Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Scotty Beamed Up At Last
Yeah, yeah, the Democrats did very well and Arianna has found somebody who understands what's the matter with Kansas, but what about this business of space burial? On 6th December a rocket will be launched in New Mexico carrying the remains of astronaut Gordon Cooper, 'Gordo' in the The Right Stuff, James Doohan, Scotty in the original Star Trek series, and 177 others. Previously, I discover, Timothy Leary and Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, have been 'buried' in space. The astronomer Eugene Shoemaker, courtesy of the Lunar Prospector, is the only man buried on the moon. A number of products are available for sending The Loved One screaming into the upper atmosphere and beyond. Space Services - 'a mission of purpose, a commemoration of love, a dream fulfilled, a step into the universe' - offers Earth Return from $495, Earth Orbit from $1,295, Luna Service from $12,500 and the Voyager deep space option, also from $12,500. From Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One and Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death right through to Six Feet Under, the American fascination with the flashy funeral has been a source both of wonder and disgust. I feel both - disgust because it seems so insanely immodest and wonder because it represents a determination to establish rites for the dead that will console the living, rites that secularity has tended to deny and suppress. Personally, I would be happy to be scattered, like Samuel Beckett's Murphy, on the floor of a pub, but then it won't be my happiness that is the issue. And, of course, Scotty should be in space, fixing that fantastically unreliable warp drive for all eternity.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Good grief - who'd want to hurtle into space shoulder to shoulder with 179 other urns, or whatever they're packed in? And precisely what of Eugene Shoemaker is buried on the moon?
ReplyDeleteYou're right about the rites and secularity of course - is there anything on God's earth more depressing than a 'humanist' funeral?
I don't know about "God's earth", but here on this planet, a humanist funeral is infinitely more desireable than the hypocricy-drenched charade that passes for a so-called Christian burial. I know I'd rather end the way I mean to go on!
ReplyDeleteAt least it's a hypocrisy-drenched charade with a language at its disposal that can talk usefully about death - 'humanism', in my experience, has no such language or, indeed, appropriate forms, so has to make it up as it goes along - with, usually, embarrassing and dispiriting results.
ReplyDeleteI recently learned that the James Blunt song "goodbye my lover" is the most commonly played song at British funerals. If we are going to dispense with hymns can't we come up with something better than that?
ReplyDeleteThe nice thing about a secular funeral is that there is no logical implication that the deceased individual may be suffering in purgatory, or may be in immortal danger of experiencing eternal suffering in hell, unless we pray for that individual.
ReplyDeleteRegarding funerals in space, there is a closely related category, in which one enlists with the army, then gets deployed to Iraq, and finally one's parts are strewn over a region of 'poorly governed' space.
And there was never anything wrong with the warp drive, it was merely taken outside its design parameters under Captain's orders! Everything else was merely scheduled outage.
Novelist Jim Crace explained that he wrote _Being Dead_ in response to his father's death:
ReplyDelete"...I had buried my own father, who was also an atheist, a really good old fashioned political atheist, and he had asked for an appropriate funeral for him, which was no funeral at all. No guests. No announcement. No flowers. No eulogy. No hymns. God's sake, no hymns. And no collecting of the ashes. We carried out his wishes, and it was a huge mistake. The memory of how we failed to bury my father properly and pay attention to his unique life was with me as I wrote this novel."
Which is why it's a strangely comforting novel, even for non-believers. (When you get a nano, Bryan, you should give it a look. Crace was an excellent journalist which means his novels are never too long!)
I guess the meaning of all these comments is that we should eschew "humanist" funerals and go for the traditional forms. After all, the funerals are for those left behind and all the rituals are designed to deal with grief.
Neil Forsyth is out of line. Maybe a Christian would like a Christian funeral and a humanist can have his devils' ritual if he so desires it.
ReplyDeleteBrings to mind a cemetery in Geneva largely for the artistically minded, civilised well-to-do etc if I remember rightly. Plenty of ornate ostentation there. I remember finally coming across in one quiet corner the most humble of humble gravestones which marked a very young child of Dostoevsky's. The most eloquent, moving spot in the cemetery. Kind of said all that needed to be said about man's vanity in the face of the unknown.
ReplyDeleteWhat humanism does is try to explain what is explainable (oops! I felt a 'Rumsfeld' coming on just then) Life can be very satisfactorily explained and given meaning by the use of our reason. As for death, there is very little to say about it. The questions religion asks are not legitmate questions insofar as they cannot be answered. Humanism doesn't try to. Some people may find this dispiriting. But I'd much rather be dispirited than deluded. Up with dispiritedness!! Down delusion!!
ReplyDeleteWell there may be very little to say about death itself, but, as Saul Bellow observed, it is 'the black backing of the mirror that allows us to see anything at all'. Which makes it pretty er important...
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what you are getting at. Of course, death is, er, important. Believe me, I take the whole death thing very seriously indeed. We could trade quotes till the cows come home (or don't come home: I do worry sometimes) but we are talking about nothing of any real consequence. Death is a backdrop, I agree with Bellow, but it should not cloud our reason. It should merely be seen as a limit on what we can do and on what we can think about.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, I agree with you, though I wish you had a more specific name.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you suppose murder mysteries are so popular? Studying death is the closest we can get to knowing anything about life. And, in murder mysteries, the mystery of death (of the body, anyway) is always solved.
Which reminds me (I love tangents, esp. when I'm on my 4th cup of coffee and trying to hammer out an essay on your brilliant playwright, David Hare), I just *devoured* a murder mystery by a Scots writer, Kate Atkinson. _Case Histories_ rocks.
Auf wiedersehen, pets--
Neil, you could well be dispirited because of deluded humanism or are you absolutely certain you're not?
ReplyDeleteOn the contrary, James, I am far from dispirited. I have asked the universe a few questions but have received not a syllable in response. However, I am reconciled to the idea of my own obscurity for now. That is not to suggest I will keep quiet. I will keep asking the questions. That is what keeps me going. It's rather fun once you start. I did try to play the universe at its own game, but lost my nerve after a few years.
ReplyDelete