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Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead
- jamesfinlayson 5mo agoInteresting - I knew about the fancy coffins (I'd seen pictures of them years ago) but had no idea about the rest of it.
- klooney 5mo ago> Modernity is about not doing what your family says The flip side is that rich and modern people feel lonely and sad that they don't have strong social bonds.
- IncreasePosts 5mo agoThat is more of a self inflicted wound than an intrinsic aspect of modern society.
- sillysaurusx 5mo agoI wish it was self inflicted. Instead, it seems to be an artifact of modern society. I posted “How to Be Alone?” exploring this issue somewhat: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47296547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47296547 690 points, 500+ comments. I’m not trying to get pity, but it would be mistaken to say that I brought it on myself. My wife didn’t bring it on me either. We simply eroded over time. But when marital bonds erode, it turns out they take family bonds with them; or at least, her side of the family. My side isn’t much, so hers was my primary source of social interaction. This is a self inflicted wound in the sense that I could have formed a lot of social bonds with people other than my wife. And I tried to, sometimes. But when you’re spending 20 years with one person, it’s hard to make time for anything else, especially if you want to do good work (in the researcher sense). So it’s more of a “pick two: family, friends, work”. I went the family and work route. I don’t regret it, but it means that now all that’s left is work, which can be a hollow existence. Luckily, modern society has a surplus of ways to help motivated people form social bonds. Once I get my car back, I’ll be going to the local therapy groups, one of which is wood crafting. Random hobbies like that with random people sounds fun. The thing to avoid seems to be dating apps. Jumping from one relationship into another is universally known as a bad idea. I’m hoping that casting a wide net (going to groups, reading clubs, DnD, or other activities) will fill the void. Honestly though, what helps the most is that I have a daughter. She’s almost 3. I’m very happy we had her, and just remembering that she’ll have a nice life helps me appreciate my own. Modern society makes it easier than ever to isolate yourself. I spend my days sitting in a house alone, having Amazon drop off USB-C cables, with my biggest social interaction of the week being the door to door salesman (who, ironically, is trying to sell me a door) that’s coming by tomorrow. That’s the default state; you have to push back against it, and that’s hard. But it’s probably mistaken to say that those who go with the flow are suffering from self inflicted wounds. Societal flow used to be towards social groups (church being the most obvious example) instead of paths that end in loneliness.
- Hnrobert42 5mo agoHello friend. I responded to your post and have thought about you since. Yet had you not referenced your post, I would not have made the connection. It's too bad there's not a way to more easily recognize people on this site, a way to build more community.
- sillysaurusx 5mo agoThank you! That’s so kind of you. I’m pleased to report that the advice I got directly helped me feel optimistic about life again. The community is here, and I continue to be amazed by it. I’m grateful for you and everybody else who helped dig me out. Feel free to shoot me an email. I was buried in dozens of emails last time (apologies if I missed anyone) but things are much slower now. Happy to hear from you or anyone else who wants to chat.
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- stavros 5mo agoThere's a happy medium between the "everyone in the family shares absolutely everything" that less individualistic societies have and the "everyone in the family is alone" that more individualistic societies tend to have. The US, in particular, is on the far end of that spectrum, because of the cultural emphasis on work and self-reliance. The happy medium, in my opinion, is trading off some work for some friends. In many cases within US culture, at least, you might be trading off an amount of time that yields a marginal reward at work but a much larger reward in friendship, simply because that's how diminishing returns tend to work.
- kakacik 5mo ago> pick two: family, friends, work That should be always supremely easy and never contain work, unless you are maybe working in medical care or education. Given education path normally leaves a lot of free time then just the former. I would maybe add fourth - oneself, unless one is a proper exreovert. Requires least of the time, but its most important for long term mental health.
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- teaearlgraycold 5mo agoSpeak for yourself.
- bobanrocky 5mo agoOk, so better to be poor and backward, eh ?
- dfee 5mo agoperhaps.
