On Comfort and Death
The Economist recently published an in-depth article on palliative care, that is to say, the issue of balancing human comfort with the existential conflict of staving off death at all costs.
It's been ages since I've even thought about the issue. I wish this article came out, or an article like it was shown to me, around high school. From 1997 to 2004 saw a period of death of quite a few family members, friends, and close acquaintances. It definitely felt meaningful at the time, and of course it was. However, time has softened the blow such that death doesn't feel as encompassing as before. It wasn't until I read this article that I remember how absurd and politicized death felt in the era of Terry Schiavo. I'm unclear as to whether that issue hasn't re-risen due to lack of euthanasia, or whether it normalized it enough that it was no longer given as much news. Either way, it was a civil rights fight not fully appreciated at the time and mostly forgotten today.
The United States especially seems to have a raging, angry focus on survival at all costs; or, in fact, the survival is made all the more important based on the difficulty level. Some terrible mixture of our Protestant flagellation and our capitalist workaholism that commits us to the abusive relationship we call The American Dream has lead to the sort of gut reaction against merely accepting a comfortable death instead of taking every option, however expensive and painful, in protracting mere existence.
This is a darker and more visceral side of the adage, "Americans always do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possibilities." In this though, as The Economist article investigates, Americans aren't unique. Humans tend to stave off death at all costs; it's Americans that merely add a patina of stress by treating death as a character flaw.
(Also I notice that the article takes some time to describe what sounds like a correlation between religious belief and dislike of talking frankly about how to make death comfortable and less traumatic. I would argue that even if the United States became more atheist, nevertheless they would retain their aggression against comfortable death because survivalism is the underlying cult religion of the nation.)
I tend to be suspicious of artists who focus on 'deaht' as their topic but it's struck me that perhaps there's something important I can explore there. I didn't think about it simply because, you know what?, life has been good. I've been focused on life. I'm not interested in death as a death wish or as an exploration of the 7 year trauma of my young adulthood.
What I'm interested in is pleasant death, and how communities can come together to honor it.
--PolarisDiB
It's been ages since I've even thought about the issue. I wish this article came out, or an article like it was shown to me, around high school. From 1997 to 2004 saw a period of death of quite a few family members, friends, and close acquaintances. It definitely felt meaningful at the time, and of course it was. However, time has softened the blow such that death doesn't feel as encompassing as before. It wasn't until I read this article that I remember how absurd and politicized death felt in the era of Terry Schiavo. I'm unclear as to whether that issue hasn't re-risen due to lack of euthanasia, or whether it normalized it enough that it was no longer given as much news. Either way, it was a civil rights fight not fully appreciated at the time and mostly forgotten today.
The United States especially seems to have a raging, angry focus on survival at all costs; or, in fact, the survival is made all the more important based on the difficulty level. Some terrible mixture of our Protestant flagellation and our capitalist workaholism that commits us to the abusive relationship we call The American Dream has lead to the sort of gut reaction against merely accepting a comfortable death instead of taking every option, however expensive and painful, in protracting mere existence.
This is a darker and more visceral side of the adage, "Americans always do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possibilities." In this though, as The Economist article investigates, Americans aren't unique. Humans tend to stave off death at all costs; it's Americans that merely add a patina of stress by treating death as a character flaw.
(Also I notice that the article takes some time to describe what sounds like a correlation between religious belief and dislike of talking frankly about how to make death comfortable and less traumatic. I would argue that even if the United States became more atheist, nevertheless they would retain their aggression against comfortable death because survivalism is the underlying cult religion of the nation.)
I tend to be suspicious of artists who focus on 'deaht' as their topic but it's struck me that perhaps there's something important I can explore there. I didn't think about it simply because, you know what?, life has been good. I've been focused on life. I'm not interested in death as a death wish or as an exploration of the 7 year trauma of my young adulthood.
What I'm interested in is pleasant death, and how communities can come together to honor it.
--PolarisDiB