Tag Archives: Bad Death

Are Selfies Worth the Risk?

Posted on April 12, 2018 by | Leave a comment

What would you do for the perfect selfie?

The emergence of the front-facing camera has revolutionized the way we make memories and document our lives. We can’t go anywhere without documenting our latest vacation or trip to the most artsy place in town. If we don’t take a selfie, where we even there at all?

It turns out there have been a number of accidental deaths linked to this seemingly innocent activity. In 2016 alone there were more selfie related deaths than shark attacks.

  1. In 2015 a man reportedly died from a lightning strike that hit his selfie stick, electrocuting him and killing him.
  2. A 66 year old tourist fell backwards down the steps of the Taj Mahal in 2015. He sustained head trauma that led to his death. Witnesses stated that they saw him trying to execute a selfie before the man lost his balance.
  3. In the past few years there was a series of incidents in which young people trying to show off guns on live video accidentally shot themselves and died.

In our society there is the pressure to get the perfect selfie. This causes people to become less aware in their surroundings, opening the door for accidents to happen. Apps like Snapchat have instituted warnings to not take selfies while moving/driving in order to limit the amount of car crashes due to distracted driving. It seems that anything, even the most innocent of actions, when taken to the extreme or done in an unsafe environment can cause harm. The deaths of each of these individuals is tragic. The adage, with more power comes more responsibility, should hold true in our use of technology. As we are able to do more and more things due to technology, we must remember that are actions have consequences. It is wonderful that we can text and call people while we are on the go, but killing ourselves our someone else in a car accident because we were busy texting is not the way to embrace the strides we have made.

The #SelfieOlympics, a viral selfie phenomena a few years ago, shows how the art of the selfie has evolved. The goal was to take the craziest most elaborate photos, all while in the comfort of one’s bathroom. The use of props was encouraged, and the more one could defy gravity the better.  Eventhough social media crazes such as the #SelfieOlympics are super fun and relatively harmless, we should be mindful that actually living our lives is more important than capturing every second of them.

https://twitter.com/tyler1995ojeda/status/476224980120637440

The reality is that while trying to capture every moment of our lives, we are actually letting a lot of it slip past. We must ask ourselves is having the wildest selfie worth it? Maybe not if it means we are risking our lives or the lives of others.

Here’s a video of selfie fails that resulted in accidents, but nobody died. Enjoy.

**WARNING: LANGUAGE**

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNswL3iQp-I

Sources:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/death-by-selfie/

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/pictures/death-by-selfie-10-disturbing-stories-of-social-media-pics-gone-wrong-20160714/ultimate-selfie-gone-wrong-20160714

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Celebrating the Death of an Evil Person

Posted on March 28, 2018 by | 2 comments

In our society, when someone is on the brink of death it is common for the patient’s loved ones to ask for prayers. We pray for the person to overcome whatever it may be that is ailing them and hope they get back on their feet as soon as possible. If this person should die, it is natural for everyone who has been praying for them become sad. Following the death, a mourning period ensues with the goal of remembering the life of the patient and in a good amount of situations still wishing he or she were alive. But, is this always the case? Are there instances where we wholeheartedly hope that someone dies or celebrate instead of mourn when they do pass away?

I came across a video on Facebook recently, and I got thinking about whether it is morally wrong to celebrate an evil person’s death. This video I saw was from a MLB game featuring the Philadelphia Phillies vs the New York Mets in Philadelphia on May 1, 2001. May 1, 2001 was the day the U.S. successfully executed a mission to kill Osama bin Laden. The video showed the Phillies fans celebrating in the stadium upon learning through their phones and word of mouth about the death of the Bin Laden. At that point, the baseball game took a clear back seat, and the crowd was in a frenzy.

I do not have a clear opinion on whether it is morally “wrong” to celebrate an evil person’s death, but I am able to see both sides of the coin regarding this question. Technically speaking, one human life isn’t worth more than that of another human. However, we as a society are quick to label people as “good” or “bad” and these labels no doubt affect the value we place on people. With Bin Laden though, I think it is fairly safe to claim as a whole most people find him to be a person with evil intentions. As mentioned before, however; his life isn’t worth any less than a “good” person’s life, per se.