- margalabargala 5mo agoHard to say. There are so many options that aren't just those two.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> flip side is that rich and modern people feel lonely and sad The happiest countries in the world are also rich [1]. I'm not saying you can't fuck up being rich. But it's a lot harder to be fulfilled if you're poor. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2025_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2025_re...
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- komali2 5mo agoLots of valid criticisms of the oft touted "happiness index." Off the top of my head from something I read a while back: Finland is listed as one of the happiest countries, but also has a higher rate than normal of prescribed anti psychotics and anti depressants, and also has high rates of alcoholism and suicide. Something isn't lining up there. My own anecdotal experience as well conflicts. When I travel through Scandinavia, people seem... Fine. Friends I have there say you're basically not allowed to talk to strangers, at all, everyone is meant to just quietly ignore each other. Meanwhile the deeper I go into Vietnam, even deep into where people still live on stilt houses made by hand tools, the happier and more sociable people are. My friends say the same of various countries in Africa.
- HKH2 5mo agoI can't see how all the mental overhead of modern multicultural living can make you happier either.
- abenga 5mo agoReally? Having other cultures around you makes one unhappy now?
- cucumber3732842 5mo agoBecause the culture that's moving in is intolerant of my way of life and wants to piecemeal eradicate it by using the government to incrementally make every bit of the way I live harder, more expensive or subject to capricious enforcement if not outright illegal. I thought I would be able to get in a good 20-40yr settling down where I did and would only be complaining about this stuff when I was old. It's been about 10 and it's all going to shit. And yes, I am intentionally not being specific and leaving room for assumption.
- yongjik 5mo agoThe flip side of the flip side is that poor people in traditional societies are often trapped in toxic interpersonal dynamics from which there's no escape, because they live in the same household. Like, in Korea, "mother-in-law vs daughter-in-law relationship issues" used to be so common that there's a single word for that. Nowadays they're getting harder to witness, unless you're a fan of weekend k-dramas.
- nntwozz 5mo agoIf you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company. — Jean-Paul Sartre
- JumpCrisscross 5mo agoLoneliness and aloneness are almost separate phenomenon. I've felt my loneliest in the middle of Manhattan and completely fulfilled when on a solo hike in the Grand Tetons.
- internet_points 5mo agoor just an extrovert, but nuance doesn't make for pithy quotes
- whimsicalism 5mo agomaybe. personally i would definitely not trade places
- kakacik 5mo agoThats what people on one side of the argument like to think, patting themselves on their back for their own decisions. I am old enough to have seen it many many times. There is no simple win - each person is different, each family is different, where one thrives the other has absolutely miserable time imprisoned with no way out. world is not black and white and neither are people, dont dumb it down like that since you miss what reality looks like.
- renewiltord 5mo agoI don’t actually think so. I think if you apply rigor to those results you find that they don’t stand up. The field of sociology applies rigor selectively. Few of its results actually hold up. I don’t even think the loneliness epidemic is real. The science is really not that strong.
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- truth777 5mo ago[dead]
- jrm4 5mo ago[flagged]
- tomhow 5mo agoPlease don’t post sneering dismissals of imagined arguments on HN. We’re trying for curious conversation here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jrm4 5mo ago[flagged]
- tomhow 5mo agoHey, this kind of defiant strutting is not cool. It's fine to disagree with the article, and you don't owe the author anything, but you owe this community better if you want to participate here. HN is only a place where people like to participate because we have clear guidelines and many people who make the effort each day to uphold them. It's not OK to disrespect this community by acting as if the guidelines don't apply to you. A particular pattern in your comments is using capitalization for emphasis, which is explicitly against the guidelines. Please take a moment to remind yourself of the guidelines and take care to observe them in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jrm4 5mo ago[flagged]
- Bombthecat 5mo agoWife is from Africa, buried her dad and mom. If she wouldn't have put down her foot, they would have sucked her dry ( our money) we set a budget and they got what they got... But I can easily see other people/ wifes not setting boundaries and spending a ton of money..
