Let's Recognize BS for What it Is

Let's Recognize BS for What it Is

Sometimes we just have to wake up, bite the bullet, and call a spade a spade.

I follow Ryan Thogmartin's Connecting Directors. I started a couple of years ago, when I felt that I should start learning more about what funeral directors are thinking, since I work with so many. At about the same time I began independently studying mortuary science subjects and collected a small reference library to assist in my thanatology, psychospiritual support, chaplaincy, and general knowledge, as well as in my writing. All in the interest of professional continuing learning and interest in improving my services.

Over time I learned that there is an incredible myriad scams and promotions being offered practically everywhere ranging from personal blogs to corporate funeral services marketing to certification programs to pundits like Thogmartin to new disposal technologies for dead human beings.


Some of these scams have not left national and international organizations unscathed nor have they even left our seminaries unaffected. It seems that the West's greatest denial has become the opportunist's windfall! Western society is so entrenched in denial of death that it has created an entire industry focused on treating the "victims" of the fact of the Grim Reaper. Everything from telling one of the oldest professions in human history, the deathcare profession, how they should operate, what they should do, and how to succeed to informing this privileged and ancient profession that they are doing it all wrong (Thogmartin's approach), and that they should be going the route of the brainless addict, that is, go Facebook! For business purposes, Facebook and most other social media, including the professional networking media, are practically useless. Sure, we get happy birthday and work anniversary wishes but do we get any new clients? Sure, we make colleagues aware that we are alive and still providing services, but anyone beyond a 25 or 50 mile radius from my office is highly unlikely to consider my services, that is, the services I offer to make a living. Sure, they read my blogs and my articles but they then incorporate what they can and dispose of the rest; after all, it doesn't cost them anything. Do they promote psychospiritual support or chaplaincy to their customers or staff. Perhaps, but again, not if it's going to cost them bucks to bring a professional in to do the job. Lord knows (nothing witty intended) most families balk at the paltry $150-200 for the services of an experienced bereavement chaplain to officiate a funeral or memorial service. Yet they'll spend multiples of that on some toy that is obsolete even before it leaves the shop; or they'll spend untold hours online wasted with digital "friends." Go figure!

During the time I've spent on Connecting Directors I have been able to note that Ryan Thogmartin is republishing most of what he has from other sites and sources. Most of it totally irrelevant to local deathcare operations and of curiosity interest only. The real nitty-gritty of what's happening in your area in your niche should be gotten from your state/provincial, regional, and national deathcare association publications and professional journals. Thogmartin's obsession with converting deathcare professionals to the millenials' addiction to social media is particularly disturbing to those of us who work directly with dying, death, the survivors, and the general population of mourners. Even more so since Thogmartin stymies our human efforts at making a dying public aware of and accepting of the inevitable; Thogmartin promotes a fiction, that of social media and digital solutions. The efforts of such opportunists like Thogmartin in the deathcare niche and others like him in the HR niche, who promote check-list recruiting and hiring are, in a word, DEHUMANIZING. If we accept what psychologists and philosophers have taught for centuries, that is, that human beings are the only species that are (or should be) aware of their own mortality and finitude, shouldn't we hold that distinction in reverence rather than commercialize and monetize it?

I, for one, shall oppose at every turn such efforts to remove humanity from dying, death and surviving. I shall, at every turn, unveil the fallacies of the bull crappola proselytized by a grunge specialist! The self-appointed Facebook minions, gurus, and doulas who purport to be the social media experts to the dying and to the bereaved, as well as to the respected deathcare professionals, those with their boots on the ground, those who are present where the rubber meets the road, the local funeral home operators and staff, not the industrialized funeral factories.

Contrary to Thogmartin's and his keepers' promotions, Facebook has very little to offer locally and most shoppers don't go to Facebook to find a funeral professional. The funeral professional and his/her facilities continue to be local, even if they are a corporation hiding behind a former family operation (Dignity Memorial). Thogmartin is a narcissist, an infllated self-appointed guru of BS. I used to be interested, then amused, now only annoyed by him! Think about what he has to say, and then get back to running your business compassionately...and successfully. Rediscover the values upon which the deathcare professions from the embalmer to the cosmetician to the chaplain to the usher are founded. Rediscover the values that have made the deathcare professions so important to human beings. Rediscover the values that have, over the centuries, made the deathcare professionals a special and important part of all cultures and all societies. Those values are human values, not industrial or technological.


Steve Suehiro

Arrangement Director at GREEN HILLS MORTUARY AND MEMORIAL CHAPEL, INC.

6 年

Thank you reverend for putting to words the feelings most of my colleagues havet every time this media company? makes a pitch and attempts to represent itself as a panacea.? Well done!

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Timothy M. Kramer, FD, CFC

Funeral Director/ Supervisor at Kearney Funeral Homes, Inc

6 年

When someone has a car accident, do they post on face book that they need help or do they dial a number hoping to get a "real person" on the other end who will respond quickly? The same goes in the funeral industry. No one posts that their mother has passed hoping someone will reply, no they call a phone number and pray that someone answers. I am not a millennial, not exactly sure what group I am in, nor do I care. I am me and always will be. I take a little of this and a little of that and pieced myself to who I am. I am old school doing it in a modern way. I would rather talk then text and chat face to face then post on facespace. I refuse to have an account because my business is just that, mine. And exposing my every move online doesn't open me up to opportunity, it mostly opens up to trouble. I'm not saying that social media doesn't have a legitimate place and function if used properly. It does help get information out to a widespread audience. But ultimately, the funeral industry is a localized business which serves a circumscribed community and locale. And we are usually deeply imbedded into that community and most people know us by first name. And they know that we can get them the help they need beyond the final prayers

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6 年

For a more extensive discussion of this topic, please visit my Pastoral Care blog and my most recent article "Is Funeral Home Use of Social Media Moral?" at https://wp.me/pFJiy-cK

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Timothy M. Kramer, FD, CFC

Funeral Director/ Supervisor at Kearney Funeral Homes, Inc

6 年

I don't like banking online, I don't like shopping online, and I don't like self check outs. I feel that having that human interaction with another person is a primal desire and need. We need daily interaction with another human being to feel that we exist and that we have meaning. And to ultimately give one of the most personal and intimate of situations and the most vulnerable of times and give it over to technology is going to destroy the funeral industry and humanity as we know it.

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