The next step... or is that morbid?
I am studying death and dying in a class in school right now, and I am really enjoying it. Death is something that has always interested me, but never really frightened me. I am not obsessed with death on a scary, gothic level or anything, but I find it to be a captivating subject. The simple fact is that literally every single person will die at some point. There is no way to avoid it. Admitedly, some ways to go are better than others, but in the end, everyone will take their last breath.
In America, we tend to view death as a bad thing. We do all that we can to prolong life even in the face of terminal illness and, in some cases, even when it means much greater and much longer suffering for the patient. I love the American medical field and I think that our advances are fantastic, but sometimes I wonder when we begin to intervene too much (like someone in a coma on life support for years until the family runs out of money and they have to pull the plug). Everyone has different convictions about active and passive euthanasia, but all are grappling with the same issue... death.
Also in America, we tend to be in denial about death. We call it passing away" or we say that someone is "no longer with us." Evidenced in our language, is the fact that people have a tough time confronting the issue. Cultures that are Buddhist or Hindu (just 2 examples) don't view life as the end. It is simply one step in repeating process that is , hopefully, leading toward an end state of perfection. In some cultures, the dead are kept on display for days, or even kept in the family house instead of being burried in a secluded graveyard. I (being a Christian) have always seen death as one phase of life that people experience before the next life. It is sad for me when someone dies, because they are not physically with us in the same way, but they are certainly not just gone. I think that everyone goes through this transition in life, but I have never seen it as the end of life itself. I understand why death is scary for an athiest. It is a scary thought. (Muse has a song abut this. It is called thoughts of a dying atheist. Some of the lyrics are as follows...I know the moment's near and there is nothing we can do. Look through a faithless eye, are you afraid to die? It scares the hell out of me, and the end is all I can see...)
It seems strange to me that in general, our culture is incredibly phobic about something that everyone experiences. I was wondering today if part of the intense fear of death in America is rooted in the separation of church and state. We don't have, as a nation, a unified philosophy about what happens to someone after they die, so on a national level, it is nearly impossible to address. Thailand is a Buddhist country, and death is not feared the same way there. Everyone believes the same thing about it and can talk about it. Here in America it is taboo to discuss. You never really know what somebody else thinks about death and so you have to be careful about stepping on someone's religious toes with a discussion of your theological ideas of death. I love it that we have the freedom of speech, but I think that widespread discourd on this topic has caused it to be swept under the rug. I just like to peek under the rug every now and again to see what kind of dirt has piled up there.
I am an Anthropology major (and a Psych major) and sometimes I am frustrated by the fact that most social and cultural anthropologists try to say that there are not any universals, not even in development. I would argue that since literally everyone will experience death, that makes it universal. It is amazing to see the diversity with which people approach the topic, but still, everyone has to in some way. I am amazed , though, at the fear of death that prevails in our society.
17 Comments:
That's a really good point that we don't know what to say about death because there is no agreed upon place where people go. . . It's much easier "within the church" because you know you're going to see the person again, and you know that this shared belief is held by all.
Recently a friend of mine at work who is an agnostic, her father died in an accident, it was a shocker. I was surprised to see that the funeral service was very Christian, and she was the one who coordinated it. There are so many comforting verses in the Christian scriptures, and many of them were used in this service. It just showed me that death forces people to confront the deeper issues of life. . . and in many ways there are no athiests in foxholes.
By the way, I personally find the tradition of a viewing or a wake pretty gross, mostly because I would like to remember people as living, not their lifeless bodies. . . but that's just me.
Just for the record, I am not a Buddhist. I think that there are valuable things to be learned from a close observation of that religion, but I am not a Buddhist. Personally, an end state of perfection that is defined as nonexistance seems sad to me.
Yeah, that was me again. Freakin' name preset...
By they way, I've always thought it was strange lyrically that Muse said "look through a faithless eye" not "look through these faithless eyes." Are these the thoughts of a dying Cyclops athiest? Or does the athiest have one faithless eye and one faithfull eye?
