- Email: [email protected]
Essay: Death, the great taboo
Cheating death
The invisibles ■
ADVANCES in science, technology and medicine have deeply influenced attitudes to death, old age and ways of dealing with the dead. This has happened right across the world, though in different ways. Towards the end of the 19th century, the UK, for example, was one of the first western countries to foster modern cremation. With the industrial revolution in full swing, cremation fitted ideas of progress, and many people, especially doctors, saw it as a more hygienic alternative to leaving bodies to rot in the ground. The popularity of the practice grew, and by the mid-1960s it had overtaken burial as the dominant funeral form. At the turn of the 21st century, some 70 per cent of British dead were cremated (see Chart). There has been a much slower development in European countries with a strong Catholic history, such as Ireland and Italy, where church leaders have tended to view cremation as an expression of secularisation. Yet in the US, where the religious attachment to burial has also been strong, cremation is starting to become more popular. More recent technological advances are changing funeral practice in other respects. In the UK, cremated remains that would once
KI KA
'/,)
'/-)
'/.)
'//)
(&&) &
'&
(& )& *& +& ,& -& 9h[cWj_edhWj[i\eh(&&) f[hY[dj
48 | NewScientist | 13 October 2007
.&
have been buried are now sometimes used in more imaginative ways – they have even been converted into jewellery or shot into space – to celebrate a life and mark relationships with the dead. Meanwhile, increased concern about pollution and carbon emissions means cremation is no longer seen as such a healthy option. There is now a growing interest in woodland or “green” burial, in which there are no traditional coffins or cemeteries, and the corpse decays naturally into the soil. In Sweden, the option has emerged to freeze-dry a corpse, then shake it to pieces and shallowbury it until composted. And on the radical fringe, a few individuals in the US are choosing to have their bodies or even just their heads frozen, awaiting the day when it becomes possible to reverse a terminal illness, or grow a new body for the dead person’s brain. Such changes mean that there are fewer fixed memorials to those who have died, leaving the dead increasingly invisible to those left behind. Mourning customs have shifted in a similar direction, with many now wanting to get the funeral over with and “get back to normal” as fast as possible. Half a century ago, the British social anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer declared that death had replaced sex as a taboo topic of conversation. Is that still true? From one perspective Gorer’s trajectory seems to have gone into reverse. Talking about death has never been more popular, and death is an increasingly common theme for film and television, with fictional murder cases now chock-full of simulated corpses and post-mortem scenes. There are thousands of websites dealing with the subject, many sorts of memorials, growing numbers of journals and courses on death studies, adverts encouraging us to write wills or plan our own funerals, and hundreds of support groups and self-help books. Ideas and theories of grief have become fashionable, and grief counsellors are available to help the bereaved. There is also growing interest in doctor-assisted suicide
TINA MOHNS/AGE/SUPERSTOCK
We can choose to shun death, but it’s a choice that comes with consequences, says Douglas Davies
and euthanasia for terminally ill people who desire a managed end to their life. But in many ways, the Gorer taboo has been reinforced, especially when it comes to “real death” – contact with the actual dead and dying. A sizeable minority in the UK today choose not to see their own dead before their funeral, while in the US cosmetics are used to imbue the dead with the appearance of life. Distaste in many countries for showing real corpses on television or in public supports the idea that the dead are an unwelcome presence. It seems we are becoming increasingly familiar with screen-dead mannequins, but ever more distant from actual corpses. The on-screen dead are a remote, edited presence quite unlike the cold, still silence of one you have known and loved. This distancing from the dead is a unique
Profile Douglas Davies is an anthropologist and theologian at the University of Durham, UK. He is author of A Brief History of Death (Blackwell, 2004), and co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Cremation (Ashgate 2005).
www.newscientist.com
Turning the dead Travel writer and lecturer Hilary Bradt saw how the Merina and Betsileo people of central Madagascar deal with death The people of Madagascar believe the dead, or ancestors, are more powerful than the living, that death is a transition to something greater. This means they greatly respect old people, as they are nearly ancestors. When someone dies, they are dressed in their best white clothes for the period of mourning, then wrapped in a white silk shroud and placed in a family tomb – a large concrete box, often decoratively painted. About seven years later, they are exhumed in a big ceremony known as the famadihana, or turning of the bones. The bones are “turned” so that the loved ones can be remembered and because people think the ancestor might be cold and lonely – and in need of a big party. I was nervous about going into a tomb in case it stank of dead bodies, but it smelled like a cellar and looked like a supermarket but with corpses on the shelves, all labelled to prevent mix-ups. The dead were brought out on raffia mats and carried once around the tomb. Women trying to get pregnant touched the mats, believing that they bestow fertility. Eventually the corpses were re-wrapped in fresh shrouds by guys who were laughing, smoking and chatting. People were singing and dancing. When a husband and wife have decayed away to just bones, they combine the bones to make one ancestor.
