Death And Death Essay

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,

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

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.