itself is a huge social phenomena as well, and as such, the social influence of death deserves close attention and its own part in the social science studies. This paper analyzes the presence of the death in human culture, including institutions, rituals and beliefs following the discourse of late Zygmunt Bauman who left huge influence on this field of study. Since the earliest forms of communities, humans are trying to overcome the death, the state of “after-life” and some form of immortality of the being is something that is common to all religions and beliefs ever known to mankind, which stands as a evidence that the final void of non-existence know to us as death is something that always presented horror in the mind of the humans.

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