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> If she wouldn't have put down her foot, they would have sucked her dry Can you describe the escalation of asks?
- sho_hn 5mo agoVery loosely related novel recommendation: "Ways of Dying" by South African author Zakes Mda was a revelation. I've since read a few other books by him and he's become one of my favorite novelists. I'm your usual HN-brained copious scifi novel/science non-fic reader, typically.
- onlyjanand 5mo ago[dead]
- AussieWog93 5mo agoThe article talks about the failure mode of kinship groups, but doesn't go into the fact that new migrants often enter into kinship networks that help them succeed. You see the same in religious communities as well - people pitching in not to leech off one another but to help everyone move ahead. Maybe the problem is with Ghanaian values and not kinship itself.
- sfRattan 5mo agoI think mutual aid organizations and friendly societies of various kinds among American immigrants (at least historically) benefited from a strong selection effect: people willing to immigrate to a faraway country without a welfare system in pursuit of opportunity and wealth. That population is highly self-selected for work ethic, risk tolerance, and self-discipline. Those values probably stabilize social dynamics and minimize the wealth immolation and tall-poppy effects described in the article. In other words, if everyone in a mutual aid society is a crab who crossed half the world and an entire ocean to escape the bucket, eventually said crabs stop acting like you'd expect crabs in a bucket to act, and their social dynamics are consequently less suffocating.
- technothrasher 5mo agoBasically my whole family have signed our bodies over to the local medical school. They make all the arrangements and pay for everything as soon as they're notified upon death. They'll normally give you the ashes upon cremation after a year or so, but personally I've given them permission to completely skeletonize me and keep the skeleton indefinitely. This helps society by helping student doctors learn, and it removes all funeral hassles and expenses. We can still do more low-key memorial ceremonies without needing a body. I realize this path doesn't work for everybody, especially those with certain religious beliefs, but we all just love the idea.
- jayknight 5mo agoAnd for folks that do want to bury the body, it can be done way cheaper than the funeral industrial complex would have you believe. Our church keeps a simple coffin on hand that the family can use at cost. And we have folks who will prepare the body and bring it to the church. The only part we don't usually do is dig the grave. Cemeteries usually include that in the cost of the plot.
- desecratedbody 5mo agohttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49198405 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49198405
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- y-curious 5mo agoI was gonna post the same story. The “donate grandma to medical science” story only to find out she was used to test landmines is too wild
- kennyadam 5mo agoThis is what both my parents and myself did. When my mum was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma, it was one less thing to worry about arranging and trying to find money for. She went from diagnosis to death in two months so things were a bit disorienting and just getting a RESPECT form (aka DNR) completed was such a struggle as everyone I spoke to had no record of my previous conversation with the last person I spoke to. When mum was admitted to the hospice, despite explaining the arrangements we’d made and showing them the paperwork, it was only by chance that one evening I happened to overhear a nurse mention that mum had ascites, which is one of the few things that disqualified her from being able to donate her body. I googled it and realised we would need to arrange and pay for her body to be collected, stored and cremated. She died the next morning and luckily I was able to get that sorted about 2 hours earlier. I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that if you go through the process of arranging to donate your body to a teaching hospital (which you must do yourself ahead of time) don’t assume it’s on medical records or that anyone will advise you that the body isn’t suitable for donation for any reason. Like all NHS-related things in the UK, the systems are breaking or broken and so are the poor staff, so you need to advocate for whoever needs it and never assume what you said one day will be passed on to the next shift.
- thelock85 5mo agoIt’s interesting how this is framed as a “bad deal” (being apart of a kinship society) without taking time to breakdown the cost of being on your own in Ghanaian society, especially when healthcare, credit harm and other emergencies are broadly unaffordable in individualist, capitalist American society.
- kaonwarb 5mo agoThere are definite problems with the American system, but what is considered unaffordable healthcare there is lavish compared to much of the world.
