Becoming aware and optimistic regarding death is the first step in becoming knowledgeable of an…
People die everyday all over the world. In United States, people use hundreds of different words to describe death. Generally, people that grow up in the United States tend to view death as a taboo subject and are seen as a topic that should be kept behind closed doors and contracted with an individual or family. A belief system that so many individuals hold to be true has been shaped over the past century. In this culture, death has become something that is enormously feared and as a result, some people stop living their lives to his or her highest potential because of their fear of dying. The effect that death has pertains to individuals of all ages, gender and ethnicities. But unfortunately, how death is viewed it has become more and more difficult for parents to talk with their children about death. Many parents not enough to talk or discuss death to their children until someone close to family dies, but even then children are simply told that someone they know has pasted away. Children have a very difficult time to understanding what death really means and must learn how deal with lose of someone they know internally.…
First I am going to give a little bit of overview about how people other than myself feel about death and what they think death really is. “The word death comes from Old English deað, which in turn comes from Proto-Germanic *dauþaz (reconstructed by etymological analysis). This comes from the Proto-Indo-European stem *dheu- meaning the 'Process, act, condition of dying'.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death) There are also said to be many different processes that actually consider someone dead. Physiological death is seen as a process not just an event. In this process there is a dividing line between life and death that depends on factors beyond the presence or absence of vital signs. Clinical death is not necessary or sufficient for a determination of legal death. Someone that has a working heart and lungs determined to be brain dead can be pronounced legally dead without clinical death occurring. The medical definition of death becomes more problematic, paradoxically, as scientific knowledge and medicine advance. There are also different signs of death or strong indications that a person is no longer alive such as cessation of breathing, cardiac arrest, pallor mortis, livor mortis, algor mortis, rigor mortis, and decomposition. Cardiac arrest is having no pulse, pallor mortis is paleness which happens in the 15-120 minutes after death, livor mortis is a settling of the blood in the lower portion of the body, algor mortis is the reduction in body…
In this paper we will review the three classical theories of mortality and interpret what the meaning, as well as make connections to my own culture. The purpose of this paper is to review theoretical perspectives and assess how they impact ones culture.…
Death is treated many different ways in various cultures around the globe. For instance, Buddhists believe that after death a person is reincarnated. In addition, in Mexico they actually celebrate death. El Dia De Los Muertos is a Mexican holiday where people go out and celebrate their loved ones who have died. Mexicans create elaborate alters and cook special food in honor of the dead. The atmosphere is celebratory and jovial. However, in America, death is feared. Most people do not like to talk about death. On the rare occasion that they do talk about death an uncomfortable sensation sets in. Understandably so, death can be scary because of the “unknown” factor. In America, we like to be in control of our lives and our choices. Unfortunately,…
Death is a dreaded word. It is a word that many people would not want to talk about. Death is considered a morbid word and many would not find this as an engaging topic. According to Patricelli (2007), “[d]eath remains a great mystery, one of the central issues with which religion and philosophy and science have wrestled since the beginning of human history. Even though dying is a natural part of existence, American culture is unique in the extent to which death is viewed as a taboo topic. Rather than having open discussions, we tend to view death as a feared enemy that can and should be defeated by modern medicine and machines”. There are also people that have negative connotations about death, rendering life even meaningless because of it. Death appears to render life meaningless for many people because they feel that there is no point in developing character or increasing knowledge if our progress is ultimately going to be thwarted by death (Augustine, 2000). But the author contends that there is a point in developing character and increasing knowledge before death overtakes us: to provide peace of mind and intellectual satisfaction to our lives and to the lives of those we care about for their own sake because pursuing these goals enriches our lives. From the fact that death is inevitable it does not follow that nothing we do matters now. On the contrary, our lives matter a great deal to us. If they did not, we would not find the idea of our own death so distressing--it wouldn't matter that our lives will come to an end. The fact that we're all eventually going to die has no relevance to whether our activities are worthwhile in the here and now: For an ill patient in a hospital a doctor's efforts to alleviate pain certainly does matter despite the fact that 'in the end' both the doctor and the patient will be dead (Augustine).…
