Talon

Grief. It has a psychological purpose but is it really necessary? I have an unsual attitutde toward it. If you lose someone why do you experience grief? When I was christian, my argument was; "If he's dead and in heaven, what's wrong with that?"

I felt grief is simply a selfish response. You lost something and they gained heaven. So, why are you upset? They're with god and they can't be happier. I rarely considered anyone so contemptable as to deserve hell.

I was always troubled by people who couldn't understand that simple view even if we agreed on the issue of heaven and everlasting life with god.

And this attitude hasn't changed in spite of growing up and becoming athiest. I still feel it's a selfish disposition. One where you are suffering a loss while the dead aren't suffering at all.

I've thought a lot about the subject of death. When I was christian, I didn't fear death. I thought I would live forever in heaven with god so again, why would I be apprehensive about it?

However now I have a slight fear of death. Only a slight one mind you.
I've known to people who were clincally dead and told me the same base story with details relevant to their respective situations. Giving me some solice as to something after death. I guess I'd rather wait a long time to find out.


Cy9

Viti

I also think grief is a selfish response. If someone I love, want to spend time with, and is an important part of my little world dies...I mourn the loss of that person because I will miss them. My life is enhanced by their presence, so their loss is detrimental. I am not scared of death...but I do fear living my life without the people that help make it better.

sentinel00

I don't think anybody has any illusions that grief isn't selfish. Most mental health professionals would agree, however, that- selfish or not- allowing yourself to grieve is healthier than trying not to.

Now, I'm not saying that Cy9 or anybody else who says they don't grieve is necessarily bottling up emotions. I'm not inside your head and I'm not comfortable making such assumptions.

However, if you feel that you are burying emotions, my advice is don't. Pretty much everything we do is for selfish reasons. I do nice things for others because it makes me feel good to do them. Getting hung up on whether or not grieving is selfish isn't relevant to dealing with the very real pain.

Kachana

[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: Kachana ]</p>

Kachana

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Kachana:
[QB]Whilst it may not have much point to it, I don't know how accurately grief can be described as selfish. People don't really have the option but to experience grief, it happens automatically and cannot be easily stopped with rational deliberation. Or were you saying it is a selfish human tendency, regardless of our control over it?

Perhaps grief does serve a purpose of sorts though. It tends to change people's behaviour in a way that makes them less extroverted and more intimate and caring taward their immediate family, which could provide increased support and nurture at a time when a member of the family is no longer there to provide such support.

Zar

It seems to me that loved ones are more than simply "things" which make our lives better. When you lose someone you are in an important relationship with, you are suffering more than the loss of some kind of intellectual stimulus or entertainment value. You are literally hurt and damaged. You are losing a part of yourself -- that part that is bound up in the other person's experience of you; the part of your existence and your reality that is seen through their eyes. You are losing an important psychological and emotional anchor to the world. You are losing a lifetime of investment in creating mutual understanding that you cannot repeat. Those days are spent. You are losing the pleasure of the other's company. You are alone.

It may be possible to feel sadness for the unfortunate fate of someone you care about for its own sake. I think if my wife were killed in an accident I would think of how innocent, kind, helpful and alive she was and how undeserivng of such a terrible thing. I would be sad for the fact that such goodness is gone and that it has to be gone while vile wretchedness in others can live on. I would feel terrible just contemplating the tragic unreality of it.

I suppose one could still reduce this to a "selfish" response, but I can't really understand what important point is being made by doing this. Is it supposed to be an objectivist proof of something? Surely we aren't supposed to learn to feel nothing when a spouse is killed in a car crash. We are left to feel what we feel, regardless of such talk. And what cold comfort it would be to insist on how selfish a response it is to cry at your beloved father's funeral. Most sane people think just the opposite -- that a lack of sadness at the demise of a loved one is a sure sign that they weren't very important to you, or that you might be a repressed person.

Perhaps, after all, a large part of our negative response to death is, in fact, for our loss, not the loss of life of the deceased. But to say this is "selfish" may be a failure of words to express the truth properly, becuase such a word seems like too blunt an instrument to describe this. I do not doubt that even the most generally considerate and un-selfish person would react similarly to others upon being bereaved. And, evolutionary psychology to the contrary notwithstanding, it only makes sense that a species which is based on social interaction so fundamentally should react in such a way. But I count this as an important fact of human existence, and tightly bound up with a way of experiencing the world that makes caring and benevolent interaction possible (although surely it also gives rise to some negative interaction, especially when one goes to far in putting "tribe" above "non-tribe.") At any rate, apathy about this would probably bring us closer to being house plants that humans.

[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: Zar ]</p>

Born Free

I think grieving is a part of who we are and I can't for the life of me see the process as being selfish. I suppose if you consider the human body's way of dealing with the pain as a selfish measure then yes it would be and why not?? Is your body then selfish for repairing a cut or healing a broken bone??

It happens regardless of your religious affiliations, it's human. The pain involved in bereavement is like no other I've ever experienced. It's all consuming and terrifying realising that person is gone forever.

