O modelach strategii życia jako drogach do nieśmiertelności

Abstract

Death always concerns a specific individual who lives in specific time and place defining his earthly existence. A temporal nature of death transforms into spatial issue. The natural desire to prolong life becomes an effort that aims at extending life’s economical capacity. People, aware of their mortality, give time its measure by filling each moment with action and making it valuable. Thus, different roads to immortality can be assigned certain attitudes towards life. Their symbolic representatives are: pilgrim, nomad and monk. Adopting a particular life strategy that would fulfill its aim – immortality, largely depends on the individual perception of the concept of immortality. It may seem to be identical for all. In practice, however, there are many different ways of understanding and realizing this concept, and each of them outlines a different means-method of achieving its aim. And so, one can speak of “classical” immortality, which means a transition into a new existence, beyond time and matter, and of “postmodern” immortality, which is reduced to the Heraclitus’ ongoing process of change within the limits of the existing universe. Thus, in this case different roads do not lead to the same objective. Consequently, it is impossible to judge them and choose one, basing solely on the “landscape” and “way of traveling”. Decisive here is the nature of a destination point, the awareness of the long-awaited state. The only element that seems common for all potential life strategies adopted to reach immortality is the experience of death as something irreversible.