Death: Part II
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1 . Of Zombies and Christ by Chris Dreyer^
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. —Revelation 20:13 FRANCINCE PARKER: What the hell are they? PETER: They’re us, that’s all, when there’s no more room in Hell. STEPHEN: What? PETER: Something my granddad used to tell us. You know Macumba? Voodoo. My granddad was a priest in Trinidad. He used to tell us, “When there’s no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth.” —Dawn of the Dead (Zombi) Regarding films of the horror genre as theological documents would not readily occur to most. In fact, these two entities seem so disparate as to make such a correlation ridiculous if not blasphemous. However, upon closer inspection, there seem to be some very clear connections between the Christian religion and the horror film genre—the common thread is death. Both share themes of resurrection, the afterlife and retributive justice. Clearly, Christianity and horror films treat these themes very differently, and whether or not these gruesome tales of zombies, monsters and murderers set out to invert or reinforce Christian ideas of death, films of the horror genre may prove to be a valuable but oft-ignored interpretive lens for Christian theology. Resurrection Then go quickly and tell his disciples: “He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.” Now I have told you. —Matthew 28:7 The pivotal theme of the Gospels, resurrection, has widely been co-opted by tales of horror in the cinema. Resurrection is essential to the zombie subgenre as well as to a smattering of other horror archetypes, such as Frankenstein and the Mummy, though each of these horror icons could be interpreted as zombies. Zombies are presented in cinematic horror lore as the walking dead, bereft of most typical human attributes and imbued with the insatiable urge to feast on human flesh. Once bitten, an otherwise healthy human will become a zombie. Horror cinema presents two primary methods of zombie resurrection: religion and science. From these stem many variations; voodoo ritual and incantation are responsible for the zombies in Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2, among others, and the Mummy’s mode of post-mortem resurrection deals with a religious curse. The scientific, “man-playing-God” scenarios are more common in zombie films, with zombies appearing as a consequence of ambiguous radiation in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, or viral infection as in the Resident Evil trilogy, 28 Days Later and Hell of the Living Dead, to name but a few. In such cases, zombies are the unfortunate and unintentional byproducts of man’s dabbling in science, but there are a few films depicting more deliberate attempts at playing God. Re-Animator and, of course, the archetypal Frankenstein story involve men using their scientific knowledge in attempts to cheat death. Of course, they find not the key to eternal life but rather their own demise, as their creations bring about only violence. The story of Frankenstein’s monster is interesting, because the violence is not embodied by the monster itself, who comes off as slightly charming, but rather by the doctor and the larger world he inhabits. In recent years, viral infection has become the method de rigueur for zombie films, arguably as a kind of response to the real possibility of a man-made apocalypse. However their mode of creation, zombies serve but one purpose: to wreak havoc and destruction on the living. As such, they are tantamount to death itself, anthropomorphized and functioning as a swarm, engulfing the living and transforming them into the walking dead. Zombies are not necessarily evil, as in most cases they are not conscious of the atrocities they are committing. The brainless zombies of Romero’s Dead films and the more recent Resident Evil films are examples of these soul-less beasts that represent a purely animalistic death. The zombies in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series provide an example of a zombie representative of evil as well as death (hence the straightforward title), as the zombies are reanimated and possessed by a demonic spirit unwittingly unleashed by reciting passages from the Necronomicon. Whenever resurrection in these films occurs, it always leads to destruction—in horror films, death begets death when given the gift of life. This stands in stark contrast, of course, to the story of the Christ. According to the teachings of the Gospels, Jesus Christ suffered brutal beatings and flayings and was crucified on a cross until death. He was then resurrected three days thereafter, ascending into Heaven. The resurrection of Jesus was to beget life—namely, ours. The idea was that Jesus’ crucifixion served as a representative death for the entire world, and his rise and ascension were to serve as a representative rebirth for all. As such, our sins may be put to rest and the goodness and light of our souls may rise and ascend to the heavens as Christ did. In his wake, he left those who believed in him to spread their word to others, in order that they may also believe. In this way, Jesus may be viewed as the ultimately benevolent zombie ––or conversely, zombies may be viewed as the ultimately malevolent evangelicals. The Afterlife Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. —Matthew 10:28 While physical resurrection appears only several times in the Bible, all instances involving Christian theology’s main player, the idea of a psychical and spiritual life after death is featured quite prominently throughout both the Old and New Testaments in the form of Heaven and Hell: Heaven for the righteous and Hell for the wicked. These two “places” are of the utmost concern, as they are theoretically where one’s soul will reside for all eternity, and even Lazarus’ physical resurrection only deferred his transportation to the ultimate destination. An eternity looms to dwarf even the longest-lived life on earth. The horror film genre overwhelmingly seems to take the prospect of a Heaven and Hell as a given; there are numerous instances in which Hell is depicted with all of the fire and brimstone of a Southern Baptist revival. Heaven is less often directly addressed but often implicit as Hell’s unspoken counterpart. One of the most engaging horror movies discussing Hell is perhaps Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, which spawned nine sequels (which, beyond the first three, aren’t worth seeking out). The story centers around a mysterious puzzle box known as the Lament Configuration, which promises unimaginable pleasures of the flesh upon solving it. Opening the box releases a group of awful, sadistic demons known as Cenobites, who proceed to unleash complete torment upon whoever opened it, introducing them to the pleasure/pain dichotomy championed in Hell. They are tortured to death and brought to Hell, where they are privy to the “pleasures” of sadomasochistic extremes unattainable on earth. In addition to being a terrific piece of science-fiction/horror, Hellraiser also proves to be a moralistic fable resonant with Christian teachings, albeit more extreme and literal. Lust is denounced in Christianity, conspicuously listed among the Seven Deadly Sins of the Bible and explicated in the Catholic Catechism: “Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.”1 So, for the Cenobites of Hellraiser to punish inquiries of extreme lust and desire with flaying, death and damnation is really nothing more than a perverted Christian message. As stated in the Book of Romans, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”2 For their lustful sin, those seeking to open the puzzle box received a slow and torturous death. All prospects of righteous salvation are conspicuously absent in Hellraiser, as all efforts of the protagonist