Speak the Ills of the Dead
Sometimes someone truly awful dies. This happens on the public, and in the private spheres, and there is a camp that insists speaking ill of the dead is not allowed. I disagree.
Let's look at a commonly-cited Havamal passage (translation by Olive Bray): 75. Cattle die and kinsmen die, thyself too soon must die, but one thing never, I ween, will die, -- fair fame of one who has earned. "Fair fame of one who has earned." Earned. What do we earn in the way we live our lives? Is it fair to those who earn good fame to praise those who do not? I think no. Someone who has died after having lived a life devoted to kindness, knowledge, wisdom - surely they deserve praise and to be lauded. They deserve to be remembered and emulated.
But those other ones; those who hurt and harm and use whatever power they have to take from others (be it joy, or livelihood, housing or food)? Should we laud them, too? If we laud everyone who dies, what does this say about how we view ethics, morality, fairness, justice? Go ahead and do what you want, we will be polite about you?
If it is not "decent" to speak the truth about the dead, is it decent to address living injustice? The legacy of the (if you will) evil dead lives on - lauded, they serve as examples of what to do to others who know there will be no consequence for similar actions. Everything from rudeness to genocide is, by some, given a pass because "you should not speak ill of the dead."
Havamal 127 notes we are to call out evil where we see it and give our enemies no frith. None. Not while living, not while dead.
If stating the truth of someone's actions in life is seen as disrespectful, I say that that person should have led a more respectable life.
And with that, a prayer for a bad man:
Prayer to Hel on the Death of Archer B.
Feed him at the slithering shore to the beast of below who chews slow those who know only how to sow woe. His hand is stilled, his shout is stilled, his energy distilled
into its basic components of fear, anger, destruction. Digested, dissolved, disintegrated, he becomes sadness seeping into sands washed by waves which wring him out
leaving only clean grains so small they cannot remember
life.
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