By they way, I've always thought it was strange lyrically that Muse said "look through a faithless eye" not "look through these faithless eyes." Are these the thoughts of a dying Cyclops athiest? Or does the athiest have one faithless eye and one faithfull eye?
You pulled a guapo and published the same comment 2x. What's the deal? I don't know if this is the reason for the singular eye instead of eyes, but I have noticed that some of Muse's lyrics are phrased strangely. I am not sure if English is their second language and they don't fully have a grasp on it, or if they speak a different dialect of english. Either way, they do say some funny things sometimes, but they are awesome.
I've always been amazed by death; honetly I'm excited to die because I believe with all my heart this isn't all life is. But like you said, Collin, the topic is taboo in our culture. Even as a nursing student, the topic of death as a reality that everyone faces (not just "that patient") is avoided in my classes. When talking with freinds at school, I will be the one to mention "woah, what if that car didn't stop when I stepped in front of it?" (UD student privilege, but what if), and they will get a wierd look in their eyes and never fail to say the phrase "I try not to think about that." Anyway, last week one of my nursing professors encoorporated the importance of adressing their spirituality when comforting dying patients... I have no idea where she stands spiritually, but nevertheless through her experiences my professor told us that it is often the ONLY way dying people can overcome the pain and stress and terror of death. I am terrified for those people who will face death with eyes wide open to it's reality, and find no comfort in their spirituality... what else is there in that moment?
~Laura
Buddhism does not contradict the common senses:
"Everyone fears punishment; everyone fears death, just as you do. Therefore do not kill or cause to kill. Everyone fears punishment; everyone loves life, as you do. Therefore do not kill or cause to kill."
The Dhammapada, p. 111
"Him I call a brahmin who has put aside weapons and renounced violence toward all creatures. He neither kills nor helps others to kill."
The Dhammapada, p. 197
"Buddhism's most basic set of training rules for personal spiritual development known as the panca-sila or five precepts. These basic rules of good conduct are for all Buddhists, lay or ordained.
The very first, and arguably most important, precept is the training rule of abstaining from taking life. The four other training rules are: abstaining from taking what is not given; abstaining from sexual misconduct; abstaining from false speech; and abstaining from intoxicants.
Abstaining from the destruction of life encourages the development of compassion (karuna) for all beings. Moreover, Buddhism teaches that all sentient beings (sattva) are fundamentally good. All sentient beings possess what is known as Buddha-nature (buddhata). Having Buddha-nature means that all sentient beings can eventually realize enlightenment/awakening (bodhi) and thereby become Buddhas i.e., Awakened Ones."
(The American Journal of Jurisprudence
41 Am. J. Juris. 271
A Buddhist Perspective on the Death Penalty
Damien P. Horigan)
Buddhism does not contradict the common senses as in, "Death isn't bad." It seems to me that all religions deal with the common senses and the Buddhist notion of "nirvana" or escape from all common senses is a bad way of dealing with them. Common sense: Everyone knows that all is not right with the world. In fact, this is a basic logical fact that cannot be disagreed with. The second you say, "No, you're wrong... all is right in the world!" you are admitting that something is actually wrong in the world. I.e. evil exists. You cannot escape it and all you can do is seek something that will atone for it.
Hinduism, you have to be born into it. So it may be of little relevance to all those not born into it. I'm not sure what it specifically says with valuing life versus death, etc. I once asked a Hindu about another civilized distinction of human and animal and didn't get an answer that lends itself to civilization. Note that Hinduism's notions of a "great chain of being" are remarkably similar to ideas that justified slavery, another sort of caste system. They are only just now making steps out of this and some of them hate this Western influence. I also asked about attitudes towards sexual perversion and they said that sexual perversion is "a luxury we can't afford." Which is an interesting answer. Note that an increasingly decadent Americana thinks it can afford it... at least for now.
I think that one of the things that makes death so scary is that it's something that everyone experiences, but nobody lives to tell about. For real, it is something that will happen to you and me, one of the most significant steps or changes in life, yet nobody can tell us what it is like or what to expect.