Although the majority of people thought similarly, obviously not everyone believed Bin Laden was an evil person. For example, his followers and other extremists certainly didn’t think of Bin Laden in a bad light, and most even saw him as a respected leader. Those who respected him definitely had a different reaction than the Phillies fans the day Bin Laden was killed. These questions can be applied to Adolf Hitler as well, a man who may be regarded as the evilest person in human history. As an American, I was proud to hear about Bin Laden’s death. I believe he was an evil person and that was the only just punishment for him. Ultimately, I think mourning or celebrating a person who is considered evil on the level of Bin Laden comes down to several factors. One of them is how you value a life. If you think that all lives are equal, then perhaps you may think it is wrong to mourn ANYONE’S death. Another factor is obviously your relationship to the person. All Americans were happy about Bin Laden’s death but as mentioned before the rest of Al-Qaeda was probably not. I do not advocate for either side, but I certainly do think this is a viable question that has several variants of both sides of the coin.

To see the atmosphere at the Phillies game, take a look at this video.

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Seppuku – Honorable Suicide

A staged version of the Japanese ritual suicide known as Seppuku or Hara-Kiri, circa 1885. The warrior in white plunges a knife into his belly, while his second stands behind him, ready to perform the decapitation. (Photo by Sean Sexton/Getty Images)

As an anime fan, one thing that I have grown to love and appreciate is the diversity and uniqueness of both modern and traditional Japanese culture. One practice that does stand out to me is the practice of the honorable death known as Seppuku.  Seppuku, death by self-disembowelment, became a ritualized and institutionalized form of suicide among the Samurai in Feudal Japan; and it was seen has a form of honor and courage reserved for the Samurai, the traditional Japanese military. I was interested in learning a little bit more about this practice especially with our recent class discussions of what constitutes a “good” death or a “bad” death.

The deaths of Minamoto Yorimasa, a poet, and Minamoto Tametono, a samurai, describes the earliest known acts of Seppuku. Seppuku, which describes a process of slicing the stomach open, was considered the most courageous, straightforward and bravest way to die because the stomach was considered to be where the human spirit resided. In these practices, witnesses would sit discreetly to the side while the samurai, dressed in white, would kneel on large white cushion. The Samurai would then inflict the fatal injury to his stomach and his Kaishakuin, second in command or assistant, would make sure the Samurai did not experience prolonged suffering and ensured a honorable death.

Seppuku’s adoration and inspiration in Japanese culture has remained even today and can be seen depicted in movies, plays, novels, anime and more. During WWII, in the Pacific Islands, American soldiers witness Japanese militia committing this ritual right before their very eyes. After losing the war, some men and women performed the ritual in order to serve as an apology to the Emperor of Japan.  But for people who are not Japanese the practice has been held with horrid fascination.I think this is because each individual has their own qualms about the topic of death and even more so suicide. So for me, it is interesting to see how understanding death is highly influenced by the culture, the society and the time and how they all play a major role in determining what constitutes a “good” or “bad” death.

References

http://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/honorable-death-samurai-and-suicide-feudal-japan-005822

Fusé, Toyomasa. “Suicide and culture in Japan: A study of seppuku as an institutionalized form of suicide.” Social Psychiatry 15.2 (1980): 57-63.

 

 

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Posted on January 30, 2017 by in ritual, suicide

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Two Massacres and No Funeral

Posted on October 20, 2013 by | 2 comments

We’ve been talking about in class how central the funeral is to the mourning process.  The funeral takes care of the body and gives mourners closure.  So what happens when there is no funeral?

This is unfortunately usually the case in war or genocide.  The dead are piled into mass graves or sometimes just left where they were killed.  Throughout history, the innocent have been massacred and their bodies unceremoniously abandoned.  One example is the recent archaeological discovery of a 5th century massacre in Sweden.  The remains show that the individuals experienced violent deaths and were left where they fell, since the dead were usually cremated during this time period.  Read more here:

http://www.archaeology.org/news/1369-131007-sweden-sandby-borg-massacre

Viking Mass Grave http://www.montysworldonline.com/2010/05/viking-mass-grave-excavated.html

Viking Mass Grave
http://www.montysworldonline.com/2010/05/viking-mass-grave-excavated.html

