Social Cultural changes in death
To begin to look at Death and the Social Cultural changes that have occurred over time one must contemplate how historically time itself has contributed to these changes. Over the past few centuries our species has endured many changes from Kings to governments, wars, extreme poverties, and different economical faces. However despite all these challenges our human species has continued to share two things in common. We are all born and we all die, the act of how we start and end that journey is where the separation begins.
Death in the earlier centuries was everywhere and not unexpected. The average life expectancy of humans varied,
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Life was such a fight to survive, “it is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change”. (Charles Darwin) Historians such as Phillips Aries have charted the changes in attitudes towards death over time, and it appears to change like all things do with what is socially acceptable during the present moment. Our ancestors were like us, trying to adapt to the environment and social issues as they unfolded in life. Aries talks about a “tamed death”, and “one’s own death” in the 12th to the 18th century. It is a period of time was as shown above death was everywhere and peoples values where to an understanding, and acceptance to it. They usually could feel it was time to die, and accordingly the bed chambers became a public domain with many people coming and paying their last respects and good byes. Children were welcomed and present, the local doctor or priest was available to help transition the dying soul to rest. Simple, to the point, and peaceful, perhaps people felt grateful to have been able to kiss their loved one good bye. A form of self-medication in grieving that was their closure for them. “This is why I have called this sort of household death a tamed death” (Aries …show more content…
Perhaps in part by the plague or other diseases such as syphilis, tuberculous and small pox that would reduce the population and made disposing of the body something that Doctors and churches had a pronounced say in. Cemeteries and tombs were no longer places to dance and sing but to keep the living out of. Individual names on a plaque, with their occupation “here lies so and so” was becoming more popular to view. A living will was only something the dying person whispered on his death bed to whom he leaves his belonging to. As we begin to enter the 18th century we see a shift once again more of a concern over isolating death and how one grieves. Wills became legal documents and the way in which one died became a private affair. Aries states that in the 18th century we see the shift “causing the initiative to pass from the dying man to his family- a family in which henceforth he would have complete confidence.” (p.89)
Tony Walter writes about death in the new age as a direct result from secularization,(the process of detaching from religion in social culture) with strong contributing factors that have led to this he calls Medicalization, privatization, individualism and finally expressivist.
Mortality, the subject of death, has been a curious topic to scholars, writers, and the common man. Each with their own opinion and beliefs. My personal belief is that one should accept mortality for what it is and not go against it.
Death. Only two things are certain in life, death, and taxes. As the Human condition is concerned death is directly related to mortality. Mortality is in a sense the focus of all human existence. In most cases, the human mind inadvertently neglects this concept. In the true depth of mortality is hidden behind a shroud of humor. In the inquisitive, the brain creates a logical fallacy to cope with the concept. The basis of the human condition is mortality. The main points of the human condition are birth, growth, emotionality, aspiration, conflict, and mortality. Birth, growth, and aspiration all stem from the concept of mortality.
She opens up her essay by saying “How surprised [Yorick] would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged, and neatly dressed transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture.”(Mitford) Funerals are meant to protect people from seeing what kind of toll death has on their loved one; to remove the scars of being human. Kubler-Ross touches on this when she says “The more we are making advancements in science, the more we seem to fear and deny the reality of death. How is this possible? We use euphemisms, we make the dead look as if they were asleep” (Kubler-Ross) which connects to her opinion that death is feared and people take responsibility when a loved one dies, even if they had no impact on their death. The eradication of the sense of death is the key reason why the deceased are embalmed. Clifton Bryant discusses that the reason why people want to have their dead embalmed is because of “death anxiety”, that it is the collective phrase for all the different and complex fears of death. He later states that death anxiety is why we tend to have “death denial” and why we tend to avoid it wholly. “Likewise, the use of metaphors or euphemisms that serve to soften the harshness of death (e.g., passed away, deceased, expired) clearly represents a culturally approved attempt to deny or camouflage death's impact on our daily lives.”(Bryant) This reflects well on the point Mitford makes, when she says “[The funeral director] put on a well-oiled performance in which the concept of death played no part whatsoever” (Mitford) Kubler-Ross feels that death being ever increasingly more taboo the more
As a natural phenomena that occurs frequently yet is still not completely understood, death has confounded and, to a certain degree, fascinated all of humanity. Since the dawn of our species, people have tried rationalize death by means of creating various religions and even attempted to conquer death, leading to great works of literature such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Cannibal Spell For King Unis.
Nuland, Sherwin. How we die: Reflections on life's final chapter. New Yord: Vintage Books, 1993. 140-63. Print.
