People die. All the time.
Not the same person, of course. No, no. Multiple persons are
dying. They are dropping like flies all around us.
I wonder about that. Do flies drop when they die? I
suspect that flies perceive the onset of death, land on some comfortable,
horizontal, surface and then shuffle off this earthly coil.
One of my school friends died recently. She was a tiny
person with a huge heart. One wonders if she occupies more space in heaven than
she did on Earth.
R.I.P. Wendy. You are remembered for all the right
reasons.
We are now modern, civilised and sophisticated. We abhor
the sight and, even, thought of death. Millions of years of evolution in mind
and body have been snuffed out in a deluge of pity, sympathy and comradely
condolences.
Have they? One wonders.
In days of yore huge crowds attended public executions.
Kings and Queens were put to the sword in public. Minor celebrities were axed
and nasty, common, people were hanged.
The last public execution in England was of Michael
Barrett:
“Yesterday morning, in the
presence of a vast concourse of spectators, Michael Barrett, the author of the
Clerkenwell Explosion, was hanged in front of Newgate. In its circumstances
there was very little to distinguish this from ordinary executions. The crowd
was greater, perhaps, and better behaved; still, from the peculiar atrocity of
the crime for which Barrett suffered, and from the fact of its being probably
the last public execution in England, it deserves more than usual notice.”
(Acknowledgements
to:
where you can
read the whole article.)
“...a vast
concourse of spectators...” arrived to watch the death of a Fenian.
Indeed.
More recently we
have seen Japanese officers playing a game whereby they try to remove the heads
of prisoners in one blow of a sword. Difficult to do, it seems, and, judging by the
competitive spirit from the onlookers, a thing of joy to behold.
In Afghanistan
there is documented evidence of the pseudo-Islamic group known as ‘The Taliban’
(it means ‘Student’ – this will give a clue as to their origins) executing
people, women specifically, in front of crowds in football stadia.
We are far more
civilised than to engage in these activities, are we not?
And yet videos of
beheadings, of shootings at petrol (gas) stations, school shootings are ever
more popular.
A public eager
for blood seizes upon them. To feel the thrill of escaping death themselves; to
embrace that warm feeling of immortality that we get from seeing another person
die.
It is a small
wonder, then, that cock-fighting, dog-fights and bull fighting is ever more
popular.
It is a step – a
small step, away from the Roman Amphitheatre as lovingly portrayed in
television series like ‘Spartacus’.
It is base, it is
cruel, it is primeval. It takes us back to where we came from. A point in time
when we were part of the food chain.
Death is not
glamorous and neither is it glorious. Bodies do not lay down neatly disposed,
clean and tidy. In a disaster there is often only body parts that are difficult
to find and even more difficult to assemble into part bodies.
We are cruel. As
a species. We are cruel to each other and we are cruel to animals.
We are not so far
removed from nature as carnivores feasting on prey that still lives.
People make
comments about other people. Decrying them for their beliefs, their culture,
their traditions. They do this without looking inwards; examining themselves.
We grieve about
people who die singly or in groups but the difference is only numerical. There
is little difference between one person dying and a hundred people perishing in
a disaster.
Each person has
one life. To that person it is the most valuable thing that you possess.
Seeing others die
is a confirmation that we are alive; knowing that others have died is sad.
Only other people
die. But remember this:
To everyone else –
YOU are the other person.