to destroy the puzzle box are perennially thwarted, presenting a highly fatalistic view of sin in the world. Though the heroine escapes successfully, the box remains to tempt another into damnation. Retributive Justice And I will punish the world for [their] evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. —Isaiah 13:11 A logical offshoot of the idea of the Afterlife, retributive justice is found both in horror films and Christian teaching. If you lead a good life and accept Christ into your heart, you will spend your afterlife in Heaven, but if you lead a sinful life, you will end up in Hell, which amounts to the death of the spirit. In horror movies, more often than not, the wicked are punished for their sins in some form—usually death. Exceptions to this rule of retribution rarely see widespread commercial exposure because stories in which the bad guys “lose” are seen as happy endings. Though, more often than not, this so-called happy ending will be followed with some sort of loose end the protagonist did not tie up in the hopes that a sequel may be wrought––i.e., the killer’s not quite dead yet, or there’s an egg with a demonspawn it, etc. Regardless, in most horror movies, those that are evil see retributive justice. This theme in reference to the villain is so widespread in the horror film genre as to render a list of specific examples woefully inadequate and highly arbitrary––knowing that the antagonist is going to suffer a righteous downfall in the final reel is arguably what enables the average viewer to stomach the prior 80 minutes. But oftentimes bit players see justice for their sins. Teenagers having pre-marital sex in the Friday the 13th films (and numerous other ‘80s slasher flicks) are brutally murdered postcoitally, just as those seeking sexual pleasure in Hellraiser meet untimely fates. The scientists responsible for creating the zombies in Resident Evil and Re-Animator meet unfortunate fates at the hand of their creation as punishment for their atrocities against nature. In all cases, the ultimate retribution is death ––which, of course, is why horror movies are so enjoyable: everything is simplified to extremes, and the bad guys always get it in the end. It is for the same reason that Christianity is so accessible. It rests on simple tenets: the good are granted life, and the wicked are banished to death. It bears mentioning, however, that horror films are absent of the Christlike compassion of forgiveness and as such may be viewed as containing a perversion of Christian ideas of retributive justice. But then again, as the villains of horror cinema are often embodiments of pure evil, any attempts by the protagonist to “turn the other cheek” would likely result in the dismemberment of said cheek. Conclusion We see many commonalities between Christianity and the horror film genre, centering around death––death as rebirth, death as passage to an afterlife and death as punishment. It would seem that horror cinema may be a unique lens through which to interpret the Christian theology or, at the very least, that Christian theology makes for an interesting interpretation of horror films. At best horror cinema reinforces ideas established by Christianity and at worst perverts them into something wholly twisted but oddly religious. Perhaps it merely offers a new language and frame of reference for the interpretation of Christian theology. Perhaps it could be said that Jesus was the Anti-Zombie, spreading life through the ingestion of his own flesh and blood. End Notes 1 Catechism of the Catholic Church: 2351. 2 Romans 6:23. 
2 . Death in Books and Film^
Death is a fascinating topic for both writers and filmmakers. Here are some intriguing books, movies and television shows regarding death: Books about Death: Reflection Editor Julie Depner recommends: The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold The Gonzaga Bulletin Advisor Susan English recommends: A Prayer for the City by Buzz Bissinger The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion Bodies in Motion and at Rest by Thomas Lynch Killings by Calvin Trillin Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell Spires Editor Frank Normandin recommends: A Death in the Family by James Agee Charter Editor Anne Pauw recommends: Kokoro by Natsume Soseki Monster by Naoki Urasawa Associate Director of Public Relations Peter Tormey recommends: On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Movies and Television about Death: Reflection Editor Julie Depner recommends: “Meet Joe Black,” directed by Martin Brest “Dead Like Me,” created by Bryan Fuller “Pushing Daisies,” created by Bryan Fuller Spires Editor Frank Normandin recommends: “The Big Chill,” directed by Lawrence Kasdan “Night of the Living Dead,” directed by George A. Romero Charter Editor Anne Pauw recommends: “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” directed by Tim Burton Student Publications Manager Joanne Shiosaki recommends: “The Lion King,” directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff “Moonstruck,” directed by Norman Jewison Spires Writer Dan Talevich recommends: “Weekend at Bernie’s,” directed by Ted Kotcheff
3 . Into the Abyss by Rob Joyce^
LINDSEY: Aaargh!! I’m freezing! She climbs up on the pilot’s seat, scrunching right up against the ceiling,keeping as much of herself as possible out of the frigid water. She’s shaking all over with the cold, and getting drenched from above by waterpouring in. LINDSEY: Okay, look, you swim to the rig and come back with another suit. BUD: Seven, eight minute swim each way…not enough time. Look at this…(the rate of flooding)…Time I get back you’ll be-- That stops the conversation for a second. About two feet of airspace left. Bud can’t believe what this is coming down to. They both stare at each other for a long moment. In this excerpt from James Cameron’s screen play, The Abyss, Bud and his estranged ex-wife Lindsey suddenly find themselves facing the terrifying prospect of one of them drowning at the bottom of the ocean. Their vehicle has just become disabled and is quickly flooding. Still in love with Lindsey, Bud’s first impulse is to take off the suit and sacrifice himself for her. Hard-headed Lindsey is not willing to concede that one of them must die. She fights with him to keep him from undoing the fittings on his suit, screaming: LINDSEY: Listen…will you listen to me for a second!? You’ve got the suit on and you’re a better swimmer than me. Right? So I got a plan… BUD: What’s the plan? LINDSEY: I drown, you tow me back to the rig–– BUD: WHAT KIND OF PLAN IS THAT!?? Lindsey’s gut-scared…shaking violently, her eyes wide. But she’s keeping it together. Thinking it out. Bud sees the bottomless pit opening to take her and he can barely think. LINDSEY: Look, this water is only a couple degrees above freezing. I drown. I go into deep hypothermia…my blood like icewater. I can maybe be revived after ten, fifteen minutes. You got all the stuff to do it on the rig. While there are hundreds of scenes in hundreds of movies where the hero saves somebody’s life, what makes this scene so unforgettable is the decision that Lindsey makes. She must die and trust her ex-husband to bring her back to life. She sees a chance that not one in a billion see in the last few seconds of their lives, a chance to go through death, to dive down into it, with the hope of cheating it in the end. BUD: Oh God, Lins…I–– LINDSEY: Tell me later. He grabs her head in both hands and pulls her mouth to his. They lock together in a fierce kiss, fueled by passion and terror…the naked realization of love hanging over the abyss of death. She breaks away at the last possible second and quickly pulls his helmet over his head, seats it down over the neck ring, and locks the bail-out handle, sealing it. Even with her head pressed up into the highest point of the