Who Is The Fountain Of Youth A Curse For America?

In America, people are changing their views on aging and the elderly. Some of the reasons that the attitudes are changing could be due to more elderly people are remaining in the work place longer, as opposed to retiring early. Riffkin (2014). And there is the fact that we baby boomers are living longer. Even though the U.S. only ranks 53rd with a life expectancy of 79. That’s an increase of one year since 2010. (“The World: Life Expectancy” 2016)

Time moves forward, and only forward. It’s a circle – we are born, raised, we live, then we die. But have you ever imagined what would happen if you were endowed with immortality? What if you could not die no matter how many decades had passed, while the world around you keeps changing and everyone else keeps aging? Would it be wonderful to live forever like that? Then you should take a look at Tuck Everlasting, a novel written by Natalie Babbitt in 1975 which focuses on the negative side of immortality.

This is greatly illustrated in the book "Monkey" where the Monkey King mentions his desire to live forever at numerous points.

Hawthorne’s short story “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” highlights four major vices that humanity as a whole struggles with. For each of the four vices there is an elderly character that has failed at life due to them. The first such character is Widow Wycherly; her vice is vanity, the next is Mr. Medbourne; his vice is greed, after him is Colonel Killigrew; his vice is lust, and finally Mr. Gascoigne; his vice is corruption. All four of these characters are invited into Dr. Heidegger’s lab to partake in an experiment. They are given water that is believed to be from the fountain of youth. They will be given another chance to right their wrongs and fix their vices. Upon consumption of the water, the four elderly people begin to act young again and return to their old ways of vanity, greed, lust, and corruption. Dr. Heidegger said that, “if the fountain gushed at

Immortality has been made into this ultimate goal. Literature and films have often painted immortality as a gift only given to the few who have proven themselves worthy of it. A life full of great wisdom, experience, and many other joys. In Journey to the West, it opens up with the birth of Monkey and follows him as he tries to achieve immortality. Monkey wants immortality and is willing to do anything to get it; thinking immortality will bring him a an enlightened life. After reading Journey to the West, I believe immortality should not be something that is prized as the ultimate gift. I think living an immortal life would be far worse than a mortal one and throughout this paper I will discuss why.

With a respectable argument against the idea of pharmaceutical advances eventually leading to immortality, Lexchin uses multiple forms of rhetoric, mostly logos, to sway the readers. He sets our deep fantasies of someday being able to live forever against our rational minds and backs up his case with sound logic and viable examples that leave us no doubts about human limitation.

be completely different and Americans would not be free and have the opportunities that they

Are Americans thinking about the world they are leaving behind for future generations? Some argue yes, but I disagree. If we are truly considerate of the future generations, global warming would not be a prominent issue. Americans are not seeking alternative sources for energy that do not omit harmful chemicals, thinning the ozone. It is hard to comprehend the damaging effects of our actions for the reason that they may not show for years. In order to better understand the harmful effects of numerous chemicals used in America and around the world, one must put his or herself in the shoes of a climatologist and study the changing climate. Data has proven countless times the climate is gradually getting warmer. This seemingly unimportant

Some individuals believe they are entitled to a life of ease and happiness. Few people are good and actually strive to become someone who makes the correct decisions and acts in an appropriate way. These people actually work hard in life to achieve their immortality. However, these people are rare. People in Greek myths and in real life are greedy, selfish and generally careless.

Therefore, Williams’ asserts the immortal life would be undesirable, or unlivable since we will inevitably exhaust our categorical desires (100).

This means that if I did live forever I could take many more risks in life. For example I could go base jumping and not worry about being killed. Or I could be bitten by a rattlesnake and not have to go to the

The concept that most clearly unites ?The Epic of Gilgamesh? and modern humanity is that immortality cannot be reached. Gilgamesh went through his entire quest, only to return with empty hands. He strove for immortality, and even almost had it, but in the end he was back where he started. He had just wasted a little more time of his ?mortal? life. Despite our advances through the centuries, humans still cannot achieve eternal life. Many teenagers, however, think that they are indestructible. They constantly take chances. Speeding, piercings, drugs, and alcohol are all things that teenagers constantly take risks with. They think, ?it would never happen to me,? when in reality no one is immortal. In the end, everyone dies, no matter what.

Another piece of vital evidence to support that the elixir is real, is that the four test subjects plan to find the “Fountain of Youth”. “They resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida, and quaff at morning, noon, and night, from the Fountain of Youth” (Hawthorne 5). This shows that the four test subjects want to feel young all the time. If the elixir was not real, they would not be so desperate to find the source. The change that they felt was so invigorating, that they want it all the time.

In Florida, there is a Ponce de León Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park dedicated to the area that León explored. There are many other places throughout Florida that claim to contain The Fountain of Youth but they are all just using this legend in order to make money. Additionally, the geographical discovery that came with the fountain back then is no longer applicable now. There is now technology that makes something like a reverse-aging fountain seem absurd. People back then did not have the scientific advances that could tell them that the fountain couldn’t exist so there was still mystery and hope that came along with it. Additionally, today modern companies capitalize on the idea of preserving youth through anti-aging products and cosmetics. Some even use the fountain directly in advertisements. The Fountain has also been used in multiple TV programs, namely Walt Disney’s Don’s Fountain of Youth which made the myth into a cartoon. Overall, the idea of the fountain today doesn’t represent the same things that it did back when the myth first

He sets out the number of guidance that meant to assist in establishing the building of which lifespan can become ‘eternal’. (Vitruvius, 1960) However, in modern, ever changing society, Vitruvian stance of permanence becomes partly invalid and problematic.