Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick. And today on Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: Your Mind, we're going to be beginning a series of
Speaker 3: episodes about the personification of death, when death becomes not
Speaker 3: a process but a person or I guess more generally
Speaker 3: an entity. So, Rob, you picked out this topic, how
Speaker 3: did you end up thinking about this?
Speaker 2: Well, I guess the main answer is how could I
Speaker 2: not write because general contemplations of mortality aside, which will
Speaker 2: definitely unwrap as we proceed here, All that aside, anthropomorphic
Speaker 2: personifications of death are just everywhere in our media and culture,
Speaker 2: to the point that it almost becomes invisible until you
Speaker 2: really start looking for it. Like I was just reflecting
Speaker 2: over the movies that my family and I watched to
Speaker 2: get during the month of December, and they are like
Speaker 2: three different films that had a personification of the Grim
Speaker 2: Reaper in it, you know, to varying degrees. So two
Speaker 2: of them were of course from a Christmas Carol from
Speaker 2: Mickey's Christmas Carol, which we watched, and then also the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy Scrooge Musical, which is also excellent. Both of
Speaker 2: those have a manifestation of the Ghost of Christmas Yet
Speaker 2: to Come, which is a death entity. Of course, in
Speaker 2: the original story and in pretty much any adaptation you
Speaker 2: encounter often depicted as a grim reaper, a skeletal figure
Speaker 2: in a black robe.
Speaker 3: The bony hand pointing the Scrooge's grave. Yea name is
Speaker 3: on that grave.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then another one we watched was the two
Speaker 2: thousand and six TV adaptation of Terry Pratchett's The Hogfather,
Speaker 2: in which you have actual death taking over the duties
Speaker 2: of a Santa like figure named the hog Father in
Speaker 2: order to save the mortal world, in a story that
Speaker 2: I have to stress is equal parts hilarious and silly
Speaker 2: and then also legitimately thought provoking. And beyond these examples, though,
Speaker 2: it just really becomes a challenge to think of works
Speaker 2: and fandoms and sort of fan you know, mythos is
Speaker 2: that don't have at least some death personification analogue. You know,
Speaker 2: even if it's not a direct Reaper style figure, then
Speaker 2: maybe it's somebody who just looks like death, like for instance,
Speaker 2: Star Wars. Of course, you know, the Emperor or Emperor
Speaker 2: Palpatine is month after sent past cinematic depictions of death.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they're just simply too many to name. We'll
Speaker 2: probably name some as we go, but yeah, you have
Speaker 2: everything from the enigmatic chess player from the Seventh Seal
Speaker 2: to just various versions of death in comic books where
Speaker 2: heshi or they range in exactly how they're depicted and
Speaker 2: you know, seriousness and some are frightful, summer sexy. We
Speaker 2: have all different sorts of rappings that we give the
Speaker 2: death entity.
Speaker 3: The one from the Seventh Seal goes a long way.
Speaker 3: I noticed even academic papers and scientific papers in the
Speaker 3: in the background section often mentioning the Seventh Seal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that is the one that I'm to understand.
Speaker 2: Emperor Palpatine is like visually based.
Speaker 3: Upon and Bill and Ted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, of course, of course, Yeah, we'll have to
Speaker 2: come back to him as well. But yeah, the cessation
Speaker 2: of life is the ultimate individual dwell point in all
Speaker 2: of our futures, drawing us towards our fate and just
Speaker 2: summoning endless contemplations of it along you know, multiple lines
Speaker 2: of human culture. So again, yeah, it's hard not to
Speaker 2: think about about the personification of death, you know, even
Speaker 2: just sort of like you know, I don't know, spitballing
Speaker 2: over the years and just think, you know, encountering death
Speaker 2: in life. I've long thought of death, and I'm not
Speaker 2: the first to think of it this way, like a
Speaker 2: figure in the distance, you know. And perhaps if you're
Speaker 2: very lucky, you begin at a considerable distance from this figure,
Speaker 2: though it inevitably comes closer, and not merely in terms
Speaker 2: of the advancement of one's own life, but of course
Speaker 2: also the myriad ways we wind up experiencing death through
Speaker 2: the passage of others in the world around us, close, distant,
Speaker 2: you know, it makes no difference. It's all unavoidable, of course.
Speaker 2: And as this figure approaches, we continually make out more details,
Speaker 2: at first in its silhouette, and then as it comes
Speaker 2: closer still we make out more exact features. Features maybe
Speaker 2: we've long suspected we're there, believed to be there, or
Speaker 2: that we've been taught to expect, and perhaps new revelations
Speaker 2: as well. And I still find this to be the case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this visual metaphor of death is a figure that
Speaker 3: is in the distance, but on its own closing the
Speaker 3: distance to us. Is one that I think about how
Speaker 3: well this was explored in a horror movie from a
Speaker 3: few years back.
Speaker 4: It follows, yeah, you've seen that one, Yes, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 4: and yeah it it really does feel like that sometimes
Speaker 4: it's such a great yeah, a great a visual metaphor
Speaker 4: for it.
Speaker 2: Now, I want to advise listeners here that yes, these
Speaker 2: episodes are going to deal with the concept of death
Speaker 2: personified in human culture and what it means. So no
Speaker 2: shame if it's just not the right time for you
Speaker 2: to listen to these episodes. We're going to, of course
Speaker 2: approach the topic with the same level of respect and
Speaker 2: curiosity that we always try to use and approaching subject
Speaker 2: matter on the show. I know I can understand though
Speaker 2: if you want to skip them. In many ways, I
Speaker 2: feel like I had my fill of death in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five, and I'm sure virtually everyone feels the same.
Speaker 2: I don't think anyone out there is thinks thinking to themselves, Man,
Speaker 2: I wish I'd experienced more death in my world, so
Speaker 2: part of me would prefer not to think about it either.
Speaker 2: But I also feel like it's helpful to chase after
Speaker 2: these concepts instead and maybe better understand them, and also
Speaker 2: you know, explore how everyone before us has thought about
Speaker 2: these concepts. So in this series, we're going to tackle
Speaker 2: the subject matter here from a number of different angles.
Speaker 2: This episode is going to deal largely with some of
Speaker 2: the overreaching classifications that they are going to be essential
Speaker 2: for our conversations moving forward.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, So we thought in part one here
Speaker 3: it might be good to focus mostly on types of
Speaker 3: death personified and to kick things off, there is one
Speaker 3: interesting distinction I started thinking about between two related but
Speaker 3: different figures that appear in a lot of different mythologies,
Speaker 3: and that is the figure that actually embodies the moment
Speaker 3: of death itself, like the grim reaper, versus the figure
Speaker 3: that we might call the psychopomp. The psychopomp coming from
Speaker 3: the Greek meaning the soul guide, the guide to the afterlife.
Speaker 3: So the grim reaper type figure appears at or right
Speaker 3: before the moment of death. It is sometimes glimpsed by
Speaker 3: the doomed as a notice of impending death. Maybe you
Speaker 3: even see it a good time before your death, but
Speaker 3: you know it's just there letting you know, like hey soon.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it is portrayed as showing up right before death
Speaker 3: and kind of calling the still living person to the
Speaker 3: realm of death, or sometimes it is imagine to actually
Speaker 3: mechanically cause death in some way, maybe by touch or
Speaker 3: by kiss or by a word. So it's there at
Speaker 3: the moment the person dies to either let them know
Speaker 3: death is coming, to call them, or to make them die.
Speaker 2: Whereas what does what does death do? In the Final
Speaker 2: Destination movies?
Speaker 3: Death settles the score In those movies, death is an
Speaker 3: accountant and notices that you are in debt and we
Speaker 3: need to come collect.
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll come back to that example then for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's sort of the grim reaper type figure,
Speaker 3: whereas the psychopomp figure appears to guide or faery the
Speaker 3: soul of the dead to the afterlife. So I was
Speaker 3: thinking about an analogy. The grim reaper figure is like
Speaker 3: the bouncer who taps you on the shoulder and says, hey,
Speaker 3: it's time to leave. You know you're cut off, we're
Speaker 3: going versus the psychopomp is the cab driver who takes
Speaker 3: you home after you've been kicked out of the club.