ceiling, Lindsey’s mouth is barely above water. She gives a scared little laugh. LINDSEY: This is maybe not such a great plan, is it? She is half-paralyzed with the cold, shaking pathetically. Puts her face to the glass of his helmet. Seconds to go. LINDSEY: Hold me. Hold me, Bud…I’m so scared… He can’t hear her, but he reads her lips. They clutch each other desperately. The embrace lasts while the water rises over her mouth and nose. She starts to choke. Her hands grip his shoulders like claws. She bucks and thrashes. Bud holds her, and a scream tears loose from him, a pure agony of the soul. BUD: NOOOOO!!! The freezing seawater races into her lungs. Her fingers go slack, and her hands float lifelessly. In his 1986 thesis Engines of Creation, Eric Drexler prophesies the coming of nanotechnology. He paints a picture of a world where machines are so small they can’t be seen with a microscope, yet they do everything from restoring the ecology of the earth to making rocket engines so efficient and cheap we will each have our own. They are capable of going inside our bodies and fixing every cell for as long as we want to live. Because of the rapid increase in the rate of technological development, he sees these possibilities coming in the next 100 years or so. Ironically, according to Drexler’s estimates, humanity will take this exponential step forward in their evolutionary journey a generation too late for him to participate in it. But like Lindsey, Drexler is not willing to concede defeat. In a chapter titled “A Door to the Future,” he describes a way to cheat death by diving into it. A team of experts rushes into the room where the patient has just died. Within seconds of the heart stopping, they drain the body of its blood, replacing it with an ice cold, chemically neutral fluid which will preserve the intricate structure of the brain, nerve and other vital cells. The body temperature is lowered to the point where molecules become inert, and is kept in that state until the time nanotechnology can facilitate the reversal of the process, re-animating the body, and waking the individual into a world he or she never dreamed of. Moving from the near future to the ancient past, Job, of the Old Testament, faced the same horror Lindsey had to face. His children were all dead. Everything he had worked for was gone. His body was riddled with disease. He was looking into the same yawning black abyss spreading out before him, that un-relenting consumer of all living things, the gaping jaws of death. But Job had a response that defies all reason and explanation. The view of death in the surrounding Mediterranean cultures of his time was one of a hazy, shadowy, ghost-like existence in some kind of underworld. But against everything that logic can assume, against his cultural conditioning, against even his own instincts, generations before Moses and the prophets would live and die in the land, thousands of years before his redeemer would be born, he makes this incredible declaration: “For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” Yet in my flesh shall I see God. Most translations of the ancient text get this line wrong. It looks like a contradiction. How could he see God in his flesh if his flesh has been destroyed? The only possible way to understand this statement is to come to the stunning realization that Job, against all odds, believed that God was so good He would not leave Job dead. The God, who made the atoms, the trees, the rivers and the stars, would rebuild his body and waken him again on the other shore, out of the icy waters of the river Jordan. In the next scene we see Bud kneeling over the body of Lindsey surrounded by his crew with the crazy nicknames, holding medical equipment. BUD: Zap her again! Do it…DO IT! They do. And Bud works, feverishly. He locks his lips over hers and starts mouth-to-mouth. It is frantic, passionate…the kiss of life. BUD: Come on, breathe! He slaps her face, hard. Her head lolls. He smacks her the other way. LINDSEY’s Point Of View, from the bottom of the great well. The circle of faces and light rockets toward us in the blackness, as we soar upward from the pit. We see Bud yelling, but his voice is distant, wind-like. BUD: FIGHT!! The others look on in wonder as Bud wills this woman back. She starts to cough, weakly at first…then more violently as she draws air into her lungs. Bud crouches over her, rubbing her limbs…trying to re-establish circulation. It is like a difficult birth. Lindsey comes hacking and howling back into the world, wet and naked and fighting for breath. ON THE GROUP: Catfish, Hippy, One Night, Jammer, the others…they’re all grinning, crying, beaming…gazing at the miracle of her rebirth. ON BUD…tears are streaming down his face. BUD: (a whisper, fierce and harsh) You did it, ace. The abyss waits for each of us. Job is still there. Lindsey, if she were a real person, would only have escaped it temporarily. According to reliable sources, particularly one Thomas of first century Palestine, there is one who has returned from the icy waters of the Jordan, never to go back again. This Jesus made the same decision, to dive into death ultimately to defeat it. His resurrection, like the others we have looked at already, was a physical reanimation. Like Lindsey, He had a plan that involved trusting someone to pull Him out. And now He offers the same plan to us.
4 . Keeping the End in View by Eric Cunningham^
The Archbishop Theophilus, of holy memory, said when he came to die: You are a happy man, Abbot Arsenius, for you have always kept this hour before your eyes. ––Thomas Merton, Wisdom of the Desert While we all know that death is a part of life, pondering the inevitability of death is not the sort of thing that fills most of us with comfort or satisfaction. Pope Benedict XVI, in his recent encyclical on Christian Hope, Spe Salvi, looks at the question of death in the context of “eternal life.” Questioning whether people really even want eternal life, the pope recognizes that for many alive today, there is no concept of life other than earthly existence. For this reason, Christian faith becomes not the “substance of things hoped for,” but rather the substance of a belief system that forces us to come to grips with the unpleasant fact of mortality. Perhaps many people reject the faith today simply because they do not find the prospect of eternal life attractive. What they desire is not eternal life at all, but this present life, for which faith in eternal life seems something of an impediment. To continue living for ever—endlessly—appears more like a curse than a gift.1 Benedict follows this observation with a very down-to-earth argument for why eternal earthly existence would be such a curse. He writes, “…to live always, without end—this, all things considered, can only be monotonous and ultimately unbearable.”2 It is odd, but also very compelling to see the problem of death characterized in such a way as to make a long, monotonous life seem worse by comparison. The argument suggests that death is a kind of cure for a life that is apparently flawed from the start—a provisional life that has no inherent value, but whose quality might be linked to the individual’s capacity to stay entertained. In this sense, death is not “the” problem—life is—and the problem of life is that we really don’t know if it ends here, or if it actually does continue in some way after we pass over the threshold of death. It seems, then, that our fundamental ignorance about the meaning of life will always affect the way we view death. If we believe that there is no “eternal life,” i.e., the kind of life that would truly expose how provisional life-on-earth is, then death is welcome or unwelcome, depending on the quality of life as the living individual perceives it. If life is bad, then death is good, even to the point of suicide. If life