Elizabeth Mbone Jombo

Ah-Ha Journal 2

This unit address and covered various life perspectives written by well-known writers.

These life stages include the nature of human death, personal identity, seekers of visions, the

malleability of identity, and the absurd. All these topics are very interesting and helpful to

know about life from a different point of view and experiences. As written in the topic of

“The nature of human death” I would relate to that realism about death as a biological

phenomenon does not entail the acceptance of traditional assumptions about the moral

significance of death. Although unsuccessful in displacing the biological concept of death in

the case of humans, this approach helpfully presses us to consider whether we must wait for

death before engaging in “death behaviors”. Related to personal experience as a healthcare

worker with this statement, I have observed some patients who had suffered from stroke

severely that there was no sign of mentation and who were kept alive with intravenous fluids.

Some mental patients involve in death behaviors and end their lives voluntarily. Some

individuals belonging to different cultures do not accept treatment options and instead of

accepting life support to save a life they choose death. Hence, in biological terms, death is the

absence of life is an entity that was once alive.

Moreover, personal identity deals with philosophical questions that arise about

ourselves by virtue of our being people (or, as lawyers and philosophers like to say, persons).

This contrasts with questions about ourselves that arise by virtue of our being living things,

conscious beings, material objects, or the like. I agree with the statement documented in the

chapter that personal identity implies the continued existence of that indivisible thing that I

call myself. Whatever this self may be, it is something which thinks, and deliberates, and
resolves, and acts, and suffers. I am not thought, I am not an action, I am not feeling; I am

something that thinks, and acts, and suffers.

Why people sometimes feel that life is absurd. For example, they often say that life is

absurd because nothing we do now will matter in the distant future. But Nagel points out that

the corollary of this is that nothing in the distant future matters now: “In particular, it does not

matter now that in a million years nothing we do now will matter.” Life has no objective

meaning and there is no reason to think we can give it any meaning at all. Still, we continue

to live and should respond, not with defiance or despair, but with an ironic smile. I disagree

with this statement that life has no meaning, life has different meanings from different

mindsets, and with our missions and goals, we set different meanings of life that are being

followed and valued by other people. Life is not as important and meaningful as we may have

once suspected, but this is not a cause for sadness. When someone undergoes a radical

change, it is common to say that she or he has become a different person either related to

lifestyle, behavior, communication pattern, working style, and many other changes. Like, one

of my shy school friends has changed dramatically and now become very appealing, classy,

outgoing, and confident. Some changes occur due to society perception, some occur due to

survival for the fittest, and some due to environmental factors.

From the chapter of Marya, I agree with the statement that the heterogeneous group of

circumstances that might be described in terms of a change in identity could be divided up in

many different ways. Some changes impact positively on our lives and some drive negative

impacts giving us a life lesson. The most interesting chapter for me in this unit is Talking to

the Owls and Butterflies by Lame Deer after the nature of human death. Lame Deer begins

with a plea for all of us to sit down and experience the spirit of the earth in our lives. He

demonstrates how to feel the strength and power of nature in our lives like the Native

Americans do. He then tells us, the white population, how we have made it hard for us to
experience nature in a good way. Lame Deer proceeds to show us how the whites have raped

and violated these lands. Lame Deer states that the whites have altered and degraded both the

land and the animals on it, and taken away their power and spirit. After reading the chapter, I

will conclude that the way each person lives contributes to the degradation of the

environment. Each of us needs to mediate between what we want and what the environment

needs. Can we make the effort to reform our lives in a fashion which respects life and nature?

Maybe the first step will be to sit down here, all of us, where we cannot see a highway or a

fence. Feel the ground with our bodies. Listen to the air, you can hear it, feel it, smell it, taste

it.