This regrettably still happens all over the world.  It happened during the Holocaust, the genocide in Bosnia and Serbia, and in Liberia.  The massacre in Liberia took place at a refugee camp twenty years ago, with the victims dumped into an unmarked mass grave.  Action is only being taken now to bring the perpetrators to justice.

http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-massacre-neglected-mass-grave-161230540.html

The victims of these massacres are not cared for after death by their loved ones.  They did not get the ceremony they wanted or that their beliefs mandated.  Their loved ones did not get to say good-bye to their deceased.  What happened in these communities? How did they deal with their loss?  How did their community not break down in the absence of this most important rite of passage?

I think that when something this terrible happens, the community just has to reset and move on.  Since the violent situation often makes it impossible to loved ones to go back and claim the bodies of their deceased, people just have to accept it and move on.  This sounds rather harsh but I think that this is the community’s survival mechanism.  If they tried to go back and claim the bodies for a funeral, it would take a very long time or they could be killed themselves.  They have to come to terms with the fact that they won’t be able to care for the body as they wish and they must honor them in some other way.

The lack of a funeral tends to lend itself to the building of a memorial monument, such as the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.  When individuals of a community can’t honor their own dead, the community honors them collectively, thus giving the mourners closure and the dead their respect.

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Freedom to Worship? Shooting of Pastor in Worship Service Causing Grief and Bereavement for All

Posted on October 2, 2013 by | 1 comment

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Is it true that religion, or the church is to be a “safe haven” for individuals, a place where they can go and experience freedom and peace? Not for this Louisiana congregation on September 29th, 2013, as Pastor Ronald J. Harris, Sr. of Tabernacle of Praise Worship Center was shot and killed in the middle of a worship service. This situation is disturbing not only because it is yet another case of gun violence, but because this is a horribly “bad” death, and social and moral lines have been crossed yet again. These questions that comes to mind is: is anywhere safe? Shouldn’t the church be exempt from these heartless killings?

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2013/09/29/sheriff-office-pastor-shot-twice-killing/9ik3bg2qJ9GzcxUGV9nh5M/story.html

For many, the church is they go in order to bury their dead or grieve the loss of the dead. For the congregation of Tabernacle of Praise Worship Center, the church was where they witness the violent death of their pastor. Culturally this is unheard of and is a horrifying death for all involved. The suspect, Woodrow Karey, was said to have been an ex-deacon for Tabernacle of Praise who left the church more than 5 years ago. The reason for this aggression is unknown and has left the entire congregation, especially the victim’s children and grandchildren reeling and confused. Despite his death his daughter continued to speak highly of him, even after death- His 31 year-old-daughter spoke of his saint like qualities, and said that he would say to his gunman, “I forgive you and I love you.”

This type of death goes beyond ethical boundaries for me. The church should be a place where they experience life, not death. This tragedy meets multiple criteria of a bad death: it was unexpected, in a public place, a result of great violence, and “unwarranted.” This pastor was greatly loved and respected in the community, and ‘m sure  is a tragic experience to witness your spiritual leader shot twice and killed in front of you. In putting myself in the shoes of a witness of the shooting, I would be both scared and enraged. What would make a man come into a church service and kill a man, who was in the act of worshiping, in front of everyone, even women and children? The question is why? Why would someone do such a thing?

Well, that is what everyone in this Louisiana church is wondering as well. We live in a culture where we want to know the cause of death and it is important in the mourning process to know this information. It brings about closure. It is also these type of violent deaths that cause a great grief and a sense of bereavement among those who loved the victim. In this case, not only his family will experience great loss, but the church immediately is without a pastor. This causes a great sense of functional loss as well as an emotional loss as well for those who knew this pastor. Thoughts?

