Fascination with death

Short description: Human interest throughout history

'Seductive death' by Eustache-Hyacinthe Langlois

Fascination with death has occurred throughout human history, characterized by obsessions with death and all things related to death and the afterlife.

In past times, and present, people would form cults around death and figures. Famously, Anubis, Osiris, Hades, and La Santa Muerte have all had large cult followings. La Santa Muerte (Saint Death), or the personification of death, is currently worshiped by many in Mexico and other countries in Central America. Day of the Dead (2 November) is a celebration for the dead.

## Contents

* 1 History
* 1.1 Modern Western culture
* 2 Necrophilia
* 3 See also
* 4 Notes
* 5 References
* 6 External links

## History

The ancient Egyptians are most famous for their fascination of death by mummifying their dead and building exquisite tombs, like the pyramids of Giza, for their dead. Many of their deities were death-related, such as: Ammut, the devourer of unworthy souls; Anubis, the guardian of the Necropolis and the keeper of poisons, medicines, and herbs; and Osiris, the king of the dead.

The Greek underworld, Hades, was ruled by the god Hades, and had five rivers that flowed through it. The rivers were: Acheron, river of sadness; Cocytus, river of lamentation; Lethe, river of forgetfulness; Phlegethon, river of fire; Styx, river of hate. The Underworld had attendants who, though not rulers, were important gods and beings. The Furies were female spirits who exacted vengeance against people who committed specific crimes. Keres were female spirits of death and destruction. Persephone was the goddess of the underworld and the spouse of Hades. Thanatos, the god of death, was said to wear dark robes.

The Vikings believed that if a warrior died in battle, he would be taken to the Norse afterlife: the hall of Valhalla, in which the warriors would prepare for Ragnarǫk, the battle at the end of the world. Rune stones were erected to commemorate particularly brave warriors. Death in one's sleep (a "straw death") was considered dishonorable.

### Modern Western culture

Étienne-Gaspard Robert offered phantasmagorias projecting skeletons and ghosts. A 1831 engraving of a 1797 show in Paris.

In the early part of the 20th century, it was common to hold séances at dinner parties. A séance is an event where a group of people (3 or more) try to communicate with the dead through one person of the group, known as a psychic medium.

Today there are a number of authors who have spoken on the fascination people have with death. "If it bleeds, it leads" is a phrase related to this, meaning that in the mass media most of the material is based on death. For example: death and crime are almost always a topic in the news. The goth and metal subcultures are often associated with death and dying.

Daniel Kahneman and others have studied the psychology behind this. For example, people buy insurance and make other decisions based on what comes readily to mind—e.g., the previously recorded high-water mark for a flood, rarely considering that something worse is possible and in many cases eventually likely. This interacts with the management policies of media outlets to create availability cascades and media feeding frenzies: For example, "strokes cause almost twice as many deaths as all accidents combined, but 80% of respondents [in a survey] judged accidental death to be more likely. ... [This is because media] coverage is itself biased toward novelty and poignancy. The media do not just shape what the public is interested in, but also are shaped by it."[1]

This fascination with death and interaction with media editorial policies sometimes has problematic consequences for public policy. For example, Vincent Sacco[2][3] and others described how the mainstream commercial media in the United States changed their editorial policies in the 1970s to focus more on the police blotter. The human psychology behind "If it bleeds, it leads" meant they could retain or even increase their audience while reducing the cost of producing the news: Investigative journalism is enormously expensive, especially if it offends a major advertiser. Focusing on crimes apparently committed by people without substantive political or economic power is cheap.

## Necrophilia

'Necrophilia' is generally used in English to refer to the paraphilia associated with dead bodies, although the term has been used in a broader sense and in foreign language merely to refer to 'a fascination with death.'