is good, it must be extended at all costs, even to the point of artificially prolonging the existence of the biological organism, or for many people, desperately extending that dubious marker of vitality called “youth.” If we believe in an eternal life, then death would seem to be the gateway to that life, whatever it actually is. Death is not just the only exit from the highway of life, it is an exit that must be taken. To date, the possibility of earthly immortality has been limited to the out-of-time worlds of mythology, sci-fi and romance fiction, although a good many New Age adherents insist that the charismatic bon-vivant, Comte de St. Germain (1710-84) actually attained immortality by becoming an “ascended master.” Of course, if he is an “ascended” master he is technically not living an eternal life on earth. In recent years, Cambridge University geneticist Dr. Aubrey de Grey, director of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) project announced that science was on the verge of radically increasing human longevity. According to de Grey (a name that does not appear to be an anagram for “St. Germain,” although “Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence comes close) technologies exist that can repair molecular and cellular damage, allowing the human organism to attain an average age of somewhere “in the region of a few thousand years.”3 De Grey is confident that this breakthrough is happening now, proposing that “…the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already.”4 The question of why that would be necessary or desirable is a philosophical question, not a biological one. As a historian, I have noticed a strange correspondence between the way modern civilization views the issue of “life and death” and the way it views the issue of “world and end of world.” According to the modern understanding of history, the past and the present are linked in a cohesive narrative that moves relentlessly in the direction of a goal-less future. Since the Enlightenment, modern humanity has systematically swapped a worldview based on divine providence (including the eschatological consummation of the world) for a worldview based on the expansion of material progress through time, essentially plugging itself into a never-ending story. In such a world, which is to say, a world devoid both of ends and spiritual value, death is the ultimate marker of human worthlessness. In the pre-modern mental universe that contained the “end of the world” as an integral (if not determining) piece of human experience, death could be welcomed as a fractal foreshadowing of the world’s own consummation. Even as the world approached its end, so did all of our lives, and we went to our deaths confident in the knowledge that at the end of all things we would arise and take part in a glorified new creation. But, in a historical world that never ends, human death merely underscores the limited, puny quality of human experience against a vast cosmos and nature-machine that runs just as well, if not better, without us. So in addition to being a theological-philosophical problem, as well as a biological-medical problem, our fundamental wariness over the prospect of death is also a major world-historical problem. We can’t come to grips with the ends of our personal lives because we have become alienated from the ends of our historical world. This may be why the modern world can’t decide if it loves life or hates life. We apply our best technologies, not only to prolonging life but also to devising ingenious ways of destroying it. We apply our best philosophies, not only to articulating the inviolable sanctity of life but also to defending the inviolable sanctity of our freedom to take the lives of ourselves or others should those lives get in the way of some greater convenience. Being stuck, as we are, in a non-ending historical process, death seems to mock any attempt to create an authentic life. When Max Weber paraphrased Tolstoy saying that “for civilized man, death has no meaning,”5 this is what he meant. We don’t live purposefully with a view toward achieving fullness and dying “old and satiated with life” we just get old and die, either resentful of old age like Yeats’ pensioner or simply tired of the monotony of living. The greatest problem with this reality is that if death has no meaning, then life has no real purpose. It would seem then that the only way to recapture the authenticity of life is to recapture the dignity and great purpose of death, and arguably the best way to do that is to reinvent personhood as part and parcel of a historical process that reverently and awe-fully embraces its own end. If the ends of life and the world were reunited in the selfhood of the historical person, then human life would be the most vivid expression of the Creator, and death would be the most vivid emblem of the consummation of the world. St. Ignatius of Loyola maintained that we “must look only to the end for which [we] are created, that is, for the praise of God our Lord, and for the salvation of [our] soul.”6 The Spiritual Exercises and the entire Ignatian spiritual practice was based upon living this end, pursuing this end and leaving aside any provisional or subsidiary goods that did not assist in reaching this end. As Ignatius writes: Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. All other things on the face of the earth are created for man to help him fulfill the end for which he is created. From this it follows that man is to use things to the extent that they will help him to attain this end. Likewise he must rid himself of them in so far as they prevent him from attaining it.7 Arguably, the mental construction we call modern consciousness—this manufactured historical narrative that has no end—is posing the greatest obstacle to humanity’s attainment of the end for which it was created. Perhaps humanity would do well to “rid itself” of this consciousness and put something better in its place. It would take a great deal of spiritual courage to redefine the historical process from the inside out, by living the eschaton and making the end of history the substance of the end of our own lives. Nevertheless, if we are able to “practice resurrection” in our daily lives, we should be able to make our daily resurrection a piece of the transformation of the world. In an essay on Christian Humanism, Thomas Merton tells us that “eschatological Christian hope is inseparable from an incarnational involvement in the struggle of living and contemporary man.”8 If we can keep the end in view, i.e., appreciate the historical world’s eschatological ends as the ground of our own living struggle, we may succeed in restoring to our civilization the great meaning of death. Life and death will both be enriched when we re-connect ourselves to history and integrate its fulfillment into our own, offering up to the historical world the potent beauty of lives well lived and receiving in turn the solemn but delightful validation of deaths cheerfully embraced. End Notes 1 Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, Encyclical Letter On Christian Hope, art. 10, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/ documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html 2 Ibid. 3 Dr. Aubrey de Grey, quoted in BBC News online edition, 3 February, 2004 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/l/hi/uk/4003063.stm) 4 Ibid. 5 Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology, ed. Lawrence Cahoone (London: Blackwell, 2003), 128. 6 St. Ignatius of Loyola, “Introduction to making a choice of way of life,” The Spiritual Exercises, trans. Anthony Mottola (New York: Image Books, 1989), 82. 7 Ibid., 47. 8 Thomas Merton, Love and Living, ed. Naomi Burton Stone and Brother Patrick Hart (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1979), 156.
