anomie of mortality

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I’m regularly reminded, by obituaries of once-prominent persons, that I’d forgotten about them—as the major media evidently did, since they weren’t subjects of articles in recent years (as far as I knew), until they died. “Oh!,” I realize about the person I admired, “s/he wasn’t already dead.” It’s amazing how quickly a long obituary appears, as if some editor was ready for the death.

Encomiums abound for a few days, then they’re forgotten again, at best becoming characters in someone’s distant scholarship.

Tradition was that families kept memory of their recent ancestors alive because families stayed close across generations. Now, many marriages don’t last; the children adjust to a parent being a visitation, everyone having vaguely recognized relatives. And nomadic professions (nom-
adic families) may barely ever know who their relatives are, let alone who’s still alive.

“Neighborhoods” become privatistic data areas in city management. “Communities” become vaguely bounded segments of exurban metropolia. Obsessive social networking brings anomie, even depres-
sion. People are glued to their phone screens on the street, as if desperate for something novel.

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