- mkl 5mo agoThe USA system is hardly the only alternative.
- bobanrocky 5mo agoLots of buzzwords in your comment, but pointless. This is a complete waste of money, and a burden on the living to ‘show off’ their status. The ancient egyptian kings at least had the resources, power and wealth to build their pyramids..
- kenferry 5mo agoYou're talking about funeral costs; the author generalizes _a_lot_ from funeral costs to "kinship societies are bad". That's the leap the comment you're replying to is discussing.
- thelock85 5mo agoI lifted or paraphrased the terms from the benefits that the author ascribes to kinship society; not sure how that’s buzzword-y unless you are referring to “individualist, capitalist” which seems like a pretty fair description of broadly held American societal values related to wealth. Regardless the question still stands and I’ll put it more plainly: Do the lifetime costs and contributions(including the accrued funeral costs) to a kinship society outweigh the shared benefits? That would be my criteria for an overall “bad deal”. And this is no shot at the author because I appreciate the exposure to another culture, but if the framing is the highest earners in a kinship society subsidize the lowest, there is also a question of the extent to which the high earners were successful in spite of or due to their kinship society membership.
- mlsu 5mo agoIn America we spend that money on weddings. Lots of young people wipe their savings on getting married, at one of the most critical times in life (just before starting a family). It often prevents them having kids or buying a home for years.
- cortesoft 5mo agoI am so glad we had a big wedding. It was so much fun, and all my friends and family had a blast.
- knicholes 5mo agoAre you otherwise well off? How do you define "big?"
- cortesoft 5mo agoWe do pretty well, although it is expensive living in LA. We had a little over 100 people, our wedding was at the downtown library, and we spent about $60k. It didn't really hurt our ability to buy a house a few years later, an extra $60k would not have changed our budget at all.
- gigatree 5mo agoThe good thing is you can have a big wedding without going into debt (assuming you’re rich or don’t mind public parks)
- AussieWog93 5mo agoIt's so funny you say that. Was literally just chatting to my wife the other day about how mediocre weddings are. You spend $20-$50k basically LARPing as landed British gentry, and end up having less fun than the average 21st, Christmas or New Year's. So much more stress in planning too.
- cobbzilla 5mo agoI know the kinds of weddings you speak of, and it’s sad, and hard to disagree. Even more sad that for $20-$50k you /could/ have a super unique, awesome and even low-stress wedding (ok that last part depending on parents/relatives may be impossible), yet so many are the same songs (you know them all), same venues (estate, banquet hall, rooftop, etc), same food.
- binsquare 5mo agoMy mom's funeral was ~23k in Chicago, US. As a reference to how much that is - she made minimum wage her whole life (<44k). It's obscene how much money there is in death.
- olalonde 5mo agoReminds me of that article from a few days ago about Chinese people buying apartments to store cremated ashes due to high cemetery costs: https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3348673/chinese-buy-flats-cremated-ashes-due-high-cemetery-costs-leading-law-against-practice https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/arti...
- mohamedkoubaa 5mo agoCall it a membership fee to an institution that actually cares about you and everyone you care about for life. Over here we have extractive taxation
- anon291 5mo agoOnly someone who's never had to deal with it could pine for it. No thank you. There are some lessons to learn but it's a shit sandwich.
- chistev 5mo ago[dead]
- whalesalad 5mo agoMeanwhile I want to be tossed into a hole bare naked with a tree planted on top of me.
- card_zero 5mo agoI would like to be embalmed and placed at the end of a dark corridor in a run-down guesthouse, in a crouched position. Seems less wasteful.
- mystraline 5mo agoSounds like failed priorities, spending that much on dead people, rather than the living.
