Bitter Sweet Home Coming

“Every existing thing is born without reason, goes on living out of weakness, and dies by accident.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, “The Philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre”

On the 18^th of February 2012, the world said goodbye to their music idol, Whitney Elizabeth Houston.

The funeral ceremony was aired to the world via a social media- the Houston family invited the world into their private lives. 

Social media connected people on a higher platform of solitude and spirituality. Individuals from all walks of life and religious backgrounds went to church.  We all entered that church, led by social media to say goodbye to Whitney. Moreover, we were taken back to school and taught about what it meant to religious and to belief in a higher power (God).  The strength it takes to accept loved one has now gone to another spiritual reality.

 What echoed throughout was that this was not a final goodbye rather that their loved one’s purpose on earth had ended; now it was their time to rejoice in the arms of their heavenly father. My existentialist hat is own: The belief in the afterlife is a hard concept to grasp, as the afterlife creates a continuum of life in spiritual form. Death although acknowledged in the funeral ceremony, does not exist- spirituality creates an afterlife.

As I write over 13,000 people around the world have flooded the ‘Remembering Whitney website, to share their memories. http://remembering.whitneyhouston.com/. On this social platform (aided by Facebook) the participants were united in sharing memories of their idol, and in sharing their feeling of loss.

Twitter yesterday was flooded with people commenting per second on their thoughts about the funeral ceremony. I was amazed at the floods of per second tweets from individual across the global- who all had a bit of personal contribution to make. There was no inhibition of thoughts, which would usually be the norm in daily physical social engagements.  People had free will on this social platform to speculate positively and negatively on each speaker; there was love, empathy, mockery, ridicule and at time ‘hateful’ words. These people had no obligation to anyone to hold some type of social etiquette; for at the touch of a button they had the free will to express their thoughts, without any judgements from anyone. This is the phenomena of social media, guilt free environment and a platform where one makes the choice.

Social media, allowed a shared platform where people could express how they were feeling, about the death of someone they idolised.

There is conflict within me, about all this social media hype. The same social media that was adulated yesterday, was the same that may have been the downfall of this idol. Of course there may have been other causes as well, which have to be considered.

Who is the social media?

We all feed of the media virus and have some level of control in pushing the social media drive. There are those behind the camera who are driven by our need to be feed off per second the latest news.

 This person who had everything in the world had doubts about herself (like we all do); unlike us her feelings must have been heightened to another level. When she was down, we were all spectators on her down fall and fed off all the negative press. Not once do I recall any high level out pouring as magnified to the level as it was yesterday.  There was no outwardly energy pouring out to rescue their idol.

I watched the funeral ceremony, whilst multi-taking between pre-viewing Twitter, Facebook and TMZ, another social site was that we feed off social media, in all shapes and forms. I am amazed at my ability to simultaneously feed off various social media platforms at once. There was some level of stimulus to absorb it all, as much as possible so as not to miss any second of it. 

What I began to realise was that we scream the loudest when the person has departed from this earth. We mourn yet not recall that at one point the individual may have cried out the loudest screams to be rescued. Typical us we feed off the negative press, and feed the vulnerable individual to the wolves, thereby leaving the individual isolated.

So there becomes a conflict the person wants to be loved so much, by the public and struggles through love and hate relationships with the media. The conclusion is that the media is not only the person carrying the camera, the media is US. We all have some level of control in what defines social media. This is such a powerful movement which can construct and destruct in a second.

It was interesting to see that when the camera’s stopped rolling on the TV, the social media on some internet sites continued rolling. There was a high interest from reporters, who wanted to know which celebrities had attended the service. There was screaming and shouting at the site of a celebrity, and a need to get that person’s attention. What was forgotten here was that we were somewhat intruders on the day; so there needed to be some level of respect for the aggrieved. I can appreciate that us the population has the need to know who attended. What become apparent was that as spectators, there was luck of sympathy and it was easily forgotten that these individuals were human beings who were going through a grieving process and may have been in fragile state to vocalise their feelings to the media (US).

To conclude on the existentialism:

“They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then its night once more.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Albert Camus believed in the concept of absurdity- “Life is Absurd.”

Life is Absurd in that we live in the future and in the hope of later and tomorrow.

“We live on the future: “tomorrow,” “later on,” “when you have made your way,” “you will understand when you are old enough.” Such irrelevancies are wonderful, for; after all, it’s a matter of dying…. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is the absurd.”

This absurdity occurs because the Intellectual patterns in humans desire to live for the future. Biological patterns, on the other hand, don’t live for the future.  Camus suggested we get rid of hope because hope gives us the illusion of eternity. He says that we should live in absurd freedom, revolting from our absurd position, but constantly reaffirming the absurd.

So basically what he is saying is that when one awakens to self, they realise how absurd is it, to long for the future which may never come. Rather what’s more important is how we actively engage and perform with life in the now.  Not such an easy concept to achieve, but ultimately this way would bring us closer to understanding death and its importance. And possibly if we lived our lives in such a way, we would be more questioning to daily routines and rules and significance in our lives. For we only have today to live, Right?

Camus believed in dualisms, life and death, rational and irrational. The conclusion was we had to engage with one or the other. For instance, if you’re not being rational, then you’re being irrational, and by being irrational one would not be able to understand anything, including the universe. He suggested that we reflect on our emotions, and then we would begin to understand. What I can understand in relation to death- is that we do not understand it (therein lies the absurdity), because we are busy living for the future.  Death is absurd because the rational mind cannot deal with it.

“It is the idea of death makes one aware of one's life, one's vital being – that which is impermanent and will one day end. When this vitality is appreciated, one feels free – for there is no urgency to perform some act that will cancel the possibility of death, seeing as though there is no such act. In this sense, all human activity is absurd, and the real freedom is to be aware of life in it’s actually and totally, of its beauty and its pain.”

 “We know we must die; we would rather not, but why must we suffer angst, engage in theatrics, and create myths for ourselves. Why not simply face it and get on with the living of our lives?” -Kai Nielsen’s

To end........

There is an absurdity in our temporary fixture on the death ‘especially in relation to celebrities (for we only know them via social media). Social media numbs us, to the level of which we do not really appreciate the symbolism in the death; it does not push us hard enough to wake us up to ourselves to change the course in the direction of our lives. Apart from exposure to social media, death close to home neither pushes us to that heightened state of living for today (only a few can master this art).

Death has now become easily accessible globally, via socially mediated devices and communication technologies. Apart from access to celebrity deaths, we are exposed to images of death from around the world- per each news hour we watch on a daily basis. We have become immune about death it’s now a daily norm. There is nothing authentic in this experience.

If we were affected by death, we would not be immune to rescuing a celebrity (with a drug addiction), or mass daily killings, or poverty.

As a collective if we were affected, we could change the world by a click of a button. This would be joined social consciousness awakening to the absurdity of life.