Is there any suggestion in the literature that this "grief activity" is a new socializtion ritual, primarily engaged in by adolescent females, or older females with arrested emotional development?

That was not the anecdotal experience my pal, a Nova Scotian in the BBC, reported at the time of Diana's death. It was everyone. I wonder, however, how new it really when you look at reports from, say, the funeral of Howie Morenz at Montreal. Perhaps it is only disassociation from death in the researcher or the reporter finds the activity odd. People do odd things in large groups - for example, from the mass suicides at Okinawa in 1945.

I just checked on the net for a little bit more on Patrick West's report see:

http://www.civitas.org.uk/hwu/prcs34.php

I like West's observation:'Mourning sickness is a religion for the lonely crowd that no longer subscribes to orthodox churches. Its flowers and teddies are its rites, its collective minutes' silences its liturgy and mass. But these new bonds are phoney, ephemeral and cynical'; and:

'When a group called Hedgeline calls for a two-minute silence to remember all the "victims" whose neighbours have grown towering hedges, we truly have reached the stage where this gesture has been emptied of meaning.'

I don't quite buy that as there is something more than the fashion of ritual occurring. It is true that too often the trotting out of mourning for victims is occurring but the desire to act collectively or ritualistically is still there. It reminds me of someone describing their parent who had become utterly senile - he would still make the same faces into the mirror when shaving, something was still there. What is still there for the participants in events like the mourning for Diana? At he moment a person is doing it, it is not a self-conscious moment of meaninglessness. Yet it is ultimately largely unconnected.

I suppose there is a difference to be drawn between attendance at a solemn organized public memorial service, and attendance at a weeping, teddy bear laden, candle-light vigil at a place associated with the death of the deceased.

Objectively there may be, depending on the circumstances: if it was the location of the death of my child, for example, there would not be any difference to me at all subjectively. But, the more abstract the experience of the loss is to the personal, the odder it gets. What is left in the subjective experience when one is weeping over a stranger only known through mass media? There is that desire to participate in the act, almost regardless of the subject matter of the event. The breadth of the reaction within society should not be the validator of the subjective experience of the individual in matters of loss. Loss is a funny thing. In the last two weeks I learned of the deaths of university acquaitances from 20 and 15 years ago. The deaths were not immeditately recent and I was most struck by my recollection that they were both among the most beautiful women I had ever met, that they both died at 40, that they were both good social acquaintances but not close friends. Hard to figure where to place the loss I felt. I think participants in these mass events are doing something like that - trying to place something real in things that are, like Diana's funeral, entirely disproportionate.

Those weeping and hugging for the cameras at these vigils that commonly now occur, seem to be almost exclusively females, and mostly adolescent. There are some exceptions, like on Lennon's death, where males participated, but the females seem to have that "stick-to-itedness" that keeps these "grief" sessions going. Males are mostly "handholders". As West's point those still mourning Diana, have a misplaced, ill-proportioned sense of "grief", that amounts to a sickness. My question: Are these misplaced grief sessions a "sickness", which effects mostly females who suffer from arrested emotional development, and in which male participation is as the "understanding companion"? For instance, do have any male friends (or female friends)for that matter who you would still take seriously after they told they forked out $4000.00 to visit Diana's grave site, to lay their favorite teddy bear on her monument? Or even if they told you they attended a neighborhood candlelight vigil for her on the anniversary of her death? Isn't it true that serious people, or people who wish to be taken seriously, just do not particpate in that sort of thing?

I think your assumption based on gender does not hold. Think of Jim Morrison's grave. Further, "people who ish to be taken seiously" may just be people who have negated emotion, sterile in their modernity, faithful only to irony or materialism.

I think a visit to Morrison's grave site at the Pére Lachaiseis a little different, man. Drop a little acid and recall the old days, partying with Jimbo and the Doors, living or dead, man. We where soldiers, man. It's not about "grief", man, it's about the "trip". No teddys on Jimbo's grave, no way man, just empty the burbon, rye and scotch bottles in his honor, man."I'm the freedom man. I was turning keys setting people free." Turn your own key, man, set yourself free - no grief, man, no worries.

