On Different Views of Death between Chinese and English Culture.doc

中西方文化对于死亡的不同见解On Different Views of Death between Chinese and English CultureAbstract: With the rapid development of science and technology, peoples existing and living conditions have being improved. However, as modern people are so busy in chasing, choosing and achieving material life and wealth, they gradually lose the ability to realize and obtain the final meaningfulness and value of life，which this leads to mans decreasing of existing character and increasing of existing worry. Accordingly, “Death” which is about essence of life has been got rid out of the modern peoples mind. The reason is not only the historical traditions, the morals or the social realities, but also the backwardness of “Death Education”.Key words: death; culture; death awareness; death education 摘要：随着现代科技的迅猛发展，人们的生存条件不断得到改善，生活水平不断提高。然而，现代人在尽情地追寻、选择和实现自我物质生活价值的同时，也逐渐丧失了实现与获取生命终极意义与价值的能力，从而导致人的生存品质降低、生存焦虑加重。而“死亡”这一关乎生命本质的永恒主题，也就这样渐渐被排除在现代人的意识之外。这不但有人文历史、伦理道德和社会现实等方面的原因，“死亡教育”的滞后也有不可推卸的责任。关键词：死亡；文化；死亡意识；死亡教育ContentsI. Introduction.1II. Definition.2A. Death.2B. Death Awareness.3C. Death Education.3III. Different Views.4A. In China.4B. In Western Countries.5IV. Death Problems.5V. Death Education.6A. Death Education for the Public.8B. Death Education in Public Schools.8C. Reduction of Death Anxiety as a Goal in Death Education.9VI. Conclusion.10Works Cited.11I. IntroductionIn the modern human history, especially in 21st century, people use knowledge to recreate nature and to meet the needs. With all kinds of technologies and inventions developing in an extreme speed to provide more and more fields and probabilities for value choices, peoples condition of existence and quality of life are getting better and better. However, as modern people are so busy in chasing, choosing and achieving material life and wealth, they gradually lose the ability to realize and obtain the final meaningfulness and value of life, which leads to mans decreasing of existing character and increasing of existing worry. Therefore, there are many youngsters ignoring their and other peoples lives. Accordingly, “Death” which is about essence of life has been got rid out of the modern peoples mind. Death Awareness is often eliminated from peoples awareness. The essence and true value of death is so important in our life that we should not ignore it because both life and death are natural rules which we can not resist. Death is the basic fact for life which can not be avoided for every individual. Although we can not say death is the most important of all, the history of death has typical and special meaning. In the tortuous course of human being, this is an ideal constant, and also a major constant which doesnt come from black humor. The so-called constant is of course relative, the relationship between people and death has been changed, and the ways of death attacks people have also been changed. So death which is laid at the end of life brings the most sensitive feeling to people. It is also said that we can judge and evaluate a society through the system of death in a special level. But the purpose of this kind of evaluation is how to complete the last step, no doubt it is the special step in our life, which has been circled by a series of concealment, escape and taboo system. This is absolutely against the religious doctrines or the ideology, and the explanation systems. In the history of death, the feedback to death which people have left for us was a twisted one which we must interpret its meaning. Although the research can give people some exciting feelings, people need to be careful and greatly ambitious. The reason we need to be careful is that death is often considered as an easy thing as the action of death is often over-simplified and death becomes an established modes by some groups of people. While the reason why we should be ambitious is that we can have an effective way to walk near the history of death which is carrying on an all-round research: from the death of biology, the death of demography to the death which brings the most complicated emotion. This kind of research need indefatigable endeavor (Vovelle 2).From ancient to modern times, it seems that the view of death is always changing with the development of our society. People always regarded death as the end of life. From the traditional view of Chinese, the born is the beginning of life and the death is the end of life which is similar in Westerners mind. For example, a philosopher of Rome once said, the ending of the definite life is waiting for everybody forever; death can not be avoided and we must meet it. Death is a serious problem which needs careful consideration and earnest treatment.But death is not going on in order. As we know, besides natural deaths and unexpected deaths, most of people have died by various kinds of illnesses. So in real life, abnormal or unexpected death is nonscheduled and unnecessarily happenings to people. There is an old saying, “That everyone has to die is certainty, and when to die is absolutely uncertainty.” Therefore it is of great importance for us to understand the real meaning of death correctly. To the whole human being, death has affected the survival and development of human being on the earth, while to the individual, death can prompt people to realize the truth of life and the value of life. II. DefinitionA. DeathIn the human beings history, we can find different definitions about deaths. In Oxford dictionaries, the definition of death is “Death is the end of life.” In any other ordinary dictionaries in our country, we define it as the end of organism life and the metabolism. Other people believe death is the same as life, and a part of human existence, growth and development of life. (Ross 7).For human being, death does not only have biologism, but also has socialism. The death of every member in society will have a more or less influence on the society. Death is like a shadow which can not be wiped off and shroud the human society from beginning to end. Death is a kind of life sublating. (Feng 4).In all, death is not only a phenomenon of biology, but also has the certainty of uncertainty, extermination and un-replacement. Death means people have finite existence. B. Death AwarenessDeath Awareness means the limited understanding of the life of human being as well as the value of individual life, the exploration and cherishes of ones life, the respect of others life, and longing for and pursuing eternity.In general, Death Awareness means the sum of the feelings of death and the thinking of death. It includes not only all kinds of psychological activities, such as the individuals feeling of death, emotion, aspiration, will, thought, but also the concept of death, psychology and system of thinking in the society.