Essential Question Cycle 17 Response 1

I’m mostly answering my personal essential question in my journal. However, now and then I’ll post one on my blog in addition to in my journal for various reasons. My essential question is “What is human immortality, and does it have any significance?”

Yesterday, I was trying to do my homework, but unfortunately got distracted. Actually, I got distracted several times, but this time it was by Garage Band, an application that let’s you write your own music. I started writing this little splurge thing until I decided that I should really finish my homework. But, before I could start working, I got distracted again, this time fortunately. Listening to my nameless splurge, I began to think about what I had just written. If I hadn’t gotten distracted, then the thing that I had just created wouldn’t even exist today. However, that’s not a big deal because no one even cares if it exists or not, frankly, not even me. But what about other songs and their existence? I wonder what the world would be like if Beethoven’s fifth didn’t exist today, or if all of Elvis Preseley’s work no longer existed. But is doesn’t only apply to music, it could apply to anything. What would the world be like without Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa? There is no doubt that the world would be a different place.

The following made me conclude that there are indeed certain things that humans hold onto long after the creator is gone. I would also have to say that it does hold some significance to our lives because our society would be very different without these works. These creators to some extent are immortal. Their names will forever hold meaning in our society and will be associated with their work as well as the lives they led and the people they were. The question that bothers me now is whether this significance is really important. Significance by definition refers to importance, but does the significance hold a greater importance? The world would keep turning and humans would keep living if all of Da Vinci’s work was somehow destroyed and eventually forgotten. If we forget a historical being, we forget about our culture and our past, but are there greater reasons to remember? I’m still boggled to whether human immortality is highly significant or not.