The Death Land Series

Leah Green, a reporter for The Guardian, offers this seven-part series of short videos exploring responses to death. Throughout, Green – who suffers from death-related anxiety – maintains a healthy balance of rational skepticism and curiosity in her encounters with immortalists attempting to prolong their lives indefinitely, survivors of near-death experiences, organizers of death café … Read moreThe Death Land Series

Falling Flower: a Simple Memorial Ritual

Oh, that sweet fragrance of falling petals…. With kind words, it is ended. Farewell. The time to go is now. It may be that the people who would most benefit from symbolic ritual are those who are least likely to partake in it. The inclination towards formal, poetic gestures in moments of truth may very … Read moreFalling Flower: a Simple Memorial Ritual

“Monuments to Unbelief”

Leigh E. Schmidt’s essay for Aeon.com examines the phenomenon of public memorials representing humanism, freethought and atheism: American freethinkers had long been preoccupied with the public memorialising of their incredulity and anticlericalism. They wanted to enshrine their commitment to scientific rationality over biblical revelation, their strict construction of church-state separation, and their worldly focus on … Read more“Monuments to Unbelief”

Symbolic Immortality and Mortality Sapience

Terror Management Theory proposes that humans experience a fundamental psychological conflict between the instinct of self-preservation and the understanding that death is both inevitable and, to some extent, unpredictable; a state described as mortality salience. TMT is based on the pioneering theoretical work of anthropologist Ernest Becker, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning 1973 book The Denial of Death … Read moreSymbolic Immortality and Mortality Sapience

Recompose, the First Human-Composting Funeral Home in the U.S., is Now Open for Business

Click here to read Brendan Kiley’s article for the Seattle Times: As I’ve learned more about Recompose, I’ve found it to be a very graceful and beautiful way to go,” Bontrager said. “It’s the natural way, the way every living thing in history has eventually been cared for, from an apple core to a human … Read moreRecompose, the First Human-Composting Funeral Home in the U.S., is Now Open for Business