Speaker 3: And this distinction appears across a lot of different cultures
Speaker 3: and mythologies, but of course it's not universal. Sometimes there
Speaker 3: are major death associated figures that don't exactly fit either type.
Speaker 3: Sometimes there are figures that embody both rolls simultaneously, as
Speaker 3: if you know, the bouncer tells you it's time to
Speaker 3: leave and then also gives you a ride home.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's a good way of putting it. I was
Speaker 2: reflecting on these two types and thinking, Okay, the grim
Speaker 2: reaper type is I guess more easily conceptualized as a
Speaker 2: hunter or a killer. You know, in one case, maybe
Speaker 2: not even a human enemy, but you know, one that
Speaker 2: hunts you and pursues you and will eventually gets you.
Speaker 2: But there's like that idea, well maybe I can outsmart
Speaker 2: it in the meantime, Yeah, maybe I can bargain with
Speaker 2: it and so forth. Whereas the psychopomp that feels much
Speaker 2: more human in nature because it is like it is
Speaker 2: it is ultimately well maybe not always, but in many
Speaker 2: cases the psychopomp is an ally. It is someone you
Speaker 2: want to find you because you've died, Yes, but now
Speaker 2: you have this journey that needs to be undertaken to
Speaker 2: reach the afterlife, and the psychopomp is going to guide
Speaker 2: you there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And the role of the psychopomp I think differs
Speaker 3: a lot, depending on what your particular what your particular
Speaker 3: vision of the afterlife is. So, you know, there are
Speaker 3: some more benevolent views of the afterlife where they're kind
Speaker 3: of like an you know, they're the concierge who arrives
Speaker 3: to say like, hey, everything's going to be great now
Speaker 3: we're going up to heaven versus there are more threatening
Speaker 3: or perilous journeys to the afterlife where you need a
Speaker 3: guide to get you there or you are in trouble.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, and yeah. And in this case with the psychopomp,
Speaker 2: they're not judges, they're facilitators of a journey. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I thought it might be worth mentioning just a
Speaker 3: couple of examples of these types appearing in literature, and
Speaker 3: we can come back to these throughout the series. But
Speaker 3: one demonstration of a psychopomp figure that stuck out in
Speaker 3: my head is the way Hermes, the god Hermes, guides
Speaker 3: the pitiful souls of the dead suitors to Hades in
Speaker 3: the Odyssey. Do you remember the rob m Yeah, yeah, vaguely.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to read from the Richard Lattimore translation here.
Speaker 3: This is going to be in the beginning of book
Speaker 3: twenty four, and the context in the story is that
Speaker 3: Odysseus has come home finally to Ithaca, and he finds
Speaker 3: that while he's been gone, all these guys have been
Speaker 3: trying to woo his wife, Penelope. They're referred to as
Speaker 3: the suitors. And all these guys are like, hey, you
Speaker 3: know he's not coming back. Marry me instead, And so
Speaker 3: Odysseus comes back and he kills them all. He kills
Speaker 3: them all to reclaim mastery over his house. And then
Speaker 3: after the slaughter, Odysseus and Penelope go off to bed together.
Speaker 3: And later we're told what happens to the souls of
Speaker 3: the dead suitors. So here I'm gonna read from the
Speaker 3: beginning of book twenty four. Hermes of Kyline summoned the
Speaker 3: souls of the suitors to come forth, and in his
Speaker 3: hands he was holding the beautiful golden staff. This is
Speaker 3: the Cadusius, the beautiful golden staff with which he mazes
Speaker 3: the eyes of those mortals whose eyes he would maize,
Speaker 3: or wakes again the sleepers, hurting them on with this,
Speaker 3: he led them along, and they followed, gibbering, and as
Speaker 3: when bats in the depth of an awful cave, flitter
Speaker 3: and gibber when one of them has fallen out of
Speaker 3: his place in the chain that the bats have formed
Speaker 3: by holding one on another. So gibbering, they went their
Speaker 3: way together, and Hermes, the kindly healer, led them along
Speaker 3: down moldering pathways. They went along and passed the ocean
Speaker 3: stream and the White Rock, and past the gates of
Speaker 3: Helios the Sun, and the country of dreams, and presently
Speaker 3: arrived in the meadow of Asphodel. This is the dwelling
Speaker 3: place of souls, the images of dead men. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: so here Hermes. And if you read older translations, this
Speaker 3: is sometimes rendered as Mercury, but Hermes would be the
Speaker 3: accurate name of the god. Here in the great context,
Speaker 3: Hermes leads the powerless and bewildered souls of the dead
Speaker 3: into Hades, into the land of the dead, kind of
Speaker 3: like Batman with his bat summoning beacon. You know, I
Speaker 3: remember that? Is is it?
Speaker 1: In?
Speaker 3: Batman begins that he like presses a button on something,
Speaker 3: and it makes a big train of bats up here
Speaker 3: and swirl down on it. Except, of course, the thing
Speaker 3: that he uses to lead them is not technology. It
Speaker 3: is the magical Wand again the Cadusius, the staff and
Speaker 3: the suitors here are already dead. Their souls are being
Speaker 3: guided to the next place in their journey. And importantly,
Speaker 3: they need a guide because in this ancient Greek vision
Speaker 3: of death, the souls of the dead are not They
Speaker 3: don't go to the afterlife automatically, I think, you know,
Speaker 3: in some visions of ancient Greek afterlife they do, but
Speaker 3: here they really need a guide. And also, the souls
Speaker 3: of the dead in this ancient Greek vision of the
Speaker 3: afterlife are not elevated to a superhuman state of like
Speaker 3: demi godhood, as we often imagine the ghosts of the
Speaker 3: dead and modern media, you know, when you see like
Speaker 3: movies and stuff today, it's almost like people imagine that
Speaker 3: when someone dies they become a ghost or an angel,
Speaker 3: and they become like a god, they gain extra powers,
Speaker 3: they're semi omniscient, you know. The souls of the dead
Speaker 3: are not like that. In the vision of Homer, these
Speaker 3: souls are distinctly diminished. They're confused, frightened, and without much
Speaker 3: strength or agency of their own. And that's why they're
Speaker 3: described does gibbering like bats in a cave. They're just
Speaker 3: you know, they're they're no longer even fully human. They're
Speaker 3: just kind of like, you know, crying out in pain
Speaker 3: and astonishment, and they don't know what to do. They
Speaker 3: are like sheep in a flock, actually, and they need
Speaker 3: a shepherd with the staff to guide them or they
Speaker 3: will be lost. So that's a classic psychopomp. But by contrast,
Speaker 3: reaper type figures usually appear before death to the living,
Speaker 3: giving them a signal of impending doom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there are ultimately tons of examples we could
Speaker 2: draw from here, and the one that I'm gonna mention
Speaker 2: first is maybe not the best example because it's more
Speaker 2: death adjacent than it is supposed to be actually death.
Speaker 2: But I thought about it many times in the run
Speaker 2: up to this episode. I was also just reminded of
Speaker 2: it because the cadence in Homer kind of reminds me
Speaker 2: of the cadence of what I'm going to read here.
Speaker 2: This is, of course, just one tiny bit from the
Speaker 2: Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and
Speaker 2: it goes as follows, like one that on a lonesome
Speaker 2: road doth walk in fear and dread, and having once
Speaker 2: turned round, walks on and turns no more his head
Speaker 2: because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread.
Speaker 3: So in fact, here you don't even see it. You
Speaker 3: just know it's there again, it's closing the distance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So it's this idea again. This is maybe
Speaker 2: not death, this death adjacent Jason, a contemplation of fear.
Speaker 2: We don't know, or at least I assume, we don't
Speaker 2: know whether the teller here actually sees anything behind him
Speaker 2: in this example, or he just feels that it is there.
Speaker 2: And then feeling that is there, there's a certainty that
Speaker 2: they are pursued, that they're hunted, and that it will
Speaker 2: eventually catch up with them, and so what can they
Speaker 2: do but just continue on in the state of anxious dread. Now,
Speaker 2: there are a couple of more fun examples of a
Speaker 2: clear grim Reaper character that you can find in the
Speaker 2: writings of the Brothers. Grim Death's Messengers is one that's
Speaker 2: pretty fun and ultimately has a punchline. One of the
Speaker 2: things about the grim Reaper or any personification of death,
Speaker 2: as I'll probably mention again, whenever there's a joke, generally
Speaker 2: you are the punchline. That's just how Death's humor goes.
