DISCUSSION 1
How do you feel about the scientific view of death, as described in the From the Expert page on The Scientific Definition?
(Below is the scientific definition)
Traditionally death was determined by the presence or absence of breath. Someone held a feather or a mirror to the presumed dead person’s lips to see if they were breathing. If the feather did not move or the mirror became fogged, the end was acknowledged.
As the understanding of the human body developed, a doctor would additionally listen for a heartbeat and feel for a pulse. If none of these signs of life were detected the person was declared dead.
As the scientific capability grew with the advent of new technology, particularly the electroencephalogram (EEG), the question of “What is dead?” became more complex. If a person’s heart beat and breath issued from the lungs but there was no brain activity was this person dead? These considerations had medical, ethical, legal, social and emotional implications.
In the mid-20th century, it was recognized that a person’s major organs could continue to function even if there were no brain wave activity. Was this person dead? Had the definition of “dead” evolved from an assessment of the physical condition to considering the end of “personality” (as in a deep coma) as part of the definition of death?
In 1968 The Harvard Medical School Ad Hoc Committee to Examine the Definition of Brain Dead identified four essential criteria for death. The diagnosis of coma included unreceptivity and unresponsivity, no movements or breathing, no reflexes, and a flat EEG (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=5694976).
As Kastenbaum (p. 41) notes, these criteria have provided “useful structure and guidance.” However, with further advancements in medical technology, the question of what is death has become complex and not all professionals agree. The issues have escalated because of the ability to transplant organs. Someone may be brain dead and kept on life support so that organs remain viable. We will discuss the social, legal and ethical perspectives of these situations in later weeks.
DISCUSSION 2
Using insights gained from reading the From the Expert pages, how do you think the denial of death could impact how a person lives? In the same vein, if one lived in a culture or practiced a tradition that focused on or had training for preparation of death, how do you think that might impact the way they live?
(from the experts I’ve posted at the end of the instructions)
DISCUSSION 3
What do you think happens when we die? As you discuss this personal view of death, what are the sources and influences that have formed and shaped your perspective?
FROM THE EXPERTS:
From the Expert: Defining Death
To begin the study of death we need to define death, to explore its social and spiritual meaning in diverse contexts. We need to assess its personal impacts. We will consider the definitions of death which are generally shared.
Death is the major event of a lifetime. Some cultures and most religious traditions acknowledge the fact of death and integrate it into their worldviews. Some cultures are structured to ignore or suppress the reality of death. Without question, the inevitable death of everything that lives, including ourselves, impacts the nature of our lives. This first week of the Death and Dying course we will ask the questions, “What is death, and what does it mean?” We will explore attitudes towards death and diverse answers to questions about it.
We may choose to face death, philosophically, as does cultural anthropologist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Ernest Becker who says, “The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity – designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man.”
Or, we may choose to make light of the fact of death, as this quote does from comedian, Woody Allen, “I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
From the Expert: The Scientific Definition
Traditionally death was determined by the presence or absence of breath. Someone held a feather or a mirror to the presumed dead person’s lips to see if they were breathing. If the feather did not move or the mirror became fogged, the end was acknowledged.
As the understanding of the human body developed, a doctor would additionally listen for a heartbeat and feel for a pulse. If none of these signs of life were detected the person was declared dead.
As the scientific capability grew with the advent of new technology, particularly the electroencephalogram (EEG), the question of “What is dead?” became more complex. If a person’s heart beat and breath issued from the lungs but there was no brain activity was this person dead? These considerations had medical, ethical, legal, social and emotional implications.
In the mid-20th century, it was recognized that a person’s major organs could continue to function even if there were no brain wave activity. Was this person dead? Had the definition of “dead” evolved from an assessment of the physical condition to considering the end of “personality” (as in a deep coma) as part of the definition of death?
In 1968 The Harvard Medical School Ad Hoc Committee to Examine the Definition of Brain Dead identified four essential criteria for death. The diagnosis of coma included unreceptivity and unresponsivity, no movements or breathing, no reflexes, and a flat EEG (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=5694976).
As Kastenbaum (p. 41) notes, these criteria have provided “useful structure and guidance.” However, with further advancements in medical technology, the question of what is death has become complex and not all professionals agree. The issues have escalated because of the ability to transplant organs. Someone may be brain dead and kept on life support so that organs remain viable. We will discuss the social, legal and ethical perspectives of these situations in later weeks.
From the Expert: The Faces of Death
Kramer, in the Sacred Art of Dying, proposes that there are other faces of death in addition to the physical one. He says (p. 12) death may be viewed through at least three faces:
Physical (the irreversible loss of brain waves, central nervous system, heart and breath functions)
Psychological (the life of the quasi–conscious, living, as if having already died)
Spiritual (the death or transformation of old patterns, habits, roles, identities and the birth of a new person)
Psychological Death
Kramer proposes a state that is death–like called psychological death, a profound state which he defines as “the reversible termination of one’s personal aliveness… It manifests itself as habitual behavior, or an emotional deadening which results when normal psychic and volitional responses are shut down or suppressed.”
