Ageing and Death - Breaking a Taboo

Matthias Rauterberg, Kiarash Irandoust

2015

Abstract

This position paper argues for addressing ‘good death’ as part of ‘well ageing’ in human life. Although in most societies death is protected through taboos, we have to provide solutions in helping citizens preparing for their own death. The Oedipus Trilogy is an ancient narrative to describe clearly the three phases in any human life, the unavoidability of those phase changes. We have to use the last phase of our life to prepare for the end. We will summarize the different philosophical positons regarding ‘meaning of life’, and – although addressing death is a mainly social issue – we describe the challenges for future ICT development in supporting the important last steps of preparing for a ‘good death’.

References

  1. Adams, E. M. (2002). The meaning of life. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 51(-), 71-81.
  2. Bax, M. (2009). Generic evolution. Ritual, rhetoric, and the rise of discursive rationality. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(4), 780-805.
  3. Busselle, R., Ryabovolova, A., and Wilson, B. (2004). Ruining a good story: Cultivation, perceived realism and narrative. Communications, 29(3), 365-378.
  4. Cambridge Dictionary, o. (1995). Life. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Publisher. Retrieved October 22, 2012, from http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ dictionary/british/life.
  5. Cappon, D. (1978). Attitudes of the ageing toward death. Essence, 2(3), 139-147.
  6. Cicirelli, V. G. (1998). Personal meanings of death in relation to fear of death. Death Studies, 22(8), 713-733.
  7. Corr, C., and Corr, D. (2012). Death and Dying, Life and Living (7th ed.). Boston: Cengage Learning.
  8. Cosco, T. D., Stephan, B. C. M., and Brayne, C. (2013). Deathless models of aging and the importance of acknowledging the dying process. CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal, 185(9), 751-752.
  9. Cottingham, J. (2003). On the Meaning of Life. London: Routledge.
  10. Craig, W. L. (2008). The absurdity of life without God. In W. L. Craig (Ed.), Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (3rd ed., pp. 65-90). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
  11. Davis, K., Hu, J., Feijs, L., and Owusu, E. (2015). Social Hue: A subtle awareness system for connecting the elderly and their caregivers. In Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshop (IEEE PerCom Workshop). Los Alamitos: IEEE Press.
  12. Explore-Ideas. (2011). Death and Dying. internet: exploreideas. Retrieved January 22, 2015, from http://www.exploreideas.com/index.php?category=Death_and_Dying.
  13. Fernandez-Ballesteros, R., Garcia, L. F., Abarca, D., Blanc, E., Efklides, A., Moraitou, D., et al. (2010). The concept of 'ageing well' in ten Latin American and European countries. Ageing and Society, 30(01), 41-56.
  14. Fischer, L. (1983). The essential Gandhi. New York: Vintage Books.
  15. Frankfurt, H. G. (1988). The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical essays. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  16. Girolimon, M. T. (1994). Hugh of St Victor's De sacramentis Christianae fidei: The sacraments of salvation. The Journal of Religious History, 18(2), 127-138.
  17. Hartshorne, C. (1996). The meaning of life. Process Studies, 25(-), 10-18.
  18. Higgins, R., and Higgins, C. (2011). CliffsNotes on Sophocles' Oedipus Trilogy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
  19. Irandoust, K. (2013). Path of life in mixed reality. Master, Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherland.
  20. Kehl, K. A. (2006). Moving toward peace: An analysis of the concept of a good death. American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, 23(4), 277-286.
  21. Kellehear, A. (1984). The sociology of death and dying: An overview. Australian Social Work, 37(3and4), 3-9.
  22. Kidd, L., Cayless, S., Johnston, B., and Wengstrom, Y. (2010). Telehealth in palliative care in the UK: a review of the evidence. Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, 16(7), 394-402.
  23. Korhonen, E.-S., Nordman, T., and Eriksson, K. (2014). Technology and its ethics in nursing and caring journals: An integrative literature review. Nursing Ethics, online(first), 1-16.
  24. Lamb, S. (2014). Permanent personhood or meaningful decline? Toward a critical anthropology of successful aging. Journal of Aging Studies, 29(1), 41-52.
  25. Lederbogen, F., Kirsch, P., Haddad, L., Streit, F., Tost, H., Schuch, P., et al. (2011). City living and urban upbringing affect neural social stress processing in humans. Nature, 474(7352), 498-501.
  26. Leighton, A. H., and Hughes, C. C. (1955). Notes on eskimo patterns of suicide. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 11(4), 327-338.
  27. Levine, M. (1987). What does death have to do with the meaning of life? Religious Studies, 23(-), 457-465.