Speaker 2: And that's pretty much what happens here. But in Death's Messengers,
Speaker 2: a fun little story in which Death gets caught up
Speaker 2: in a fight with a giant, like essentially the Grim
Speaker 2: Reaper ends up fighting a giant and gets whooped by
Speaker 2: the giant. Usually we think of personifications of death being
Speaker 2: pretty powerful when it comes to mortals, and maybe even
Speaker 2: like semi immortal characters. But here the giant just whips
Speaker 2: Death leaves them, you know, laying next to a stone
Speaker 2: on the side of the road or whatever. And then
Speaker 2: a young man comes across Death, doesn't know that he's Death,
Speaker 2: and says like, oh, here's a guy who needs my help.
Speaker 2: I'll help him out. And we also come to understand
Speaker 2: that this is necessary because if the longer Death is
Speaker 2: out of action, the more Death cannot do his thing.
Speaker 2: People are not going to die, the world's going to
Speaker 2: become overrun, and so forth. Oh no, so, But the
Speaker 2: young man knows nothing of this. He just helps him up,
Speaker 2: and then Death asks the young man if he knows
Speaker 2: who he is. The young man says, nope, no idea,
Speaker 2: just trying to do a good deed, and Death says,
Speaker 2: I am Death. I spare no one, nor can make
Speaker 2: an exception with you, however, so you may see that
Speaker 2: I am grateful. I promise you that I will not
Speaker 2: attack you without warning, but instead I will send my
Speaker 2: messagers to you before I come and take you away.
Speaker 2: And then the twist is that after various bouts of illness,
Speaker 2: death does come for the man, and he initially is like, whoaa,
Speaker 2: whoa hold on? You promised me that you would send
Speaker 2: messengers first. You wouldn't just come and swoop me up.
Speaker 2: I would have some warning, and Death informs him, yes,
Speaker 2: I did send you messengers, and he gives a list
Speaker 2: of all these ailments that the man had suffered. He's like,
Speaker 2: those were my messengers, and then the story ends with
Speaker 2: the man did not know how to answer, so he
Speaker 2: surrendered to his fate and went away with Death got him. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And there's another tale, Godfather Death, which involves Death being
Speaker 2: named as the godfather of a child who then grows
Speaker 2: up to become a famous physician because his godfather Death
Speaker 2: shows him a special healing herb that grows in the
Speaker 2: forest and also gives him this ability to see where
Speaker 2: death stands in relation to an ill person. So if
Speaker 2: he sees death at the head of the bed, of
Speaker 2: the sick person is a bond, then he knows that
Speaker 2: that individual can be cured with the magic herb. If
Speaker 2: death stands at the foot of the bed, well, then
Speaker 2: no cure is possible. Might as well pack it up.
Speaker 2: But then the physician ends up exploiting this trick by
Speaker 2: turning the bed around. And this works, you know, once
Speaker 2: or twice, but he runs a foul of death in
Speaker 2: the process.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I thought that would be a good lesson
Speaker 3: about correlation and causation.
Speaker 2: But in both tales, death is mostly an executioner of
Speaker 2: a decree. You know, He's there's a bit of the
Speaker 2: psycho pomp there as well. In the first tale, death
Speaker 2: says upon finding the main character again, he initially says,
Speaker 2: follow me. The hour of your departure from this world
Speaker 2: has come. So, you know, I guess we can tales
Speaker 2: like this. We can kind of get into the details
Speaker 2: of like, Okay, is he does he do something? Does
Speaker 2: he actually have a scythe? And is he going to
Speaker 2: swing that scythe and like sever something like sever you
Speaker 2: from the mortal world? Is there a thread that needs
Speaker 2: to be cut? Is there a soul that needs to
Speaker 2: be like ripped out of the body Mortal Kombat style
Speaker 2: or is it more of like, hey, I'm here, come
Speaker 2: with me. Get in, dummy, We're off to the afterlife.
Speaker 3: Well, rob, if you are ready, I was going to
Speaker 3: talk about a few ideas about the archetypes of death
Speaker 3: from studies in psychology from beginning in like the nineteen
Speaker 3: sixties and seventies and coming up until recent years. Do
Speaker 3: you want to jump into that, Let's do it. So
Speaker 3: there's one concept I think we should start with before
Speaker 3: we talk about anything else about archetypes of death in psychology,
Speaker 3: because lots of psychology studies about the personification of death
Speaker 3: refer back to the same foundational text, and that text
Speaker 3: is a book from nineteen seventy two called The Psychology
Speaker 3: of Death by Robert Castenbaum and Ruth Aisenberg. This was
Speaker 3: a very important work in the academic study of how
Speaker 3: we think and feel about death. But the idea that
Speaker 3: gets repeated the most from it is this idea of
Speaker 3: the four archetypes of death. So Castenbaum and Aisenberg set
Speaker 3: out to investigate how Americans think about death when they
Speaker 3: imagine it as a person or an entity, and they
Speaker 3: use the following prompt in their initial sort of open
Speaker 3: ended question and answer sessions. So they said, if death
Speaker 3: were a person, what sort of a person would death be?
Speaker 3: Think of this question until an image of death as
Speaker 3: a human being forms in your mind. Then describe death physically,
Speaker 3: what death would look like? Now, what would death be like?
Speaker 3: What kind of personality would death have? And after comparing
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of answers, And then after they did
Speaker 3: the initial research with like open ended queries, they started
Speaker 3: doing kind of consolidating these into categories and asking people
Speaker 3: multiple choice questions. And the authors end up arguing that
Speaker 3: most Americans' ideas about death fell into one of four
Speaker 3: general categories, which they called the macabre, the gentle comforter,
Speaker 3: the gay deceiver, and the automaton. So to briefly summarize
Speaker 3: these archetypes, I'm going to draw from an updated edition
Speaker 3: of The Psychology of Death published by Castenbaum in the
Speaker 3: year two thousand. So the first one is the macab.
Speaker 3: Castenbaum writes quote, the macab was characterized as a powerful, overwhelming,
Speaker 3: and repulsive figure. The image often was of an emaciated
Speaker 3: or decaying human, or of a monster with only faint
Speaker 3: resemblance to human form. So a few characteristics of the Macab.
Speaker 3: In terms of age and gender. When human in form,
Speaker 3: the Macab was most often imagined as a hideous old man.
Speaker 3: In terms of personality, the Macab is either callous and
Speaker 3: unfeeling or actively sadistic, wanting to hurt you. People. I
Speaker 3: thought this was interesting. They reported feeling emotionally close to
Speaker 3: the Macab figure, but in a threatening way, not a
Speaker 3: good emotional closeness, like you know this this thing knows me,
Speaker 3: and it wants to hurt me.
Speaker 2: It is a personal enemy.
Speaker 3: Yes, And Castenbaum notes the irony that this death figure,
Speaker 3: the most frightening of the four types, is the one
Speaker 3: most often portrayed as a victim of death itself, being
Speaker 3: either already dead like a skeleton, or in a partially
Speaker 3: decayed state, you know, having been consumed or partially consumed
Speaker 3: by the force which it symbolizes. Which that's kind of interesting,
Speaker 3: Like the scariest image of the thing is also a
Speaker 3: victim of the thing.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. I want this is kind of I mean,
Speaker 2: this almost feels like an outrageous overstatement of the obvious
Speaker 2: by virtue of how it is echoed through, especially like
Speaker 2: fantasy media, like I instantly think of Warhammer forty thousand,
Speaker 2: where you have like the gods of chaos and the
Speaker 2: God of decay. Of course he and all his cronies
Speaker 2: look like gross zombie creatures. Yeah, the blood God, you know,
Speaker 2: he looks, you know, it's everything's bloody and violent and
Speaker 2: snarling looking and so forth. You know, So we almost
Speaker 2: take it for granted that the embodiment of the thing
Speaker 2: would look like victims of the thing. But yeah, when
Speaker 2: you really stop and ask, well, why would that be,
Speaker 2: And it's not certainly not always the case in you know,
Speaker 2: human myth making, fantasy and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially since this is the version of death that
Speaker 3: is an inflictor more so than certainly more so than
Speaker 3: the next type we'll talk about. So, the second main
Speaker 3: archetype is the gentle comforter. That's what they call this one.
