Death - a government responsibility?

Death – a government responsibility?

Swedish television baffles me in various ways, not least the news broadcast. Perception of what is news varies and Swedish state television seems to think, on a regular basis, that news is to make an in-depth interview with a particular person about a particular problem. More often than not privacy is put on display to the public.

Is this a good thing? Generally speaking, I don’t think so. The other week I was taken aback when confronted one evening with the following “news” on Swedish television (Aktuellt at 21h00). A co-habitant had lost her partner co-habitant who had died all of a sudden (in more traditional language: a woman had lost her husband through sudden death). She was unprepared for this and hid in bed for two weeks and refused to eat or communicate with the outer world. After this she became indignant as she discovered that “society” ought to have services to help people who end up in similar problems. The discussion on TV was about this: why do the (political) authorities not do anything in such a case? The woman was interviewed and one got a very clear idea of how miserable a situation she had landed in.

There is every reason to have sympathy for the woman in question. She was desperate and needed help. All of us will end up in situations where somebody close to us will die, without much of a warning. However, the critical eye must turn in two directions: first towards our own society as it appears to be now, and second, towards those who make news.

How could it happen that the perception is that society, government, by and large the politicians today have to take responsibility for almost everything that happens? The fact that somebody dies also seems to have become a government responsibility and the sitting government has to beware that it proves itself useful in this respect otherwise they will be voted out of power at the next election!

Everything has become political, which in a sense is true. In a struggle situation, when people have to fight for their life and survival, for example in the huge refugee camp in Kenya, which today makes out to be the third largest city in the country, then it is more than legitimate to claim a political solution to your problem, whatever it might be. You have to reach some kind of normality first. If nothing else, the United Nations is good at telling us what such a normality of life entails.

But here we are talking about one of the richest countries in the world, a well organised society at that, and we ask for a political solution when somebody dies. Maybe, at the next election, we should vote death out of our existence?

Where there is the slightest tendency towards what could be called normality, other forces are at large. A very good way of expressing this is to talk about “civil society” meaning that level of society where citizens organize themselves, not necessarily for an immediate political purpose, but for other purposes. People want to enhance their life in terms of family, local traditions, culture in a very broad sense, church or other religious activities. This is part of civil society and if somebody dies one would just hope that family, friends and hopefully church would step in and help out and console.

What angers me is that we seem to have such uneducated, and as it seems, less intelligent journalists who are allowed to use valuable space in a news programme in order to politicize a personal tragedy in such an absurd way.

It may be true that the social networks in Sweden are cracking or already have vanished. We may have affluence but we do not have an affluent social life. Maybe our more recent immigrants can help us to rediscover ourselves and our own wonderfully rich traditions in Sweden, all of them being in themselves important social networks (be it sport, temperance movements, club for vintage cars, collectors of antiquities, mountaineering societies, etc., etc.).

It is about time that news coverage again will be dealing with real, general, relevant issues that allow the more private level of our lives to remain – just that – private.