 

 

 

 

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Send Silence Packing

Posted on December 10, 2012 by | Leave a comment
On November 1, 2012, Emory hosted the Send Silence Packing exhibit. As I walked to my last class of the day, I came across many backpacks dispersed about the Quad. As I got closer, I saw that there were personal letters or notes written by friends and relatives, telling a short story of the tragic loss of their loved one to suicide. With each step I took along the sidewalk, I viewed the letters of other deceased college students. Lifting my head, I realized that these people were once students just like me, stressing out about classes, but something about their situation made their only solution suicide. Suicide falls closer than we expect. The 1100 backpacks represented the students who have taken their own lives in the past year alone. For more information go to: http://news.emory.edu/stories/2012/10/er_send_silence_packing/campus.html
Suicide has left a mark on our younger generation. It is interesting that although it is so prevalent, its stigma makes it a subject not openly discussed. It is such a difficult topic that many suffering from depression do not seek help. However, a mental health issue must be handled appropriately. Furthermore, there is no “type” or person who commits suicide. At a school of diverse students, this issue should top priority because anyone of any background can suffer from mental illness.
This silent epidemic is taking our loved ones away from us. The worst thing to do when dealing with an epidemic is nothing. The lack of attention and effectual solutions to this problem produces incessant reports of suicide throughout the country. Therefore, it continues, spreads, and will continue to do so until we as a society take preemptive steps to avoid this last resort and help the people who are in this situation.
Something has changed that has caused problems to be so unbearable that the only answer is death. It is especially problematic because with this exhibit, the victims are college students. The stress of college can be intimidating. Not only do students concern themselves with academics, but also work, paying for school, approval from parents and professors and friends, their future and career. Although college is supposed to be the best four years of your life it can also be the worst and last years of a student’s life. There have been strategies to help depressed students, but how far have we come to where suicide is not statistically significant?

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Assisted Death

Posted on December 5, 2012 by | 1 comment

Advocates of assisted suicide support it, because they believe that it is not painful to the individual and instead, acts as a relief for those suffering from a poor quality of life (whether it is due to an illness or old age). However, thirty-three of the fifty states support a painful assisted death, the lethal injection of prisoners.

In a recent report issued by the Human Rights Watch, titled So Long as They Die, the organization highlights that “although supporters of lethal injection believe the prisoner dies painlessly, there is mounting evidence that prisoners may have experienced excruciating pain during their executions.” Like methods described in the movie Suicide Plan, lethal injection requires a sequence of drugs: an anesthetic, a paralytic, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. However, unlike the drug cocktail used during assisted suicide that yield a painless death, the drugs approved by state officials for legal injection have been deemed “too cruel to use on dogs and cats.” What makes it worse is that prisoners are often paralyzed but “insufficiently anesthetized,” and therefore, although they are experiencing intense pain, they are unable to “signal their distress.”

The descriptions of the things that have gone wrong in executions were appalling. Some included:

  • “For over an hour, medical technicians and then a physician tried to find a suitable vein for intravenous access. The condemned inmate ended up with one needle in his hand, one in his neck, and a catheter inserted into the vein near his collarbone. One hour and nine minutes after he was strapped to the gurney, the prisoner was pronounced dead.
  • “A kink in the intravenous tubing stopped some of the drugs from reaching an inmate. In the same execution, the intravenous needle was inserted pointing the wrong way-towards the inmate’s fingers instead of his heart, which slowed the effect of the drugs.”
  • “A prisoner who initially lost consciousness during his lethal injection execution began convulsing, opened his eyes, and appeared to be trying to catch his breath while his chest heaved up and down repeatedly. This lasted for approximately ten minutes before his body stopped twitching and thrashing on the gurney.”
In the movie, Law Abiding Citizen they show a lethal injection that corresponded to some of these examples. Below is the link for a clip of the scene: 
Now imagine this going on for 10…20…or even 30 minutes, like what occurred during the lethal injection of Angel Diaz.
How is this humane? People may do bad things in their life, but no one deserves to die in this way. However, it is not only supported by states but people come to watch these people die this way. Families hurt by the individual gain satisfaction in seeing the person die.     

On another note, I found it interesting that the death penalty is legal and the punishment is given, because a judge, jurors, and the families that fall victim to the actions of the prisoner during their life believe that the he or she deserves to die. Yet, euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal. Do people suffering in this world not deserve to have the right to die too?
Xavier

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Good Death in Modern Society

Posted on November 2, 2012 by | 1 comment

             

         In our society, death is thought of as something that needs to be overcome.  If someone dies, others ask what they could have done to prevent it.  If someone commits suicide, they say “I should have helped before it was too late”, if someone dies in a car wreck: “I shouldn’t have let them go out that night”, if someone dies of lung cancer: “they shouldn’t have smoked so much” or “if only they had gotten a new lung in time”.  Because of all these wishes and beliefs towards death, it becomes difficult to see what constitutes as a “good” death in our current society.  One would think that with all the prevention techniques, or aspirations for cures, that a good death can no longer occur; all death is now considered bad.  This becomes a problem for the sick and dying, which can no longer aspire to die with dignity.