## See also

* Thanatology
* Mean world syndrome

## Notes

1. ↑ Kahneman, Daniel (2011), Thinking, Fast and Slow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 978-0374275631
2. ↑ Sacco, Vincent F. (May 1995), "Media Constructions of Crime", Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 539: 141–154, doi:10.1177/0002716295539001011 , reprinted as chapter 2 of Potter and Kapeller (1998, pp. 37-51, esp. p. 42)
3. ↑ Sacco, Vincent F (2005). When Crime Waves. Sage. ISBN 0761927832.

## References

* "Death: A User's Guide" by Tom Hickman
* "Spook: Science Tackles The Afterlife" by Mary Roach
* "Letters from the Afterlife: A Guide to the Other Side" by Katherine Hart, Elsa Barker
* "Life After Death : A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion" by Alan F. Segal
* "The Ghost Next Door" by Mark Alan Morris
* "Ghosts, Spirits and Hauntings" by Patricia Telesco
* "The Beginner's Guide for the Recently Deceased" by David Staume
* "Walt Disney's Curious Fascination With Death" by Sean Braswell

## External links

* All Souls Day
* Day of the Dead (Dia de Los Muertos)
* History and Customs of Halloween
* Dark Tourism - the pursuit of visiting sites where people have died

* v
* t
* e

Death

In medicine|

Cell death
Necrosis

Avascular necrosis
Coagulative necrosis
Liquefactive necrosis
Gangrenous necrosis
Caseous necrosis
Fat necrosis
Fibrinoid necrosis
Temporal lobe necrosis
Programmed cell death

AICD
Anoikis
Apoptosis
Autophagy
Intrinsic apoptosis
Necroptosis
Paraptosis
Parthanatos
Phenoptosis
Pseudoapoptosis
Pyroptosis
Autolysis
Autoschizis
Eschar
Immunogenic cell death
Ischemic cell death
Pyknosis
Karyorrhexis
Karyolysis
Mitotic catastrophe
Suicide gene

* Abortion
* Accidental death
* Autopsy
* Brain death
* Brainstem death
* Clinical death
* DOA
* Death by natural causes
* Death rattle
* Dysthanasia
* End-of-life care
* Euthanasia
* Lazarus sign
* Lazarus syndrome
* Medical definition of death
* Organ donation
* Terminal illness
* Unnatural death

Lists|

* Causes of death by rate
* Expressions related to death
* Natural disasters
* People by cause of death
* Premature obituaries
* Preventable causes of death
* Notable deaths by year
* Unusual deaths
* TV actors who died during production

Mortality|

* Birthday effect
* Child mortality
* Gompertz–Makeham law of mortality
* Holiday effect
* Immortality
* Biological
* Digital
* Infant mortality
* Karōshi
* Maternal death
* Maternal mortality in fiction
* Memento mori
* Micromort
* Mortality displacement
* Mortality rate
* RAMR
* Mortality salience
* Perinatal mortality

After death|

| Body|

Stages
Pallor mortis
Algor mortis
Rigor mortis
Livor mortis
Putrefaction
Decomposition
Skeletonization
Fossilization

Preservation
Cryopreservation

Cryonics
Neuropreservation
Embalming
Maceration
Mummification
Plastination
Prosection
Taxidermy

Disposal
Burial

Bed burial
Burial at sea
Chariot burial
Jar burial
Natural burial
Premature burial
Secondary burial
Ship burial
Sky burial
Space burial
Cannibalism
Cremation
Dismemberment
Excarnation
Promession
Resomation

Beating heart cadaver
Body donation
Cadaveric spasm
Coffin birth
Death erection
Dissection
Gibbeting
Postmortem caloricity
Post-mortem interval

|

Other aspects|

Afterlife
Cemetery
Consciousness
Customs
Death mask
Eternal oblivion
Examination
Funeral
Grief
Intermediate state
Internet
Mourning
Obituary
Resurrection
Taboo on the dead
Vigil

Paranormal|

* Ghosts
* Near-death experience
* Near-death studies
* Necromancy
* Out-of-body experience
* Reincarnation research
* Séance