5 . Strange Aeons: The Quest to Cure Death by Aaron Brown^
At the turn of the 20th century, a white male born in the United States had a life expectancy of about 48 years. A century later, at the start of the 21st century, a child born into the same demographic had a life expectancy of about 75 years. In one hundred years, life expectancy shot up 27 years.1 Other demographic divisions made similarly impressive gains in life expectancy through the 20th century. This means that, roughly speaking, a person born on an arbitrary day in the 20th century could reasonably expect to live about three months longer than a person born on the same day the previous year. What makes this trend particularly interesting is not just how rapidly life expectancies have increased in the last century, however. Rather, what makes it interesting is that it marks the acceleration of what, up until very recently, had been a very slow trend. By best estimates, the life expectancy for a European (man or woman) born in the year 1000 was about 24 years.2 The accelerating rate of life expectancy increase, then, becomes clear when comparing the turn of the 11th century to the turn of the 20th and the turn of the 20th to the turn of the 21st. 11th Century: 24 20th century: 48. Time Passed: 900 years. Life Expectancy Gain: 24 years. 20th Century: 48 21st century: 75. Time Passed: 100 years. Life Expectancy Gain: 27 years. So, in the past one hundred years life expectancies have increased by a greater margin than they did in the 900 years leading up to the turn of the 20th century. What happens if we extrapolate or extend this trend over the next century? That is exactly the sort of question being asked by a community of researchers who are involved in studying what is sometimes known as Radical Life Extension. The basic idea behind Radical Life Extension is that, through a broad spectrum of medical investigation, researchers can figure out ways to increase healthy life span dramatically, if not indefinitely. If life expectancy can go from 24 to 74, then why not to 100? 200? 1000? It was this last number of 1000 which Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey predicted in a BBC News article.3 Furthermore, Dr. de Grey thinks that, thanks to the efforts of life extension researchers, such fantastic old ages might be in the grasp of some people already in advanced years. So close are these 1000 year life expectancies, according to de Grey, that “the first person to live to 1000 might be 60 already.”4 De Grey is not alone in thinking that such long lifespans are possible. A number of other scientists are engaged in similar research into life extension. One of the most publicly visible of these researchers is Ray Kurzweil, who has written a number of books on issues ranging from intelligent machines, to the social impacts of technology, to radical life extension. His book (written along with Terry Grossman) Fantastic Voyage details a great deal of the work being done in the field. Kurzweil is also one of the minds in the Radical Life Extension community who doesn’t think that life expectancy has an upper limit. Rather, Kurzweil believes that it is in principle possible to attain what is known as “clinical immortality”: a condition in which one can reasonably expect to survive any injury, contracted ailment or other affliction, regardless of how old they are. Furthermore, Kurzweil contends that the groundwork has already been laid and that it’s only a (brief) matter of time before death becomes, in essence, optional.5 One of Kurzweil’s simplest arguments is an extension of the trend shown in the introduction to this essay. To whit: in the 20th century, life expectancy increased by about three months for every calendar year. This is a much faster rate than it has ever increased by in the whole scope of human history. Indeed, the rate at which life expectancies are increasing seems to be, itself, speeding up. For every year that goes by, a person’s life expectancy itself increases by a year or more. While no sure indication that one would live forever (life expectancies are statistics, not perfect predictors), it would certainly seem to indicate that maybe “old age” is at least a moving marker, forever sliding further and further away from birth. Who knows, maybe some of the more extreme elements in the radical life extension crowd are right, and clinical immortality really is a possibility. Maybe in time science will make good on lines penned by the great H. P. Lovecraft (1890 – 1937), dying within a few months of the age one would expect from a man in his time almost a century ago: “That is not dead which can eternal lie / And with strange aeons even death may die.”6 End Notes 1 “Life Expectancy by Age, 1850-2004.” http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html Retrieved 2008.1.17. 2 Perry, Mark J. “Life Expectancy 1000-1999” http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2007/05/life-expectancy-1000-1999.html Retrieved 2008.1.17. 3 De Grey, Aubrey. “We Will Be Able to Live to 1,000”. BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4003063.stm. Retrieved 2008.1.18. 4 Ibid. 5 Kurzweil, Ray and Grossman, Terry. Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. New York: Plume Books. 2005. 6 Lovecraft, Howard Philips. “The Nameless City”. Available online at: http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thenamelesscity.htm Retrieved: 2008.1.18.
6 . Bosnia Croatia by David Colman^
7 . The Science of Death by Peter Pauw^
Death is a powerful force in society and has elicited an enormous body of literature, especially in philosophy and religion. And clichés about death abound––nothing is assured except death and taxes. While the inevitability of death is a cliché and the importance of death as a “stage of life” is often cited, it is still difficult to intuitively understand the necessity and importance of death in non-religious terms. Biologists have a somewhat different and much more materialistic perspective, but even this group has exhibited some major blind spots about the materialistic implications of death, as well as the opportunities implicit in a cycle of birth and death. A biological discussion of death requires some definitions. What kind of death are we talking about? Most biological death involves the destruction of microbes, in processes essential for evolution and nutrient cycling. That’s probably not the kind of death most people think about. And, when a bacteria divides by binary fission, has the original cell died? There is a transmission of molecular information in any process of reproduction, and a new bacterium contains about half of the DNA of the cell that divided––not half as much, but half of the actual DNA molecule of the parent cell. So, in any reproducing organism, defining death and birth is rather artificial in what is really a molecular continuum. But let’s proceed from a more human perspective. The death we all relate to is usually that of a much more complex structure––the somatic body of a sexually reproducing organism. Death in this sense can be viewed as an essential consequence of sexual reproduction. In the simplest sexually reproducing organisms, such as yeasts, sexual reproduction begins with the fusion of cells of two different mating types to form a diploid zygote. Meiosis of the zygote then results in four haploid vegetative cells, each of which has a set of genetic material derived in equal part from each of the original parental cells. The value of this process is that it results in increased genetic diversity in the population. Again, it is not particularly important if we regard meiosis of the zygote as resulting in its death. The continuity from parents to offspring remains. Rather, a conventional definition of death generally involves the fate of complex multicellular forms that are derived from a zygote in what are often referred to as “higher” organisms. While such forms are produced in plants and fungi, it is convenient and simpler to restrict the discussion here to animals. An animal can be thought as consisting of two types of cells, somatic cells and germ-line cells. Both types are derived from the zygote through mitosis and processes of development and differentiation. The germ-line are those cells