I have beliefs about the "afterlife" namely, that I'll go to heaven, but who knows what's between here and there? It's like an inevitable giant leap in the dark. I have to agree with Laura about this, (that's my job afterall) it is a remarkably exciting prospect! It's going to be a remarkable adventure, and I know more or less how it's going to end up, so it's going to rock.
Laura (and Ian), You are right. It is a very exciting prospect. With such a huge transition in life, it would be difficult to not wonder what awaits on the other side, but it is just that wonder that causes people to fear.
MyNym, you bring up some great points about different religions and I am glad to see that you have done some original source reading of various religions. I think that a misunderstanding lies in your assumption that Thai Buddhism follows the same principals you mapped out as being core beliefs of all Buddhism. Thai Buddhism is, in fact, as different from continental Buddhism as Unitarianism is from Greek Orthodoxy, or as a pitbull is from a poodle. During the months I spent in Thailand I saw several bodies of dead individuals covered in gold dust and set up on display. When I inquired about them, there was no fear or saddness, just a cheerful explanation of the custom. The Buddhism mixed with Hinduism and other indigenous religions that makes up Thai Buddhism does indeed provide an explanation of death that takes much of the fear and stigma out of it.
My main point was that since the religion and the government are one and the same in that country, there is a commonly accepted and nationally taught theory of death that allows it to be out in the open and largely deviod of the fear that we place in it in America.
You also quoted several sources about the importance of not killing or depriving others of life. Those valuse exist in the culture I was describing, but that is something totally different than a fear of death. You responded to my statement as though I had said that Buddhists like to kill each other since they aren't afraid of death. That is not what I said, nor is it the case. Just because someone does not fear death does not necessarily mean that they think killing other people is good. I don't know why you thought I was implying that and I am sorry if there was any confusion in the way I phrased my statements. Thanks for your thoughts and comments.
Collin, my point was that Buddhism admits the common senses but then seeks to overcome them in "nirvana." But common senses originally served as rationales for ethical behavior. "Everyone has this common sense, therefore do this. But overcome the common senses in nirvana..." There is some confusion here so I'll try to expand.
Supposedly, in that culture the fear of death and the common sense that it is bad has been overcome. (But has it really...) So the people you talk to will not admit to a basic common sense on purpose, especially if they follow tradition and are seeking nirvana. But this doesn't really mean that they don't have the common senses that we do. This may be a papering over of common sense with some tradition that does not match it. The common senses have a way of peeking back through anyway, it happens to Darwinists (My beliefs are just the result of natural processes and the current biochemical state of my head... now listen to what I have to say.) postmodernists, (Everything is about power. You can't write a text that can't be deconstructed. Now, listen to what I am going to write about this.) etc., anyone who seeks ways of deny them. There is a lot of evidence that they still have this common sense. Which is evidence that they are rather far from nirvana, I suppose. It seems that dealing with the common senses in this way probably has fundamentally to do with the Buddhist notion of achieving nirvana. Separation of church and state is important in how it impacts adherence to Buddhism. Note how Buddhism seems to be on the decline as far as its impact on the state and public life, similar to how Christianity is on the decline here. You might be interested in studying Natural Law, which tries to seek out the common senses. Self evident truths, evident in the self, etc.
C.S. Lewis wrote a few chapters about "Natural Law," call it what you will, an excerpt:
"There are two reasons for saying [Natural Law] belongs to the same class as mathematics. The first is, as I said in the first chapter, that though there are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country and those of another, the differences are not really very great—not nearly so great as most people imagine—and you can recognise the same law running through them all: whereas mere conventions, like the rule of the road or the kind of clothes people wear, may differ to any extent. The other reason is this. When you think about these differences between the morality of one people and another, do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or worse than that of another? Have any of the changes been improvements? If not, then of course there could never be any moral progress. Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better. If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilised morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality. In fact, of course, we all do believe that some moralities are better than others. We do believe that some of the people who tried to change the moral ideas of their own age were what we would call Reformers or Pioneers—people who understood morality better than their neighbours did.
