Today’s man is such a slave to societal norms already created through our evolution cycle that has now become beyond him to comprehend why exactly he feels the loss for someone he does even know more than the occasional greeting. At times, even a strangers death is known to make a person re-evaluate this life and how he lives it. Re-evaluation wouldn’t even be necessary if the person begins by understanding this feeling of remorse and why exactly he feels the need to emphatize with relatives of the deceased.
This probably began at a time when the earliest of man began to form smaller groups necessary to hunt and to become the first hunter gatherers. Small hunting packs ensured a catch over a solo hunter and the numbers were also useful to defend land and the tribe itself from other such tribes. This is comparable today, with your absolute immediate circle of friends. People you confide in, people you trust when drunk and people you can think being stranded on an island with. Naturally, in both timelines, a death is perceived by the immediate circle/tribe as lesser numbers. Its one person lesser that you can trust and depend on. After family, we’ll regard this as the second circle of grief. We feel grief even though we know of how inconsequential our grief is. What we also feel, is a deep sense of loss, no of the actual person though. We feel the loss of the life we’d planned around the person. With each of our close associates today, we have a fair idea of where we want that relationship to head, and we’ve all projected into the distance future with regards to that person. Death distorts our plans completely and makes us redo the whole plan. This again, is an emotion that isn’t allowed by society, since in the first timeline, a death in the tribe, would weaken the whole tribe. The sense of brotherhood would be broken, only to be replaced by a sense of weakness with respect the tribe, and inability with respect to being able to save the person in question. Society does not permit us realizing this as a core emotion anymore, because now, it is politically incorrect to think of “survival of the fittest” as a concept conducive to society (even though we all know it exists). Therefore death in the immediate circle is accompanied by the deepest regret which would manifest itself as profound sadness. This is best observed in couples where one person survives the other.
How we feel towards the death of others now is all a relative scale to the above argument. Our grief or sadness regarding it, is always directly proportional to how well we tie in with this society and how much we crave acceptance from it.
How do we relate to this now? How does this tie in with our current everyday lives? It doesn’t yet. But soon, very soon, someone related to someone you know will die. This person wouldn’t affect your life in the least and your total personal experience with this person will barely be adequate to fill a nutshell. At this point, remember that you’re programmed to feel sad for this and be atleast a bit grief stricken only by society. You’re original intention for feeling bad was good, but now society has made you guilty about now feeling this same emotion for everyone around you, after all, aren’t we all just one huge big tribe now?
Of course I agree, there are multiple sides I’ve overlooked, I assure you these are intentional, I have no ambition to write a thesis about this here (cause I’m lazy), but since you asked nicely here they are in point form, well some of them.
1) Religion has made death a sacred affair. It isn’t, although now it is too late to redo that much of early inculcation that death is a door way to something greater. This however completely clashes with our evolutionary trigger of feeling a sense of morbid loss manifested through sadness. This is why even as the priest mumbles nonsense about how the person is in a better place and how this was God’s plan, the immediate family cannot help but sob into the next month.
2) The Hindu concept of death is much more appreciable. Not the reincarnation bit, that is idiotic. Not the Hindu Heaven too, that is well, let’s say flawed. I’m talking about northern Hinduism where death is death, and just that. Where the self has to realize that death is not to be feared or conquered. Death is just to be realized as death. Pondering over death, fearing it or planning your life around it, is as inconsequential as you buying a chimp a computer.
3) You feeling sad/grief regarding the death of anyone else is a wasted byproduct of our evolution. It does not facilitate you or the person’s immediate circle in anyway. It only suffices to reassure the person of a sense of false security for a while, until the next death sets it off again.
4) People will never realize this. Ever. Never ever. Ermm, Ever! They’ll still cry at deaths, they’ll feel a sense of deep sadness. They’ll call you cold for not feeling the same and they’ll even call you heartless at times. All the while, bending over forwards to facilitate society’s hand up their arse to better move their lips whilst they attempt to maintain a false sense of superiority over you.
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