- forthwall 5mo agoThis article seems to establish that kinship leads to the failure of wage growth and ultimately wealth, people will hide their wages because people will ask for money. This seems like the issue rather is is that wealth accumulation in sub-saharan africa is limited to a small subset of population, I don't think this wealth tax by family members exists when you have a larger group of individuals making more money. You can observe this in the US, and presumably in the rest of the world, when wealth is concentrated to individuals, your family will probably ask you for money. The difference is here, there is less income inequality and more people have the ability to make more money. I do like the look into funeral culture, but I don't think this assumption that kinship and family-peity is the cause of the lack of economic mobilty.
- willmeyers 5mo agoThis is the most insightful comment in this thread. Unfortunately Oks decided to use a clickbait title that made people jump to conclusions.
- themacguffinman 5mo agoThe difference is that it's pretty acceptable for you to reject family requests for money, it doesn't make you a pariah and being a pariah doesn't carry the same consequences when non-family institutions govern society. The article spends a lot of time belaboring this point: you don't have to do what your family asks you to do in developed countries. On the other hand, becoming outcast from your family in a kinship-dominated society means you have nowhere else to turn to which is enormous pressure.
- mothballed 5mo agoThe article's description of kinship sounds a bit like family based governance and taxation. Only with say a western government their enforcers will happily imprison anyone not giving what the government ("kin") says is owed, and those who resist being violently dragged jailed typically find a fate even worse. The western version then of being a pariah for not paying up is violence rather than ostracization and shame. Of course until you get rich enough that you can corrupt the government itself.
- TheGRS 5mo agoThat was a very interesting read. I appreciate when anyone tries to dig into the actual why of culture instead of just leaving it at face value. I get the impression this is more of a working theory than factual on the sociological side, because I do think there's a lot of counter-arguments to be made about strong kinship networks that are otherwise wealthy and prosperous. And there's a pretty obvious parallel in wealthy nations: the lavish wedding. There are many examples of otherwise modest to low income couples, even with support of their families, putting on weddings they can't really afford but they do it anyway because of social mores. Maybe there's a clear connection between those examples and strong kinship networks. Or maybe its back to peer pressure and keeping up with the joneses.
- jillesvangurp 5mo agoSocial pressure to do stuff like this is enormous in some families. It's not necessarily about the subjects (deceased person or the newly wedded couple) but about re-affirming the status of their relatives. Arguably the dead don't really care. But their nearest relatives definitely do care how they are perceived to be dealing with the death of the deceased. It underlines their importance and status. People come to "pay their respects". There's a whole etiquette around that. In many cultures it used to be (or still is) quite common to treat brides as property. It's more like a financial transaction than a romantic thing. The groom's family "buys" the wife for the husband. Money changes hands sometimes. An elaborate party seals the deal. A lot of royal houses actually have a rich and colorful history with arranged marriages. And inbreeding because they jealously guarded their power by marrying cousins and managing how wealth and power is distributed via inheritance. Of course grief and empathy with the mourning relatives is also very real and genuine and is mixed through this. Same with happiness for a newly wed couple. And some of that empathy translates into people making sure they are there for the mourning family. So, they travel from far. And if everybody is coming, you need to make sure you don't forget to invite everybody else. People will want to be there. And that creates a need for a social gathering. And that in turn results in it becoming a big event. Which then that creates an obligation to make sure that all these people are welcomed properly. They need to be fed, entertained, etc. Or it would look bad on the family. In short, it's all very explainable. But also a bit irrational to put yourself in debt because you are getting married or because somebody you care about passed away. Some people flip this with not wanting to impose on others with either their marriage or deaths. I'm not married and I don't believe in an after life. I've told my relatives to do what pleases them and works for them with my remains when the time comes but that I otherwise don't really care.
- Tade0 5mo agoThere's an interesting film focused on this topic: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1499420/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1499420/ The author traveled through Cameroon and documented, among other things, the realities of having a backlog of dead one must properly bury. Turns out not everyone can afford putting their deceased relatives in a freezer - especially for extended periods of time, so sometimes the dead are stored in a separate storage area next to the home until the living gather the necessary funds.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> so sometimes the dead are stored in a separate storage area next to the home until the living gather the necessary funds Isn't this an own goal when it comes to disease?