that will ultimately undergo meiosis to form haploid sperm or eggs that in partnership will initiate the subsequent diploid generation. Somatic cells form everything else––muscle, nerve, epithelia and connective tissue responsible for protection, movement, behavior, etc. The point of sexual reproduction is the same as in yeast, though––to increase genetic diversity by combining and recombining different alleles of genes. The utility of the somatic body, in the simplest, most materialistic terms, is to increase the likelihood of the progression of the haploid gametes derived from germ-line cells to form that next diploid generation. So, if you don’t reproduce, you become nearly irrelevant from a biological perspective. Who would have thought that a career in biology would produce such a romantic point of view? The formation of the somatic body itself actually requires the death of many cells. Cell death has long been recognized as an event involved in shaping the development of organisms in events like the metamorphosis of a tadpole into a frog. But an important aspect of the somatic body of any multicellular diploid organism is that the individual somatic cells must subjugate their reproductive capacity, and in fact their very survival, to the needs of the whole organism (in maintaining that molecular continuity to the next generation). A loss of control over the growth and survival of cells is, of course, the principal cause of cancer, but in most cases cells that are not playing by the rules are induced to die. Cells of complex animals have redundant control pathways to prevent inappropriate growth. One important mechanism at work here is a process termed programmed cell death or “apoptosis.” While the need for such a pathway appears obvious in retrospect, the ubiquity of the evolutionarily conserved steps leading to programmed cell death was not recognized until fairly late in the twentieth century. An adequate overview of the topic is not possible in a short space, but it is clear that the process can be activated in response to cellular damage, to mutations leading to loss of growth control or to viral infection, as well as in normal developmental processes. Other familiar processes mediated by apoptosis include the development of the waterproof outer surface of the skin through the orderly death of “keratinocytes” and the separation of digits in human extremities, where failure results in a phenotype called syndactyly, characterized by “webbed” hands and/or feet. The cellular suicide involved in all of these examples is remarkably complete, with DNA in the cell being cut into fragments no larger than a couple hundred pairs of nucleotides. The destruction of genetic information insures the abberrant or unneeded cell does not infect any of its neighbors. But in what sense is death of the whole somatic body the “consequence of sexual reproduction,” as was asserted above? Does sexual reproduction directly require the death of the parental generation? Well, no. It is, in principle, easy to imagine organisms that in a consistent environment could be essentially immortal. Given adequate resources, there is no fundamental thermodynamic requirement that a somatic body would “wear out” in time. Unfortunately, this would give potential competitors, parasites and pathogens an infinite time to find weaknesses that could be exploited. This illustrates the role of evolution as the central organizing principle in biology. The environment is inherently finite in terms of both space and resources. Thus, reproduction itself makes death necessary because space and nutrients are limited. And sexual reproduction helps generate the diversity that allows for the evolution of better adapted populations through natural selection. Populations of organisms with the capacity to evolve have the ability to adapt to and exploit the environment in ways that static or non-evolving populations of organisms cannot. This principle of dynamic (that is, both reproduction and death are occurring), evolvable populations is actually recapitulated at multiple levels in successful complex organisms. For example, the “adaptive” arm of your immune system is dependent on this strategy and thus upon the regulated death of constituent cells. The immune response features components that are relatively static, the innate response, as well as an evolving, adaptive population of cells expressing a staggering level of diversity in their ability to recognize specific molecular patterns. The innate response depends on the recognition of distinctive conserved features of organisms that are potentially harmful ––such as components of the bacterial cell wall or appendages that are used for attachment or motility. That recognition is coupled to the activation of protective responses––phagocytosis, inflammation, enzyme activations, etc. Such a response, while effective, places a powerful selective pressure on populations of potential parasites. Microbes that have altered or camouflaged the features recognized by these mechanisms tend to survive and thus become more successful parasites. And populations of bacteria and other potential parasites can evolve much more quickly than those of potential hosts. So, how do complex organisms survive? The solution is to augment the recognition process to also recognize “non-self,” rather than just particular conserved structures. And the strategy for this is to produce evolvable populations of immune system cells––lymphocytes, that each recognize a different molecular structure, essentially at random. That population must then be shaped by selection. Cells that recognize “self” structure die through apoptosis. Cells that are specific for non-self are activated after binding to the foreign structure and divide to form a large population of cells that can eliminate the challenge. Even then, cell death is important in the continued function of the immune response. Again, the number of lymphocytes the system can contain is finite. Some time after activation of cells by non-self, most undergo “activation-induced cell death” (apoptosis again) allowing the system to continue to generate new populations of cells capable of recognizing the complete range of non-self. Some of the activated cells are retained to provide the system with a “memory” of the challenge so that activation can occur more rapidly if it appears again. That memory is why we seldom get a disease like chicken pox more than once. The population of lymphocytes continually evolves in response to exposure to different challenges, allowing immunity to the most frequently encountered ones, while still retaining the ability to respond to previously unencountered non-self. Highly regulated cell death is the principal tool that allows you to establish and maintain this finite adapted population. Cells that have not been selected and activated by contact with non-self are continually eliminated by apoptosis and replaced by more new cells with random specificity, ensuring the ability to recognize virtually any new challenge. Failure to maintain the diverse, unselected population means the next new thing will probably kill you. To oversimplify a bit, that is what occurs in AIDS, where the virus selectively kills a major subpopulation of lymphocytes. Populations of organisms, like lymphocytes of the immune system, have the ability to adapt to new environmental conditions because they are constantly changing––diversifying through mutation and recombination to produce forms that might be more “fit.” Here too, death shapes populations, and those that do not diversify sufficiently to meet new challenges are ultimately replaced by populations that evolve more efficiently. Because of the general nature of this overview, I am not attempting to provide references for any specific points. For readers that are interested in learning more, any introductory biology text would be a good resource. There are also numerous books written for general audiences. Books that I have recently read that I would recommend include Darwin in the Genome by Lynn Helena Caporale, The Way of the Cell by Franklin Harold and, for discussions of the immune system, Tending Adam’s Garden by Irun Cohen and Faith, Madness, and Spontaneous Human Combustion by Gerald Callahan.
