Why is it that after eons of evolution we have no working approach to death? Why is it that death is not openly discussed without taboo? We are talking with great excitement about the birth of a child, and yet its birth is also pregnant with death as part of the cycle of life. So why are we so silent and so hostile to talking openly about death?

Death has been veiled with words. Seldom will you hear that someone actually died, but rather than one left or departed. In VietNam U.S soldiers had developed their own language of death, with terms like He Got Wasted or He had His Shit Blown Away. Even statistics contributed to veiling the fact of dying, as it is better to read KIA or MIA, while most of those missing in action were actually dead. But again statistics prevail with a comforting shroud.

Have you observed the flourishing business of death in our occidental developed countries? The Actors’ Studio should really hire those people, because from the clerk sitting behind his desk, to the man in charge of the whole show, it is almost ridiculous how affected they seem to be, and yet they are living of it. Acting performance is on par with Philip Seymour Hoffman as Brandt, a sycophant and loyal assistant to the Big Lebowski, who tries to please everyone.

Have you been in resuscitation rooms? This is a strange world of pale badly shaved medics, strong white lights, long corridors of white walls and floors, and where everything is looking so clinical. It is not hospital, with its crying people and stressed nurses, this is a space ship, the Enterprise after the crash. Every room has seen thousands of people die there. It is a slaughterhouse. And you feel like walking in a dream, with walls expanding into nothingness, as your steps are echoing, and you think, death is there at work. You feel its cold breath on your neck.

So why is it we have that problem with death? Catastrophes happen all the time. Car accidents. Fire. People falling in the stairs. But every time it is a tragedy played intimately. Even when the grief is intense, you don’t feel like sharing it. You actually feel guilty about the death of a beloved person, as if you had failed. Because our society is so much focusing on life we are terrorized to display that ultimate failure of quitting. We feel shocked, betrayed, angered, or guilty for relief. But all these feelings are selfish, not once do we think that the departed is enjoying a better world.

Again language has made amusing parallels. When you lose your job, you are being fired. And when you have a project, you will work hard to meet the deadline.

Claude Levy-Strauss has described societies with intimacy to death. Football games would be organized between the living and the dead, and victory always attributed to the latter. So-called primitive societies have a realistic approach to death, considering that it is better for the dead to remain where they are. What a mess it would be if they ventured to come back!

The day of the dead ones was the only day of freedom of expression to the native and black populations in the colonies of Spain and Portugal in the New World. As if the celebration of a carnival would exorcise the enslavement of whole populations.

In our societies, including in zones of war, like Afghanistan or Iraq, to name a few, we are not talking about dead people, but about casualties, as if the fact of being napalmed had something casual, and this is because we are so afraid of death, even if we are developing incredible weapons, that we don’t want to feel responsible. All these gadgets of missiles, bombs, drones, it is only about introducing distance between the operator of death, and the casualty.

There is a joke of an airplane about to crash and all the people onboard are crying, all but one. And it is a Jew. And the woman sitting next to him is angry and asking why he is not afraid because they are going to crash. And his answer is that, why should he be afraid, as the airplane is not his.

It is the same with death. Death is terrifying and we don’t want to talk about it, openly, cleanly, and humanly, because we think that there is responsibility. We prefer to think that it happens to people, oh bad luck, tough. But we don’t want to give meaning to death. Either it is too personal, or too impersonal. But it is never right, or within the order of normal life.

In India it is common sight to see a man lie himself down in front of a rushing train. Body parts are raining around, and nobody is even taking care. Dogs come. And after some time, nothing is left. Death is totally integrated into the daily process.

This is why our societies are so ill at ease with the question of suicide. Here is a person who is voluntarily putting an end to her life, and really assuming the responsibility for it. How revolting! How inhumane! How irresponsible! And we have plenty of words to describe those with a death wish. Mad. Lost. Because we feel it is like quitting that marvelous game of life, before the end of it. They are cheating.

So we have introduced religion to explain death. Science is not even sure about the legal definition of it. Is it when the heart is stopped, or the brain? And what about the measuring instruments? Is a human body hosting a soul, so what is death then, but a transformation? We are totally at a loss, and death is a subject so fundamental that it should be cleared in school by teachers. Children should learn about death. They would grow more responsible and more respectful. They would learn that fundamental lesson that parents are prone to fail or depart.

So strange it is to observe how mass media is perverting our understanding of death. And how perverse it is because people lose perspective of life when it is not projected on the larger canvas of death. We are hearing all day long words like harmony, balance, zero emission, and all these words are directly related to death. The very definition of a dead system is a system, which has reached the point of balance, so that there is no interchange between its components and the environment.

Of course, you will object by saying that death is not a funny subject at all. That we cannot spend our time thinking about it, if we don’t want to get mad. I would reply that there have been many occurrences of societies intimately integrating death with social life. Pharaohs had pyramids built for their death, lest they would be forgotten. Roman legionaries believed that their banners were gods, and were absolutely ready to forsake life, so that the banner, the spirit of the unit, would survive.

And what about our history of warfare? Never in the history of the world have we been so close to mass extinction today. With a push of a button, billions of human beings can be terminated. And we pretend to avert our eyes, no, death is really not a subject of discussion.

More confusing is the case of some tribes of Amazon who see death in the silent forests they are inhabiting. Death is primarily lack of or devoid of, food, shelter, warmth. It is something, which is totally contrary to human survivability. Something like the caverns described in the fiction of Terremer. A void, without light, warmth and even air. A place of nothingness.

I have been particularly impressed with the very bleak approach to death the Greek had. There is nothing romantic in the description of Achilles walking silently in that Nether-world. The Romans were even more pessimistic. Consider howÆneas of Troy does open the gate to the world of the dead, by slaughtering a sheep and waiting for the ghosts of famous dead Greek heroes to assemble around the pool of dark blood, and drink it, as price of their wisdom.

There is a very interesting story by Robert Erwin Howard about the myth of Akivasha, the Princess, so beautiful that she decided to seduce death in order to remain young and in love for ever. So that generations of lovers would pray for her help, as love and death are intimately entwined, something I would like to develop later on, on the basis of the famous Eros and Thanatos relationship.

So Akivasha everyone does believe in living in a wonderful world is in fact living under a pyramid, in a little room, and sharing her time with some not so hospitable forms of beings, the kind of which does transform any honest to God citizen into a palatable orgy of gore.

So that Akivasha is inspiring poets, and yet like the heroes of the Greek Iliad she is drinking the dark blood of the slaughtered sheep. So perhaps children have to be spared with that kind of stories. And yet, are all those children stories, not entirely stories of sexual fantasies and awfully cruel happenings?

There are two remarkable studies about death at work in our modern societies. One is “Rites of Spring” by Modris Eckstein, and it is a revealing analysis of how the Great War shaped modern society, in all sectors of social life, from lovemaking to artistic ballet. Another work I found fascinating is Juenger’s “Fire and Blood” where the author is describing how death has changed human nature as a consequence of trench warfare.

Frederic W. Erk
December 22-25, 2009 La Touche Belin-Riga.