• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Are We Just Shit at Death?

Blank

.
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
1,201
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w6
Are We Just Shit at Death? | VICE | United States

In 2014, a survey by the spine-tinglingly titled Dying Matters Coalition discovered that 80 percent of people felt that death is an uncomfortable subject to discuss, and that only 21 percent of British adults had discussed their end of life wishes with another person. A similar survey in California found that 76% of respondents had not planned their end-of-life wishes, despite recognizing the importance of doing so.

I feel like this article hits right on the nose about some things. How many of you have had end-of-life discussions with your loved ones?

It's gotten me into thinking that in Western society (speaking as an American,) we don't do a great job at reconciling ourselves with death--we don't talk to our loved ones, we don't plan for it adequately, we just like to think "out of sight, out of mind." We sweep away our old people into nursing homes like dust under a rug and spend billions prolonging our suffering leading to the inevitable. Most people want to die in their homes, yet most spend the last few months of their lives linked up to expensive machines for weeks in a hospital before they exit the stage.

Makes me wonder how I'll end up. Will I make it into old age? If I do, would I have the wherewithal to stubbornly die in my own home and refuse medical treatment?
 

á´…eparted

passages
Joined
Jan 25, 2014
Messages
8,265
I have no interesting talking to my parents about it. I'll have a note on my computer that can be accessed. If I did talk about it they'd both get huffy over things (but very different things) and I'd ultimately see it as non-productive.

TBH I don't all that much care what happens when I am dead. I won't exist anymore, and therefore be unable to fret or be concerned with what's going on. As such, it's just kinda pointless to care beyond divving up personal belongings and such, which can easily be done on paper.

As for conditions, if I am paralyzed, suffer TBI, or are in anyway rendered insufficient to function more or less as I do now, I will not want to live, and I have instructions to take me somewhere for assisted scuicide, and I have explicitly pointed out to bar ALL of my family from having any say, because all of them will want to keep me alive for their own personal reasons. Nuh uh, that's not happening.
 

Beorn

Permabanned
Joined
Dec 10, 2008
Messages
5,005
Are We Just Shit at Death? | VICE | United States



I feel like this article hits right on the nose about some things. How many of you have had end-of-life discussions with your loved ones?

It's gotten me into thinking that in Western society (speaking as an American,) we don't do a great job at reconciling ourselves with death--we don't talk to our loved ones, we don't plan for it adequately, we just like to think "out of sight, out of mind." We sweep away our old people into nursing homes like dust under a rug and spend billions prolonging our suffering leading to the inevitable. Most people want to die in their homes, yet most spend the last few months of their lives linked up to expensive machines for weeks in a hospital before they exit the stage.

Makes me wonder how I'll end up. Will I make it into old age? If I do, would I have the wherewithal to stubbornly die in my own home and refuse medical treatment?

Remember that this is a fairly recent phenomenon. People used to be reminded of their dead relatives and their own mortality when they saw the church graveyard every Sunday.

There is a fascinating short story by Wendell Berry about a boy who "steals" his grandfather from the hospital and takes him to his old barn to die as he wished. I might try to dig it up later. I'm not a fan of prolonging the inevitable with pointless intervening treatment, but I'm also conscious of the fact that any direct act that leads to death is murder.
 

Luke O

Super Ape
Joined
Mar 25, 2015
Messages
1,729
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
954
I'm talking to my 5 year old daughter about death regularly. Her grandparents on mum's side had a dog that recently died, so had to explain that. Plus same grandparents are in their seventies, and said grandad has type 2 diabetes that he doesn't even try to manage (apart from insulin) and still puffs away on cigars, so there's a chance it could be any day soon that he dies.
 

Blank

.
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
1,201
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w6
yeah, I just started to wonder why do I have the grim reaper like my avatar picture if ...I don't like death very much?
I'm going to assume this is sarcasm. As such, I will rebut your comment with:

Death, skulls, and the grim reaper in a way have been fetishized. To me, it seems like while these things obviously represent death, the way people use these images is pretty far from actually representing death. Instead, people want to seem like a "badass" and use images that would shock others into taking them more seriously since few people would actively confront the concept of mortality. I mean, how often do you see someone with skull tattoos, a Tom Hardy shirt, or something of the like? Then how often do you think, "Holy shit, this sonuvagun is dangerous?" It's just a front. To be frank, I don't really take these people seriously. They just remind me of middle school atheists who shun religion just to piss off their parents.
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

Up the Wolves
Joined
Jul 24, 2008
Messages
19,449
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
I think the Irish and the Mexicans have a much healthier attitude towards death than Americans do. I'd love to expand on this, but I'm writing on my phone.
 

