Seminars

To be mindful of death and to love the world describe a dual impetus for many engaged in more ecologically sustainable and communally-engaged deathcare practices. Yet, to love the world is to grieve it in an era of climate collapse and ecological devastation, as our common fate is bound up with the wellbeing of other-than-human companions in a web of life on the brink. This talk and the ensuing conversation will engage in theological reflection on the place of the corpse in the larger web of life, foregrounding ecological theology and ethics in the development and implementation of deathcare practices, with an eye toward the ways the corpse becomes a window into our relationship with the ecological web.

There is now widespread use of the emotional term 'grief' in connection with the response to the state of the Earth (enviro-grief, eco-grief, climate grief, reef grief, good grief, deep grief, animal grief, etc.). Grief occupies the extreme negative end of the psychoterratic spectrum of Earth emotions, alongside other extreme emotional states like global dread, tierratrauma, terrafurie, solastalgia, and forms of non-sexual necrophilia. However, it is, in my view, grief that has become a defining emotional response to actual and projected biophysical change. In this talk I explore the limits of grief in ‘environmental’ contexts and tentatively examine the issue of “what comes after grief?” I suggest a new concept, ‘mersis,’ is needed to describe an emotional state beyond grief that takes us to the inevitability and nothingness of self-imposed death. As 'we' do not ever wish to go there, I have created ‘mersis’ in order to preemptively destroy its emergence.

The landscape of death care in the United States has been undergoing a significant transformation over the past fifty years. The most notable change has been the increasing popularity of cremation, a shift that has had a profound impact on the industry and societal attitudes towards death. As we look to the future, it's clear that further innovation and evolving preferences are shaping the way we approach death care. What will the next fifty years bring? To help answer that question, an academic survey has been conducted by Wake Forest Law School for each of the past two years which delves into consumer preferences in death care. The annual study aims to assess openness and interest in six methods of disposition: casket burial, cremation, green burial, alkaline hydrolysis, natural organic reduction, and donation to science.

Does death harm nonhuman animals as much as it harms humans, and does it harm plants, fungi, and other living beings at all? The answers depend in part on ethical issues such as: Why is death bad? Is it bad because it causes suffering and frustration at present, because it deprives the subject of happiness and satisfaction in the future, or for another reason? They also depend on scientific issues such as: To what extent do animals, plants, fungi, and other living beings have the kinds of desires, preferences, and psychological continuity over time that create vulnerability to the harm of death? Join us for a wide ranging guided conversation about the moral significance of death across species.