week ten_the changing attitude

In the lecture today, professor mentioned about the so called taboo in Chinese culture that when someone is severely ill, his or her family members usually see breaking the bad news to the patient is a bad thing. Despite the fact that according to the statistic, most people want the truth about their own health instead white lies given by their family out of good wish.

Time has changed, the topic of death is no longer something unspeakable. But  social culture seems still admit the traditional value that death is something bad that can never be broke especially in front of the person him or herself experiencing the process of death. In fact, this taboo is not necessary at all. Just like what we have experienced in the former two interviews, talking about death is not as tabooed as we what may think. Traditional believes also tell us that good people would deserve a good life condition after their death (so to be positive and to consider less, as long as we keep being good persons, we needn't be afraid of death :D). Open attitude towards death like this also act as the same role in terms of this problem in modern society.

Come to the perspective of patients themselves, they should be given fully right to know the health condition of themselves, and only in this way can they then decide how to react and then what to do. Making decision for other people somehow equals to exploiting the basic rights of other people. Now that society and reality have both been open to diseases and death, then why we still want to put it aside from normal life, especially in these vital cases?

week eight_body, spirit and soul

It is interesting to see the idea on lecture held this Monday that human body is consisted by three components: the body, the soul and the spirit. Sure to most people they generally believe in the idea that a person is consisted with both visible as well as invisible parts, but to me it was in fact the first time (maybe it is because of the religious factors) to see the idea of considering a man as a trinity consisted by these three parts.

According to the Scriptures, the word "soul" can be used to referred either a single person or the mind of someone, while the word "spirit" conveys the meaning of the air breathed, non-physical being as well as the same meaning of the word "soul". So there is some overlap of meaning between these two words, but the one raised the idea of dividing the non-physical part of human being into soul and spirit might probably want to express something else.

Why bother differentiating soul and spirit? Maybe people always have the will to divide their mind into rational and instinctive ones. The evil part of mind is soul, and the rationally kind part is spirit, such division can be also seen in Freud's theory, like id and super-ego.

References:

https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/526-soul-and-spirit-whats-the-difference

http://bible.org/seriespage/man-trinity-spirit-soul-body

week seven_to keep or to dump

It is natural that people want to keep the body or even ash of their gone family members or friends, for the reason everyone can understand easily: we want to stay in the time spent with the loved person, leaving the body behind seems as cruel as dumping the family member or even worse,because the one dead won't make any resistance to show his or her anger or sadness, which may probably makes people done so feel terrible about what is done. To most people, knowing the fact that each gone family member / friend is resting in peace in some graveyard or cinerarium is much more relieving than have totally have no idea that where he or she finally belongs to.

But let's think from another perspective, since the very beginning of human history death has kept a close companion with it. People born and died, nobody knows where the remain of our earliest ancestors' bodies are now, and nobody cares. Just let it be, for nobody cares about it, that is the opinion we hold to death happened long time ago. But we are treating death much closer to ourselves in a quite different way: we hold ceremonies and try to make the dead one feel better without even understanding the original meaning of these ceremonies; we buy some place to store the ash of them as long as possible. Just like the ship mentioned in today's lecture, this ship is designed to carry the ash of dead people to release the active demand of cinerarium in Hong Kong. But why not just simply spread the ash to sea area nearby as many local families have done? Why still bother figuring out a way to keep ash as long as possible? Is this insistance of intergrality of body really unbreakable?

news photo taken in a sea burial

week seven_so called taboo

[drawn / shot by poster]

It is actually right here, and there is nothing to afraid about.