In my case though I have trained my mind so well to block out painful memories that I now cannot openly express how bad I feel. My mind has stopped the grieving process which then is unselfish if you are to follow this train of thought, but in doing this I know I'm storing up trouble for the future.

It is rare that I even think about my dad now who is dead only 6 months, everytime I try my mind goes blank. I however attribute this to not being comforted by my partner when I cried. My mind I think associated thinking about dad with crying and then crying with no physical or emotional comfort so now stops me having to deal with more pain by putting a mental block on thoughts of my dad.

Although it could be that my mind has done all it's natural grieving, feels healed and now it's way of coping is to not bring it up again. Not being an expert on bereavement it's a possiblity.

Before I get side tracked and go off on a ramble I would sum it up by saying that grieving = healing and if that's considered selfish then being selfish is not always a bad thing.

Laurentius

AVE

Being selfish (and all its attendant connotations and denotations: self-absorbed, self-centered, self-interested, self-regarded, self-seeking, egocentric, egoistic, egotistic, narcissistic, etc.) is held as a negative moral value in all cultures. Morality being a social construct, it discourages in its members the tendency to be interested only in their own person, regardless of others.

At a first glance, grief (keen mental suffering/distress over loss) seems to escape a moral qualification since it is spontaneous & involuntary.

Posted by Kachana:

Yet, what and how one love & hates, shares & withholds, admires & scorns depends on the set of values (and their hierarchy) absorbed during one’s lifelong experience. This is the reason why, for instance, xenophobic feelings – although spontaneous – bear a negative moral load, whereas tolerant sentiments are praised as positive.

One does not need to philosophize to long to realize that grief may or may not be selfish, according to one’s priorities.
Let’s take, for example, the hypothetical situation in which five officials, members of an aviation operator whose planes were crashed on the September 11 attacks, grieve over the loss:
(1) Official 1 grieves mainly over the loss of innocent lives in the attacks.
(2) Official 2 grieves mainly over the loss of a friend in the attacks.
(3) Official 3 grieves mainly over the loss of the airplanes & and trained personnel.
(4) Official 4 grieves mainly over the loss of his/her sex slave in the attacks.
(5) Official 5 grieves mainly over the loss of a suitcase with clothing he had been sent through one of the planes.
It seems to me obvious that official 1 is the least selfish of all, and official 5 is the most selfish. Although all grieve spontaneously over they feel most regretful, their sentiments have been cultivated the same way one is educated to perceive reality through one’s senses (sight is not just receiving nervous signals, but interpreting the information).

Feeling is one’s response to stimuli according to an automatic but value-bearing inner process. That is why the society considers mourning moral, and the opposite highly immoral. (Simulation of grief should not be taken into consideration here, I think, although at times people tend to feel what they required to feel, rejecting their spontaneous sentiments as improper).

Now the tricky question could be whether or not it is selfish to grieve over a relative or close friend. My opinion is that it isn’t as long the defunct person has not been an object of one’s delight or convenience.

As Zar excellently put it:
I cannot refrain myself, and this is perhaps the reason I felt it necessary that I should express my opinion on the issue, to mention that I grieve over my mother’s early death. Beside the fact that I feel I owe her much of what I am now, there is more than that, I know it. Every time her favorite band releases a new hit I painfully feel sorry that she is not here to listen to it, and every time I see her favorite actors play or her favorite trees blossom I wish she were here. But I mostly feel sorry that she did not live long enough to see some of her dearest dreams fulfilled, such as being a grandmother or being able to travel across Europe without being required a humiliating visa. It would be selfish if I did not consider these things from her perspective, who I know no longer exists in any form, but from the point of my own relief/comfort.

[ January 07, 2002: Message edited by: Laurentius ]</p>

Lykil

Zar, I think you are spot on, and would have said the same, if I were eloquent enough I have quoted a small passage below, since I find it well worth reading one more time:

[Emphasis mine]

La Chupacabra

Mad Kally

After being a home health hospice R.N. for a few years, I consider myself an expert on the subject. I would never call grieving selfish. It's a very normal and healthy thing to do. (unless it's buried, as in alli's case)

I watched people die on an almost daily basis. Part of my job was psycho-social support for the families/friends. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference if they have a belief in any god/gods or you are an atheist/agnostic. Everyone dies exactly the same, and everyone grieves. (if they care)

This is the mistake most people make. In the US we continue to visit the family for months after the patient dies. They need to talk about it. Have them get out a scrapbook and remember the good and bad times. You''ll see them laughing and crying. I've heard people say things so many times like "Oh, don't bring up the subject of alli's dad , it might upset her", that's what happened with her partner, who seems to have only made her grief worse. I guess it's ignorance on the part of the average person who hasn't been trained on death, dying and bereavement. I've also heard that nurse's in the UK are not very well trained or paid.

My best friend's brother was killed in a car accident. She was inconsolable to her family. I started stopping by her house every day to just talk about her brother Robert. That was a few years ago and she still thanks me all the time. (and we still talk about Robert)

We also refer people to various bereavement groups, etc. We would never leave a person alone without resources or comfort.