....The moment you say that one set of moral ideas
can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis
less true, there must be something—some Real Morality—for them to be true about."
(C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)
MyNym, Nice passage of C.S.Lewis. I love that book. It was assigned in a philosophy class at UD that I took. I was happy about that because I thought that it was an exceptionally good and logical presentation of the gosple for people to read and gain a better understanding of Christianity.
My point remains, however, that in a country where there is a government-sanctioned religion, the people of that country have a unified theory of death, and it is much easier to deal with. Even if fear remains, they can openly talk about it and agree on it. That is something that we lack in America.
Also, your mention of common senses that are given to us for adaptive reasons was interesting. I agree that we have those (remember my discussion of emotions? Fear is a fundamental emotion). Your explanation of why we need those common senses sounded remarkably similar to what Jason said in his reaction to torture in Iraq.
Collin, I don't know that America is any less a Christian culture than Thai culture is Buddhist. I.e. that these religions are separated from culture. Both religions are on the decline (i.e. more and more "separated" from public life) in their respective cultures. Note that if America separates Protestant Christianity from the culture then the very
notion of separation of church and state would tend to
goes along with it. So it can't be that separated yet.
As Christians living in the remnants of what once was a strong Christian culture I don't think that we tend to notice just how pervasive Christianity is in it. Perhaps a Thai would notice it more than we tend to.
I don't think that the common senses have a purely naturalisic/adaptive cause. This is what people who believe in a relativistic, "Do whatever you can get away with doing without causing harm." so-called standard believe. They believe if something doesn't cause physical harm then it isn't wrong. But this is not the type of creature we are. We know some things are wrong in themselves, as C.S. Lewis also argues.
I think often attempted explanation of the common senses must admit the spiritual as well as the physical. E.g. it seems that a New Age, vegetarian nudist seems to want to return to Eden but is in denial that Christ is the only way that the common sense of good and evil can be dealt with. I think this type of common sense is a spiritual issue. Of course, a Darwinist might say, "Well, they have this common sense because they were once animals that were herbivores and so these notion are in their brain somewhere." Somehow passed down from ancestors, etc., which may well contain some truth. But note that Darwinist explanations only make sense if you're willing to believe the whole fairytale of, "Once upon a time, there was a population of fish that flopped up on land, killing themselves enough times that Nature selected for them one leg, then another leg, then another leg, then another leg, then a lung.. until eventually they walked away." etc...
...and perhaps a New Age, vegetarian nudist would tend to be an animal rights activist. This is a pattern denial of the common senses and our knowledge of good and evil. It is and was (in Nazism) an attempted elimination of the "Jewish influence." What would be anathema to the Buddhists and Nature worshipping pagans etc.? It seems that it would be a God who demands that animals be cut in half and this sort of thing for hundreds of years as the result of wrath and justice that even with our puny sense of good and evil we can't comprehend. Instead of looking at this sort of thing and admitting that we have "blood on our hands," (Hey, sounds like a song.) ...that animals being slaughtered and so on is our responsibility, people used to living in denial will blame or deny God. Perhaps they will blame the Jews for "inventing" such a God. They will also think that the Jews were just being "sadists," etc., when nothing could be further from the truth given Sade's philosophy.
MyNym,
For your statementabout America being as christian as thailand to be true, George W Bush would have to lead our nation in worship, spiritual instruction, ritual sacrifice, communion, and seasonal religious rituals. The white house would also have to be the biggest and most important church in the nation. There would be statues of saints, public scripture readings 24/7, and a crusifix that W himself dressed, cleaned, worshiped, and swore loyalty to frequently. He would also have to be a direct intermediary between us and God. Not only that, but there would be laws about having shrines in every public property so that we please God. These would not be merely tradition (like christmas is a religious holiday) but they would have to be written and enforced law. Every school would be a christian school with scripture readings and spiritual teachings and every public official would have to seek the blessing of priests (and also have had formal religious training as well).