8 . Cellular Suicide: The Story of Apoptosis by Elizabeth Miller^
Take a look at your feet. Seriously, take off your shoes and socks and look at your feet. Are you looking at them? Good. Now, according to the latest statistics (well, at least those most easily found on Google) the vast majority of you will see five clearly defined toes on each foot. The story behind this podalic phenomenon is one of righteous sacrifice and often brings a tear to my eye. You see, back when you were still renting womb space from your mommy your feet were actually webbed. That negative space between each of your little piggies is the result of some real heroism on the part of the cells that initially formed your prenatal flippers.1 These noble creatures sacrificed their lives by initiating an intracellular program of apoptosis––a type of cell death that is essentially…suicide. Now traditionally “suicide” as a term and an ethically interesting dilemma dredges up some negative images and inklings, but trust me, cellular suicide is very good for you, oh so very good for you. The nobility of these brave cells’ action actually goes beyond your normal limb development. Perhaps the most interesting facet of apoptosis is that the physical form of the resulting “corpse” can be easily engulfed by the cell’s neighbors and metabolized.2 Cellular cannibalism…isn’t it fantastic! But beyond the novelty of discussing apoptosis in terms of such deliciously taboo social realities, the aim of this essay is to not only introduce you to the basic process of apoptosis, but to also describe how understanding apoptosis biologically has had, and can have, tremendous impact on our understanding of human diseases–– especially cancer. When I was first introduced to the process of apoptosis and programmed cell death (PCD) in general, I was surprised. It seemed counter-intuitive that cells would “willingly” die––and that cell death could be strategic and beneficial to an organism. But upon further inspection PCD made some sense. In an attempt to be as cliché as possible I’ll remind you that extremism in all regards is just no good by reiterating the stunning “everything in moderation” slogan, with apologies to Ron Paul supporters and alcoholics. The fact of the matter is that living organisms benefit from and strive for an existence in balance. Homeostasis is not just a “favorable” state––it’s an essential one. You need yin and yang, Paula and Simon. So then why wouldn’t that also be the case within your cells? As cells grow and multiply within a complex organism, there must be a system in place to: 1) make room for the newly created cells and 2) get rid of cells or groups of cells that pose a threat to the health of the system. It is in these two regards that a program of apoptosis can step in to save the day. As far as what apoptosis looks like, when a cell is told to initiate its suicide program (via pathways discussed below) one of the first morphological changes that it undergoes is a shrinking and condensation of the entire cell. The reason for this condensation is that the cell’s cytoskeleton basically collapses inward. The cytoskeleton is responsible for providing the overall shape and strength of the cell’s surface as well as providing anchors where cells can attach to each other to form layers of tissue. So without the stability of the cytoskeleton, apoptotic cells can no longer hold their shape or connections to surrounding cells and thus will shrink. After collapse of the cytoskeleton, the cell’s nucleus becomes the next site of self-destruction. First, the nuclear membrane that encases the genetic material within the nucleus breaks down––causing the release of chromosomal DNA into the cytoplasm. Once released, the DNA itself condenses and then fragments, destroying the cell’s ability to carry out its necessary functions. While all of this occurs the surface of the cell starts to bleb or bubble––which not only looks super neato, but after the cell has died, creates (if large enough) small membrane-enclosed pieces of the dead cell called “apoptotic bodies.” These cell bits are then engulfed by the surrounding cells and converted into raw material for their own life processes.3 Sounds a bit cruel, but overall this process is an extremely painless and efficient one––not only does apoptosis occur relatively quickly, but it doesn’t require an immune response to clean up the mess. So there’s no inflammation of the tissue or “discomfort” to the organism. So give your cells a pat on the back and tell them “thanks.” They totally deserve it. Apoptosis can be triggered via two different pathways: the extrinsic and intrinsic pathways. The former begins with the binding of certain signaling proteins produced by neighboring cells with “death” receptors located on the outside of target cells. The physical consequences of the protein-receptor interaction allow for a series of internal reactions to occur that comprise the cascade of events leading to cell death. Put plainly––cohabiters of the area in which the cell is located tell it to kill itself, and it obeys. For all parties involved, preserving the health of the tissue or organ that they constitute is much more important than the life or death of a single cell. So then in terms of maintaining the health of the organism, cells don’t mess around. If you’re not fulfilling your job duties, you’re done…seriously. The intrinsic pathway, on the other hand, is pursued by cells entirely on their own without any signals from neighbors and mostly as the result of irreparable damage to the internal structures of cell.4 But one interesting fact to point out about the initiation of the intrinsic pathway of apoptosis is that, sometimes, NOT receiving signals from their neighbors telling them that they shouldn’t die will cause a cell to commit suicide.5 Yes, your cells are that needy! Without support from its friends, a cell just can’t go on––single cell life is just unbearable. But whichever pathway is used to initiate apoptosis the result is the same. Armed with knowledge of how apoptosis occurs and what sorts of signaling events can trigger it, many researchers of human diseases have begun looking at their work in very different ways. Dysfunctional apoptosis has been charged with involvement in autoimmune diseases, AIDS, neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, ALS and Huntington’s disease and cancer––a pretty weighty list of diseases to be influenced by the act of suicide.6,7 It is this wide range of applicability that makes research of apoptosis a very “popular” field of investigation as of late. The fact that apoptosis has also been found to be a largely conserved mechanism between species as distantly related to us as Caenorhabditis elegans (a microscopic worm) and Drosophila melanogaster (the fruit fly), makes research using these model organisms excitingly applicable to human research models.8 Combined, these make the study of apoptosis incredibly interesting and a pivotal part of future development of treatments and cures for diseases. To further impress on you how amazing the discovery of apoptosis was and is for disease research I’d like to describe further the role apoptosis has played in the research of cancer. Classically, the approach of scientists employed in cancer research has been centered on the phenomenon of over-proliferation––as cancer essentially occurs when cells just can’t stop themselves from dividing. But with the fairly recent increase in our understanding of apoptosis a new approach is being taken to researching cancer. “Apoptotic resistance” has been proposed as a mechanism of cancer cell propagation and tumor formation and may explain why traditional anti-cancer treatments like chemotherapy and irradiation aren’t effective in some cases––as the cancer cells become “indestructible” so-to-speak.9 This has inspired some to explore apoptosis as a therapy for cancer patients. But while the logic of such pursuits is easily seen, the creation of treatments suitable for humans will be difficult. It is not a problem of being able to synthetically “induce” apoptosis––there are several different agents that can be used for this purpose.10 The problem lies in creating a trigger for apoptosis that is specific enough to kill the cancer cells and not healthy ones.11 In order to do this, an intimate knowledge of which part of the apoptotic process is being disrupted in the cancer cell must be understood at the molecular level. Then that molecular deficiency can be the focus of treatment and not all of the body’s cells. Overall, apoptosis is a fascinating biological phenomenon and holds much promise for medical research. So stay tuned kids––someday one of these enthusiasts of apoptosis might just “cure” something. And that sounds good to me. End Notes 1 V. Zuzarte-Luıs, J.A. Montero, J. Rodriguez-Leon, R. Merino, J.C. Rodrı´guez-Rey, and J.M. Hurle. 