THE CULTURE OF DEATH AND THE CRISES OF MODERNITY
;The vast majority of reality seems enmeshed in cyclic elements of bifurcation: day and night, good and evil, heaven and hell, black and white, life and death, etc. Often, an element is projected not just as a contrary within the gamut of opposing options, but as the inescapable adversative alternative, precluding the possibility of a midcourse or ‘third force.’ That is, the presence of an element portends not only the absence of its alternative, but a somewhat contrived force working to dismantle the alternative. In this sense, cultivating the “culture of death,” which is deemed as the base of the crises that humanity is currently forced to endure, is antithetical to cultivating the “culture of life”. Life cannot be pro?tably sustained in the midst of forces that pull it apart. Admitting this adversative relationship as a universal rule among bifurcating elements, though ?awed in many respects, explains the persistence of racial bigotry in modern societies. In this essay, the mistreatment of blacks by whites was underlined as one of the crises of modernity. The modern penchant for abortion, euthanasia, homicide, capital punishment, unsustainable exploitation of nature, wars and violent con?icts, among others, was recognized as obvious means of promoting the culture of death. In the end, various blips currently bedeviling societies were identi?ed as watersheds ensuing from the culture of death.
Keywords: crises, culture, death, modernity