Legal|

* Abortion law
* Administration
* Capital punishment
* Cause of death
* Civil death
* Coroner
* Death-qualified jury
* Death certificate
* Declared death in absentia
* Death row
* Dying declaration
* Faked death
* Inquest
* Legal death
* Murder
* Necropolitics
* Prohibition of death
* Right to die
* Suspicious death
* Trust law
* Will

Fields|

* Forensic pathology
* Funeral director
* Mortuary science
* Necrobiology
* Post-mortem chemistry
* Post-mortem photography
* Taphonomy
* Biostratinomy
* Thanatology

Other|

* Apparent death
* Dark tourism
* Darwin Awards
* Dead pool
* Death and culture
* Death anniversary
* Death anxiety
* Death deity
* Personification of death
* Dying-and-rising god
* Psychopomp
* Death camp
* Death drive
* Death education
* Death from laughter
* Death hoax
* Death knell
* Death march
* Death messenger
* Death notification
* Death panel
* Death poem
* Death pose
* Death-positive movement
* Death squad
* Death threat
* Death trajectory
* Dignified death
* Extinction
* Fan death
* Festival of the Dead
* Fascination with death
* Hierarchy of death
* Homicide
* Last rites
* Martyr
* Megadeath
* Museum of Death
* Necronym
* Necrophilia
* Necrophobia
* The Order of the Good Death
* Predation
* Sacrifice
* human
* animal
* Social death
* Spiritual death
* Suicide
* Assisted suicide
* Thanatosensitivity
* Undead
* Voodoo death

* Category
* Outline

* v
* t
* e

Media and human factors

* Cognitive psychology
* Externality
* Evolutionary psychology
* Behavioral modernity
* Cognition
* Mismatch
* Media psychology
* Media studies
* Social psychology

Media practices|

* Betteridge's law of headlines
* Gatekeeping
* Infotainment
* Human-interest story
* Junk food news
* Least objectionable program
* Soft media
* Journalistic scandal
* Media bias
* Media manipulation
* Pink-slime journalism
* Political endorsement
* Propaganda
* Public relations
* Missing white woman syndrome
* News values
* Sensationalism
* Hot take
* Spiking
* Tabloid television
* Trial by media
* Yellow journalism

Attention|

* Attention economy
* Attention inequality
* Attention management
* Attention span
* Chumbox
* Clickbait
* Cognitive miser
* Low information voter
* Digital zombie
* Phubbing
* Doomscrolling
* Human multitasking
* Media multitasking
* Mobile phones and driving safety
* Smartphones and pedestrian safety
* Texting while driving
* Influence-for-hire
* Infodemic
* Information explosion
* Information overload
* Information pollution
* Information–action ratio
* Rage farming
* Screen time
* Binge-watching
* Television consumption
* Sticky content

Cognitive bias/
Conformity|

* Availability cascade
* Availability heuristic
* Bandwagon effect
* Confirmation bias
* Crowd psychology
* Mobbing
* Moral panic
* Mean world syndrome
* Negativity bias
* Peer pressure
* Social-desirability bias
* Social influence bias
* Spiral of silence

Digital divide/
Political polarization|

* Algorithmic radicalization
* Youth
* Algorithmic amplification
* Echo chamber
* Fake news website
* Post-truth politics
* United States
* Filter bubble
* Knowledge divide
* Knowledge gap hypothesis
* Political polarization in the United States
* Social media use in politics
* United States
* 2016 U.S. presidential election
* 2020 U.S. presidential election

Related topics|

* Computer rage
* Criticism of Facebook
* 2021 Facebook company files leak
* Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal
* Criticism of Netflix
* Cultural impact of TikTok
* Digital media use and mental health
* Effects of violence in mass media
* Fascination with death
* Griefer
* Mass shooting contagion
* Psychological effects of Internet use
* Sealioning
* Social aspects of television
* Social bot
* Social impact of YouTube
* Technophilia
* Neophile
* Technophobia
* Violence and video games

ro:Moarte (mitologie)

0.00

(0 votes)

Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascination with death. Read more

|

Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Unsolved:Fascination_with_death&oldid=4159123"
*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template