Speaker 3: In Castenbaum's words quote imbued with the theme of soothing welcome,
Speaker 3: the gentle comforter is quiet, kindly, you know, it's all right,
Speaker 3: you're coming home. Unlike the macabre, which was most often
Speaker 3: a frightening old man, the gentle comforter seems to be
Speaker 3: of any a your gender, though usually an adult and
Speaker 3: not a child. The comforter is All of the categories
Speaker 3: are more often male than female, and that's true of
Speaker 3: the Comforter as well, but the male bias is much
Speaker 3: smaller in the Comforter category than in the macab It's
Speaker 3: more mixed with gender representations. A commonly reported image is
Speaker 3: that of Father Time, a soft spoken, grandfatherly figure with
Speaker 3: a beard who eases your fears. Some people even There
Speaker 3: are some reports that Castembaum includes where people identify identify
Speaker 3: that the comforter figure with like biblical figures you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know, like Abraham or something you're imagining,
Speaker 3: like a bearded figure from the Bible welcoming you.
Speaker 2: Or Gandolf you know, Oh yeah sure.
Speaker 3: And as with the macabre, people felt emotionally close to
Speaker 3: the gentle comforter, but obviously without the threatening tones. It's
Speaker 3: the opposite here. Both of these figures know me well,
Speaker 3: but the macabre brings a personalized curse and the comforter
Speaker 3: brings a personal blessing. One woman in the research said quote,
Speaker 3: his voice would be of an alluring nature, and although kind,
Speaker 3: would hold the tone of the mysterious. Therefore, in general
Speaker 3: he would be kind and understanding yet be very firm
Speaker 3: and sure of his actions and attitudes. This passage, for
Speaker 3: some reason, really hits something kind of like it touched
Speaker 3: a deep intuition that I thought was mysterious and interesting.
Speaker 3: So the figure is friendly and soothing, but also firm
Speaker 3: and mysterious, like it's not going to be persuaded and
Speaker 3: you don't understand it.
Speaker 2: M yeah, yeah, the deep mystery of the incarnation. Yeah. This,
Speaker 2: and of course all four of these types we're going
Speaker 2: to come back to again and again in subsequent episodes
Speaker 2: as well. Of course, how can you not like the
Speaker 2: the gentle comforter, the good cop, the bad cop good
Speaker 2: cop scenario that we've looked at thus far. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is clearly the one you want, and you know
Speaker 2: so it should come as no surprise that poetic incarnations
Speaker 2: of this are also very attractive. There is one, in
Speaker 2: particular in the poem when Lilac's last in the dooryard
Speaker 2: bloomed by Walt Whitman, And I want to read a
Speaker 2: couple of lines from that here, because I found this
Speaker 2: quite enchanting. Dark mother, always gliding near with soft feet,
Speaker 2: have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome.
Speaker 2: Then I chanted for THEE. I glorify THEE above all.
Speaker 2: I bring THEE a song that, when thou must indeed come,
Speaker 2: come unfalteringly approach strong deliveries. When it is so, when
Speaker 2: thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead lost
Speaker 2: in the loving, floating ocean of THEE, laved in the
Speaker 2: flood of thy bliss o death. That's great. That's that's
Speaker 2: how everyone would want it to.
Speaker 3: Be, I think, certainly most. And it turns out that
Speaker 3: the gentle comforter image is the most common across all types,
Speaker 3: so it's the one people imagine the most often.
Speaker 2: Though, of course, as we're going to continue to get
Speaker 2: into here, it's not like you really necessarily get to choose,
Speaker 2: like various ideas are you were exposed to via your culture,
Speaker 2: via media, and then it's going to be also informed
Speaker 2: by how you feel about death as a personal concept,
Speaker 2: as a larger concept in the world, and so forth right.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the next category is what they call the
Speaker 3: gay deceiver. And note that gay here doesn't have anything
Speaker 3: to do with sexual orientation. This is the older usage
Speaker 3: meaning like jolly you're happy, So, as the name implies,
Speaker 3: this is a jolly trickster somebody who embodies tempt Haitian seduction, danger,
Speaker 3: I think fun, and fatal irony. This figure is usually
Speaker 3: depicted as an attractive, elegant, and sophisticated middle aged adult
Speaker 3: or young adult of any sex, most often actually described
Speaker 3: as just a few years older than the person doing
Speaker 3: the imagining, and usually but not always, the opposite sex
Speaker 3: of the person imagining. So the deceiver here, they tempt
Speaker 3: their victim with pleasures, with excitement, pleasure, and adventure. And
Speaker 3: from a lot of the descriptions I'm reading here, I
Speaker 3: get notes of what'st thou like a taste of butter,
Speaker 3: So the trickster. One key thing about this figure is
Speaker 3: that people think of it as something that is first
Speaker 3: seen one way and then revealed to be another way.
Speaker 3: So you think of it first as one type of being,
Speaker 3: but then later there's an iron You find out who
Speaker 3: they really are only once it's too late, usually after
Speaker 3: your death is sealed. And so this death archetype shares
Speaker 3: a lot in common actually with literary depictions of the
Speaker 3: Christian devil, you know, glamorous, powerful, irresistible, and dangerous when
Speaker 3: imagined as a man. Some respondents mention a goateee and
Speaker 3: a dark suit, very devil imagery when imagined as a
Speaker 3: woman often thought to be tall and beautiful with long
Speaker 3: dark hair and Castenbaum says interestingly that this archetype often
Speaker 3: involves elements both of ego ideal meaning an idealized version
Speaker 3: of the self, but also of scammer or con artist.
Speaker 3: And obviously you can see how this version of death
Speaker 3: as a tempter and as a deceiver taps into ideas
Speaker 3: you find in Christian morality plays about how temptations to
Speaker 3: the pleasures of the flow, temptations to adventure and lust
Speaker 3: and greed will ultimately lead to one's destruction.
Speaker 2: I'm reminded that this variation of death and its feminine
Speaker 2: form was often invoked on wartime anti std propaganda. Yes,
Speaker 2: where you know, there'd be some depiction of the alluring
Speaker 2: feminine form. Yeah, but there would be a skull face,
Speaker 2: you know, that sort of thing, or the mass slips
Speaker 2: away and it's a skull there. A skull is somehow
Speaker 2: revealed in the scenario, that sort of thing, and of
Speaker 2: course that ties into you know, the whole subject of
Speaker 2: the monstrous feminine is depicted as well the.
Speaker 3: Other way around. I think of a softer version of
Speaker 3: the deceiver here as the death in Emily Dickinson's because
Speaker 3: I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for
Speaker 3: me where. You know, it's subtle in the poem, but
Speaker 3: I think he is depicted as kind of like a
Speaker 3: handsome suitor there, like he's coming to show you a
Speaker 3: good time, but we all know where it's going to
Speaker 3: end up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, coming back to the fun of the scenario,
Speaker 2: the joke. Even I am reminded that if death is
Speaker 2: telling a joke, you're probably the punchline. So I guess
Speaker 2: that's that's one of the that seems to be one
Speaker 2: of the take comes here, is that the fun being
Speaker 2: had is not necessarily yours or a fun has had.
Speaker 2: Maybe it is in the short term, but not in
Speaker 2: the long Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's the setup. And then the punchline is dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so those are the first three categories. You
Speaker 3: got the macabre, the comforter, the deceiver, and then finally
Speaker 3: what Castenbaum and Aisenberg called the automaton. Castenbaum writes, quote,
Speaker 3: the automaton may be a class in a class by itself.
Speaker 3: The image of death as an objective, unfeeling instrument in
Speaker 3: human guys, The automaton looks like a normal person but
Speaker 3: lacks human qualities. Unlike other personifications, he usually a male,
Speaker 3: does not establish a huge human relationship of any kind. So,
Speaker 3: unlike the first two categories, which both of which were
Speaker 3: understood to be emotionally close to the dying person, the
Speaker 3: automaton is not understood as emotionally close at all. Quite
Speaker 3: the opposite caston Maulmin goes on. He advances with neither
Speaker 3: diabolical pleasure nor gentle compassion, but as an automatic, soulless apparatus.
