Revolutionizing death, part II

The rebuttals got me thinking. Mr. Self Destruct brought up a good point: cemeteries are a reminder of our temporal nature, which interestingly enough, is a supporting point to my argument and I didn't even realize it. In my desire to have the world more comfortable with their own demise, I forgot that we have a fantastic tool out our disposal already, that tool being cemeteries.

Cemeteries do remind us of death, but my main complaint is they don't do it in a secular way. They are imposing areas, with tombs and crypts meant to intimidate and humble. Cemeteries, if we insist upon their existence, need to be places of intelligence, not emotion. Scaring people with glib tombstone quotes and merciless specters of death is not the way to help people rationalize. There is something very final and irrefutable about a cemetery; the stones do not offer many opportunities to question the unknown. So perhaps it's time to open up the world of death, a post-Morten Glasnost if you will. Here's what I propose:

Instead of the wasteful and frankly, overly emotional spaces we currently have, consolidate all death related industries into one building. Instead of hiding our dead away in hospices, give them a comfortable place where (and this is key) their family members can see them die.

I know that sounds horrible, but hear me out: Lewis Thomas talks about this a bit in his amazing book Lives of a cell, and I tend to agree. Even J.K. Rowling makes mention of it in Harry Potter number 6 (or 7, I don't know). As seemingly ridiculous those two references are in relation to each other, they both say some intelligent things about death to different audiences. Thomas says the reason we cannot deal with death in the modern world we live in is because of distance. Like Mr. Self Destruct said, people would never be able to face the embalming process, and that's a problem. Distancing ourselves from death and the processes we create to hide it is the reason philosophy has endless ammunition in this area. Familiarizing ourselves with death opens doors to understanding it. Allowing oneself to witness the end of a loved ones life would probably make it easier to deal with than sitting at their graveside. Death, like birth, is something we all have in common, and yet they're two things we hide due to some insane theological modesty.

So open up the death industry, and start society down the path to realizing it is not immortal, we will die, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I feel like I should explain that Harry Potter reference. Rowling created some horse critters named Thestrals in the books, that you could only see if you had seen someone die. While this makes for some hilarious flight scenes with people on invisible horses, it's also a good metaphor. When you witness death, you gain the ability to ride the horse of knowledge, and in the books it is no coincidence that these beasts have the ability to flawlessly navigate to any destination at speeds we cannot fathom. Rowling for all her idiocy and mediocre writing skills often surprises me with how deep she takes her metaphors. Her belief in a soul is painfully ridiculous to me, but she is at least more willing to deal with death than most people.