On Funerals

So, I was thinking about this for a while...

In life we are born, we live for a period of time, and then we die. What happens after we die isn't certain, but we are at least certain of what happens while we live. (More on life as a process at a later blog).

And at the end of it all, you generally have a funeral, but during that period you're dead. Now, funerals are generally tied to spiritual things. You wish the soul or whatever to do well in the next life, or afterlife or oblivion or whatever the beliefs are; and you stay musing upon the person's memory and mourning the loss.

Now here's the problem. The only person not being effected by this is the person being celebrated. Even if you believe in an afterlife, there is no guarantee that the person is watching, is able to watch or wants to watch. Maybe he reincarnated already, maybe he's enjoying permanent happiness and doesn't care about the affairs of this world, maybe the afterlife doesn't let you see what's going on. We don't know.

So here's my proposal to turn it into a humanist ritual. This doesn't have to replace the current spiritual funerals, and both can be done. This requires the subject to be alive at the time, so it can't be done in certain cases, but where death may be predicted its possible.

So, you call upon the subject's friends, family and well-wishers. You place him in a large enough location - it doesn't matter where. The person then gets to meet his friends and people who care about him - which should make him feel happy or comforted. You then place him in a location where all can see him - the head of a table, a platform or whatever, and a list of all the person's achievements are read out, and appriciated by the crowd there.

These achievements could be anything, and depend on the person's own philosophy. They could range to the jobs he performed, his academic achievements, creative ones... The idea is to show what a full life the person has lead, and for those present to appriciate what the person has done during his life - while the person is guaranteed to see it.

Of course you can have an additional spiritual funeral later. At least this way the person is alive to see how his life fared and whether it was all worth it.

Llama