Trust me, If you had ever spent 5 minutes in Thailand, you wouldn't say what you did. The religion, government, and culture are inseperable. They are ways of life.
That being said, I do have to agree that as insiders, we take for granted the christianity that is still a part of our culture. It is a great exercise to spend time outside of our country, learning the ways of other cultures, and then return to America. Every time I do that, I see things about America that I never recognized until I could have a fraction of an outside view. And no matter what I do, I am familiar with this culture in a way that can never be fully escaped or bypassed. How different we must look to people who didn't grow up here.
O.K. I don't know what my problem is with this name preset. I apologise yet again.
Note that Christianity contains the notion of separation of church and state. "Render unto Ceasar..." in the New Testament and in the Old the Jewish prophet's harsh criticism of the state by a higher power than it because it is taken to be a "nation under God." I would argue that Protestant Christianity shapes this culture just as much as Buddhism shapes Thailand's. It is religion that always shapes "cult"ure. This fact is inescapable. Although given our "cult"ure I'm sure we'd all like to believe that we've escaped all forms of "cult," perhaps evidenced by the fact that the very word is now a stigma word. Like all revolutions Protestantism probably goes too far with its separation. And so the knowledge of a need for reformation becomes a cynicism with respect to all form and a separation from it... and so pretty much all art. (Because art is of or leads to cult/fanaticism.) So perhaps art tends to be Catholic. It can be observed historically that American liberal Protestantism degenerates to cynicism, which ultimately acts as an atheistic/agnostic solvent to itself. So the term "liberal" does not mean what it meant just a short time ago. It used to be that one could be a conservative liberal. This change was not the doing of talk radio just inventing a stigma word arbitrarily. As Protestantism acts as a sovlent to itself more and more the very terms taken up based on a Protestant religious rationale (Words taken to be based on the sacredness of the individual's relationship with God) such as "separation of church and state" come to support a totalitarian enforcement of intolerant secular atheism/agnosticism.
But back to the arts since that is what is probably important here. One second, by the way you're right that I don't know much about Thailand specifically. I know a few facts learned in passing from other issues and that is all. But I don't think your conclusion that it's a separation of religion and "cult"ure that is at issue is correct. But anyway, it would be interesting to compare the artists in general. As the result of an American Protestant cynicism with respect to all forms/"images" I suspect that the art of Thailand would at least take itself to refer to objective meaning while in contrast American art tends towards a denial of forms communicating any objective meaning. And notice the impact of this sort of cynicism where all forms (also known by the stigma word "stereotypes") must be broken down by sinister artists. So all "stereotype" must go... and the cynicism with respect to form/pattern/image also causes the notion that form is merely of the subject/person and "created" by them. I.e. all art is subjective/personal. So supposedly the artist can just "create" whatever image they want to without respect for the meaning of patterns that transcends them. So an artist in this culture is more likely to say things like, "I just walked past a big pile of dog poop and doing so made me contemplate the essential transcendent meaning of life!" Probably because this type of thing breaks down some patterns and so on. Since we all know that this isn't the type/pattern of things that really points to transcendence artists feels more elite because they supposedly have esoteric knowledge. Artists who can actually point to transcendence don't need to do this sort of thing to make themselves feel elite because their focus isn't on themselves. Ironically, this elitism only illustrates the common sense that this is the type/pattern of things that contrast with the essential but don't point to it. So if you saw "American Beauty" but didn't think that a plastic bag blowing around in the wind was a Beautiful Thing then you're not alone. After all, the effete artists who made the movie didn't think so either. The whole point is to toy with the common sense of beauty, after all, so it obviously exists in an objective way. But if you are prepared to question effete artists be prepared to be told, "We are the Bohemian artists, listen to us, commoner!" I'm reminded of some scientists who also seek to break down all patterns/species and the typology of Nature into "one." The answer of many scientists when confronted with common sense and reason is, "We are the science geeks, listen to us!" Identity politics and the claim of some inaccessible esoteric knowledge just like some artists.... so what is This that is being hidden away by so many scientists and artists?
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