The Spirits of the Dead Pushback

Thank goodness. No tooth extraction required.

After dealing with an abundance of pain, a threshold beyond which I thought I could never endure, I sat in the dentist’s chair, who told me that my molar was good and strong, but the nerves were dead – not one, but all three. So, a root canal is in order. That will be handled later this week.

It was a relief. I have had a root canal before, and it worked out well. I want to keep as many of my own teeth in my head for as long as I can.

Speaking of losing teeth, I was watched two films produced by legendary Italian filmmaker Dario Argento, Demons and Demons 2. Argento has the reputation for the gore, and both these films deliver. In the films, people who are scratched by demons by their fingernails become demons themselves. As the humans transform into demons, their regular chompers are replaced by sharp fangs. Director Lamberto Bava takes care in showing the orthodontal transformation, as human teeth are pushed out and fall to the ground, and the demon teeth push down and protrude.

Metaphorically, this is what happens when people disturb the graves of the undead. In Demons, an unidentified man passes around tickets in the public during the day for a special nightly movie screening at a mysterious movie theater. This is the lair of the demon spirit, but not in human form, but housed in a mask in the lobby of the theater, which has something sharp inside that carries the spirit poised to infect the host.

The movie being screened is about four teenagers who come across and old tomb dig up a grave of Nostradamus, the old famous 16th century prophet. Many through the centuries have followed this global icon, claiming his predictions have come true. Instead of finding a body, they find a book and a mask. One of the teenagers puts it on in jest, and like the woman who takes the mask in the lobby of the movie theater and puts it on, he becomes a demon. Let the demon surge commence.

We have to be careful by what we extract, because it may push out something we not only don’t want, but dread. Throughout history, we have been warned that we should not play with dead things. Of course, the folly of youth is always present, their curiosity outweighing the consequences. We would like to believe in real life that they would walk away relatively unscathed, and that their demise only plays out in the movies.

But for adults, we have unearthed the ancient burial grounds of indigenous people around the world, for expansion and profit, scoffing at the consequences of our deeds. Some would say, the dead are dead, they are merely fertilizer for the soil, so they cannot harm anything or anyone. Others would say it is about progress, which when it comes to industry, progress means doing more of the machine that was initially built. A compromise would be to move the graves to another location to honor the dead.

It is fascinating to witness how humans choose to believe. It is not that many do not believe that souls cannot be resurrected. That is the story of Jesus. But for regular people, if you will, to rise up from their graves to walk the earth, or their spirits to haunt the lands they once roamed freely, to antagonize the living until they receive justice if they were wronged, is counted as superstition. In fact, indigenous cultures around the world believe that the spirits of the dead are with us, not in some remote location looking down upon us. This levies accountability for our actions, for we do not want to anger the dead.

But it would make sense that modern civilizations would view these beliefs as mere superstitions, because on some level, they treat its citizens as mere means. This is the dichotomy we live with every day, that we are afforded many legal rights, protections and opportunities, and are provided with a multitude of social safety nets. Yet we citizens are also treated as commodities, as pounds of flesh, as disposable products, that our bodies are only valued as long as they are productive to society. After that, our bodies are socially disposed until they expire, unless we have the means to pay into the senior living industrial complex.

If modern civilizations treated the land as if they were accountable to the spirits of the dead, they would conduct themselves much differently. Their construction of homes, roads, bridges and commercial properties, their removal of minerals and gas, all would be radically blueprinted. Their shareholders would not only be the ones who live by the ticker. They would not be formally poised in boardrooms near the gods while below people hunch over rising toxins.

Or would it? With every civilization over time, the kings believed that they were the closest to the gods. Some declared they were god. World leaders of today believe they operate with some impunity. Might makes right. We are going to do what is in our best interests. We will stay the course.

When you mind travel around the world, you see that there are great cities and rural towns, empires and villages, steel and concrete, and wood and bone, and there are always hierarchies, whether it’s tribal, or organizational. Every faction has a way of honoring their dead, but they will disallow being kept from living and moving forward. Everything should be done with care, but that is not what it means to be human. We are not built that way. We are the most curious creatures on this earth, the most maladjusted beings in the natural environment, so much so that we create our own habitat to suit us. But that is not the whole story, because there are generations of families who still live near the ground, and have their ear to those beneath it, whether they are farmers in Iowa, or tribes in the Amazon.

The spirits of our dead know all of this, and will push and protrude when it is time, and when it is necessary.