Fun with Death: Exploring Thanatopias and Gods of the Ages

1. ThanatopiasorFun with Death Gods Across the Ages

2. Thanatos • = death-instinct s.v. DEATH n. 19. • 1935 Brit. Jrnl. Psychol. XXVI. 283 Freud's final duality was the division of the mind into two sets of instincts which he termed life instincts and death instinctsrespectively or, if one prefers the Greek names, Eros and Thanatos. Ibid. 284 He was inclined..to regard the voice of Thanatos as mute. 1955 [see DEFUSION]. 1967 [see EROS 1b]. 1970 G. GREER Female Eunuch 148 Our life-style contains more thanatos than eros. 1979 H. SEGAL Klein i. 20 The fundamental conflict, between Eros (life, including sexuality) and Thanatos (self-destruction and destruction) is the deepest source of ambivalence, anxiety and guilt.

3. Thrillseekers: to gain a peak life experience, or to toy with death?

4. Thanatology • The scientific study of death, its causes and phenomena. Also (orig. U.S.), the study of the effects of approaching death and of the needs of the terminally ill and their families; • 1903 MITCHELL tr. Metchnikoff's Nat. Man xii. (1904) 298 The scientific study of old age and of death, two branches of science that may be called gerontology and thanatology. 1912 Jrnl. Amer. Med. Assoc. 27 Apr. 1246/1 There is something more than mere transcendentalism in the Science of Thanatology. 1969 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 13 Sept. 12/7 A Foundation of Thanatology is being formed in New York. 1972 New Scientist 2 Mar. 497/2 The most disturbing issue that has arisen anew with thanatology is the problem of what to tell the terminal patient about his illness. Ibid., Another area of thanatological controversy concerns the administration of drugs to relieve the pain of the terminally ill. 1976 Billings (Montana) Gaz. 11 July 3-F/4 Workers in the new field of thanatology are encouraging parents to take their children, even small ones, to funerals. 1977 New York Rev. Bks. 12 May 10/1 There is now a special branch of learning called ‘Thanatology’, and historians of death, like Philippe Ariès or Michel Vovelle, have suddenly appeared on the scene. 1979 Brit. Med. Jrnl. 15 Dec. 1530/2 The near-dead are not dead; and the dead, whether surviving in some form or not, can be left to thanatology and eschatology.

5. Thanatologist • a. A student of or a person versed in thanatology; in quot. 1901 (nonce-use), one who studies dead animals. (HEY, is that biology or TAXIDERMY?) • 1901 E. SELOUS Bird Watching viii. 224 We have studied animals only to kill them, or killed them in order to study them. Our ‘zoologists’ have been thanatologists. 1972 New Scientist 2 Mar. 497 Thanatologists ask doctors..to help the terminal patient and his family to meet his own death. 1975 Times Lit. Suppl. 31 Oct. 1305/4 Their real subject, as is customary with Signor Manganelli, is death. He has always been proud of introducing himself as the supreme thanatologist. 1983 Oxf. Bk. Death p. xiii, While to ‘deny’ death would sound as foolish as the lady who told Carlyle she had decided to accept the universe, I cannot say that I share the thanatologists' missionary urge to bring death out into the open. • b. An undertaker. • 1972 Daily Colonist (Victoria, B.C.) 1 Mar. 1/8 Quebec's 450 undertakers want to be called thanatologists. 1980 Times 25 Apr. 6/4 He was one of 300 thanatologists, better known as undertakers, gathered in the principality [of Monaco] to discuss death in all its aspects.

6. Egyptian embalming & Afterlife Ritual Anubis, jackal-headed god of embalming • A strange fetish, known as the imiut fetish, was linked to Anubis. It was a headless stuffed skin (usually of a great feline), tied by its tail to a pole which was planted in a pot. Known as the 'Son of the hesat-Cow' (the cow that produced the Mnevis bull was linked to the cow goddess Hesat), another title of Anubis, they is evidence of this fetish as early as the 1st Dynasty. They were linked to the funerary cult, depicted in the Chapel of Anubis at Hatshepsut's mortuary temple and actual golden fetishes being left in the tomb of Tutankhamen. These emblems of Anubis were placed at the western ends of the corridors, one on each side of the outermost shrine at Tutankhamen's tomb. The pots were made of Egyptian 'alabaster' and the poles represented the water lily water lily (lotus) stem and bud while the tip of the skin's tail had a papyrus flower attached and the pole and fetish itself were gilded. Other fetishes have been found made of real animal skin that have been wrapped in bandages. In early times there was a god, Imiut, who was known as 'He Who is in His Wrappings' who became a form of Anubis. The fetish was probably linked with mummy wrappings though it also appears to have been related to the royal jubilee festival.

8. Entomological Myths of Thanatopias:

9. Historical ,Cultural&Cult Thanatopias Jonestown (People’s Temple) Heaven’s Gate Branch Davidians Movement for the Restoration of the 10 Commandments of God Solar Temple Masada Dia de la Muerte Kamikaze pilots and Saipan Japanese Cryogenics Haitian Zombies

10. Cybernetics & Artificial Intelligence At Its Worst • Humans have already traded physical effort for technological strength • Artificial intelligence may supplant original human thought, or… • Humanity may absorb and integrate artificial intelligence, making our species the ultimate biological automaton, or… • Humanity may become subject to technology by way of…

11. Total Isolation in the Guise of Total Connectivity Televisiphonernetting Snurfing Second Life Wifiving Karaocasting Telebinge Tripnotized