I had the great privilege of corresponding with Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner, co-authors of the book Freakonomics. You will find a link to the book down on the left hand side of your screen. If you have any interest in stretching your thinking about society and how it works, getting under the hood so to speak with a down to earth mechanic, these two get the job done. Highly recommended.
I had sent the two authors a copy of the Sin and Damnation essay I posted earlier on this site. I got a couple of good questions from Stephen Dubner which pushed me to broaden my thinking and follow through with a more complete reply. Here's how it went.
Stephen Dubner:
Two things that strike me: I'm unconvinced of a correlation between people fearing hell and people holding funerals. In my mind -- and I may well be wrong here -- a desire for heaven rather than a fear of hell is as strong a motivator. Which leads to my second thought:
I'm also unsure that fewer Americans, per capita, believe in hell now than they used to, and I'm almost certain that just as many people as ever believe in heaven.
And my reply:
I agree that the desire for heaven has played just as significant a roll as the fear of hell in the decision to hold a funeral. As with any other emotion driven activity, a yin/yang admixture of love and fear combine to promote behavior, in this case the use of ceremony to assure the attainment of one (heaven) over the other (hell).
As for belief in American society, quantity has little to do with the decisions I'm talking about. The quality or character of belief, is what matters here. To ask someone in a survey whether they "believe" in heaven is one thing, to measure whether that belief equates to what people used to call a "fear of God", that is another thing entirely.
When funeral customs as we have known them became formulated, God was still the big guy just beyond the clouds who had lots to do with where and when those thunder bolts came streaking out of the sky etc. etc. Heaven was an extension of the natural world, as was hell. Dig deep enough into the earth (or so the thinking went) and you might just run into the guy with the pitch fork. Hell was right under our feet.
I think much of society has moved beyond this. Heaven may need to "exist" as part of the human psyche, but in a much more ethereal, downright vague form which softens the need to keep the "big guy upstairs" happy. For many if not most, heaven or the afterlife is automatic and basically without judgment or punishment. Take away the anxiety about doing the wrong thing and traditional ceremony requiring intercession by a trained representative of God (your local clergy) holds far less meaning. After all, if you don't *have* to go through an initiation right to gain entry to the club. Why not just walk in to the clubhouse?
As a secondary factor, I suspect that the pressures of community participation and social convention have sustained the traditions far beyond their theological necessity. Traditional churches have been a key social cross roads and source of friendship and support. In a cohesive community you don't want to upset your friends by doing something out of the ordinary at the time of a death. Everyone is upset enough already. Those pressures have subsided, however, as communities and relationships became more transient and temporary.
Remove all those societal and emotional barriers and the traditional funeral loses most of its purpose. People still need to recognize loss and commemorate a valuable relationship, only the rights and ceremonies can take on a myriad of forms as grief and loss becomes more and more an individual journey rather than a community journey.
An “individual journey rather than a community journey” in those words reside lots of opportunity. People want a way to express themselves individually. Someone out there will figure this out and make it happen. THAT will be the person and the business that someday soon gathers in the lion’s share of the profits in the area of grief and remembrance.
Have a fantastic day,
BT
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