- decimalenough 5mo agoDoesn't stop the Torajans in Indonesia for storing the corpses inside their own houses, sometimes for years. https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2017/oct/13/cleaning-the-dead-the-afterlife-rituals-of-the-torajan-people https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2017/oct/13/cleani... (warning: graphic)
- Tade0 5mo agoWell, there are many worse systemic issues in the region. It's been 15 years since I saw that movie, but I recall the remains presented to be just the skull and some larger bones - all dried out completely. What happened to the rest of the body I don't recall.
- kenferry 5mo agoThe factual material about funeral spending costs is very interesting, but when it gets into "Kinship societies are wealth-destroying societies" it seems rather… unsupported? That's a sweeping statement that actually requires understanding the whole picture, and the whole picture is not being presented. Is there reason to think the author truly has all the context to make these claims?
- decimalenough 5mo agoThis is not a novel observation, eg Kapuscinski's "In the Shadow of the Sun" describes the same phenomenon: it's very difficult to get ahead because anything above bare subsistence is immediately siphoned off by your kin.
- ted_bunny 5mo agoFewer homeless, I bet.
- marcus_holmes 5mo agoThe flip side is that it's very difficult to fall too far behind as well. Your kin have an obligation to support you, too.
- dchftcs 5mo agoYour pack falls behind, and has nothing to eat during food supply shocks like the one that's almost certainly coming.
- nostrademons 5mo agoOn a factual level the relationship between kinship societies and economic headwinds is fairly well documented [1] [2]. The mechanism is the same reason that communist/socialist societies often fail: when wealth belongs to everyone, nobody has either the incentive or the means to accumulate wealth, which prevents capital formation within the society [3]. The part that the article glosses over is that "Kinship societies destroy economic growth" is a Russell conjugate [4] of "economic growth destroys family formation". Kinship networks provide important intangible support to several important community functions, notably child-rearing. That's the whole "it takes a village to raise a child" aphorism. When you allow people to defect on their social obligations in the name of accumulating wealth, then it turns out they do, and the village suffers. It is exactly as the article said: "The kinship network has a strong interest in preventing any of its members from becoming prosperous enough to no longer need it: someone who no longer needs your help is also someone who might not help you." That's exactly what we've observed happening in modern industrialized economies, where people become increasingly atomized and those informal community organizations that create things like belonging and mutual aid (not to mention group childcare and socialization) die off as everyone chases the promotion that will let them afford ever-higher institutional childcare costs. And this is why the fertility rate in every major industrialized country has cratered, usually right as it industrializes. [1] https://www.uni-heidelberg.de/md/awi/forschung/paper_e.bulte_kinship_jds_final.pdf https://www.uni-heidelberg.de/md/awi/forschung/paper_e.bulte... [2] https://edepot.wur.nl/14918 https://edepot.wur.nl/14918 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation
- orbital-decay 5mo agoThe author is trying to generalize this narrative, but it still sounds pretty specific to Ghana and some other African societies. Chechnya and Dagestan are mentioned, but I struggle to remember any demonstrative wealth destruction practices there. Also what about other historic kinship societies (e.g. Scottish, Italian?)
- jamesfinlayson 5mo ago> Also what about other historic kinship societies (e.g. Scottish, Italian?) Low sample size but I know a few Sicilian families and there was a bit of intergenerational living, paying for family members to emigrate etc but it always seemed very focussed on working hard so that the next generation had it better. Some were a bit showy with their wealth but most lived modestly - my Dad theorised that in rural Sicily early last century, showing your wealth would probably ear-mark you for a shake-down or some other targeted crime, so people learned to live modestly and keep their wealth quiet.
- asadm 5mo agoPeople should look again at how we Muslims bury. Not only is it much "green" but also cheap and doesn't waste land forever. There is wisdom in simplicity.
- selimthegrim 5mo agoMuslims are also obliged to attend funerals - that goes double in Punjab for someone in your biradari.
