Situation:
The majority of the class agreed the fear of death in America is increasing. The topic is rarely discussed at home. In fact, 50% of the students said it is rarely or never discussed, 39% said it is occasionally discussed, and only 11% said it is frequently discussed. Commercial cards sent to the bereaved rarely use the word "death" and instead substitute words such as "sympathy" and "gone to sleep". To describe death, euphemisms are resorted to such as "Called to God", "passed away", "the departed", "the deceased", etc. Now most of us live longer and see little death. It is very uncommon for a student to have witnessed a person dying, or to even have a terminally ill person in the same home. As a rule the dying are isolated in America. They are left to the specialists to handle in hospitals, nursing homes and adult homes.Students were asked on a survey if they thought death was a pleasant or unpleasant process. From that question, 39% thought of it as unpleasant and 31% regarded it as pleasant! One girl wrote, "[Death] is unpleasant because I am afraid of dying, but pleasant because I don't want to see the world destroyed."
"Death is an important part of life," states Yale's psychiatrist, Dr. Robert J. Lifton, "and denying death has grave psychological costs." He goes on to say, "Suppressing death limits our general feelings and vitality, and because of high technology and the search for youth, our society suppresses death more than any other in human history." He further suggested that death is much more manageable when it is part of our rituals. "However, we have not been close to death because of: hospital structures being what they are, and being distant when death is takes place. Children are often excluded, and we do not generally take death and mourning too seriously." Justifying the latter, Dr. Lifton mentions how we downplay emotional expressions around death, funeral ritual, crying, and then try to pass over a death very quickly and lightly.
One of the most amazing things I've found is that courses in psychology avoid mentioning the fear of death. When one examines the index of most psychology books there is not one reference to it. Even psychiatry avoids the subject. You will find references to acrophobia, claustrophobia, kathisophobia (the fear of sitting down), but not thanatophobia. That is truly amazing because I believe most of the neurosis in America arises from our incapacity to accept death, or as a reaction to the fear of death. In fact, a basic anxiety is created over the question, "Do I have an authentic potentiality for being in this world?"
Maria H. Nagy, did extensive research on children of different ages regarding their thoughts on death. Although the divisions are not absolute, she found children up to 5 years old tend to think death is temporary and reversible. It is similar to sleep - you wake up or you get better. A typical reason to explain why a body doesn't move is only because it is in the coffin. Children between the ages of 5 and 9 tend to think of death as a person. Death can be a skeleton that comes to get bad children. Death can assume frightening characteristics. At 9 years old death is usually thought of as a process and it is inevitable. This is carried through the teenage and adult years. In some ways it depends upon the upbringing of the child. Inner city kids usually think of death as happening by a violent means, whereas others think of it as caused by more natural reasons such as old age.
Most of us are living with a huge burden. Assuming the major underlying cause is how parents treat the subject of death with their kids, what happens to a person in a society full of ignoring and avoiding death? One manner of handling it is repression. To put it "out of mind" will allow us to live superficial lives pretending death is on another level from ours. Of course, when it hits close to home it can be devastating - mourning can become pathological and difficult to overcome. Another technique is to transcend death. The idea would be to set up a huge immortality defense in order to prove death is inferior. Live today for tomorrow for it will always come! The constant challenge to death in order to build self-power and longevity becomes paramount. There is so much euphoria when seeming success takes place that it is a major driving force among us!
When asked if they would be able to tell people that they loved them, several students pointed out problems with that. Feeling that people will be around forever makes saying, "I love you" not that important. And, because it is phrased so infrequently reactions to the words might be misinterpreted. One girl said the words might make her male friend think she wanted to have sex with him. Another said his father would think he was in trouble, contemplating suicide, or seriously sick if he said, "I love you" to him. The element of embarrassment was mentioned. Lastly, one said if it was left unsaid you might live longer knowing you might say it later in life.
Historically not all cultures are, or were, preoccupied with avoiding death and/or the fear of it. The ancient Egyptians both loved life and welcomed death. The pharaohs were in a position to observe their mausoleum being constructed. (How would it fare if your friends began erecting a crypt next to your home to place you in after death?) The afterlife was looked forward to. The three states of existence: the living, the dead, and the gods were all equal and life-like. To pass into death was similar to changing a costume in the theater, and each of these states had the same needs such as food, sex, etc. In fact, the afterlife was considered so good some of the mummies, such as Pum II, had their penises held in the erect position with a stick. After the pharaoh died and was embalmed over a period of months, he was eventually entombed with the people that loved him. They were entombed alive and did not seem to mind! And, when one studies how the Egyptians fared in life they did much better psychologically than we do.