2004. “A new role for BMP5 during limb development acting through the synergic activation of Smad and MAPK pathways.” Published in Developmental Biology 272: 39– 52. 2 Zahra Zakeri. 1998. “The study of cell death by the use of cellular and developmental models.” In When Cells Die: a comprehensive evaluation of apoptosis and programmed cell death. Edited by Richard A. Lockshin, Zahra Zakeri, and Jonathon L. Tilly. Published by Wiley-Liss Inc. New York, NY. (pp. 97-129). 3 Molecular Biology of the Cell 5th ed. B. Alberts, A. Johnson, J. Lewis, M. Raff, K. Roberts, P. Walter. Published by Garland Science: New York (2008). 4 Ibid. 5 “Apoptosis: Cell Death and Cancer.” 1997. Video produced by BBC Worldwide Americas, Inc. Copyrighted by Films for the Humanities and Sciences. 6 Jean Claude Ameisen. 1998. “The evolutionary origin and role of programmed cell death in single-celled organisms: a new view of executioners, mitochondria, host-pathogen interactions, and the role of death in the process of natural selection.” In When Cells Die: a comprehensive evaluation of apoptosis and programmed cell death. Edited by Richard A. Lockshin, Zahra Zakeri, and Jonathon L. Tilly. Published by Wiley-Liss Inc. New York, NY. (pp. 3-56). 7 B. Fadell and S. Orrenius. 2005. “Apoptosis: a basic biological phenomenon with wide-ranging implications in human disease.” Published in The Journal of Internal Medicine 258: 479–517. 8 Jean Claude Ameisen. 1998. “The evolutionary origin and role of programmed cell death in single-celled organisms: a new view of executioners, mitochondria, host-pathogen interactions, and the role of death in the process of natural selection.” In When Cells Die: a comprehensive evaluation of apoptosis and programmed cell death. Edited by Richard A. Lockshin, Zahra Zakeri, and Jonathon L. Tilly. Published by Wiley-Liss Inc. New York, NY. (pp. 3-56). 9 B. Fadeel and S. Orrenius. 2005. “Apoptosis: a basic biological phenomenon with wide-ranging implications in human disease.” Published in The Journal of Internal Medicine 258: 479–517. 10 Apoptosis, Cell Death and Cell Proliferation 3rd ed. Roche Applied Science (unknown date). 11 “Apoptosis: Cell Death and Cancer.” 1997. Video produced by BBC Worldwide Americas, Inc. Copyrighted by Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
9 . Death to Diversity by DaVina Hoyt^
Death to diversity. That is what I say! Death to diversity! Diversity should not stay! As someone who was hired to promote diversity on the university campus, I am sure that you are wondering why I would be so bold as to question this topic. My question to you would be: what prompted you to read this essay in the first place? Was it the topic of diversity, or the suggestion that it should die? Perhaps this title was encouraging to those who are tired of all the talk of diversity. Yes, death to it! Finally somebody sees things my way! Although I may never know your true motivation for reading this essay, it is apparent to me that either you found the title interesting enough to read it, or it was imposed on you as a requirement. The reason isn’t important; the fact that you are continuing to read it is. Maybe you, like many others, aren’t quite sure what the definition of diversity is. The definition of diversity is ever-changing, depending on the source that you acquire it from. What is your definition of diversity? Ask any five people you know and respect to tell you their definition of diversity. I am quite sure that each one of them will have a different interpretation. Perhaps a standard working definition would be helpful. According to the 2006 American Heritage Dictionary, diversity is defined as “the fact or quality of being diverse; difference; a point or respect in which things differ.” In the quietness of your soul answer this question: Do you believe it is important to promote diversity or should we call for the death of diversity? I urge you to be honest with yourself, don’t worry no one is watching. Whether you promote diversity or not is not the question, but being completely honest with yourself is. If you answered that we should promote the death of diversity, then I wholeheartedly agree. By promoting the death of diversity, I mean that we should promote the death of the traditional “dictionary” definitions of diversity and allow, celebrate, and promote the growth of a forward-looking definition of diversity given to us by Dr. Deryl G. Hunt. According to Hunt (1999), diversity is the starting point on a continuum leading to unity and hence to community. In the traditional understanding, diverse is defined as different from the norm, thus separate from the norm. Separation implies division, and like the proverbial divided house, a divided group cannot stand. In order for a people to stand, they must be structurally whole, coherent, and unified. Once the group is unified, its people are then in a position to begin the work of building community. As they build, they must take care to include everyone in the building work. Hunt argues, then, that the first step is a move from division. This is not a lateral move, but an upward leap of faith in the humanity we share. At this early step in the process of reaching community, people come to appreciate differences and not to judge differences as better or worse. This is known in universities and the general society as diversity. Devotees of diversity hope for community but cannot achieve it because the diverse groups often remain separated in mind and body. To reach community, the groups must unify around a common purpose. In the state of unity, old feelings of superiority and inferiority are shed and new views of togetherness are formed. It is only when people unify around a common theme that the foundation for true community can be built. The building blocks in a foundation of unity are consent (agreement), concord (peace), harmony (compatibility), understanding (comprehension), and oneness (same mind). This foundation stands in contrast to conquest, whose building blocks are seduction (bewitchment), domination (power), occupation (invasion), overthrow (destruction), and subjugation (servitude). As those committed to unity build, and others see their building work and desire to join them, the final step comes into play and that is community. Again, the focus is on inclusiveness. The builders send out a call for all to join in making life better, not for the few rich or privileged, but for all, so that rich and poor, privileged and underprivileged, may come out the better for having participated in the unified work with a loving, caring and sharing spirit. Death to diversity! That is what I say! Death of diversity when defined as division! Long live the differences that combine to make us One! References diversity. (n.d.). The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, (4th ed.). Retrieved December 12, 2007, from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/diversity Hoyt, D. (2006). The Ellison Executive Mentoring Inclusive Community Building Program (The Ellison Model): A program plan to assist low-income African American females achieve academic success. Unpublished master’s thesis, California State University Bakersfield, Bakersfield, California. Hunt, D. G., Howard, L. C. & Rice, C. M. (1997). Handbook on Building Inclusive Community. Miami: ICB Productions, Inc. Rice, C. M. & Hunt, D.G. (2004). The Ellison Unitary Model in Conflict Resolution Training. Peace and Conflict Studies, 11(2), 35-54. Retrieved December 13, 2007, from http://ricetrainingsolutions.com/pcsarticle.doc. Hunt, D. G. & Rice, L. A. (1999). Building the Inclusive Community: An Alternative Student Services Delivery System. Miami: ICB Productions, Inc. Rice, C.M. (2001). A Case Study of the Ellison Model’s Use of Mentoring as an Approach toward Inclusive Community Building. Dissertation published by ProQuest Information and Learning Company (UMI Number 3015938).
10 . Last Stop: Photos from Auschwitz-Birkenau by Mallory Ferland^
