why celebrating death is still wrong This has touched off some interesting debate about whether there is something unseemly about celebrating the death of another human being. But there are at least two importantly different issues in play we need to keep separate here. The first is the idea that we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. Is this just a matter of etiquette, or does it have an important moral dimension as well? When someone dies, we begin to tie up the narrative of their lives, finalising and knotting off the strands of meaning that they wove while they lived. It is a time for consoling the bereaved, but it is also, inevitably, a time for forming judgements. At the moment of death, a person’s life will always and forever be just what it was. We reflect on the totality of that life and form a view of the whole, much as we do when the credits roll on a movie or we finish the end of a book. The notion of a “final judgement” of the dead in another realm, which features in religions from ancient Egypt to Christianity and Islam, largely reflects what humans do down here already. Philosophers from Aristotle onwards have argued that we have moral obligations to the dead, even though the dead no longer exist. The arguments used to justify this claim are quite ingenious, but I won’t rehearse them here. We don’t simply refrain from slandering the dead because it will hurt their loved ones, but because this somehow harms the dead person themselves. Likewise, we go out of our way to right past injustices because this is what we owe to the dead, not just their survivors or descendants. Our dealings with the dead are just as ethically governed as our dealings with the living. And the dead are especially vulnerable – “prey” to the living as Sartre put it – because among other things they cannot defend themselves. But speaking ill of the dead is one thing; celebrating someone’s death is something else. . In this case we don’t simply judge a person’s life or actions but repudiate them as a human being. Rejoicing in someone’s death is tantamount to denying them even that most basic moral regard. That should indeed trouble us, however harshly we may judge Thatcher and her legacy. Every death, as John Donne reminds us, diminishes us. Rejoicing in death only diminishes us further.
So that the living can continue to live and not fall for the same dumbass mistakes thinking memeing bullshit will fool death. The dead don't care, they are gone.