The Idea:
Governments and organized religion exploit our ignorance and fear of
death, to everyone's disadvantage. It's time we faced down the
exploiters and faced up to death's simple truths.
Nowhere is our modern society's
squeamishness about telling the truth more bizarrely evident than in
how we deal with death. In nature, and in gatherer-hunter human
communities, death is witnessed briefly (a creature is killed and
devoured by another, and usually within hours virtually nothing of its
body remains) and accepted as part of the rhythm and pattern of life.
Animals that reach old age generally choose to go off by themselves to
die, perhaps to lessen the grief of their loved ones when that moment
comes. Most animals live rich emotional lives, and undoubtedly
experience grief over the death of a loved one, but except for animals
with exceptional memories (like elephants) that grief would appear to
be short-lived. There is no evolutionary (or any other) advantage to
dwelling on grief, so fast healing is selected for.
Most gatherer-hunter cultures do not lay a guilt trip on their members at the moment of death, acknowledging that for every
creature, both the body and the spirit are recycled in some way when we
die. Death is acknowledged as part of the cycle, and is not cause for
undue mourning or moralizing. Death, and the recently dead, are treated
with great respect, and survivors honour the dead not by endless
grieving but by living a full life.
Our culture takes a much more cowardly and perverse approach to
teaching us about death. On the one hand, our 'entertainment media'
bombard us with thousands, even millions of images of death, almost all
of them 'bad guys' who deserved
to die. This is a depraved way of numbing us to the importance and
sacred nature of life and the arbitrariness of death, and overlaying it
with a fake morality. When we witness thousands of fake deaths, almost
all 'deserved', how are we expected to react when we see one in real
life, generally undeserved?
We are simply incapable of handling it, or processing it. Our 'trained'
reaction is that it's unfair, wrong, that only the bad die, so this
must be some kind of terrible mistake. Instead of acceptance, then, we
respond with anger, we want vengeance, someone to blame.
Modern organized religions cruelly exploit death to extend their power
over their brainwashed members. If you lived a bad life, as assessed by
some 'higher judge', you are condemned to an eternity of pain and
anguish. If you fail to get last rites you cannot be admitted to
heaven. When someone bad dies, it is divine will, and everyone else who
misbehaves or doesn't abide by the one true religion had better watch
out. When someone good dies, it is because they were too good
for mere mortal humans, so they were called to a divine purpose in
heaven -- No chance for a 'put-down' of those left behind is ever
missed. And worst of all, we are told that all those who died are
eternally watching us, passing judgement on everything we do. Death is
not treated as an intrinsic part of the wondrous cycle of life, it is judgement day.
And religious services encourage us to wallow in grief: The body is
prettied up and displayed to a crowd who are encouraged to get as
worked up as possible in their grief while some priest explains the
'meaning' of death. Then people are asked to come up and tell stories
about the deceased until they break down. Finally, the body must be
buried intact, wasting valuable land for pomp and ritual and depriving
waiting patients and science of organs and cadavers that could save
other lives. This, according to organized religion, is how we 'respect'
the dead. Don't let these leeches get their hands on my body.
And if we dare try to end a life when medical science can possibly
extend it, even if that life is full of constant anguish and suffering,
even when life has effectively ended (as in the brain-dead), organized
religion and organized government rush in and prohibit us from doing so.
We may see millions of fake deaths on film, but our culture doesn't want us to see any real death.
Governments and the media are complicit in not allowing us to see the
deadly consequences of our wars and acts of violence: No pictures of
dead and dismembered Iraqi children lying in the rubble of aerial raids
can be shown to the home audience. Even pictures of flag-draped coffins
containing our own dead troops are forbidden. Those who have the
temerity to die outside of the hospital or the nursing home are rushed
to the morgue before anyone can see them.
The combination of this obsession, moralizing, denial, ignorance and
exploitation of death only serves to increase the fear and trauma we
feel when we actually encounter it. But if we just spent a short time
thinking critically about it, talking to one another about it, and
learning from nature, we could liberate ourselves from death's
exploiters and reduce its fear and trauma to us, and show a lot more
genuine respect for the dead in the process. If we did that, except for
those hopelessly under the control of organized religion, we would
probably do the following:
- Prepare a living will
for ourselves and encourage our loved ones to have one as well, to
ensure that no extraordinary or grotesque measures can be taken by
doctors or politicians or religious freaks to keep us alive against our
will.
- Complete an organ and full-body donor form
so that on our death our bodies are able to be used to make others'
lives better, and not become part of the human body landfill sites
called cemeteries.
- Work to expand right-to-die and right to assisted suicide legislation.
- Talk with friends and family (especially children) about
the simple truth of death and the folly of allowing it to be handled by
exploiters and fear-mongers. Strongly discourage loved-ones from
holding large, circus-like funeral and memorial events, and encourage
instead simple, short, private and individually-selected acts of
remembrance.
- Refuse to patronize films and television programs and video
games that trivialize and moralize death and violence (in action films,
it's usually the evil-doers that die, painfully; in horror films it's
usually the sexually promiscuous).
- Patronize media that refuse to censor (or self-censor)
information and images of death. War is only possible when the citizens
who accede to it cannot see its ghastly consequences. This isn't
sensationalism, it's telling the truth.
- Use our new and fearless knowledge of death to inspire us
to live our lives to the fullest, instead of allowing our ignorance of
it to be exploited to repress us.
Photo from The Memory Hole
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
