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Lecture 1: Death and dying in contemporary society Agenda:

a) Investigate State of Death and Dying Today b) Investigate Historical Perspectivec) Debate / Discuss d) Video presentation “Crypts, Coffins, and Corpses” e) Discuss Phenomenological Journaling

Development of Current Attitudes to Death and Dying

•Setting a perspective:

• Illich states: “Image of death determines the prevalent concept of health”

• So what?

Phases and Stages

“Stage 1: Dance of the Dead” 15th century

✞ Prior to the 15th century death in hands of god (death is grim)

✞ During the 15th century move toward becoming part of life

✞ Readiness for societal change

Stage II: Dance of Death 16th -

17th century

“Dance represents a change from being a transition into the next world to accent being

put on this life”

Dance of Death (contd)

✞ The individual faces death alone

✞ Death then, becomes an adversary, whereas in earlier

medieval times a doctor /healer would not attempt to prolong life*

✞ Folk and superstitious practices were employed to

ensure a good death

✞ By end of 17th century corpses were no longer sacred.

✞ Push toward freedom

Stage III: Bourgeois death 17th - 18th century

• Industrial revolution creates employment and wealth

• Those who can afford it, now pay to “keep death away”

• Health of a nation becomes economic management (an overall

policy of government)

• Families begin to uphold ethics of good health

• Middle class employs doctors and society begins to give them

the power to tell when death will strike

Death is an “untimely event” for those who are both “healthy and old”

Forerunner

Forerunner

to medical

to medical carecare

Stage IV: Clinical Death 19th

century

• Death is a product of disease certified by the doctor

• Rise of the scientific doctor.

Stage V: Health as a Commodity 20th century

COmCOmmCommodity 20th

century

• Doctor in a struggle with

death

• Society deems it to be a

civil rite (prolong life)

• People eventually lose

their “spiritual capacity

to deal with death

Stage VI: Death in Intensive Care

middle of 20th century COmCOmmCommodity 20th

century • Critical condition in ICU

• Individual is protected against death by modern medicine

• We no longer can set scene for our own death (death rituals are medicalized)

• Death seen as failure for both doctors and nurses

• Preoccupation with living has repressed any meaningful preparation and acceptance of death

• Lose connection with understanding life

Death denying culture

OR...

Stage 7 = Social Death

Are we Returning to...

Stage 8Holistic concepts?

Understanding death as a rite of passage?

What does stage 8 look like?

• A return to holistic care

• Finding meaning in life and death

• Taking responsibilities for our death / dying rituals

Rituals in other Societies?

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/taboo/4600/Overview#tab-Videos/07780_00

Are we stuck at Level 7 in the

West?

• Looking at the Death, Dying and the Dead in Popular Culture?

•Or are we ready to embrace something new?

The Crux of Article 2!

• The West is frequently described as a death-denying society.

• Numerous scholars have observed that recent generations of

North Americans lack the firsthand familiarity with death and

dying that our ancestors had.

• Meanwhile, our popular media and many of our cultural

mediums appear to have an obsessive fascination with death,

dying, and the dead.

• Nowhere is this paradox more apparent than in our popular

culture. Television programming, movies, songs, the print media,

games, jokes, and even recreational activities are fraught with

thanatological content.

The Crux (contd)

•So what do folks think?

The Crux (contd)Is it that:

We are not a death denying culture?

or

We are a death denying culture, but our insulation from death causes us to crave some degree of information and insight concerning death, and we feed that craving through popular-culture depictions of death and dying.

or

Again we are death denying culture, but through displacement we socially neutralize our death anxiety?

The act of neutralization

• Reconceptualizes death into a form that stimulates something other than primordial terror. These phenomena may be considered fascinating / entertaining, depending on the social context (i.e., visit to Elvis Presley’s grave).

• Through detachment, (i.e., horror movies, video games) suspend belief about death. Enjoyment of this type of humor / entertainment per se requires us to laugh at our own mortality.

• Ultimately, North American folk may vest interest in popular culture to dilute our anxiety and desensitize death, so as digest death making it easier to live and transcend death.

Grave Digger: Dave Matthews

• Is this death

denying, morbid, or

is a sign of a stage

8?

•Or is just...

• Just - Rock -in Roll!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7wSefU2H9Q

Summing Up

• Looking at the past and present

Stages in the process of social death in ‘primitive societies’

Initial social status Period of transition New social status

Living Living personperson

Soul in Soul in LimboLimbo

Dead Dead ancestorancestor

Rituals markingbiological death Rituals of mourning Rituals of social death

Stages in the process of social death in modern ‘western societies’

Initial social status Period of transition New social status

Living Living personperson

Body and Soul in Body and Soul in LimboLimbo

Dead Dead ancestorancestor

Rituals of admission

hospitalization and / or

institutionalization

Anticipatory grief Social death

Hospital Hospital patientpatient

Biological death and rituals of mourning

Movie Time: Crypts, Coffins and

Corpses• Take notes

• Be prepared to Discuss

For Next Week... •Continue to journal

remember: 1 out of the Oxford book of Death and the 2nd related to the reading, lecture material, felt-sense, etc.

•Reading for this week...