People cry at funerals.
This is so obvious that it really doesn’t need any pointing out. But I’ve been having conversations with people about why we do that, and the more I hear about the current way of explaining it, the more offended I get at what I see as trivializing of grief.
The modern theory, with us in the popular understanding since about the 1970s, goes like this: You’re sad when someone dies because you’re feeling sorry for yourself – sorry that they won’t be in your life any more, sorry because you’ll miss them. You can’t logically be sorry for the dead person, because that person is gone and there’s no one to be sorry for (or they’re in the afterlife and not gone, so there’s no reason to be sorry, if that’s your belief). So you must actually be sorry for you.
I think that is a huge load of self-centered self-help-book crap.
When I have dealt with the death of someone I knew, I felt sad and sorry for the person who died. It never had anything to do with my own loss; I can get along on my own, that’s just how things are. I was sad that that person didn’t get the chance to live out his or her life, missed out on things, got cut short. Sad for the person, not for myself. And yes, I know that the person is gone and there’s no one there to feel sorry for. I know that consciously, anyway. But for a while, when someone dies, you feel different about it. It takes a while to adjust to the person not being there any more, and during that time you’re going to emotionally react as if they were not gone, because your emotional state hasn’t adjusted yet. How long is it before you stop unconsciously expecting the dead person to walk in the door? Certainly that lasts a lot longer than it takes to have a funeral. So even though you know consciously that the person is gone, your emotional sadness and sympathy for that person still seem to have an object.
The idea that sadness over a dead person is all based in selfishness, that we are only sad because of how that person’s death negatively affects us, takes one of the more noble and powerful human traits – empathy – and just wipes it out of consideration like a dry eraser on a whiteboard. It reduces empathy and genuine compassion for others to the self-centered whining of a child who has dropped her ice cream cone on the sidewalk. It cheapens us, paints us as small and mean and petty to the core. I think we’re better than that; not all the time, but sometimes, and more often at those times.
You might think this is all just conjecture, but I have two pieces of evidence in favor of my position: tearjerker movies and media tragedies, especially those involving children. People watch a tearjerker and cry when someone dies. Even grown men can be brought to tears if the movie is skillfully done. So where do these tears come from? The popular explanation that we cry for our own loss has no answer for the tearjerker movie. Not only is the dead movie character someone you’re not going to miss in your real life, it’s not even a real person at all. Similarly, when the news reports some child dead or missing, people are moved to sympathetic reactions in droves. For what? If grief were purely selfish, why would thousands of people care about a dead child whom they had never met and will never miss?
This has bothered me for a long time, ever since someone tried to explain away my grief over a dead friend this way in 1982. It offended me then and it offends me now, and I’ve had a long time to think about it in the intervening years. Every time I hear it, I want to retort: How dare you trivialize my sadness that way? How dare you try to take away one of the bonds that make us human, and replace it with glib Oprah self-esteem nonsense? Maybe you’re self-absorbed enough to make someone else’s death all about you, but not everyone can be so shallow. So speak for yourself and leave me out of it.
In case you’re wondering after reading this, no one close to me has recently died. But some people are getting close to it, so it’s been on my mind.
So, is John “Every man’s death diminisheth me” Donne an Oprah narcissist too? Or is there a choice between feeling a selfish solidarity with the deceased and not doing so, because one doesn’t feel that one is “part of Mankind”?
Good point. I think, often, people try to intellectualize the emotion, as if we are input machines. We just arent! Another point. Often, people just dont know WHAT to say to comfort you. They very often say the wrong thing when they try to make you feel better. “I’m sorry” is always best.
@Grinebiter – Hugo, Donne’s quote is not the kind of thing I mean, and you know it.
I always understood Donne to mean that this is true for him and everyone else (whether they realize it or not), thus every man’s death diminishes us all. Donne never claims this is the only cause of grief, as far as I know, and never implies that externally-directed sympathy or empathy is not genuine, as the self-esteem cult does.
Everyone grieves in their own way … and for their own reasons. There is no wrong or right way.
I too have been forced to face my own mortality and the mortality of those I love.
To my friends I say this: When dealing with a death that effects you … know that my shoulder is always available to cry or lean upon.
Yes, feeling empathy for one who is not has its own odd dissonance, Dwasifar.
Grief is complex. As much as I share your contempt for pop psychology, I’m loathe to restrict it too much. People should do whatever they need to in order to get on with living. Part of grief IS about the griever’s loss. I guess that is selfish in one sense, but from another perspective such grief also emphasizes the value of the now lost connection, how deeply the deceased touched ones life. I guess that’s a kind of empathy, albeit diachronic.
David hit a key point I think. In grief we also face our own mortality. Selfish? Sure, why not? But salutary and bracing as well.
Life is for the living. As an Atheist, I can’t pretend that loved ones who have died are watching and guiding us. But the memories, good and bad, are indelible in one’s mind. When I grieve for someone, it is for them, and my conviction that their life experience is over makes me sad for them, along with those whose lives they’ve impacted. It is completely noble to honor the dead, and celebrate their lives, and I feel that the wishes of the deceased should be respected, regardless of whom left behind is affronted by beliefs or the lack thereof that don’t coincide.
I was outraged to learn that the dead, even centuries back, can be “baptised” into the Mormon faith, for one, so as to achieve that specific salvation, regardless of how the decedent lived his/her life. This practice strikes me as offensive and degrading to any philosophy divergent from the specific Mormon one. I don’t mean to single out any specific faith, as I find them all preposterous, but this twisted facet strikes a nerve in me. I know I’ve strayed a bit from the topic here, but we are discussing our conduct regarding death.
Yep … one particular LDS ‘ward’ started baptising holocaust victims into the mormon faith … their justification: To give the victims a choice.
I’ve always been of the opinion that most organised religion is nothing more than a way for a group of people to get political power.
Catholic’s don’t want abortion or birth control so as to increase their numbers so they accumulate power over more people.
I think the mormon’s like to say that their religion is the largest in the world … and that may be … at least on paper and by their own accounting.
If course I could be wrong
Wow, David, that’s strong stuff coming from you. You’re usually a little more ambivalent.