We humanise mortality by viewing it as a set of problems, we seek an enemy and kill it, we turn to projects that we can handle and there by attempt to give ourselves a sense of mastery over reality"
             Bauman (1992)
             This essay will attempt to discus Bauman's notion of death as the 'other' of high modernity, through explaining the methods in which high modernity has employed to sequester death, through medicine and thus institutionalising the dying and those involved. It is also discussed how curtain minorities are linked to death and as a result-attempted genocide is justified to eradicate death. Lastly it is explained how those exposed to death are affected.
             Up until the late 18th and early 19th century, death was a public affair. Literature such as 'The book of the dead' and the 'Artes Morendi' (How to Die well) gave society a common education that enabled one to know what was expected in the presence of death. Because death was an aspect of everyday life before the late 18th century the literature was used as a copping mechanism and 'tamed' Aries (1991) death. Death was explained in the literature not as an end, but as a transitional event and what could be done to be granted one entrance into the next life. Aries comments on the religious notion of life after death as 'continued existence or obstinate denials of immediate destruction.' In high modernity, religious ritual has seised to have such a need, as death is not so prevalent, thus there is no longer a need for death to be a public event, death now is highly individualised, and wild because it is not so rampant in western society in high modernity. This lack of exposure to death has given rise to a lake of knowledge of how to confront the situation, both as the dying and the bereaved: 'unlike our distant ancestors and 'people unlike us', we do no...