No, this post isn't about how I'm afraid of getting old and dying and how I never want to die. It's about the fact that these days death is such a taboo subject. Sure, we all have relatives who die and we all know that accidents and natural disasters happen every day, killing hundreds or thousands of people. But our exposure to that death is very limited. When I look at my 'experience' of death, I realise that I have been extremely sheltered. I'm 21 years old and have never been to a funeral. Granted when I was living on the other side of the world to my grandparents, it wasn't exactly easy to ship the entire family back at a moments notice when someone died. But for your average kid who grows up say in a European country with his or her family around, the occasional family funeral is probably all they know about death.
I've been 'lucky' enough to have seen more than that while living overseas - from a body wrapped in cloth floating down the Ganges to a body burning in a funeral pyre to the dead man I once saw on a train station platform with flies all over him while on a school trip.
What I don't understand is why people have this fear of showing death. Obviously it's not pleasant, but there's no point in hiding from it. Looking at the two most recent natural disasters in the world - the cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in Sichuan - there are potentially anywhere between 100,000 and 150,000 people who have lost their lives within the space of merely a few hours. Sure, we hear about the numbers of dead and we see images of rescue operations, but does that actually give us a true picture of the reality of the situation? When it comes down to it, a number is just a number, and rescue operations, as important as they are, are only one aspect of it. I believe it was Stalin who said "a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic". Not that I support his ideas, but he has a point. Consider this: what would affect you more, hearing that 50,000 people died in an earthquake, or seeing a picture of a single child killed by his school collapsing on him? Having lived in Asia for half my life and travelled through Sichuan and South-East Asia, I feel more connected to the disasters than your average European or American, who probably will just see the coverage on tv, say "that's terrible" and then go back to eating dinner.
I'm mentioning this because of some comments I saw here. People call the pictures offensive, but how can a picture portray anything but reality? They can be used to target certain emotions or to get a certain point across, but when it comes down to it, what you're seeing is real stuff folks. Personally I find the pictures compelling and well worth displaying.
It's definitely a cultural issue as well - in Western cultures I find people are far more sheltered from death. I have to say though that when it comes to that, I definitely side with the more Asian view, which although of course it varies from country to country, on the whole displays death but in a dignified and respectful manner.
I've been 'lucky' enough to have seen more than that while living overseas - from a body wrapped in cloth floating down the Ganges to a body burning in a funeral pyre to the dead man I once saw on a train station platform with flies all over him while on a school trip.
What I don't understand is why people have this fear of showing death. Obviously it's not pleasant, but there's no point in hiding from it. Looking at the two most recent natural disasters in the world - the cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in Sichuan - there are potentially anywhere between 100,000 and 150,000 people who have lost their lives within the space of merely a few hours. Sure, we hear about the numbers of dead and we see images of rescue operations, but does that actually give us a true picture of the reality of the situation? When it comes down to it, a number is just a number, and rescue operations, as important as they are, are only one aspect of it. I believe it was Stalin who said "a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic". Not that I support his ideas, but he has a point. Consider this: what would affect you more, hearing that 50,000 people died in an earthquake, or seeing a picture of a single child killed by his school collapsing on him? Having lived in Asia for half my life and travelled through Sichuan and South-East Asia, I feel more connected to the disasters than your average European or American, who probably will just see the coverage on tv, say "that's terrible" and then go back to eating dinner.
I'm mentioning this because of some comments I saw here. People call the pictures offensive, but how can a picture portray anything but reality? They can be used to target certain emotions or to get a certain point across, but when it comes down to it, what you're seeing is real stuff folks. Personally I find the pictures compelling and well worth displaying.
It's definitely a cultural issue as well - in Western cultures I find people are far more sheltered from death. I have to say though that when it comes to that, I definitely side with the more Asian view, which although of course it varies from country to country, on the whole displays death but in a dignified and respectful manner.
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