How Technology Ends the Glamorization of Death

by Brenna Patterson

In this journal, I am going to discuss some points that were brought up to me while reading “The Intruder” by Jean Luc Nancy. When I first started reading this essay, I was slightly confused by the language and what was being talked about, however, after reading a little further I was reminded of a conversation that occurred in a philosophy class that I took at Cal Poly. The conversation revolved around the topic of whether we are simply our souls or if our body is a part of us as well. I came to the conclusion that our body and soul makes up who we are because the two are inextricably linked and both play a role in making up who we are. Both at an internal and external level, our body has an effect on the trajectory of our lives due to the way it functions and the way it appears. In “The Intruder”, Nancy is exploring a similar subject but with the inclusion of technology and the aspect of inevitable death.

One part of this work that I found particularly interesting was when the author pointed out that technology has taken the place of religion by defying nature and postponing the end of life. I attended Catholic school from kindergarten through my senior year of high school and philosophical conversations about death were very common in our religion classes. The moral of most of those conversations, however, was that we should accept death when it comes upon us because that means that God is awaiting us in heaven. When I was younger, I did not question this much because I didn’t often think about death and even if I did, I have never been someone who is really afraid of dying. But, the older I got, the more I began to see the contradictions. The first time it hit me was when we were talking about the morality of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and my teacher (who was also a priest) said that IVF was wrong because if God does not want you to have a child then you are not meant to have a child and you should not force it. This comment immediately did not sit right with me so I raised my hand and asked, “Then why is it acceptable for people who are dying to use life support in order to stay alive?”. My teacher did not have a good response to that question and just kind of skipped over it, which now in hindsight, confirms to me that no matter what, everyone is at least a little afraid of dying. Even devout religious people who believe that there is a God and an afterlife fear the end because it is so unsure. Technology, however, has made it so that we now have the ability to perpetuate the end to a reasonable extent. Some people might struggle with the philosophical component of this, but does it bother you to the point that you would die before you have to? As our world becomes more and more secular, will the glamorization of death end and will technology take charge?