- asadm 5mo agoobliged = attend funeral prayer at local mosque + help in burial. essentially free.
- selimthegrim 5mo agoYes, that's what I meant.
- muzani 5mo agoIt's the opposite of the article. Wrap the body in a cloth. Bury as fast as possible. Bury as cheap as possible. One headstone and one footstone. No buildings on it though the headstones recently have names. Recently there's been more intricate graves and sometimes tombs, but time by time, people fall back to the original traditions. After all, the big caliphs who ruled empires were buried under two stones.
- levocardia 5mo ago>Kinship societies are actively hostile to economic growth, because economic growth undermines the basis of kinship: that is why kinship societies demand constant, visible sacrifices of wealth—funerals being the most spectacular—that make it extraordinarily difficult for any individual to accumulate capital, reinvest their assets, and pull ahead. The funeral is a window into a system of wealth destruction that serves, above all else, to keep people poor This reasoning is flawed. Consumer spending is not "wealth destruction" -- who makes the fantasy coffins? Who prints the banners? Local businesses! Ghana is sitting at a 5.6% GDP growth rate; for reference developmental success India is at 6.5%. Ghana's GDP in 2000 was $5B, today it's $82.B. Its per-capita GDP has more than doubled in the same time period.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> Consumer spending is not "wealth destruction" -- who makes the fantasy coffins? Who prints the banners? Local businesses! This is the parable of the broken window [1]. > Ghana is sitting at a 5.6% GDP growth rate Ghana is a success story in large part due to having made a clear-eyed recovery after its 2015 IMF bailout. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
- haritha-j 5mo agoThank you, TIL about the parable of the broken window. I was thinking the same thing when reading the comments, surely that money would still benefit the economy if say it was invested in the education of a child, but it would also act as a economic multiplier as the child can now contribute more to the economy. But I never knew there was a term for it. Especially this line really highlights it: > by the 2000s, many Ghanaian hospitals were earning more from storing dead bodies than from treating living patients. Surely those resources are better spent healing the living.
- decimalenough 5mo agoGhana's GDP per capita is around $2000. It's only a success story because the baseline is so low, and because most of its neighbors are doing even worse.
- basyt 5mo agothe western mind cannot comprehend kinship...
- wewtyflakes 5mo agoI found a lot of the points being made against kinship networks are also easily made against traditional wealth-oriented cultures. "The kinship network has a strong interest in preventing any of its members from becoming prosperous enough to no longer need it" Seems like the exact monetary pressures someone from the west would feel, except it comes from bosses rather than family. Minimum wage needing to exist as a thing is a clear example of that.
- voganmother42 5mo agowhen I'm dead just throw me in the trash
- littlexsparkee 5mo agoseriously, i've never understood spending so much money on rituals like burial or marriage, might as well set it on fire. i'd just do aquamation or mushroom burial, whichever's the best mix of green/cheap.
- 0x1ceb00da 5mo agoIt's a way of dealing with the fear of death. "When I die, an event will be organized for me and then I'll go to heaven". The living need to do that to maintain the illusion.
- littlexsparkee 5mo agoI mean, I understand their motivations at a distance, but I've always tried to confront harsh realities including my own mortality. It seems the better option to me over dulling the sensation with stupefiants or belief systems.
- t1234s 5mo ago[flagged]
- Wolfenstein98k 5mo agoI always wonder how much of the West's wealth(- holding capabilities) come from centralising and rationalising our superstitions through central authorities like the church.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- madradavid 5mo agoI am Ugandan. These kind of burials are unheard of in my country. The Author is labeling this an “African” thing which is just the usual daft nonsense. A number of Ghanaian and Nigerian tribes bury their dead like this , it is more a celebration of life. This is like taking something a small town in Louisiana does and declaring it an “American” tradition.