Problem:
In Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's book, On Death and Dying, she states the terminal patient "May cry for rest, peace, and dignity, but he will get infusions, transfusions, a heart machine, or tracheotomy if necessary. He may want one single person to stop for one single minute so that he can ask one single question - but he will get a dozen people around the clock, all busily preoccupied with his heart rate, pulse, electrocardiogram or pulmonary functions, his secretions or excretions, but not with him as a human being."our culture makes death quite distant
Teenagers have very strong feelings of omnipotence and immortality. The belief in self-death is at a low point in their lives. Before the age of 15 the belief one will die is stronger than in the 16 to 21 year olds, and as one approaches 40 it also increases at a slow, but steady rate. After 40 the belief rises much more rapidly as certain abilities decrease and as friends and acquaintances die. As one would expect, the fear of death is also at the low point between the years of 15 to 21. Because of that kids do the damnest things.
Generally parents are not doing a good job with their children regarding the subject of death. Although the overwhelming majority of the students say they would allow their children to participate in the funeral rituals (11% would not allow it), as adults they usually don't. (2008 Note: After attending funerals where relatives of Death Education students were involved they usually have - not force - their kids involved in most of the funeral ritual.) Many kids are sequestered and not allowed to go to the funeral home and/or the burial. Usually this is done without explanation. Much of this has to do with the uncomfortable feelings adults have about death and children. The common thought is that children cannot handle death. It is "too much for them."
Because adults show anxiety about death and tend to shield children from it, the kids must turn to other sources to learn what they can about the subject. Their education is distorted. Their knowledge is incomplete. Their sources are biased. Most people in America die of old age but kids learn about death from television, movies newspapers, and video games and those sources major in deaths of violence. Kids spend more time watching television and movies than they do in school. They see rapes, murders, body counts, crashes which amount to thousands of killings. Death in the media does not take on the element of reality, nor does it seem final. Without realizing death is final can cause a teenager to "experiment" with it through thrill-seeking and attempting suicide. Wise parents let their kids share grief and make death an important part of life.
As a rule, death is a process that can make a person very lonely in America. Very few would ever lead someone to believe they are about to die when they are not. Letting a person know that someone has a life-threatening disease usually causes avoidance or further contact with the doomed. This is encouraged by getting the dying away from the living by placing them outside the home, and then relegating their care to technicians, who in turn tend to treat the patient as a thing. Dying can be dehumanizing and lonely. The dying usually have very little right to their opinion (e.g., if they express a desire to commit suicide and it is ignored or arhues against), and the patient might be kept in the dark on what their life-threatening condition is all about!
Children are thirsty for knowledge. They constantly ask questions about everything they can think of and everything they interact with. But, as with sex-talk many years ago, kids cannot obtain factual information about death. There is a classic adult feeling that children cannot conceive of death in any form so it is better to not discuss it. If a kid starts asking questions about death to a parent the typical reply is, "Don't talk about that now.", "We're eating so why do you want to talk about that now?", "Go ask your father.", "What on Earth are you talking about that for?", or " That is not a subject that should be discussed at this time." Parents unwittingly do real damage to kids when they respond to death questions differently than other questions. They set the kids up from the earliest age for a very negative death attitude.
I was talking to a friend and he related a sad story supporting our obsession with immortality. The father wanted his daughter to go to the store and buy cherry-vanilla ice cream. She returned with vanilla instead because she was unable to find the cherry-vanilla. The father started an argument that led to him smacking the daughter. The daughter walked out. The wife, being upset over what happened, got into a fight with the father. The end result was the father and mother not speaking to each other for several days! If any of those people knew the other was about to die they would have never let it end that way. Can you imagine going to that extreme over an ice cream mix-up? The belief in immortality is a strong force!
Solutions?
The first way is to have someone in authority convince you that you are about to die. That would put a whole new outlook on what life is all about. I met a girl at a summer camp in Maine many years ago. She was very pretty and always had a smile on her face. She was the type of person you wanted to be with because she made you feel good. After talking with her one day I discovered she had been told she had a blood disease, such as leukemia, that would cause her death in less than a year. A second opinion confirmed the diagnosis. She made some abrupt behavioral changes based on her shattered immortality beliefs. After living with this knowledge for 6 or 7 months, she found out the problem had been wrongly diagnosed. The blood disease was completely curable. I met her about 3 or 4 years after this experience. I was appalled. How terrible to have to go through such a trauma. On the contrary, according to her, it was the best thing that ever happened. By suddenly facing the fact she was mortal, her life turned dramatically around and she appreciated every second of it more than ever!
The second way is that you must conceive of your death everyday. You must solve problems after considering what would happen to the solution if you were to die. For example, if you think your presence on the job is so critical the company would flounder without you, conceive of what really would happen if you died. If you find the company would really flounder (and that is hard to believe) it is quite unfair for you to put the business and its employees in such a tenuous position. On the other hand, if you come to realize the company would get along without you, it would make you a better leader. Solve problems as if you will die tomorrow. Make today important. Stop living for the future. Treat others as if you will be seeing them for the last time.
source : George D. Campbell, III, (1996). Exit Strategy ; A textbook on Death
and Dying. Retrieved September 8, 2015, from
http://www.deep-six.com/deathweb/page200.htm
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