Speaker 2: So yeah.
Speaker 3: Again, unlike the macabre, which is emotionally close and threatening,
Speaker 3: unlike the comforter, who is emotionally close and soothing, the
Speaker 3: automaton does not have any identification with the dying person
Speaker 3: at all. At the automaton acts at a remove. He
Speaker 3: does not have a meaningful relationship with you. He does
Speaker 3: not have feelings about what is happening.
Speaker 2: He can't be stopped, he can't be bargained with. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so he's the terminator. But he's also kind of a bureaucrat, right,
Speaker 2: or like a civil officer. Yeah, you know, this is
Speaker 2: not personal, This is just the job. Take no pleasure
Speaker 2: in it, but it also doesn't really bother.
Speaker 3: Me facilitating an unstoppable process. Yeah. So a few general
Speaker 3: findings from cast Enbaum and Aisenberg. I think I already
Speaker 3: mentioned this, but of the four types in their original research,
Speaker 3: the gentle comforter was the most common. They say, across
Speaker 3: all categories, death is more often imagined as male than female.
Speaker 3: All four categories show male bias, but the male bias
Speaker 3: is strongest in the macabre and the automaton. Those are
Speaker 3: the most often thought of as male. The comforter is
Speaker 3: still male biased, but more mixed. The deceiver is mixed,
Speaker 3: often the opposite sex of the dying person. And then
Speaker 3: this is interesting, weird little detail. Castenbaum says, quote for
Speaker 3: what it might be worth, funeral directors and students of
Speaker 3: mortuary sciences, where the subsamples with by far the highest
Speaker 3: personage of no personifications encountering some type of inner resistance
Speaker 3: to a task most others did not find very difficult.
Speaker 3: So you know, you ask people to sit down imagine
Speaker 3: death as a person. Most people can play this game.
Speaker 3: They can play along and say, yeah, here's what I
Speaker 3: think they would be like. For some reason, people in
Speaker 3: these professional classes, you know, professional training or professional services
Speaker 3: around death. They just resisted this task. They were more
Speaker 3: likely to say, I can't come up with the personification.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 2: That is fascinating, you know, like, what does it say
Speaker 2: about proximity to the physical realities of death in the
Speaker 2: you know, in the generation or contemplation of these concepts,
Speaker 2: because we obviously put a lot of energy into distancing
Speaker 2: ourselves from the sort of experience of physical death that
Speaker 2: mortuary professionals and in various other professionals experience. So I wonder, like,
Speaker 2: do we on some level tend mystified death and the
Speaker 2: departed in removing ourselves from that physical reality? And granted,
Speaker 2: you know, we have to acknowledge that in much of
Speaker 2: the modern world we are able to remove ourselves from
Speaker 2: that physical reality of death and dying in ways that
Speaker 2: people in different times and even in different places cannot do.
Speaker 2: So it's you run into the problem of being too
Speaker 2: universal across time and space with this sort of pondering.
Speaker 2: But I mean, I mean, it's there in the finding though.
Speaker 2: You know, the question is anyway you know that these
Speaker 2: people who's day in, day out is dealing with the
Speaker 2: reality of death and the physical reality of death find
Speaker 2: it much harder to say, oh, yeah, here's a sketch
Speaker 2: of what death looks like. This is the personification of
Speaker 2: this individual entity that carries this out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and as you, I think we're just alluding to
Speaker 3: it is really worth noting that these archetypes are not
Speaker 3: proposed to be either culturally unif versal nor necessarily stable
Speaker 3: across time. I think a key finding in death psychology
Speaker 3: is that the personification of death, while it might possess
Speaker 3: a few characteristics that are kind of common across culture
Speaker 3: and time, is mostly pretty variable and is going to
Speaker 3: be informed by shifting changes in how the culture portrays
Speaker 3: and processes death, and also by just more obscure factors.
Speaker 3: In a lot of cases, is going to be hard
Speaker 3: to understand why people at a certain time and place
Speaker 3: think about death the way they do. It's just a
Speaker 3: lot of cultural input on that. Anyway, I wanted to
Speaker 3: mention a few more things from Castenbaum's book here, so
Speaker 3: Castendam cites the work of a different researcher named Richard
Speaker 3: Linnetto in nineteen eighty two, who compared personifications of death
Speaker 3: to levels of death anxiety thought this was interesting, and
Speaker 3: Linetto found that the people with the highest levels of
Speaker 3: anxiety about death were tended to be among women who
Speaker 3: personified death as a woman. That's interesting, I don't know why. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: men who imagined death as a man were the most
Speaker 3: afraid of thinking about the following things, the sight of
Speaker 3: a dead body, the prospect of another world war, and
Speaker 3: the shortness of human life. With all of these correlations
Speaker 3: I just mentioned, it's hard to know if there's really
Speaker 3: any significance, but interesting. Linetto also found that people who
Speaker 3: were most focused on the shortness of human life and
Speaker 3: the quick passage of time were the least likely to
Speaker 3: picture a gentle comforter and the most likely to picture
Speaker 3: the macabre, you know, the grim, horrifying vision of death.
Speaker 3: I thought that was interesting because while I personally I
Speaker 3: don't usually think about death as a as a personified
Speaker 3: figure much. I I found this personally relevant because I
Speaker 3: so often find my life defined by time anxiety. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's like, I feel like it's the main struggle in
Speaker 3: my life is just always thinking about there not being
Speaker 3: enough time to do the things I need to do.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I wonder if that that makes me especially
Speaker 3: prone to thinking of death as a monster.
Speaker 2: Huh. Yeah, this is fascinating to think about. No one
Speaker 2: ever came up to me and asked me to draw
Speaker 2: a picture of what I think death looks like. And
Speaker 2: and I don't think I ever really gay. I get
Speaker 2: I'm you know, morbid enough that I've always been fascinated
Speaker 2: by depictions of death and you know, visual and you know,
Speaker 2: in literature and film and and in various mythological treatments.
Speaker 2: But you know, it wasn't until recently that I really
Speaker 2: created I think we're created or chose or you know,
Speaker 2: had it thrust upon me, that there would be like
Speaker 2: more or less a concrete idea of what it is is,
Speaker 2: you know, I would say that I yeah, I felt,
Speaker 2: I felt, I felt a fair amount of time anxiety
Speaker 2: of late as well. You know, the shortness of human
Speaker 2: life and the threat of greater wars are also both
Speaker 2: things that weigh on me all the time, you know,
Speaker 2: much like the people in this of the study. But
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, I wouldn't say that I ever strongly
Speaker 2: associated the idea of death with the personification. I'd say
Speaker 2: maybe growing up, you know, in in in a Protestant
Speaker 2: church environment, and being exposed to various you know, works
Speaker 2: from you know, from from the Western catalog of art,
Speaker 2: you would, you know, you'd see images of like an
Speaker 2: Angel of Death, you know, be they classical or something
Speaker 2: more recent. And so I think I had maybe a
Speaker 2: vision of that in my mind, like maybe a vision
Speaker 2: that maybe maybe leans slightly more masculine and kind of
Speaker 2: wavered between automaton and gentle comforter, and more recently I
Speaker 2: think I've gravitated towards more of a gentle comforter, but
Speaker 2: maybe at times with a little bit of the gay
Speaker 2: deceiver thrown in there as well. So I think maybe
Speaker 2: more feminine in my mind now, maybe more comforting, but
Speaker 2: also like sometimes wondering if there's a bit of a
Speaker 2: sly smile there, you know, that there's a joke at play,
Speaker 2: and again with all death jokes, you're the punchline.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, I like the idea that a
Speaker 3: comforter could still have a sense of irony or a
Speaker 3: sense of humor about what's happening, even if it's at
Speaker 3: my expense.
Speaker 2: I mean, well, that's one of the great things about
Speaker 2: Pratchett's death in the Discworld books is that he has
Speaker 2: a very dry humor about everything. So yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 2: of course, do you want that kind of personal service
Speaker 2: if death were to come calling. I'm not sure, but
Speaker 2: it can be pretty amusing in our literature.
Speaker 3: But I find myself often really put at ease if
Speaker 3: a person who I do understand is genuinely sympathetic can
Speaker 3: still make a joke at the expense of my suffering.
