Followup to: Solstice: What Memes May Come (Part II)

Content note: My own opinionated thoughts on rationalist funeral ritual, which have evolved a bit since I first started thinking about it in 2012. I expect that if you haven't thought about funeral ritual and find that you need to, this will make for a better starting point than figuring things out from scratch.

But, human mindspace is diverse enough that I wouldn't be surprised if this anti-resonated with some people. Make of it what you will.

[Edit: In this post, I was specifically exploring 'funerals where a majority of attendees are "culturally rationalist"', as opposed to general secular funerals. However, it turns out much of the advice is still relevant regardless]

Prior: a desire for deep cultural ritual

In October 2012, as I planned the Winter Solstice ceremony, I was thinking a lot about death. In the space of three weeks, three friends of mine had lost someone closed to them. And it occurred to me that the rationality community had very little in the way of funeral ritual.

My friends were all young, but it seemed likely at least someone in the community wouldn’t make it. And we were not ready.

When my Grandmother died, I went to a Catholic funeral. And as much as I don’t believe in any of the doctrine, there was something comforting in having several hundred people join together to say the Lord’s prayer in unison. The literal content of the words was basically meaningless – what mattered was the knowledge that my Grandmother was not alone, that hundreds of people were connected to her, and to each other.

Another friend of mine lost their mother, and had a similar experience. They said (paraphrased) “when you lose someone, you do not have the energy to try new things. You are lost. You don’t know what to do. The point of funeral ritual is not to be epistemologically sound, it’s to give you something to do, that you know how to do, that everyone knows you’re supposed to do, so that at least you can do something.”

A ritual that completely fails will feel hollow. Ritual that almost succeeds but doesn’t match your values or aesthetic feels cringey. I think pushing past that cringe is an important piece of the modern search for meaning and culture.

But funerals are not the time to experiment.

I looked at this set of facts, and it seemed like the solution (if you wanted an epistemic...

Grieving