Death (again)
Someone asked me today what my thoughts were on death because I appear to be obsessed with the phenomenon when it comes to my zombie work. My immediate response was something along the lines of not being obsessed with death, but maybe more with life?
I've given it some more thought, and here's what I've come up with. While becoming a zombie is a horrible way to go, the situation where your corpse suddenly is not under your control forces you to take responsibility for your death, but also the death of others. I'm not talking about killing anyone, but rather dying peacefully and honorably. It's not really a negative thing, which it might be perceived as. It comes down to making the very unselfish decision of ensuring that your corpse doesn't rise and put the lives of others in danger.
More importantly, once you accept your demise as inevitable (as it invariably is, especially in a necropalytic wasteland) it becomes non-traumatic, and in many ways, life-affirming. If anything, it causes you to appreciate the life that you have, and to protect the lives of those that you love. Like we've discussed before, fighting for your survival engenders a sense of living, which goes un appreciated in these current pre-apocalyptic times. This doesn't mean going out and placing yourself in life-threatening situations (but this is usually cited as a reason for sky-diving, bungee-jumping, etc.) but to pre-emptively make yourself aware of the inevitability of your demise, so as to savor every day for all that it is worth.
I've given it some more thought, and here's what I've come up with. While becoming a zombie is a horrible way to go, the situation where your corpse suddenly is not under your control forces you to take responsibility for your death, but also the death of others. I'm not talking about killing anyone, but rather dying peacefully and honorably. It's not really a negative thing, which it might be perceived as. It comes down to making the very unselfish decision of ensuring that your corpse doesn't rise and put the lives of others in danger.
More importantly, once you accept your demise as inevitable (as it invariably is, especially in a necropalytic wasteland) it becomes non-traumatic, and in many ways, life-affirming. If anything, it causes you to appreciate the life that you have, and to protect the lives of those that you love. Like we've discussed before, fighting for your survival engenders a sense of living, which goes un appreciated in these current pre-apocalyptic times. This doesn't mean going out and placing yourself in life-threatening situations (but this is usually cited as a reason for sky-diving, bungee-jumping, etc.) but to pre-emptively make yourself aware of the inevitability of your demise, so as to savor every day for all that it is worth.
posted by Melissa at 10:29 PM
1 Comments:
I try to delete the spam as soon as I see it, but it's hard to keep up with the legions of "zombie" computers that work so hard to pollute the blog world with their crap.
I like the Woody Allen quote, it's a very appropriate way to approach death.
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