Speaker 2: I suppose it's also worth reminding ourselves in all of
Speaker 2: this that, I mean, we're all capable of holding multiple,
Speaker 2: even contradictory ideas about reality and unreality, and of course
Speaker 2: our views on such big concepts as death can also
Speaker 2: shift over time, so you know, there doesn't necessarily need
Speaker 2: to be you know, one version of death. If you
Speaker 2: were to personify it and draw it down on a
Speaker 2: piece of paper, death might look a little different if
Speaker 2: you're setting in your study, or if you were, you know,
Speaker 2: waiting in in the waiting room at a hospice. You
Speaker 2: know there's going to be perhaps different mindsets in play.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally Also worth noting that Linetto as well as
Speaker 3: other researchers, have generally found that the more quote favorable
Speaker 3: personifications of death, and I think this would mainly be
Speaker 3: the gentle comforter are associated with lower levels of death anxiety.
Speaker 3: But in interessting question is which way does the causality
Speaker 3: run there? So does imagining death as a comforter make
Speaker 3: you less afraid of death? Or does being less afraid
Speaker 3: of death make you imagine a comforter. Another variation is
Speaker 3: that Linetto found that the deceiver archetype was not associated
Speaker 3: with lower death anxiety, even though this archetype is attractive
Speaker 3: and seductive. So you might think at one level favorable.
Speaker 3: I think there's just like people have enough cognitive aw
Speaker 3: awareness of like the danger and irony wrapped up in
Speaker 3: this personification to maybe treat it more like they treat
Speaker 3: the other less favorable forms. So one more thing we've
Speaker 3: alluded to several times, how these trends in death personification
Speaker 3: can change over time. They're clearly not just like fixed
Speaker 3: in the human animal. You know, they're culturally variable and
Speaker 3: they change. So in the two thousand an edition of
Speaker 3: the book, Castenbaum mentions that he did some research with
Speaker 3: colleagues in the late nineteen nineties to see if anything
Speaker 3: had changed about how people personified death since his original
Speaker 3: work in the sixties and seventies, and this is Castenbaum
Speaker 3: and Hermann nineteen ninety seven if you want to look
Speaker 3: up the paper. But the main changes he identify have
Speaker 3: to do with gender breakdown in personification. He says that
Speaker 3: by the time of nineteen ninety seven, there had, for
Speaker 3: some reason been a sharp increase in the number of
Speaker 3: women who personify death as a woman. So there's there's still,
Speaker 3: you know, a male bias in how people represent death
Speaker 3: in their minds, but more women personified death as a
Speaker 3: woman by the late nineties. Also, there were some changes
Speaker 3: in the type of personality attributed to death. The gentle
Speaker 3: comforter is still the most common type of death figure
Speaker 3: imagined by women and the most common overall, but there
Speaker 3: was a significant decrease in the percentage of men who
Speaker 3: imagined a comforter. By nineteen ninety seven, men had come
Speaker 3: more often to see death as a cold and remote person,
Speaker 3: the automaton, or as grim and terrifying the macabre. The
Speaker 3: author is also found that the average age of death
Speaker 3: personified had decreased. That's kind of interesting, So, you know,
Speaker 3: we used to be more likely on average to picture
Speaker 3: death as a person of advanced age. The average age
Speaker 3: people imagine has gone down.
Speaker 2: Okay, so death has gotten younger and younger.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting trends. Kind of hard to even speculate
Speaker 3: about what might account for some of these changes, but obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, so many factors feeding into our imaginative tendencies here.
Speaker 3: I think it would be kind of hopeless to just
Speaker 3: like pick one cultural change and say that's what caused it.
Speaker 3: But despite variability across time and culture, do think these
Speaker 3: categories are useful to talk about because, for one thing,
Speaker 3: it seems they remain very relevant, at least within an
Speaker 3: American cultural context, and they give us a scaffolding to
Speaker 3: talk about other findings in death personification. So with that
Speaker 3: in the background, Rob, if you're cool with it, I
Speaker 3: wanted to run through a couple of twenty first century
Speaker 3: research papers I turned up which I thought were intriguing.
Speaker 3: Let's do it, Okay, So the first one is I
Speaker 3: dug up a paper from two thousand and eight by
Speaker 3: Jonathan Bassett, Polly McCann, and Kelly Kate, published in a
Speaker 3: journal called Omega Journal of Death and Dying. The paper
Speaker 3: was called Personifications of Personal and Typical Death as related
Speaker 3: to Death Attitudes. So This was a simple imagination exercise
Speaker 3: done with a relatively small group of university students, so
Speaker 3: this is not like a hugely powerful study. I wouldn't
Speaker 3: place a ton of weight on the results, but what
Speaker 3: they found was interesting to me because it was counterintuitive.
Speaker 3: So to read from their description of their research here, quote,
Speaker 3: ninety eight students enrolled in psychology classes were randomly assigned
Speaker 3: to personified death as a character in a movie, depicting
Speaker 3: either their own deathbed scene or the deathbed scene of
Speaker 3: the typical person. And then after this, the students completed
Speaker 3: an updated version of a standard inventory called the Death
Speaker 3: Attitude Profile. So this idea of comparing personifications of one's
Speaker 3: own death versus death in general or the deaths of
Speaker 3: others is interesting because obviously death is a highly emotional
Speaker 3: and frightening subject for lots of people, and I think
Speaker 3: there's a good chance that variations in how we think
Speaker 3: about it would depend on the question is it my
Speaker 3: own death we're talking about?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: For example, you might guess that on average, people imagine
Speaker 3: a more frightening or unsettling type of entity representing their
Speaker 3: own death than they do representing the deaths of others,
Speaker 3: because Obviously, people tend to be more afraid of their
Speaker 3: own death, but interestingly, that is not what the researchers
Speaker 3: found in this experiment. So the authors did not use
Speaker 3: exactly the same four categories as Casten, Bauman Aisenberg. Instead,
Speaker 3: they used a system that was like sort of three
Speaker 3: for four the same. So you had the option to
Speaker 3: imagine death as a cold or remote sort of person,
Speaker 3: a gentle, well meaning type of person that's sort of
Speaker 3: the comforter, a grim terrifying type of person that's sort
Speaker 3: of the macabre, and then a robot like person. So
Speaker 3: it seems like we've split the automaton category into these
Speaker 3: options of a cold or remote person and a robot
Speaker 3: like person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've kind of ejected the trickster from the scenario.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think in general I hesitate to say
Speaker 3: this because I didn't fully check this, but my impression
Speaker 3: from reading summaries of the older research is that the
Speaker 3: deceiver or trickster archetype was the least common of the four,
Speaker 3: but you know, did still show up as a common strain,
Speaker 3: so it was worth exploring. So they said that in
Speaker 3: their sample, relatively few people chose the grim terrifying image
Speaker 3: or the robot like image. The most popular were the cold,
Speaker 3: remote sort of person and the gentle, well meaning sort
Speaker 3: of person. And in fact, something kind of the opposite
Speaker 3: of what I just hypothesized off the cuff a minute
Speaker 3: ago is what they found. When asked to imagine another
Speaker 3: person's death, subjects were relatively more likely to picture the cold,
Speaker 3: remote figure. When asked to imagine their own death, they
Speaker 3: were relatively more likely to imagine the gentle comforter. Huh,
Speaker 3: and the author is refer to previous work by a
Speaker 3: researcher named Tomer. Writing in their conclusion quote. These findings
Speaker 3: seem to support Tomer's position that it is easier to
Speaker 3: face death with stoic resignation when thinking about the inevitability
Speaker 3: of other people's death as part of the natural order
Speaker 3: of things than when contemplating one's own mortality.
Speaker 2: Okay, well that absolutely tracks right, Yeah, yeah, totally yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: someone else must die. Well, it's the cycle of life.
