Weekly Review Issue No. 23
On the memorials to mycologists, the right of death and power over life, the suffering of separation and sadness, hope and a pulsing dose of pop.
Hello and welcome back to another Review. I hope you’ll at least one thing you find interesting, useful or enjoyable. If something particularly resonated, I’d love to know about it.
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What’s alive for me
I spoke at my first memorial recently, for my best friends dad. He died 2 days before the first lockdown was announced in March 2020. His funeral was one of the first of those horrendous social distanced, reduced affairs. Given the fact he was a larger-than-life figure who almost literally rotated his life around his family, his work and the resulting good times, it was incredibly cruel. Nevertheless, my friend and her family waited until everyone could confidently get together, with the covid spectre as far behind us as possible. She asked me to speak, to help her to get going herself, but also because I offered. I don’t know why I did, but I felt like it was worth having someone who knew him but could - as I opened in my few moments - to ground us in the moment.
It felt good to do it. I was very nervous, standing in front of 50 or so people, most of whom I didn’t know, but many I knew very well. I felt like I spoke quite authentically. Not saying what I thought you should say, but I felt like I actually said the things that you might want to hear at a memorial service. It was woven with memory, in emotion, in lightness and heaviness. My speech, if you can call it that, was in service of life, and the life-force that Nick Read had dedicated his life to. It’s cliché to say, but it was a privilege to be able to do that.
I suppose what I mean to say is, when you actually orientate yourself to the things you want to do more of - in this case being of service to people in a difficult tine - and then actually offer it up into the world, then don’t be surprised if people take you up on it.
Onto this week’s links!
Research on the edges
👑 Right of Death and Power over Life
An excerpt from a book by the French philosopher, Michel Foucault, who has been an early influence in my thinking, especially as it relates to death and power. The book this is taken from is more about sexuality, but sex and death are often very familiar bedfellows.
One might say that the ancient right to take life or let live was replaced by a power to foster life or disallow it to the point of death. This is perhaps what explains that disqualification of death which marks the recent wane of the rituals that accompanied it. That death is so carefully evaded is linked less to a new anxiety which makes death unbearable for our societies than to the fact that the procedures of power have not ceased to turn away from death. In the passage from this world to the other, death was the manner in which a terrestrial sovereignty was relieved by another, singularly more powerful sovereignty; the pageantry that surrounded it was in the category of political ceremony. Now it is over life, throughout its unfolding, that power establishes its dominion; death is power’s limit, the moment that escapes it; death becomes the most secret aspect of existence, the most “private.”
One of the - now obvious - insights from my interviews with people over the last month or so is just how much our secularised, Western society has robbed us of many of the coping mechanisms or skills or wisdom to be able to navigate mortality. So its good to read of non-European perspectives on death attitude, that doesn’t seek to simply emulate and extract (thinking of you Día de los Muertos). So this paper looking at people in Kenya is very interesting.
The findings indicated that negative death attitudes declined with increase in age, whereas positive death attitudes increased with increase in age. Some of the reasons for negative death attitudes included threatening dying process, unfulfilled life goals, fear of hell, unresolved past deaths, and families with young children among others. The reasons for positive death attitude included reuniting with deceased loved ones and peers, meeting the creator, and end to a prolonged miserable life and fulfilled past life.
Some discussions around the problems of isolation and loneliness amongst other populations and what potential causes are and the potential solutions could. I was drawn back to this sort of framing, and in particular how the concept of seperation is at the root of suffering. Another good reason to de-centre ourselves from the typical ways of Western thinking and look at this from another cultural perspective.
Particularly in the United States, our cultural ideals support individualism, competition, denial of vulnerability and independence. Relationships are valued as supports or buttresses to the self. But like hungry ghosts we still yearn for the stability and continuity of deep community. When offered the opportunity, however, we often cannot drink fully; our thirst becomes painful and leads us to develop strategies to deny or to avoid feeling our yearnings. The problem is both external—lack of available communities—and internal—the ways we hold ourselves back from surrendering to relationships. Our default position of alienation or non-belonging is often a consequence of painful experiences that lead us to mistrust and run when the going gets rough. We run for protection toward isolation or search for new and improved relationships or communities. Yet we also seek spiritual practices and communities to restore or realign ourselves to our most fundamental condition of interconnectedness or “interbeing.”
🎧 Listen
This week has honestly been an equal split between two songs.
The first up is a graceful epic swinging slowly between sadness and hope, in A Winged Victory for the Sullen’s Requiem for the Static King, Part 2. Perfect for a contemplative late night, and I assure you, you’ll come away from it wanting to reach out a live a little bit more.
The other is a frankly amazing pop song by Kylie Minogue, Padam Padam. It’s an epic 2:46 full of bounce and life. You just cannae whack a good pop song. How good is she? Every 10 years coming out with a banger.
🤔 Last thought
It’s-a-me!
