1. How is our fear of death misappropriated? Is it our fear of death that has lead us to hyperpreservation or our desire for death?
2. When was this magical time before we forgot how to die?

Since we were massaging the Baudrillard on your post about Obama’s press conference, I thought I would share this gem:

“Similarly, we reduce life and death to the opposition between them, reduce them to opposing terms or, in other word, to their ‘objective’ reality. Now neither life nor death can be exchanged for anything. They alternate and that is all there is to it. Like the seasons, like the elements that change into one another–fire, water, earth and air. Like colours: neither red nor blue can be exchanged; they are exchanged only in terms of wavelength. Otherwise, they are incomparable qualities. Or, rather, there is a duel between them: Death toys with life, life toys with death. Which of the two succumbs? Santislaw Lec reverses the terms here: it is not we who defend ourselves against death, it is death that defends itself against us: ‘Death resists us, but it gives in in the end’” (Lucidity Pact 187, 188).