Kill yourself Bill Krozby
I suppose they could be compared to weddings, in that a marriage is as simple and easy as going to the courthouse and getting married with 1 witness on a Wednesday afternoon, but yet for the majority of weddings it is obviously more of an event with crowds and parties and fanfare. I can see the argument behind finding a big fancy wedding pointless when you can o 'get it done' with far less planning and organization, and the same I guess is true for a funeral- people could just go to the funeral home and pay their last respects there, or just make a phone call or text message with a sad emoji to the family offering condolences or whatever the kids do these days.
I've only been to one wedding but I enjoyed it. It's pointless in the sense that there are other ways to achieve legal union but it's an excuse to have a big party which is fun and I think fun is intrinsically valuable. Funerals have the opposite effect though, you can dispose of corpses and mourn loved ones without a funeral and participation in them generally just exacerbates the emotional woes of participants. I don't know of anyone who's come away from a funeral and been like "well gee, I sure feel great, that gave me so much closure!". Closure, at least for me, comes from people dying, their brain function stopping, the internalization the fact that they stopped existing, not the experience of trying to hold your shit together around a bunch of people trying to do the same.
For me (and my dad is my only true example), there's just something about getting family, friends, associates, and acquaintances together to honor the deceased (though I get that the deceased can't 'care' at that point), and as Lanny mentioned, benefit to the surviving family, which I assume means showing to them that he/she was loved and appreciated enough for you to take the time to say your final goodbye.
I guess I just don't see how it's meaningless when if nothing else, your presence at a funeral is respectful to those closest to the dead person. If you yourself are close to the deceased, as I've said, it's a way to help the grieving process and sort of say a formal goodbye, if not actually speak and share some memories. It's a form of closure and acceptance.
of the funerals I've attended of my own volition it's been for that reason, "show respect to the family" I guess. Since I've been part of the family in question in each case I can't help but wonder if everyone else is there for the same reason though. I went because some members of my family would be disappointed if I didn't and every moment was like pulling teeth, I hope that this wasn't uniformly the motivation of the other attendees because it would mean we're all subjecting each other to something terrible for absolutely no benefit.
A family anecdote: there was a period of time where my dad was doing some side work for his dad. It was after I was born so it wasn't like a "work at the family business while in school" type of thing. My dad hated the work, and my grandfather wasn't really happy with the work product. They both viewed their participation as a self-sacrificial kindness to the other. It took the female arm of the family gossiping about this to bring the situation to light. It's absurd, humans putting themselves out thinking they're doing something for someone else when their efforts are really they're just a mutual burden to each other.
I can't help but think that's what funerals are like. Someone organizes them because they feel like they'd be doing a disservice to everyone else if they don't and people file in because they feel like they're obligated to the organizer. Maybe I'm just a cold person but I can't imagine anyone going through the ritual for the benefit of the deceased, it's obvious they're
dead so they're not getting anything out of it, I don't think anyone gets pleasure from the experience, so why get involved at all? Just for saving face as far as I'm concerned and if that's the case for everyone involved then that's just needless human suffering on top of the background of human suffering in the wake of someone dying.