The factors that can affect an individual’s views on death and dying and include social factors, cultural, religious and spirit…
Death is a necessity to culture and society therefore it is irrational to fear the unenviable and the necessary. Death whether physical or non-physical will always cause change. The change that is caused by death does not always have to be direct but can manifest itself as an indirect change. Throughout time societies have risen and fallen, times changes, nothing is ever going to stay the same. Death is a factor that will impact everyone who is alive as they will meet death. As society’s change and cultures evolve so do the people; to keep change occurring death must ensue for creation to occur. Society’s and cultures depend on death. Death is the drive of progression which drives society’s and cultures to get farther from the unetible death.…
This paper will summarize chapters 1-5 in the book The Psychosocial Aspects of Death and Dying. We will take a deeper look at each of these chapters and explain what they mean. The chapters we will be talking about will be the following: Death: Awareness and Anxiety, Cultural Attitudes Toward Death, Processing the Death Of A Loved One Through Life’s Transitions, The Psychology of Dying and last but not least Social Responses To Various Types of Death. By taking a deeper look at the above mentioned chapters we will obtain a better understanding about society’s and individual’s viewpoints on death and dying as well as the many different responses that both society and individual’s have, and how it affects the grieving process.…
Another issue is confronting death to understand the process of death. Kubler Ross has come up with a very popular theory with five stages an individual may go through dealing with the dying process. The five steps that Kubler Ross uses are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (Feldman, 2014). When a person who is recently told that they have limited time to live due to an illness, accident, etc. the individual may at first be in denial because they think it’s a mistake and deny everything that the doctor just told…
Death is a normal process of life. From the moment we are born we begin to age until we die. Kubler-Ross formulated a series of stages that a person goes through when they die. First is denial, according to Kubler-Ross it is, “people’s first reaction to news of a terminal diagnosis is disbelief” (Boyd & Bee, 2006, pg 526). Then there is anger, “once the diagnosis is accepted as real, individuals become angry” (Boyd & Bee, 2006, pg 526). From there comes bargaining, “anger and stress are managed by thinking of the situation in terms of exchanges” (Boyd & Bee, 2006, pg 526). Next there is depression, “Feelings of despair follow when the disease advances despite the individual’s compliance with medical and other advice” (Boyd & Bee, 2006, pg 526). Finally there is acceptance, “grieving for the losses associated with one’s death results in acceptance” (Boyd & Bee, 2006, pg 526). Many researchers have found that Kubler-Ross’s stages may not necessarily go in the exact order or have all of the stages (Boyd & Bee, 2006, pg 527).…
“Death is more universal than life; everyone dies, but not everyone lives,” quoted by Alan Sachs. Death is a part of everyone and touches everyone’s lives a little differently. It is a topic is that is usually followed by forms of sadness from the people associated with the person who passes away. What death is considered would be the end of someone’s life; they stop breathing and their body stops working. Death can come unexpectedly, it can be anticipated, but it is never easy. Due to many adults having a difficult time accepting death, they feel that the topic of death is too hard for children to understand; they believe the children should be kept uninformed. In Literature for Children A Short Introduction, Author David Russell explains…
The three psychological aspects show that subconsciously we are always afraid of death. We are unable to understand the concept of death,and due to that we think our death will be a malicious intervention from an outside force. Unconsciously we are unable to distinguish between a wish and a deed. Lastly, we try to prolong our deaths for as long as possible, and dying has become impersonal and less dignifying. Since we are afraid of death, we have developed ways of bringing closure when a loved one dies by either praying, burying someone's belonging with them, or grieving in our own way. Both Elizabeth's article and the book Night show that death is inevitable and will happen even if you are…
Death is perceived in differently in various cultures and tends to impact an individual personally as compared to a group.…
In the introductory section section the question is asked; Is the fear of death Universal?” Ernest Becker argues that the very thought of death is “the mainspring of human activity.” He explains that this fear of death drives us to create myths about immortality, seemingly to deny that a physical death is the end of life. Death anxiety and denial are said to have two origins: innate animal instinct (fight or flight) or “cultural conditions that may give rise to the fear of death” (Charmaz).…