“Tabooing death risks classifying old people as socially dead” and very recent element in human experience, and it is yet another effect of technological advance. Previously, many babies and younger adults died in the midst of ordinary populations, as they still do in some poor societies and in war zones. There were no professional funeral directors or morgues, the dead were left at home before their funeral, rather than removed to places reserved specially for corpses. As average lifespans have increased, death has come to be associated with very old age, and thus bracketed with that time of life younger people do not want to think about, with its connotations of senile old people abandoned in care homes. It is perfectly possible for the corpse of an old person to be moved from a nursing home or hospital to a funeral parlour and on to burial or cremation without family or friends seeing it. Many of the younger people in developed countries have never www.newscientist.com
encountered real death. In our consumerist society, we can avoid the dead altogether. This avoidance has consequences. It affects the old by segregating them – perhaps even keeping them away from smart public places. Combined with the role of death in fictional entertainment, this encourages a vague fear of death and the dead to pervade many minds. It is not a completely one-sided picture, however. People have become relatively familiar with cremated remains and many in the UK (much more than in the rest of Europe) now take these ashes home with them. A few even want increased contact with the bodies of their dead relatives – to see and handle them, and prepare them for their funeral – believing that this will help in overcoming their grief and their fear of the dead. So which way will we go now? We can choose to taboo the dead, and thereby condemn many old people to become classified as socially dead. Alternatively, we can accept our animal bodies in their changing phases of existence. The latter is the better choice because most of us will get old – and some very old. Old age is a relatively new gift. Exploring it may yet offer unknown discoveries. ●
Ebb and flow Diana Wear was at her father’s side when he died The nursing home rang me early one cold, dark December morning. My father had announced he was about to die and had called for me. When I arrived he was breathing very loudly. He was aware of me and tried to speak. I held his hand and washed his face and mouth. Over the next hour, he became calmer and his breathing much slower and quieter. He looked very grey. I was left alone with him and thought I’d be frightened, but I wasn’t. I watched his chest, and he began to miss a breath here and there, and then those missed breaths increased in number. It was like the life was ebbing gently away from him. His eyes and mouth were open all the time. Suddenly his skin turned from grey to blue-white and his eyes opened really wide – like he’d had a bit of a fright. He didn’t make a noise. Then he took a long, final, deep breath. I knew that was his last. The colour from his face drained until he was opaque, it was like someone had pulled a stopper out. But he looked peaceful, and completely at rest.
13 October 2007 | NewScientist | 49
The invisibles ■
ADVANCES in science, technology and medicine have deeply influenced attitudes to death, old age and ways of dealing with the dead. This has happened right across the world, though in different ways. Towards the end of the 19th century, the UK, for example, was one of the first western countries to foster modern cremation. With the industrial revolution in full swing, cremation fitted ideas of progress, and many people, especially doctors, saw it as a more hygienic alternative to leaving bodies to rot in the ground. The popularity of the practice grew, and by the mid-1960s it had overtaken burial as the dominant funeral form. At the turn of the 21st century, some 70 per cent of British dead were cremated (see Chart). There has been a much slower development in European countries with a strong Catholic history, such as Ireland and Italy, where church leaders have tended to view cremation as an expression of secularisation. Yet in the US, where the religious attachment to burial has also been strong, cremation is starting to become more popular. More recent technological advances are changing funeral practice in other respects. In the UK, cremated remains that would once
KI KA
'/,)
'/-)
'/.)
'//)
(&&) &
'&
(& )& *& +& ,& -& 9h[cWj_edhWj[i\eh(&&) f[hY[dj
48 | NewScientist | 13 October 2007
.&
have been buried are now sometimes used in more imaginative ways – they have even been converted into jewellery or shot into space – to celebrate a life and mark relationships with the dead. Meanwhile, increased concern about pollution and carbon emissions means cremation is no longer seen as such a healthy option. There is now a growing interest in woodland or “green” burial, in which there are no traditional coffins or cemeteries, and the corpse decays naturally into the soil. In Sweden, the option has emerged to freeze-dry a corpse, then shake it to pieces and shallowbury it until composted. And on the radical fringe, a few individuals in the US are choosing to have their bodies or even just their heads frozen, awaiting the day when it becomes possible to reverse a terminal illness, or grow a new body for the dead person’s brain. Such changes mean that there are fewer fixed memorials to those who have died, leaving the dead increasingly invisible to those left behind. Mourning customs have shifted in a similar direction, with many now wanting to get the funeral over with and “get back to normal” as fast as possible. Half a century ago, the British social anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer declared that death had replaced sex as a taboo topic of conversation. Is that still true? From one perspective Gorer’s trajectory seems to have gone into reverse. Talking about death has never been more popular, and death is an increasingly common theme for film and television, with fictional murder cases now chock-full of simulated corpses and post-mortem scenes. There are thousands of websites dealing with the subject, many sorts of memorials, growing numbers of journals and courses on death studies, adverts encouraging us to write wills or plan our own funerals, and hundreds of support groups and self-help books. Ideas and theories of grief have become fashionable, and grief counsellors are available to help the bereaved. There is also growing interest in doctor-assisted suicide
TINA MOHNS/AGE/SUPERSTOCK
We can choose to shun death, but it’s a choice that comes with consequences, says Douglas Davies
and euthanasia for terminally ill people who desire a managed end to their life. But in many ways, the Gorer taboo has been reinforced, especially when it comes to “real death” – contact with the actual dead and dying. A sizeable minority in the UK today choose not to see their own dead before their funeral, while in the US cosmetics are used to imbue the dead with the appearance of life. Distaste in many countries for showing real corpses on television or in public supports the idea that the dead are an unwelcome presence. It seems we are becoming increasingly familiar with screen-dead mannequins, but ever more distant from actual corpses. The on-screen dead are a remote, edited presence quite unlike the cold, still silence of one you have known and loved. This distancing from the dead is a unique
Profile Douglas Davies is an anthropologist and theologian at the University of Durham, UK. He is author of A Brief History of Death (Blackwell, 2004), and co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Cremation (Ashgate 2005).