- SanjayMehta 5mo ago[flagged]
- andrewl 5mo agoHis article has a link to an article about Uganda called How the deceased are robbing the living. [1] I know approximately nothing about Uganda, and I have no way of evaluating the article. Especially since I haven’t read it yet. But it does contradict Madradavid’s statement that these kind of burials are unheard of there. [1] https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/magazines/life/how-the-deceased-are-robbing-the-living-5104616 https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/magazines/life/how-the-dece...
- madradavid 5mo agoI did read that article; it is just a generic article about how funerals are expensive, you could replace Kampala with New York, and it would still hold. My point is that the Author has picked a practice by a couple of tribes on a Continent so diverse and large you could fit the states, the UK, and still have space for 30 or so more countries, and passed it off as the norm. Funerals can be expensive, anywhere. I don't want you going away with the impression that all these poor Africans are using up all their hard-earned savings to throw these outlandish burial ceremonies.
- cineticdaffodil 5mo agoThat counter argument is valueless. Yes, it might be unequally spread but unless you can proof the locality of the phenomena the cliche still communicates. Not everything in the west is California but thanks to hollywood it is.
- incr_me 5mo agoColonialism blocked endogenous capitalist classes from developing freely in Africa. Internal dynamics should be understood in the context of the actual history of Africa.
- kqr 5mo agoThis was an eye-opener for me when I read C.A. Gregory's Savage Money. Our values, i.e. the things we do to gain the approval of each other, has a huge effect on how we live. Much larger than I had expected. Some people (not limited to Africa -- common also in e.g. rural India) value lifecycle rituals, like coming-of-age parties, marriages, and funerals. Those are the reasons they make money. They don't make money for something else and then blow it on a funeral. They made money specifically for the funeral. I make money to be able to eventually unchain myself from the daily grind and spend my later years doing armchair research. Some people near me make money to buy a fancy home and pay eyewatering amounts of mortgage interest to their bank. And some people further from me make money to spend on lavish funerals. It's easy to feel superior about any of these, but I struggle to see how one is better than the other. They're all restricting the way we live and imposed on us from society, they're just different from each other.
- vasco 5mo agoYou struggle to see how a society which has a system where you put requests from other people ahead of your own healthcare is not equal to one where you take care of yourself? Did you see the examples that those women started actually getting healthcare as soon as they had their own bank account? The picture you paint is about respecting what people do with their surplus money. The picture the article paints is that in those societies you don't even take care of your basic needs and you never get to have surplus money. So debating which use of surplus money is better is besides the point.
- giza182 5mo agoIn South Africa, health insurance is prohibitively expensive, but you can get funeral insurance as a value added service from your data plan provider, bank, or even your favourite football team. It is extremely common, so there’s just more money going around. That said all the other points made around the kinship society are still valid. Its also very like that they contribute to the proliferation of funeral insurance themselves.
- black_13 5mo ago[dead]
- imadierich 5mo ago[dead]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- Pansy3 5mo agoI am a Ghanaian, and what the article describes is inaccurate. Lavish funerals are only specific to the Akan ethnic group (Fante and Ashanti; there are 70+ distinct ethnic groups) and, to some extent, Christians. Usually, the Clan shoulders the cost of the casket, with the nuclear family covering the remaining expenses. As always, the family expects sufficient donations (nsawa) from the attendees (relatives, friends, associations, extended family) to offset the costs. What many people miss is that the funeral almost always reflects the life of the deceased - wealthy, social status (e.g., a king or playing a significant societal role), the number of children, age (funeral for the elderly is very different from the young), etc. We have a popular saying that only in the Ashanti region can one profit from a funeral. They’re the only ethnic group with the most expensive funerals.
- dzonga 5mo ago[flagged]
- dzonga 5mo agosub-saharan africa a place with more landmass & diversity than most continents reduced to a monolith by a someone who has never lived in africa for more than a year. if that's not patronizing and stupidity - IDK.
- MrSkelter 5mo agoAfrica contains a billion people over hundreds of cultures. Referring to “African” tradition is like referring to “Asian” or “European” tradition. Do better.