In seeing and hearing ads, I notice that this concept is everywhere.

As an organ donor, I was initially proud to make the decision to “donate life” to others after my own death.  I saw people who chose not to get the red heart on their license as unnecessarily greedy and as people who didn’t care about the needs of strangers.  But after talking about the position on organ transplants in other countries, I realized valid reasons to not donate.  Who are we to say who should get new, life-saving organs and who shouldn’t? Should young mother receive an organ before an old man? Should a smoker be refused lungs before a non-smoker? Who has the right to answer these questions in order to make life-changing choices? The organization Donate Life supports the donations of skin, eye, blood, and organs.  I commonly hear their commercials on the radio, with inspiring stories such as mothers who wouldn’t have had children without a new heart.  They encourage you to help this person who needs a new organ in order to live.  At which point are we helping someone at the sake of another?

 Click here to explore a video about the need for organ donations. 

Another common theme I see in ads all the time is the idea of working together in some way to discover cures to many types of cancers.  People walk to end breast cancer and donate money for all kinds of other terminal conditions.  Everyone wants to live in a world in which they don’t have to worry about their parents and grandparents getting Alzheimer’s.  But deaths caused by cancer are very common.  Without these, how will people die?

All of these hopeful preventions want to create a world in which there is no death caused by “bad” or “unfortunate” means.  But without them, how will we die? How do we want to die? Will we become like the elderly in The Giver and have programmed deaths before we become too old and lose our place in society? Although this is an interesting perspective and does provide for a “good death” in which every person gets a happy and proper send off, it is hard to imagine this being accepted in a culture that will not accept physician assisted suicide.

-Victoria G.

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Good Death, Bad Death, Very Bad Death

Posted on October 7, 2012 by | 1 comment

The older we get, the more we have to face the fact that death is creeping closer and closer. In general, a good death in the United States is one that involves old age, minimal suffering, and at least some expectation. We know that death is inevitable, and the longer a person lives, the more it seems they’ve had a “full” life. This makes the occurrence of death easier to swallow. When death suddenly pounces upon the unsuspecting victim, sinking its teeth into youth, our society is unprepared. We are taken aback, thrown off balance, and left in a state of shock. If this kind of death is mixed with injustice, it makes for a powerful combination of circumstances. My former classmate, 16 year old Christina Lembo, embodies this image of a very “bad death”.

Christina Lembo, a junior this year at Bloomfield High School in Bloomfield, NJ, was tragically seized from life on Saturday, September 29th. Though I did not personally know her, I know several people who did. She is described as an athletic student who was “smart,” “talented,” and “so sweet and loving and kind.” She was young, healthy, and full of life with a promising future. According to our culture, this shocking end to her life was not supposed to happen yet, and not like this. It was too unexpected. What makes matters worse is that it was completely out of her control. A car suspected of drag racing abruptly crashed into the car in which she was a passenger. Someone else’s mindless decision cost a vibrant young woman everything.

In instances like this it is not enough to study grief and death rituals from a purely anthropological academic viewpoint. An anthropological viewpoint, however, helps one understand and recognize how the healing process can begin. Culturally accepted rituals that tell us how to handle a situation like this give us guidance in how to grieve. They tell us what is acceptable to do and/or say, and therefore give us the freedom to begin healing. The biggest example of this can be seen in the vigil held for Christina on Broughton Ave, the street where the accident occurred. The vigil is a ritualistic way for the community to come together and publicly mourn over this beautiful young student. It is a way in which support is created to all who are in need. This vigil is also a way of showing that, though Christina is physically dead, she is not socially dead. I have a feeling that, due to the nature of this tragedy, Christina will remain socially alive for a very long time.

-Sarah Hampton
More information about Christina Lembo can be found here.

 

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