Halloween
It’s Halloween again, a source of woe for fundamentalist Christians and my favorite holiday of the year.
In America, its Gaelic origins and traditions are mostly buried beneath a pile of cheap, plastic crap and mass produced candy, but some people still recognize the more ancient traditions, including honoring the dead.
As a child, I was strangely fascinated by cemeteries, and I’ve probably spent most of my life trying to figure out how to avoid becoming a permanent resident. While I’ve had no success in figuring out how to cheat the grim reaper, I have learned a few things about death, cemeteries and the whole death industry.
I prefer to deal in the facts. What we know. What can be verified. And the facts are as follows.
WITNESSETH
WHEREAS there’s no evidence of any life or consciousness beyond death, humans should concentrate on the present. Sure, there are rumors and books that tell far fetched tales of places of glory and torment, but they are fiction, not trip reports. Fanciful stories of seeing white lights during near death experiences are, as far as we know, produced by the human brain, not celestial spirits, gods or principalities.
My suggestion is for you to enjoy this life. This, our one and only period of consciousness. There is no verifiable evidence that there’s another.
WHEREAS your body should naturally decay when you die, why spend thousands of dollars preventing the inevitable and polluting the ecosystem with embalming fluid? Our bodies should become food for beetles, flies and ravens. Human remains should naturally change within the ecosystem. Humans seem obsessed with themselves and with delaying the process by embalming our bodies with poisonous chemicals and sealing our remains in crypts. And for what?
While I find the monuments at historic cemeteries interesting, it’s also a fact they too decay over time and these unnecessary monuments to ourselves will eventually fade away. It seems to me that a lot of money is wasted on embalming, caskets and headstones, the fruits of opportunistic funeral salesmen and a gullible public.
A more sensible system of disposal is the Viking funeral or maybe Edward Abbey’s choice, being placed in your sleeping bag and simply tossed in the earth. A few meaningful words. Moments of silence. A rock, tree, cactus or shrub to mark the spot. Sounds reasonable and affordable. I’ll take either.
NOW, THEREFORE, for and in consideration of these facts, and sufficiency of which is hereby acknowledged, we the people should hereto agree as follows:
We live. We die. We decay. We go back from whence we came. The system, if kept in balance and not unnecessarily interfered with by man, works. And if we would just focus on this life, this brief, grand and wonderful period of consciousness, stop believing in things that are not there and reject institutions that attempt to frighten and control people with bizarre stories about places of torment, the very real torment endured by all living things might be lessened.
And on this Halloween, I ask you to honor the dead. Ponder and consider the hundreds of thousands of living things recently killed around the planet so the United States of America can continue its international masquerade party. Think very carefully about why they’re dead and about your personal responsibility.
There’s no neutral position.
Think about Darfur and why United States forces are in Iraq and not there.
You’re either participating in the party or you’re trying to stop it.