miss fortune

not to be trusted
Joined
Oct 4, 2007
Messages
20,589
Enneagram
827
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
I have a living will set out and have discussed it's terms with the people who I have chosen to make decisions on my behalf... not that I'm giving them many choices to make since I went out of my way to try and be as specific as possible as to what conditions I want to be left to die in and what conditions I want to be left living under. I've also already done up all of the paperwork for donating my body to science and turned it in... work has a good program for end of life preparation and all of that legal stuff, so I took advantage of it (as did the man since he's my benefits +1)

a coworker and I were discussing the warped view that the average american seems to have about death and funerals a while back while we were discussing that our families both tend to prefer funny eulogies and have big pitch in neighborhood parties after the funeral. it's a celebration of the fact that the person lived, not a mourning-fest of the fact that they're now dead... be happy you knew them! it's doubtful that they'd want everyone to be all depressed on their account

of course, my family has always had an odd love of hanging out in cemeteries and picnicking there and such anyway (to the point where I'm getting ready to schedule a cemetery tour with my dad's side of the family for the summertime!)... they're all countryfolk going back for centuries, so there's probably a stronger tie to birth and death when you live close to livestock :shrug:
 

Frosty

Poking the poodle
Joined
Apr 6, 2015
Messages
12,667
Instinctual Variant
sp
Honestly I've never been that scared of death. Even if there is no afterlife, we will go to the way things were before we existed. There were billions of years before me, and I don't remember any of them being particularly unpleasant, so why would the ones after me be scary?

I think that Americans are just likely on a whole to put off on thinking about death and living their lives, of course the occasional question comes up to them, but for the healthy person I really do not think that they let thoughts of death control their here and now.

But I do suppose that if people are going to wonder about anything they would wonder about death. I mean it is the mysterical place where EVERYONE is headed, no exceptions.
 

Frosty

Poking the poodle
Joined
Apr 6, 2015
Messages
12,667
Instinctual Variant
sp
As to how Americans choose to live out their last times on earth, I believe to each his own. I am sure that many operate out of a place of fear and decide to stay hooked up to machines whic might not be as comfortable as dying at home. But a positive is is that it might give loved ones more time to get anything they need to say off of their chest. It could give the dying person and family more time together. If someone were to choose to die at home they might have fewer days to spend with their family/friends and leave fewer things unresolved. I suppose we really do not plan for our deaths, but I think that anyway you go is going to have positives and negatives, and I don't think that you can plan for every possible way you could die. Set a broad plan, and then go out and have fun with the time you do have is what I say.
 

Doomkid

New member
Joined
Apr 2, 2014
Messages
160
I'm going to assume this is sarcasm. As such, I will rebut your comment with:

Death, skulls, and the grim reaper in a way have been fetishized. To me, it seems like while these things obviously represent death, the way people use these images is pretty far from actually representing death. Instead, people want to seem like a "badass" and use images that would shock others into taking them more seriously since few people would actively confront the concept of mortality. I mean, how often do you see someone with skull tattoos, a Tom Hardy shirt, or something of the like? Then how often do you think, "Holy shit, this sonuvagun is dangerous?" It's just a front. To be frank, I don't really take these people seriously. They just remind me of middle school atheists who shun religion just to piss off their parents.

It was't sarcasm...
 

Blank

.
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
1,201
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w6
My apologies then. One can't really tell tone via text very well, and it seemed likely that could have been sarcasm coming from someone with the monicker "Doomkid"
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

Up the Wolves
Joined
Jul 24, 2008
Messages
19,449
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
I want a sky burial.

I somehow doubt that'll happen in the US of A

A sky burial was another thing I should have mentioned. I've love to have that happen me after I die, but sadly, you are correct that such a thing would never fly in the U.S. People want to avoid thinking of men as meat as much as possible, and I think we're worse for it.

I've always been aware of my mortality. I remember thinking about the subject in elementary school. I think there's various childhood factors that make me extremely aware of the impermanence of it all, but I was contemplating the idea that death was just the end on summer vacations. The idea was terrifying to me at the time. Now it isn't. I was afraid that it would be like lying awake in blackness, but now I think that it won't be that bad. It'll just be nothing.

Mexican culture has death imagery all over the place, and it's often festive. It's coming from a place that's a little more hostile to this life than I would like, but still, there is no wallpapering of the concept. There isn't the attitude people have that if we don't talk about death, we'll somehow all live forever.

Then, the Irish have the wake. They don't act gloomy after a funeral; they get drunk and they celebrate. This seems more logical to me. What good does being morose do? Would the dead even want you to be morose? Why not celebrate that they even existed?

I still think about death a lot. I think it's a great way to put everything in perspective. Death makes equals of us all. It falls on the powerful and the weak, the rich and the poor. Death is democratic.
 
Top