This is an important concept to understand when reading these authors because in the back of their minds, they are comparing the way that people wanted to die at the time to the way Ariès defines the Good Death. For Ariès, the ideal death encompasses all aspects of the Tame Death: acceptance, last rites, and with knowledge of death’s imminence. For Rothman it is relatively similar, people strived to have accepted with their tuberculosis, faith in their salvation, make amends with family and friends, and death without pain. Faust describes the ideal death of Civil War soldiers by saying that it is best if the soldiers leave a note or fellow soldiers write to the families in place of the deceased, in order to bring some type of comfort. Also, Faust states the importance of the family having the body to bury. Orwell declares that the most ideal death is a sudden death, because death in a hospital is the worst way to die. Kaufman contends that the Good Death is a death where the patient has agency and can die before the line is crossed over into unnecessary prolongation of life. Finally, Stannard takes a completely different approach in that the Puritans consider the best death as one of complete uncertainty and anticipation of whether the dying is predetermined to heaven or hell. The main point is that during Ariès’ period of the Tame Death, the
In Sandy Hingston’s “The death of the funeral business”, the story motivates people into moving into different sets of values or beliefs that weren’t acquainted in their previous ideas. I feel the understanding of change in culture is motivating the author. The time that she is living a time and era in which we as the people search for many ways to have freedom. This includes freedom of choice from the restraints of our own minds such as culture and beliefs we are so accustomed to. Hingston is seeing as a change on how we perceive our body because of the time and era it occurs in. One of the the biggest change in history is the since 1884 which introduced the use cremation. This later rose in popularity overtime in which it finally reached
Death is not what everyone wants to think about when everything is going good, well we think its going good. This is how Ivan Ilyich felt until his last couple hours of life when all he could do was lay there and scream and regret it all. While we look at Guido from “Life is Beautiful”, and he knew all along what was going to happen to them but would use all the humor in his body to just put a smile on his sons face. It was in common meeting with Dr. Frasier the word entombment was brought up to show the detachment of the essential link that everything has with God. Each of these characters has a different way they pursue death and come to turns with it.
Death was a commonplace occurrence in the Victorian Age. "Three of every twenty babies died before their first birthday, and those who survived infancy had a life expectancy of only forty-two years" (Douglas) Death would take place most often in the home. When a death occurs, the entire house stops and takes up deep mourning. Windows are closed. Clocks are stopped. Mirrors were covered. Mirrors were covered because it was believed that a mirror, or reflective surface, could because trapped in it. Bodies would be stored in homes until they were buried. Poor families in their small houses would have to kept the dead in the same quarters as the living until the time of the funeral had arrived. Even children were not sheltered from the deaths around them. They were instructed at all ages on the meaning of death and its rituals. As the Industrial Revolution developed, Middle Class and proper etiquette were defined. Rules and regulations of what was proper was decided...
When the Black Death had finally ran it’s course on Western Europe in 1350, the population had been diminished by a great margin. The plague has reduced the whole worlds population from an approximate 450 million to about 370 million in the 14th century. Death was something that was very normal and expected at this point in time. There were hundreds upon thousands of ...
The Victorians had a precise view of the “perfect death” that was similar to societies current view of a good death. Most deaths occurred at home because hospitals would not admit extremely sick or dying patients if they knew medical care couldn’t help (Mitchel 160). The “perfect death” allowed a person to fade into death in the comfort of their own home, surrounded by their loved ones (Cedar Hill Cemetery). A dying person would be visited by all family and friends so they could say goodbye and offer advice for the future. Death was not feared by the Victorians (Cedar Hill Cemetery). This idea parallels most people’s current views of a good death; an unexpected death is feared by most people now as much as it was then. Once the “perfect death” occurred, families kept the body in their home before it was buried.
The concept of human mortality and how it is dealt with is dependent upon one’s society or culture. For it is the society that has great impact on the individual’s beliefs. Hence, it is also possible for other cultures to influence the people of a different culture on such comprehensions. The primary and traditional way men and women have made dying a less depressing and disturbing idea is though religion. Various religions offer the comforting conception of death as a begining for another life or perhaps a continuation for the former.
Death is the one great certainty in life. Some of us will die in ways out of our control, and most of us will be unaware of the moment of death itself. Still, death and dying well can be approached in a healthy way. Understanding that people differ in how they think about death and dying, and respecting those differences, can promote a peaceful death and a healthy manner of dying.
From the start of time, life and death have been the only two components living organisms can rely on. Every living organism from the coral in the sea to a human undergoes birth, a specialized life cycle and eventually death. Life is such a broad term with so many philosophical attachments from religion to evolution. Simply put, life is the ability to grow and change. Life separates plants and animals from things like water and rocks. For this paper I will focus on the different stages of human life, death and how the advancements in technology and medicine have directly affected both.
One thing that we often hear is that “death is just a part of life.” So often in our day and age do we hear people utter these words. However, death is far more significant and impactful than some would allege. True death is not merely a time when we cease to exist; it is an entombment, a mindset in which we are dead to this world. Throughout our lives, it is true that we can all be dead in one way or another, but it does not have to be that way. When we have our eyes opened to what death actually is, it is far easier to grasp what the true meaning of life is, and to embrace it. Often, we will come across individuals who are enveloped in death and others who are immersed in true life. The shadow of death and entombment lies upon some, encompassing