A Guide to Basic Human Decency - Pt. 1

Hi, this is the filthy American here again! This topic came about to me when the Queen died. Now I don't follow UK politics much if any, but we all know who the queen is to some degree, and a major world leader dying gets some attention, even in the US. While reading about this story, I ran into much discussion of people who were mourning versus people who thought mourning was not necessary given the history of imperialism and the British Empire.

I knew in general that the British didn't have their hands clean but I wasn't familiar with the specifics and went down a tangent searching for the bad history and understanding how upset people were at the Queen and the family in general. After a good amount of reading and reflecting, I came to my own opinion. One of the phrases I heard discussed a lot was whether respecting the dead was part of being a good person. Do you respect the dead when the dead were objectively horrible people? My answer is kinda yes, but let me explain.

What does it mean to Respect the Death?

I think first we need to define what respect is. I think when talking of the dead, people imagine a sort of reverence and appreciation, regardless of who they are. I think we have to separate responses into positive, negative, and neutral. Negative is pretty easy, things like spitting on someone's grave, talking bad about them, wishing their death was more dramatic or severe, or that the family would also die. Positive is that reverence I think many people imagine as the only response that's respectful. Praying for the family, wishing their souls well, feeling sad about the loss, etc. But then there is neutral. 

The importance of Neutrality when talking about the Death

I consider this 99.9999999% of responses because there's always a funeral going on somewhere near you; people die and that's just life. But you don't know everyone who dies, you don't know how they lived or what was in their hearts. You don't go stomping on their grave, but you also don't spend an hour every day at the local funeral home wishing well to complete strangers. You stay neutral, you keep living your life. 

A Personal Reflection on Respecting the Death

This is what I feel is the baseline for respect when talking of the dead. There is no rational argument that the monarchy has ever been completely clean and perfectly moral. But to be disrespectful brings down my integrity for no reason. The queen is dead and how she is judged in the afterlife is not dependant on how I feel or what I do. Her actions have been hers, but I am still living. I am still making my choices. I am still to be judged. So I will keep a baseline amount of respect, not for the queen's sake, but for my own. If I feel a person was horrible in life and I respond to their death by stooping to their level, my anger had no point. I will keep to my morals and my integrity, even if they didn't. 

As a side point to that, even Hitler had a mother, had a father. What I'm saying is even if I believe the person has not been a good person, there may be good people who still loved them, despite their flaws. Family, friends, husbands, and wives, they are hurt when people disrespect their loved ones. I will not be the person to hurt those grieving. I will not lower to the point of crushing someones already broken heart with unkind words or actions. If I want to hate the person who died, I will hate them in my head, but remain decent and respectful on the outside, not for their sake, but for mine.

With love and insanity equally,

J.M.