www.newscientist.com
Turning the dead Travel writer and lecturer Hilary Bradt saw how the Merina and Betsileo people of central Madagascar deal with death The people of Madagascar believe the dead, or ancestors, are more powerful than the living, that death is a transition to something greater. This means they greatly respect old people, as they are nearly ancestors. When someone dies, they are dressed in their best white clothes for the period of mourning, then wrapped in a white silk shroud and placed in a family tomb – a large concrete box, often decoratively painted. About seven years later, they are exhumed in a big ceremony known as the famadihana, or turning of the bones. The bones are “turned” so that the loved ones can be remembered and because people think the ancestor might be cold and lonely – and in need of a big party. I was nervous about going into a tomb in case it stank of dead bodies, but it smelled like a cellar and looked like a supermarket but with corpses on the shelves, all labelled to prevent mix-ups. The dead were brought out on raffia mats and carried once around the tomb. Women trying to get pregnant touched the mats, believing that they bestow fertility. Eventually the corpses were re-wrapped in fresh shrouds by guys who were laughing, smoking and chatting. People were singing and dancing. When a husband and wife have decayed away to just bones, they combine the bones to make one ancestor.
“Tabooing death risks classifying old people as socially dead” and very recent element in human experience, and it is yet another effect of technological advance. Previously, many babies and younger adults died in the midst of ordinary populations, as they still do in some poor societies and in war zones. There were no professional funeral directors or morgues, the dead were left at home before their funeral, rather than removed to places reserved specially for corpses. As average lifespans have increased, death has come to be associated with very old age, and thus bracketed with that time of life younger people do not want to think about, with its connotations of senile old people abandoned in care homes. It is perfectly possible for the corpse of an old person to be moved from a nursing home or hospital to a funeral parlour and on to burial or cremation without family or friends seeing it. Many of the younger people in developed countries have never www.newscientist.com
encountered real death. In our consumerist society, we can avoid the dead altogether. This avoidance has consequences. It affects the old by segregating them – perhaps even keeping them away from smart public places. Combined with the role of death in fictional entertainment, this encourages a vague fear of death and the dead to pervade many minds. It is not a completely one-sided picture, however. People have become relatively familiar with cremated remains and many in the UK (much more than in the rest of Europe) now take these ashes home with them. A few even want increased contact with the bodies of their dead relatives – to see and handle them, and prepare them for their funeral – believing that this will help in overcoming their grief and their fear of the dead. So which way will we go now? We can choose to taboo the dead, and thereby condemn many old people to become classified as socially dead. Alternatively, we can accept our animal bodies in their changing phases of existence. The latter is the better choice because most of us will get old – and some very old. Old age is a relatively new gift. Exploring it may yet offer unknown discoveries. ●
Ebb and flow Diana Wear was at her father’s side when he died The nursing home rang me early one cold, dark December morning. My father had announced he was about to die and had called for me. When I arrived he was breathing very loudly. He was aware of me and tried to speak. I held his hand and washed his face and mouth. Over the next hour, he became calmer and his breathing much slower and quieter. He looked very grey. I was left alone with him and thought I’d be frightened, but I wasn’t. I watched his chest, and he began to miss a breath here and there, and then those missed breaths increased in number. It was like the life was ebbing gently away from him. His eyes and mouth were open all the time. Suddenly his skin turned from grey to blue-white and his eyes opened really wide – like he’d had a bit of a fright. He didn’t make a noise. Then he took a long, final, deep breath. I knew that was his last. The colour from his face drained until he was opaque, it was like someone had pulled a stopper out. But he looked peaceful, and completely at rest.
13 October 2007 | NewScientist | 49