“The uncertainty of death is the uncertainty of life, and Death Awareness has gone through all of our life process” (Sun 4). Death Awareness is a kind of experience which urges people to care about the significance and value of ones life, then let people face the death bravely, overcome the fear of death, surpass the death, and create the significance and value of human beings life.C. Death EducationAmerican scholar Wass thought Death Education should be treated as a formal teaching by a teaching group, which directs the death problem as a theme. Death education generally includes teaching aims, learning content, teaching methods and teaching assessment. Besides formal teaching, it can be carried out informally, accidentally, naturally, periodically and unperiodically, and indirectly. Taiwan scholar Zhang Shumei has been studying the seniors views. He thinks Death Education refers to exploring the progress of death and the relationship of life, boosting the understanding of the significance of life, and providing us some ways on how to check the reality of death, the importance of the role it plays in life. The aim of it is to help people with the devout understanding and solemn attitudes to face death and prepare for it, and finally brings it into a teaching activity which has the formal or informal target which relate with death as a theme.Although scholars from different points of view emphasize definition of Death Education, its generally thought that it can not only help teaching progress to increase the people cognition of death, decrease the fear of death, solve all kinds of problems caused by death, but also can help learners to build up positive philosophy, and own more significant life (Zou 3).III. Different ViewsDeath is a destination which has deeply rooted in peoples mind in both cultures. Life is a journey, in which Death becomes an exit of life when the journey of life ends. So when one dies, there comes the ending point for the journey. No matter in China or Western countries, people often use such expressions as “one leaves us”, “one is gone”, “one is no more” or “one departs”, etc to describe the phenomenon of death. All of these expressions indicate that death is the stopping point of life and final destination, while from another angle, the point at which the journey of life ends is the departing point for death. As a result, death becomes the exit of life or the beginning point for another journey, and we have a lot of similar descriptions in both cultures, such as, In English: Go, depart, depart from the world for ever, decease, pass away, breathe ones last, go the way of all flesh, pay ones debt to nature, go to a better world, be in (go to) Heaven, be with God, etc.In Chinese: “去世”，“逝世”，“故去”，“病故”，“寿终”，“亡故”，“牺牲”，“作古”，“谢世”，“弃世”，“与世长辞”，“心脏停止跳动”，“去见马克思”等。No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven dont want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. Men fear death, as children fear to go to the dark.A. In ChinaThe view of death is an important part in Chinese traditional culture. Because of this, Chinese people like to talk about living, and avoid talking about death, which means Chinese people are unwilling to reflect on death. They even think the number 4 is an unlucky number and they try not use the number in their lives. So we need to develop a kind of reasonable Death Awareness in our education to help people understand the real meaning and true value of life deeply. The reason may due to not only the historical traditions, the morals or the social realities, but also the backwardness of “Death Education” and the backwardness of “Death Education” in our country is more serious. One reason is the value orientation of favoring “perfection” and “flawlessness”, which has been making Chinese people hate and keep silence on the word of “death”. On the other hand, the concept of “Death Education” in Chinese was translated from English, which is liable to be misunderstood.Death is the important invention of life, which everyone must face and nobody can avoid it. Reasonable Death Awareness should be developed through Education of Death Awareness. Schools, families and society should work together to teach the students with the knowledge of Death Awareness when they are young.“Death Education” aims to lead the youth to understand the real significance of death and to bravely face the death with correct attitudes so that they can live a real life and gain the freedom and dignity of life before the threat of death.Death Education faces living individuals which concerns about the completeness of peoples spiritual world. The process of it stresses on the spiritual formation of educational targets. The understanding of death, a necessary part of life, will have a positive significance in realizing the true value and real meanings of peoples lives, the completeness of peoples lives, and the morality of peoples lives. B. In Western countries Because of the advantages of their rational cognition, Westerners pay more attention to the innate character and the ways of death, thus setting up their own philosophy of death, which has produced a strong impact over the worlds death philosophy and the development of death culture. People in the West often have a positive attitude towards death, and reject the fear of death. They think death is the extermination of the life, and it is useless to face it with fear and shock. We can not say which concept of death is right or wrong, but we can say which is more scientific and up to date, and truly reflects the society.Heidegger is one of the greatest philosophers in the modern times. In several of his works, especially in Being and Time, time takes a very important role. Only time can make death wholeness, so if death wants to interpret itself completely, it must go-ahead itself and goes into the possibility of time.“The uncertainty of death goes with the certainty of death” (Heidegger 296). When we discuss death, we have to concern time because the interpretation of time will affect the way in which we comprehend death. If time is thought as an alignment composed of nature, now and past, then death has to be a dot on the alignment.IV. Death ProblemsWith the approach of the second anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake that killed nearly 70,000 people, the need for emotional education to deal with death is back again. This education forms a bridge between the living and the dead to teach children what death means and what attitudes they should have towards death which could help to relieve anxiety.The year has passed, yet many students are still suffering from nightmares. Many psychologists have been employed as counsellors in disaster areas to assist them but grief was so deep that some people who were overwhelmed by the pain of loss committed suicide.Death Education had a brief comeback last year when people realized that attitude of children toward death does matter. If children don't want to become doctors or undertakers who have to handle dead bodies when they grow up, other jobs like reporters, firefighters, police and soldiers who risk their lives working on the frontline would have to confront with death often.East China Normal University began pioneering work in death education in 2006. They introduced Death Education into kindergartens which included taking children to a cemetery and explained what death is. This, of course, was opposed by most parents.Later, primary and secondary schools in Yunnan Province followed up. Students were asked to write wills to get