We are now one quarter of the way into the 21st Century. Helicopters fly/flew on Mars. Satellites guide our travels around Earth. Humans live far beyond our planet’s atmosphere, and make plans for permanent habitats on other worlds of the Sun’s family. People are living longer than they ever have.

Yet, whenever someone dies we fall back on superstition to acknowledge that death. “Rest in Peace” we say, as if the deceased is in some danger of becoming a tormented, wandering spirit, like Hamlet’s father or Jacob Marley.

Even the mechanism of death we wrap up and disguise. The individual has “departed”, or “passed on”, or “gone to a better place”.

We seek comfort when we lose a loved one, but that comfort is for the living. The dead are past caring. There is no circumstance under which they will not rest in peace.*

So, I ask, please give some thought before reacting to a death with a knee jerk “RIP”.

————-

*Even imagining a scenario in which the corpse is desecrated, the original owner isn’t there anymore.