A Question of Death

So, it appears that 3 million people sat down to watch Derren Brown’s ‘Live’ Russian Roulette Stunt on Sunday 5^th October.  The irresponsibility and insensitivity of Channel 4, who broadcast the event, needs to be highlighted, in the light of the recent tragic incidents related to gun crime and the sanity of Derren Brown needs to be questioned.  Despite Mr Brown (unbeknownst to the viewing public) using blanks instead of live ammunition, the fact remains that 3 million people tuned into watch someone attempt to shoot himself in the head.  Forget the excuse of psychological tricks or mind games, because this highlights an increasingly worryingly trend in the fascination that we have for death.  We are all guilty in some way, for don’t we slow down on the M25 to have a peek at the victim of the latest accident?

So where does this deep morbid and perverted fascination for tragedies that afflict others come from?  Is it due to the media?  Have we become desensitised to violence, killing and death, as a result of what we see on our TV screens and in the cinemas?  Or have society and the time we live in just become more violent?  Recent images from the Iraq war were shown before the watershed time and seemed to shock less than in 1991.  They say that art imitates life, which must mean that society has become more violent and death more apparent, where a life of human being is not worth 2 pence.  Have we become that arrogant?

Next to the fascination with death is the fascination with cheating death.  The Blaine’s, Browns and even Houdini’s of this world all revel in the ultimate parlour trick, feeding our constant desire as a viewing public, to cheat death.  Why are we so concerned about cheating death? The faiths teach that death is inescapable.  In Islam, we are told in the Qur’an that ‘Nor can a soul die except by God’s leave, the term being fixed by Writing’ (3:145).  What does this mean?  We can not cheat death.  Death is the only one certain thing about life. So why do we fall for these cheap illusions that these individuals create about cheating death?  Is it because they create an image that they can achieve what man can not or is it something deeper?

So how do we move away from this fascination of death and of cheating death? We have to live our life to prepare for our death.  Regardless of whether one believes in an afterlife or not, the fundamental question that we ask ourselves, is how we can live to make the world a better place, so that when we die (which we all do), our children will benefit from what we did.  This is the real idea of sustainability, a word that governments like to toss in to appease the environmentalists.  We need to rethink about what drives us in life.  What do we do?  Why do we do it?  How do we do it?  Our lives need to incorporate peace, justice and equality.  Our children will need to live and grow up in a safe world, where people live in peace and justice and are not persecuted for their race, colour or religion.  This is a responsibility that we as human beings have towards each other and also the rest of creation.  We need to lose our arrogance and cohabit with other people and other living things.  We as people living in the so called ‘developed’ world need to take the initiative and tackle the key issues that affect our society.  We can’t expect the government to do this on their own and even if we did, they have not given us the confidence that they will go about it like this.  The government is only content in healing the surface wounds afflicting society, whilst completely ignoring the root causes.  The recent moves to deal with the increase in gun crime are evidence of this.  Rather than look at the causes of gun crime, the government announced new measures for the police.  This will not solve the issue as the government is not looking into the root causes such as unemployment; poor education and so on.  By not dealing with the root causes, the government will systematically fail to cure the maladies of society

One can only guess the anguish that the family of Marian Bates, shot while trying to defend her daughter, were going through on that Sunday night.  Our thoughts are with them when we say; Marian Bates was the true heroine. She had a couple of seconds to make a decision before the gun, containing live ammunition, was fired.  Do I save myself