ABSTRACT
We return finally to the synergy between life and death that constitutes human life as we know it. Because we are mortal, we know both intimacy and grief, both vulnerability and the strength to recover from loss. Knowledge of the certainty of our own death and of the death of those we love shapes our plans, hopes and fears. Of course it is possible to speculate about some technologically engineered human future in which ageing and death are postponed, or even abolished altogether (Post and Binstock 2004).1
But Baudrillard and Witwer are surely right in seeing this as a kind of nightmare:
