Senior Project Proposal (It's a bit long)

INTRODUCTION
When my little sister died six years ago, my family and I were subjected to our culture’s unhealthy views of death and mourning. We were encouraged to move on with life like she had never existed, looked down upon for being emotional, and even ostracized by the hospital community we had spent so much time around. Using the skills I have gathered in my years at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, I want to use this project as a campaign to not only bring this black spot on our culture to light, but to encourage healthy change towards acceptance of grief.

CONTEXT
Western views on death are unhealthy, unnatural, and damaging to the moving on process of people experiencing grief and loss.

HISTORY
Memento mori in art history. Examination of other cultures’ acceptance and awareness of mortality. Early American death symbolism. Victorian views on living around death. Increase of violent world conflict and natural disasters in recent history.

CURRENT SITUATION
Western society has forced the idea of mortality out of people’s minds. We accept cultural programming that denies mortality. We don’t need fear when life is ready-made for us. We grew up watching war and other mortal dangers on heavily censored news. In the last decade the world has been seeing more death and disasters then most people can remember in their lifetimes. We have been forced to start to shift views on death.
Our reactions have been programmed in us to discourage the natural grieving process, causing more harm then good. We are told that it is not appropriate to show outward displays of grief. It makes us uncomfortable to be reminded of mortality, so we tell the bereaved things like “It’s time to move on,” when the best thing for the survivor to do is grieve as long as needed for themselves on their own terms.
In a study for Terror Management Theory, created by psychologists; Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, and Sheldon Solomon, “the theory is that humans are motivated to quell the potential for terror inherent in the human awareness of vulnerability and mortality by investing in cultural belief systems (or worldviews) that imbue life with meaning, and the individuals who subscribe to them with,” subjects were reminded of their own death under the guise of a psychological questionnaire and then asked to distribute, using their own judgment, an amount of hot sauce for another subject to ingest. The subjects ended up giving people with different religious and racial backgrounds a larger amount. This study shows that the views Americans hold on dealing with grief can have treacherous results.
We live in a society where dangerous behavior is trendy, and safety is disregarded. Our youth, especially, are removed from reality: the leading causes of death in youth ages 15-24 involve automobile and firearm accidents. These would be easily preventable if the severity and finality of death were more emphasized.
We are obsessed with staying young, going so far as mutilating our bodies to look younger. Even after death, we pay for practices like embalming as an attempt keep our loved ones body looking alive. This is an expensive process that is pushed as appropriate by society. This procedure can cost around seven grand and funeral homes have been known to hold bodies from the surviving bereaved can come up with the funds.
Death has been taken over by the funeral industry. The popularity of the “green burial” is threatening the industry so laws are being passed to make it harder to legally dispose of a body without the intervention of funeral professionals - and inevitably, the costs associated with it. We as a society let this happen because we are uncomfortable with anything having to do with death and in avoidance of that not fighting for the freedom of deciding how we would like to be disposed of. As well as causing unneeded troubles for the surviving loved ones.

Death is something that everyone experiences. 62 million people die each year worldwide. It is obviously unavoidable and it should not be something that we avoid discussing. I believe we need to stop pushing away the grieving process, and work harder to accept and embrace our own mortality. We can do this by looking to other cultures and to our own history for examples of healthy mourning. It will also help to encourage communication with each other and find a way to drop this fallacy that emotions equal weakness.

PROBLEM STATEMENT
How can I help Western society begin to accept grief as a healthy and normal human act?

PROJECT GOALS & OUTCOMES
Public service campaign. (Commercials, print ads, pamphlets, interactive website.)
Creation of educational programs

SPECIAL SKILLS & APTITUDE
As mentioned before, I have personal experience dealing with death, and witnessing firsthand the negative reaction by society to my grief. I have spent much time studying and visiting cemeteries. My personal library is full of books on death. I am very passionate and committed to this cause and will work my hardest to see it through to completion.

POTENTIAL AUDIENCE
Middle-Class, Middle-Age adults that live in the suburbs of the United States.

POSSIBLE SPONSORS
Psychiatrists and psychologists who specialize in thanatology.
Grief counselors/Hospice care providers