The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl speaks of this “death” as well in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning. The experience he had himself and also witnessed in a Nazi concentration camp led Frankl to explore the idea that survival in the camp meant behaving as if one was already dead. He reports (p. 92) “One of the prisoners, who on his arrival marched with a long column of new inmates from the station to the camp… felt as though he were marching to his own funeral. His life had seemed absolutely without future. He regarded it as over and done, as if he had already died.”
Elie Wiesel, writer, humanitarian and Nobel Peace winner addresses the same idea:
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.
(Oct. 1986)
Spiritual Death
Kramer (p. 22) defines spiritual death as a “self–transformational experience, one which overcomes the fear of dying. Spiritual death is a process whereby one experiences salvation (western), or self–awakening (eastern) and by which the fear of death is de–repressed. Because the old self dies a new self emerges, spiritual death transforms one’s attitudes both toward life and in the face of death. The point is that spiritual death triggers awakening or rebirth.”
Krishnamurti, a renowned spiritual teacher, says in This Light in Oneself (p. 23):
Meditation is the understanding of life, which is to bring about order. Order is virtue, which is light. This light is not to be lit by another, however experienced, however spiritual. Nobody on earth or in heaven can light that, except you, in your own understanding and meditation. To die to everything within oneself! For love is innocent and fresh, young and clear. Then, if one has established this order, this virtue, this beauty, this light in oneself, one can go beyond.
Felix Adler (1851-1933), founder of the first Ethical Society, a social reformer, and a professor of political and social ethics at Columbia University, said:
Religion is a wizard, a sibyl . . .
She faces the wreck of worlds, and prophesies restoration.
She faces a sky blood-red with sunset colors that deepen into darkness, and prophesies dawn.
She faces death, and prophesies life.
We will explore the idea of “spiritual death” in depth in weeks 2 and 3. We will engage with the view of death from the perspective of diverse religious traditions, most of whom have a very different take than science, on the definition and meaning of death. Most of them view dying as a sacred event leading to death which is great opportunity for transformation.
Psychologists have found that there are other life events which provoke feelings that mimic the symptoms of dying. They all involve major life changes in which the familiar, the established or habitual sense of self is profoundly disturbed; events in which those parameters by which we define our “self” are overthrown. These events include divorce, moving, being fired and orgasm, which in French is actually called “le petit mort,” or the little death.
From the Expert: Facing One’s Own Death
We will just touch on this topic this week as a wrap up to this introductory exploration of the subject of death and dying. We will engage in an in–depth investigation of our own attitudes and fears and also the practical aspects related to preparing for one’s own death in Week 5. We will analyze how an awareness of our mortality affects the way in which we live our lives and also the cultural implications. We will consider the stages of dying and death and the sources of courage in the face of death. Each student will look at his/her own mortality.
Here are two quotes for you to reflect on:
Chapters 3 and 4 in The Death of Ivan Illyich in which he reviews his life in the face of immanent death and asks the question “Is there any meaning in life that the inevitability of death does not negate? …So where shall I be when I am no more?” (p. 130)
Muller’s How then Shall We Live? (p. 159).
If we follow what we love, if we live deeply and attentively in this moment, we will not feel bound by regret at the moment of our death. We will live with reverence for all things and a deep gratefulness for the gift of a single day upon the earth. Thus our death begs us to live well and with joy. As Jesus told his followers, the message of his life and death was simple: to remind them to be awake and alive. “I have come that you may have life,” he told them, “and have it abundantly.”
From the Expert: Attitudes towards Other People’s Deaths
Our attitudes towards other people’s deaths are usually predicated on our relationship to them. These attitudes run the gamut of possibility, from complete indifference, through gratitude that it is not our self but someone else who has died, to extreme sorrow at the death of someone we love, even to the extent of wanting to die with them.
The first two chapters of The Death of Ivan Illyich by Leo Tolstoy are a well–written exposition of an acquaintance’s response to Ivan Illyich’s demise. In his review and response to this event, the narrator, Ivan Illyich’s colleague, reveals a multitude of emotions including relief that it is Ivan and not himself who has died.
In contrast, we have Act V of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, in which Juliet, not wanting to live without her lover, determines that Romeo has died of poisoning. Her only desire is to join him.
What’s here? A cup, closed in my true love’s hand?
Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end;
O churl! Drunk all, and left no friendly drop
To help me after? I will kiss they lips;
Haply some poison yet doth hang on them,
To make die with a restorative.
(Kisses him)
Death is often seen as an adversary. A friend’s mother was slowly dying of Alzheimer’s disease and other maladies. The mother did not want to eat anything which my friend understood to be a signal of impending death. She would fill the dining room table at meal times with every version of Ensure, ice cream, watermelon and various soups; all foods that her mother had been interested in eating until recently. She said, “I am in a pitched battle with death for my mother’s life. I know I can’t win, but I have to keep trying.”
People who crave extreme sports, like skiing down a steep couloir which has never been skied before, are thrilled by this edge of life and death and may acknowledge that they are challenging death by skirting its domain.