  28. Luper, S. (2009a, May 26, 2009). Death. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2nd. internet: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved December 12, 2012, from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum 2009/entries/death/
  29. Luper, S. (2009b). The Philosophy of Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  30. Lyke, J. (2013). Associations among aspects of meaning in life and death anxiety in young adults. Death Studies, 37(5), 471-482.
  31. Martin, M. W. (1993). Rethinking reverence for life. Between The Species, 9(4), 204-213.
  32. Martinedale, B. (1998). On ageing, dying, death and eternal life. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 12(3), 259- 270.
  33. Marzano, S. (2009). An orchid called Mary: A vision on healthcare in 2050, ICSID World Design Congress. Singapore: Philips Inc.
  34. Metz, T. (2008). The meaning of life. Stanford: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved November 15, 2012, from http://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/fall2008/entries/life-meaning/
  35. Olson, E. T. (2007). What Are We?: A Study in Personal Ontology. New York: Oxford University Press.
  36. Platt, R. (1963). Reflections on ageing and death. The Lancet, 281(7271), 1-6.
  37. Rappaport, R. A. (1999). Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  38. Rauterberg, M. (2011). The three phases of life: An intercultural perspective. In Proceedings 2nd International Conference on Culture and Computing (pp. 80-85). Los Alamitos: IEEE Computer Society.
  39. Rauterberg, M., Hu, J., and Langereis, G. (2010). Cultural computing - How to investigate a form of unconscious user experiences in mixed realities. In R. Nakatsu, N. Tosa, F. Naghdy, K. W. Wong and P. Codognet (Eds.), Entertainment Computing Symposium - ECS (IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology Vol. 333, pp. 190-197). Heidelberg: Springer.
  40. Salem, B., and Rauterberg, M. (2005). Power, death and love: A trilogy for entertainment. In F. Kishino, Y. Kitamura, H. Kato and N. Nagata (Eds.), Entertainment Computing - ICEC (Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol. 3711, pp. 279-290). Berlin Heidelberg New York: Springer.
  41. Sankar, A. (1991). Ritual and dying: A cultural analysis of social support for caregivers. The Gerontologist, 31(1), 43-50.
  42. Seachris, J. (2011). Meaning of life: Contemporary analytic perspectives. internet: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved November 27, 2012, from http://www.iep.utm.edu/mean-ana/
  43. Sophocles. (2000). The three Theban plays: Oedipus the King; Antigone; Oedipus at Colonus (R. Fagles and B. Knox, Trans. 1st ed.): Penguin Classics.
  44. Todd, S. (2003). Death does not become us. Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 38(1-2), 225-239.
  45. van Rysewyk, S. P., and Pontier, M. (Eds.). (2015). Machine Medical Ethics (Vol. 74). Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London: Springer International Publishing.
  46. Vissers, M., Wang, F., Baha, E., Hu, J., and Rauterberg, M. (2012). Path of life in mixed reality. In Z. Pan (Ed.), Proceedings 3rd International Conference on Culture and Computing - ICCC 2012 (pp. 216-227). Hangzhou: Hangzhou Normal University.
  47. Walter, T. (2008). The sociology of death. Sociology Compass, 2(1), 317-336.
  48. Wang, X., Khoo, E. T., Nakatsu, R., and Cheok, A. (2014). Interacting with traditional chinese culture through natural language. Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, 7(3), online no. 18 (11-19).
  49. Wang, X., and Nakatsu, R. (2013). How do people talk with a virtual philosopher: Log analysis of a realworld application. In J. C. Anacleto, E. G. Clua, F. S. C. da Silva, S. Fels and H. S. Yang (Eds.), Entertainment Computing - ICEC 2013 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol. 8215, pp. 132-137). Heidelberg: Springer on behalf of IFIP.
  50. WikiHow. (2014). How to make preparations for a funeral. Palo Alto, US: WikiMedia. Retrieved January 23, 2015, from http://www.wikihow.com/MakePreparations-for-a-Funeral.
  51. WikiPedia. (2014). Life extension. internet: Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved January 22, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_extension.
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Rauterberg M. and Irandoust K. (2015). Ageing and Death - Breaking a Taboo . In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health - Volume 1: ICT4AgeingWell, ISBN 978-989-758-102-1, pages 75-80. DOI: 10.5220/0005473900750080


in Bibtex Style

@conference{ict4ageingwell15,
author={Matthias Rauterberg and Kiarash Irandoust},
title={Ageing and Death - Breaking a Taboo},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health - Volume 1: ICT4AgeingWell,},
year={2015},
pages={75-80},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005473900750080},
isbn={978-989-758-102-1},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health - Volume 1: ICT4AgeingWell,
TI - Ageing and Death - Breaking a Taboo
SN - 978-989-758-102-1
AU - Rauterberg M.
AU - Irandoust K.
PY - 2015
SP - 75
EP - 80
DO - 10.5220/0005473900750080