Speaker 2: I must die. Hold on a minute, I need a bargain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it flips the script of just how I
Speaker 3: imagine what the death personification is doing? Does this make sense?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 3: H the way I might interpret this experiment assuming Again,
Speaker 3: you know, this was a relatively small study, so assuming
Speaker 3: this kind of thing holds up broadly, I would interpret
Speaker 3: this as finding support for the idea that the way
Speaker 3: we picture death as a person often says more about
Speaker 3: what we need than about what we fear.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And obviously both pathways can manifest you know, fear is
Speaker 3: clearly there sometimes, Like for example, I would assume most
Speaker 3: people who imagine the grim, terrifying, macabre figure are doing
Speaker 3: so as a manifestation of fear unresolved fears of some kind,
Speaker 3: rather than as a coping strategy. Thinking about the skeleton
Speaker 3: with the side is probably not like helping you feel
Speaker 3: better about death in some way. I mean, it might
Speaker 3: be you could imagine some ways a person might need
Speaker 3: to think of a threatened, threatening, terrifying figure, like, oh,
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe if like the person feels they
Speaker 3: need to be punished in some way. But I would
Speaker 3: think this is a relatively rare way it works.
Speaker 2: Or they know deep down that they are a terrible
Speaker 2: boss and they've been bad at Christmas their whole life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but the image of the gentle comforter
Speaker 3: obviously does serve a psychological need. It makes death less frightening,
Speaker 3: to give it a body, and to imagine that body
Speaker 3: as belonging to a kind, wisely helper who delivers you
Speaker 3: from pain. So if the comforter comes to mind more
Speaker 3: naturally when we think of our own death versus when
Speaker 3: we think of the deaths of others, that makes me
Speaker 3: think that the base level function of the personification of
Speaker 3: death might be more as a psychological defense mechanism that
Speaker 3: provides us comfort and puts our fears to rest, rather
Speaker 3: than doing something else. And I really want to emphasize
Speaker 3: I mean, when you approach it that way, that sounds
Speaker 3: kind of obvious, but I would say it doesn't have
Speaker 3: to be this way. I would not say that providing
Speaker 3: comfort is the default reason we conjure visionary or imaginary
Speaker 3: figures in our mind. For example, I think if there
Speaker 3: is a default assumption about the evolutionary reason we imagine monsters,
Speaker 3: it is probably specifically to amplify fears so that we
Speaker 3: act more defensively and take vigorous steps to avoid danger.
Speaker 3: Like the imagination I think usually works to make your
Speaker 3: fears of the unseen and the unknown more vivid, more
Speaker 3: powerful and motivating, so as to you know to guide
Speaker 3: you away from danger. It's not supposed to make you
Speaker 3: feel like death is going to be okay, but when
Speaker 3: at least, you know, modern Americans in these experiments think
Speaker 3: about the abstract idea of their own future death as
Speaker 3: opposed to the deaths of others, the imagination does the opposite.
Speaker 3: It soothes, it provides comfort, It says it's going to
Speaker 3: be okay, and you know, you could It would be
Speaker 3: really interesting if you could like compare this to you know,
Speaker 3: ancient history or something like. I wonder if this is
Speaker 3: a historically contingent fact based on the expectation that it's
Speaker 3: now normal in industrialized societies to live to old age
Speaker 3: and die from one of a handful of chronic diseases,
Speaker 3: as opposed to there being like a high likelihood that
Speaker 3: you die an unexpected sudden death at an early age
Speaker 3: from unexpected you know, from contagious disease or violence.
Speaker 2: Hmmm hmm. Yeah, that'll be that maybe a question we'll
Speaker 2: have to carry with us into the next few episodes. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 2: if not through life itself. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, just wanted to flag this is not particularly relevant
Speaker 3: to the studying question, but in the background section of
Speaker 3: this one, the authors flag a nineteen ninety six paper
Speaker 3: in the journal Death Studies by Mara E. Tam which
Speaker 3: it surveyed a sample of Swedish healthcare workers to figure
Speaker 3: out if there were any other common time and place
Speaker 3: associations with the personified figure of death, and Tam found
Speaker 3: that death was most often pictured as a man, consistent
Speaker 3: theme wearing dark clothing, associated with rural areas, the season
Speaker 3: of autumn, and the evening time. So I'm thinking, wow,
Speaker 3: death is it's going trick or treating?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, kind of an old timey Halloween figure. I
Speaker 2: don't know. I mean, we also associate autumn with things
Speaker 2: going away, so it makes sense. Yeah, yeah, but autumn
Speaker 2: is also kind of comfy as opposed to, like, like
Speaker 2: a cold the idea of like a cold winter death,
Speaker 2: I guess a cold winter reaper.
Speaker 3: Well, so what do you think about this idea that,
Speaker 3: as opposed to other imaginative impulses we have, which might
Speaker 3: be more often to amplify fears and cause us to
Speaker 3: act defensively, that for some reason, imagination, when applied to
Speaker 3: the concept of death, causes us to do the opposite.
Speaker 3: It conjures up comforting images that make it feel like
Speaker 3: it's going to be. Okay. That does seem kind of
Speaker 3: an interesting difference, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a coping method, perhaps because I mean
Speaker 2: there are no guarantees on any of this, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: But it's like when you if you pick up a
Speaker 2: copy of the album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, like which which
Speaker 2: deathbed do you pick for yourself? And you know you
Speaker 2: instantly are gonna you may, I don't know, depending on
Speaker 2: your worldview, you may flip over to the back and say, well,
Speaker 2: the peaceful one, that's that's mine, Maybe not so much
Speaker 2: the the hellish one on the front, the debauchery. But
Speaker 2: you know, unless unless that's more your thing.
Speaker 3: Did I ever tell you about how so? My you know,
Speaker 3: three year old likes Black Sabbath and she used to
Speaker 3: ask to listen to that album by calling it the
Speaker 3: bedtime record, bedtime record that's got a guy in bed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah it is, it's bed time. Do you keep it?
Speaker 2: Which side do you keep displayed out? There's like an
Speaker 2: album that you have out and you have like one
Speaker 2: side facing.
Speaker 3: It's usually on the shelf. Well sometimes when it would
Speaker 3: be I don't know, you'd see it both ways.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's the beauty of the album design. Right to
Speaker 2: back up to something we were talking about earlier. We're
Speaker 2: talking about the Deceiver or the gay deceiver, and I
Speaker 2: was kind of there was something like there was a
Speaker 2: there was an itch that I couldn't quite scratch us,
Speaker 2: like this is reminding me of something in particular, and
Speaker 2: it brings to mind the love song of Jay Alfred
Speaker 2: Proofrock or one line from it from T. S. Eliot,
Speaker 2: and that is, of course I have seen the Eternal
Speaker 2: Footman hold my coat and snicker and short, I was
Speaker 2: afraid the Eternal Footman is of course death. And I've
Speaker 2: got back on that line before, like why is why
Speaker 2: is death snickering? What does he why does he find
Speaker 2: this funny? Like it's clearly at my expense against again
Speaker 2: I am the punchline. Yeah, So I thought back to
Speaker 2: that line.
Speaker 3: I mean, he watched you try to eat that peach,
Speaker 3: and he knows what's coming while you're eating peaches and
Speaker 3: you're not even thinking about it.
Speaker 2: There's some other underlying psychological issues going on clearly with
Speaker 2: mister Proufrock.
Speaker 3: So one last study I wanted to mention before we
Speaker 3: wrap things up for part one here was published in
Speaker 3: the same journal as the last one. This is the
Speaker 3: journal Omega Journal of Death and Dying. This paper was
Speaker 3: by a psychologist named Young Gen Kong who is affiliated
Speaker 3: with New Mexico State University, and it's called Personification of Death.
Speaker 3: What types of death are personified by macab gentle, comforter, gay, deceiver,
Speaker 3: and automaton. This was twenty twenty one. The core idea
Speaker 3: in this paper is a further exploration of Castenbaum and
Speaker 3: Aisenberg's for archetypes, but asking the question what specific aspects
Speaker 3: of the death of the death experience can be attributed
Speaker 3: to each of these four personifications. In other words, do
Speaker 3: specific types of death and circumstances of death make us
Speaker 3: think of different death figures? And a few interesting trends
Speaker 3: and results. Cong says that people were most likely to
Speaker 3: imagine the macabre figure when thinking about murder, which occurs
Speaker 3: outside the home. That's kind of not surprising.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense again thinking back to the hunter,
Speaker 2: the killer, it is one that pursues us and singles
Speaker 2: us out.
Speaker 3: The comforter was most associated with peaceful death in old
Speaker 3: age taking place at home. Again, not very surprising there,
Speaker 3: But I thought the next two were a little more interesting.