Not really. When in Paris as a backpacker, I couldn't be bothered going but my pals did it. It was a procession of the grieving as well, acting out a standardized emotion based on mass media exposeure alone. Elvis, UFOs - its all the same. Fixation on something distant and not really real at all. Very weird how humans act. I saw a short clip the otherday on how the SS invented a "baptism ceremony" for theor infant children because they sort of felt it could not be a real belief system without one.<p>Which leads to the really interesting thing - it's all about the susceptability of humans to belief systems. Your "serious people" are as much involved in belief as the teddy clutchers. They just each go to their own version of their ceremony. As a lawyer I have seen it often in the well suited. I also had a roommate in 1989 who believed in Pepsi, would curse at Coke ads. It was very weird.

Check with your former roommate - if he is still cursing Coke ads, then he’s mentally unbalanced. It is difficult to see that the teddy huggers have a “belief system” that requires that they engage in this ritual. Rather, this sustained outpouring of grief, is a bizarre, irrational behavior that no serious, balanced person would have the time, nor the inclination to engage in. By “serious people”, I refer to people of accomplishment, who hold or aspire to positions of responsibility in this society, that require their full time and attention, and that they exercise careful judgment in what they say and do - people who would "try to do some genuine, unostentatious, good". As opposed to, say, people known only for their celebrity or the teddy huggers.

I guess I have never met serious people as your division makes no sense to me...but I really do not want to go off on that tangent.

You're right, we don't need to go off on a tangent - just look around your office - you deal with serious people everyday. Do think these people have time for "prolonged extravagant displays of grief" for someone they don't even know?

I know many such people who did - that is my point of disagreement with you.

Really? That's extremely interesting. The people I know are too busy saving the world, paying their taxes and mortgages, picking up their kids from the sitter and the like, to be bothered with that kind of schlock. Not to continue on the tangent, but I would be interested in knowing what precise "prolonged extravagant displays of grief" these people you know were engaged in, and for which stranger(s); and what do these people you know do in the "serious" portion of their lives, ie. what do they do for a living? In fact, give me just one - pick out the most intelligent, or the one who might seem to be the most intelligent, based on education or accomplishment, of these people you know, as an example. Fascinating. I hope we're not just talking about signing a memorial book or the like. I hope it's something good like dropping everything (the kids, the wife, or husband, the job) and catching the first flight to London to wail with the others at the gates of Buckingham Palace over Di Di and Dodi.

Regarding interesting "belief systems", I saw an interesting story lately, (On the CBC, no less-ouch!) regarding Urban Legends, and specifically Tim Horton coffee. Many people claim to have a cousins friend who worked at a DR office where a patient was treated for a reaction to coffee. The DR demanded to be told the exact contents of the cofffee, and it was revealed, as the story according to the cousins friend, that it contained caffine.

Independent studies proved otherwise, but the story still circulates. Why? Because people have to have someone or something else to blame. They can't believe it is their own fault for drinking 5 double-doubles a day, so they invent a way to blame Tims. Interesting.

[You are really pushing our luck, Wayne...]

That is the sort of pervasive belief I am talking about. There is such a common disconnect about each person's relationship to these ordinary things. I suppose it does in part push the litigation game - beliefs that you could never make such a foolish mistake, that someone else is actually steering the boat so you do not need to.

Tim Horton? Whazza "Tim Horton"? Maybe I need to get out more - yeah, that's it - I'll take a walk to the end of my driveway to get a coffee. That's where they built that new coffee shop. It's beautiful - all brown and square, just like the 1200 others in this burg, one now for every street - our street was beginning to feel left out...now I don't even have to walk the entire block to get a java. Maybe they deliver! If I could only remember their name?...There's a rumour that they juice their coffee with crack and use nicotine filters. Sounds like my kinda place.