End times

The
Crying
Game II
Gordon MacGregor deplores the spiritless eulogy

Jade Goody

For those of a certain age, veteran rocker Iggy Pop's decision to advertise online car insurance can only be viewed as a sign that the End Times are imminent. One could be forgiven for thinking that the posing pensioner who penned songs like 'Gimme Danger' and 'Search & Destroy' has finally sold out to Mammon (or at least Swiftcover.com). But, capering and gurning before a wall emblazoned with Situationist slogans like 'Demand-a-Quote', he reassures us that what he is really selling is time, before entreating us to 'Get a life!'.
     The choice of Iggy as front man might be seen as an inspired piece of marketing; a risqué survivor selling security to the risk–averse. For others, the ironic sight of an ageing rocker selling third party may simply be a tiresome and predictable reflection of the times. Whatever your view, the ad neatly encapsulates the tensions between freedom and risk-avoidance which affect so many of our decisions.
     Freedom and risk-avoidance are not mutually exclusive concepts. It is interesting to note that the 18th century libertarian, Richard Price, whose studies of death and epidemiology can be said to form the basis of the insurance industry, was also a believer in personal freedom whose ideas were incorporated into the American Declaration of Independence. But his was a different era, when religion allowed us to accept the blind cast of fate. The world was known to be a dangerous place, full of deadly pratfalls, and we simply had to take our chances on the road to our eternal whereabouts. Chance, then, was understood to mean something quite different from risk. But now the former has been swallowed up by the latter. Nothing 'just happens' any more. In the world of risk any negative outcome could have been avoided were it not for wanton and negligent action.
     This state of affairs has been exacerbated by the rise of secular culture. Since we are no longer afforded the consolations of religion, the age-old question: 'how can I save my soul?', becomes simply 'how can I live longer?'. Individuals at no time encounter anything bigger than themselves and their own desires or needs. There is no opportunity for prayer or meditation or simply time to reflect and gather dignity. Life doesn't go anywhere and becomes reduced to a series of experiences to be ticked off before the terminal event (which is to be postponed for as long as humanly possible).
     With the death of the soul it is unsurprising that we are thrown back on the body as the locus of our hopes and fears. To the religious mind the body could be both vulgar and comical but was not to be taken seriously; one only needs to look at the works of Hieronymous Bosch or the shelagh-na-gig of Irish churches, both of which 'used the power of laughter and the outrageous to drive away the demons of darkness'. But in the thanatophobic society of strength-through-joylessness our project is to join the ordered ranks of self-obsessed, preening Olympians.
     More worryingly, this po-faced physicality has led to a vindictive and judgemental system of health provision that provides to each only according to his just desserts. What used to be called 'moral imbecility' in Victorian times now finds fresh expression in the way we treat the obese, the nicotine-addicted, the dypsomaniacal. This attitude flows from the unquestioned assumption that we have a reponsibility to look after our own bodies. Further, we must be careful not to threaten each other's physical integrity by infringing a growing proliferation of boundaries and statutory bans.
     What do we do, then, when death becomes starkly unavoidable? The uncomfortable intrusion of imminent death, the spectre at the feast, has led us to create a hagiographic cult of AIDS martyrs and cancer saints (see Ms Goody and Ms Minogue). They become a priestly, chosen caste whose survival is seen as a triumph of the will (rather than a by-product of abundant celeb cash), and who may become further purified by their enlightening experience. As Barbara Ehrenreich writes in her essay 'Welcome to Cancerland: A Mammogram Leads to a Cult of Pink Kitsch', for those who by chance do not survive, we reserve faint disapproval as if they somehow deserved to die.
     If we are confused in our approach to the dying then we have lost the plot in our dealings with the dead, who now become the focus for hyperbole and schmaltzy over-emotional displays. Every fallen soldier becomes a hero (or the victim of negligence), every dead child was a star. We talk to them, write letters to them – a curious innovation – and set up sacrificial shrines to appease the minor deities of the fast lane and the unmarked crossing. Amidst the spiritless eulogising we might ask if we have not lost our sense of proportion or, dare one say it, our capacity for gracious acceptance.
     Perhaps, on reflection, the religious society was a more free society in its capacity to deal with misfortune and personal choice. As G K Chesterton said, 'the free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog'. Or, as Iggy might phrase it – 'get a life!'