Speaker 3: The deceiver, the gay deceiver was most associated with death
Speaker 3: by heart attack. Wow uh, whereas the automaton was most
Speaker 3: associated with death from cancer occurring in a hospital. And
Speaker 3: so a few things about this. I was thinking about
Speaker 3: the deceiver, the association between the deceiver and the heart attack.
Speaker 3: I can't you know the reason obviously why people would
Speaker 3: have this association, But I wonder if this has anything
Speaker 3: to do with the idea that people think of a
Speaker 3: heart attack as a surprise. It is something that happens
Speaker 3: suddenly and without warning. It's like a trick on you,
Speaker 3: but also something that is thought to be associated with
Speaker 3: lifestyle and life history. Like I'm not saying this is
Speaker 3: the right way to conceptualize cardiovascular health, but people do
Speaker 3: think about it this way. Like you were tempted by
Speaker 3: a lifetime of pleasures from you know, Scotch and methamphetamine
Speaker 3: and French fries, and then the devil sneaks up, yeah
Speaker 3: and stabs you in the back. It's like, you did
Speaker 3: those things, they were fun, and now the heart attack
Speaker 3: is coming.
Speaker 2: What a cruel trick you played on me? That thought
Speaker 2: those were good for me? Yeah, yeah, I guess. So
Speaker 2: it really feels like, this is a category that would
Speaker 2: at least historically be more easily associated with something like
Speaker 2: siff less, you know, in in previous centuries obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: or some other you know, sexually transmitted ailment that might
Speaker 2: have a lot of morality issues attached to it, that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. And I likewise, I was a little
Speaker 2: surprised by the automaton. I mean, on one level, not
Speaker 2: like you know, when when deaths from cancer occur in
Speaker 2: a hospital environment, you know, it's there is that sense
Speaker 2: of like this is very procedural, and things have are
Speaker 2: being done, and there's kind of like a back and
Speaker 2: forth and we know where it is going and then
Speaker 2: we reach eventually reached that place. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: I mean, cancer often does feel like a cruel, cosmic joke,
Speaker 2: and I don't know, it seems like that would be
Speaker 2: more the deceivers doing. But you know, they could also
Speaker 2: be me slightly misunderstanding the classifications here.
Speaker 3: Well, I would say with the automaton, it is interesting,
Speaker 3: you know, the idea of death in a hospital some
Speaker 3: that takes place in a medicalized context. It involves technology.
Speaker 3: There are stages and steps of what is happening that
Speaker 3: people might feel are better understood by the dissociated professionals
Speaker 3: around them than by the person to whom this death
Speaker 3: means the most, the person themselves and to their family members.
Speaker 3: Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, people who this
Speaker 3: matters less to have a better understanding of what's going
Speaker 3: on because they've seen this process a million times.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I could imagine too, We're coming back to
Speaker 2: what we were talking about earlier with proximity to death
Speaker 2: and the idea that funeral directors and people in the
Speaker 2: mortuary industry may be less inclined to personify death in general.
Speaker 2: You could imagine that, like this is a place where,
Speaker 2: you know, death is very close and people deal with
Speaker 2: it every day, and yeah, there is maybe like an
Speaker 2: increased awareness of what it is and you know, and
Speaker 2: where we stand in really to it. So maybe it
Speaker 2: does demystify it and to to a point anyway, So
Speaker 2: maybe it doesn't completely erase the figure, Like there a
Speaker 2: silhouette remains, but it is this automaton silhouette and it's
Speaker 2: not it's not personal. It is just it's destiny. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Another way I was thinking about the trickster idea though,
Speaker 2: is the deceiver? Is that all you really need is
Speaker 2: just an idea that it's kind of your fault. You
Speaker 2: know that you were you know that you were tricked
Speaker 2: or you tricked yourself into doing it. And you know,
Speaker 2: I was thinking about this the other day because I
Speaker 2: was let's see, I was listening to an interview with
Speaker 2: longevity researcher and Blue Zone proponent Dan Butner, who is
Speaker 2: not talking specifically about this example, but it was talking
Speaker 2: in general about modern fitness and diet regimes that you know,
Speaker 2: often to some degree or another, sort of promising you
Speaker 2: some sort of mortification against death and some shot at
Speaker 2: a longer life. And you know, most of these are
Speaker 2: not going to you know, especially when they're attached to
Speaker 2: some sort of a fad, you know that they're not
Speaker 2: really going to make a huge difference in the long run,
Speaker 2: you know, or at least Butner would argue that there
Speaker 2: are these other other aspects that are far more important
Speaker 2: that are related to you know, broader diet and broader
Speaker 2: exercise and so forth. But anyway, there's no shortage of
Speaker 2: people that are willing to say this is your shot.
Speaker 2: You can buy this product, you can you can buy
Speaker 2: this lifestyle, and this is what you need, and there's
Speaker 2: kind of like implied, and if you don't, well it's
Speaker 2: kind of on you. You've kind of you know, So
Speaker 2: that's the trick. I don't know, that's that was one
Speaker 2: thing I was thinking about in regards to this.
Speaker 3: At any rate, I think I see what you're saying,
Speaker 3: that we live in an environment of false assurances, where
Speaker 3: people are being given the idea that they you don't
Speaker 3: have to die, you know, you can like nobody really
Speaker 3: almost nobody thinks exactly that, But you're allowed to perpetuate
Speaker 3: an illusion, a little illusion where you can feel like,
Speaker 3: you know, somehow I can escape it, somehow, it's not
Speaker 3: going to happen to me. I can just keep it,
Speaker 3: you know, I can keep it at bay if I
Speaker 3: take the right supplements or do whatever. You know, it's
Speaker 3: just it's not going to happen to me, and it is,
Speaker 3: you know. So that's the trick in a way. We're
Speaker 3: given all these these false assurances.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Though also I want to be clear, I'm not
Speaker 3: saying like there's nothing you can do to affect when
Speaker 3: it happens. I mean, obviously, you know, there are there's
Speaker 3: pretty good evidence for some types of you know, effects
Speaker 3: of certain lifestyles on longevity. Nothing is you know, nothing's
Speaker 3: going to work all the time, but you can change
Speaker 3: your your odds or you know, on average with the
Speaker 3: and and the weird thing about this is, you know,
Speaker 3: from what I can tell, like all the stuff that
Speaker 3: looks like it's the really good secret trick that only
Speaker 3: the people really in the know know about that never
Speaker 3: turns out to be real. You know, it's it's the
Speaker 3: boring stuff you've already heard in all like diet and
Speaker 3: exercise and stuff.
Speaker 2: Not having the methamphetamine in the French fries. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And not to sound like every like self help source
Speaker 2: out there, I'm sure, but yeah, you're going to die
Speaker 2: at some point, but you're in the meantime you are
Speaker 2: going to live. Yeah. That might be a short amount
Speaker 2: of time, it might be a long amount of time,
Speaker 2: but you will be living during that time. And that's something. Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I think we're going to go ahead
Speaker 2: and close up this episode, but we will be back
Speaker 2: because there's a lot more to discover to discuss. We've
Speaker 2: I think we've we've presented an excellent scaffold on which
Speaker 2: to build out the rest of our conversations. We're going
Speaker 2: to get we're certainly going to get more into gender
Speaker 2: and death personifications. I have some interesting sources on that.
Speaker 2: We're going to look at.
Speaker 3: Really interesting stuff about that in art history hmm.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah. And you can even follow that trend into
Speaker 2: and get into modern media, like you know, where does
Speaker 2: a male death show up, what does a female death
Speaker 2: show up? And so forth, So it'll be fun to
Speaker 2: get into that, and we'll also of course draw on
Speaker 2: various other cultural traditions regarding the personification of death. So
Speaker 2: we hope you will join us for those discussions in
Speaker 2: the upcoming episodes. In the meantime, we'd love to hear
Speaker 2: from everyone out there if you have thoughts on anything
Speaker 2: we've discussed here, Certainly, even if it's just maybe you
Speaker 2: had never thought about what death personified would be and
Speaker 2: how you picture it. If you want to go through
Speaker 2: that experiment with us, write in and tell us what
Speaker 2: death looks like. Maybe we can share these in a
Speaker 2: future Listener Male episode.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any others, or to
Speaker 3: suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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