“ Ecological awareness expands the context of life, it also enlarges who we are as a person. ”
My passion for human ecology was not a drive for closure—but rather the joy of endless openings and newfound connections. There is no final goal or perfect completion, only the expanding experience of being alive.
~ Richard J. Borden
The average American child, by age eighteen, is estimated to have seen eighteen thousand murders and two hundred thousand acts of violence on television. The “death play” of popular video games is accelerating these numbers to ever-higher levels.
Death is universal. The rituals associated with it, however, vary substantially—and are greatly influenced by their religious and cultural context.
It may be said, in broad-brush terms, that the primary purpose of life is the continuation of life. A deep program for survival and reproduction underwrites the complex cycles of life, in which death is the grand equalizer. There is, however, a peculiar novelty: human awareness of the cycle of life and a capacity to anticipate our own, individual death.
