Eupraxsophy

Secular humanist, freethinker, progressive, and bibliophile. I love living life, learning things, and meeting people.

Death in the Modern Era

Modern society makes us ill-suited to handle death. Granted, it’s always been hard, but more so now than ever. In many ways, this is certainly a good thing, as it indicates that we’ve made death so rare, that it’s occurrence is unusual and jarring. We forget that death, among many other agonizing ordeals, was once extremely common - and remains so in many other parts of the world. 

Historically, parents often took little interest in their children until they reached a certain age, because more often than not they’d die early. It wasn’t uncommon for mothers to die at childbirth, hence the prevalence of step-mothers or orphans in old folk stories. The worst thing you could wish on a person in medieval times is that they’d die suddenly - because that was often the case. And so on and so forth. 

Now, death has been swept under the rug. Most people in our society go through much of their lives without ever coming face to face with it. When someone dies, the process is usually sanitized; most of us don’t really know what it entails. And everything moves at such a fast pace that you often feel pressured not to grieve for very long. 

There are just some organic thoughts on the matter. Please share your own observations.
  1. eupraxsophy posted this