As highlighted by previous posts, it is natural for us (ie. humans) to create narratives in order to help us understand and make sense of the world. This is something that we often do without thinking simply by filling in gaps in events that appear could be causal. This can also have the consequence of giving random events the impression of greater significance than they necessarily deserve. This may be brought to its greatest display in Aristotle assigning Final Cause to his list of causes.
Our need to create narratives can often lead to parsing events into beginning, middle, and end; the fairly standard sequence of events for a narrative—or perhaps better thought of as states of equilibrium—either way, at the end of our narratives we seek finality. The scale of a funeral may be thought of as an intensity measure, indicating the impact that we deem that person had on the world. I suppose when an important enough of a person dies the equilibrium of the world is distorted to such an extent as to require either a week of games, or perhaps just Christina Aguilera belting out your hit song.
The creation of narratives can make it easier to manufacture support for a number of things. "Bringing the troops home" is used as a signal to the end of the war narrative, and has been used over and over by politicians to suggest that That Politician knows how to end the "war on terror," another narrative.
Of course, the funeral doesn’t have to be the end of a narrative, but our preoccupation with mortality leads to the sequel of our lives in some afterlife. Here we are free to envision a more perfect narrative as well as our carrot for being good vegetarians.
~patrick conners jr
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