Ghost Month

Time to vent a little spleen...okay, there are lots of things I like to vent my spleen about (why is it the spleen, anyway? why don't we vent, say, our liver?), because I'm a cynic, fairly observant, and my view of humanity in general is fairly well expressed by the last line of Monty Python's Galaxy Song, or those bumper stickers which read "Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here." But today my target it is a local custom. For any strangers who by some chance might read this, I live in Taiwan, a small island country southeast of China and south of Japan. Overall, Taiwan's a pretty decent place to live in (otherwise I wouldn't be here), but like everywhere else in the world, there's still plenty of room for improvement. In Taiwan's case, one of the more obvious areas that needs work is people's attitude towards (and simple consciousness of) the environment, a fact that is particularly brought home to me every year about this time.

Why this time of year? Well, because on the traditional lunar Chinese calender (most Taiwanese are ethnic Chinese), this month, the seventh month of the lunar year, is "Ghost Month". It's a bit like the original All Hallow's Eve, when it was believed that the spirits of the dead roamed free on the Earth, but in this case it lasts all month. Now I don't believe in ghosts (or anything else supernatural, for that matter), but my particular problem with "Ghost Month" is not merely that I consider it nonsense. No, the problem is that to honor these spirits (or to bribe them to leave everyone alone), more traditionally-minded people (and even companies) have big worship ceremonies during this month. Again, I have no particular objection to worship ceremonies, whoever or whatever they are aimed at (though I may consider them silly), but as part of these ceremonies people burn what is sometimes called ghost money. The idea is that if they burn this money it goes to the ghosts, who are then happy and leave the worshipper alone (or even aid them in some way).

Even if it weren't for the very concrete objections I have to this, I'll have to admit I find the whole idea rather absurd. As I've pointed out to people, if ghosts use money, that means they have an economy, with ghost shops and restaurants. That would mean there are also jobs to be had, which in turn means the ghosts shouldn't need to sponge off the living. (Okay, that sounds a bit right-wing, but how do you know that the ghost that's getting your money is one who is really in need? Maybe they actually have a cushy job in some ghost business or something. I mean, if you are doing it as some sort of charity for ghosts, you should at least make sure it's going to the ones who really need it). But I stray....

The real objection, of course, is environmental. Here we are, living in a country which suffered terrible landslides following a typhoon a few weeks back, in part because people have been cutting down the original forest cover to plant cash crops, and people are burning large amounts of paper just so some imaginary ghosts can have a nice imaginary meal? We are profligate enough with paper as it is, considering all the documents, homework papers, test papers, newspapers, magazines, books, paper bags, and so forth that people in Taiwan go through every day. But at least most of those things have some kind of practical purpose, and they can be (and sometimes are) recycled. With ghost money, it all goes up in smoke, and doesn't accomplish anything at all, except maybe psychologically. What makes it even worse is that most ghost money is not pure paper (there are usually fancy coatings to make it look golden and glittery); it contains some highly polluting chemicals, which of course go straight into the air when it's burned. This is aside from the carbon that is released. Here it is, the hottest part of the year, in a world that's getting hotter all the time due to human-induced climate change, and when you walk around the city streets, you've got to walk past all these fires which are just making it worse.

Some might say, yes, but it's a tradition, and part of the religion, so we shouldn't interfere. To which I say...bullsh...er, nonsense (might as well avoid having this page blocked for bad language, at least for the time being). In ancient times, many religions had traditions of human sacrifice. Even in modern times, suttee (where the widow is expected to throw herself on her husband's funeral pyre) in parts of India or female circumcision in parts of Africa are also "tradition". Should we "respect" those traditions and allow them to continue? I am a firm believer in respecting other cultures, at least in that I don't think European culture is in any general sense superior to the cultures of other parts of the world, and I think an effort should be made to preserve most traditions. But if a tradition is harmful in a direct and obvious way, then it should go. Tradition is no excuse for ruining our environment.

In fact, there are plenty of Taiwanese who feel the same way. Buddhist organizations in Taiwan often speak out against the burning of ghost money (though admittedly that's because the whole ghost money concept is Daoist, not Buddhist), and I personally know many Taiwanese who agree that it's not a good thing. Even the government has indirectly acknowledged the problem (I think not so much the environmental destruction, but because it's a fire hazard) by providing websites where people can burn virtual money. And why not? If you really believe that ghosts use money, then why shouldn't virtual money be just as good? After all, in the real world, most money is virtual money that only exists in computers, rather than physically in the form of cash. If it works for us, it should work for the ghosts too.

The upshot is, I hope that some day in the future, I'll be able to walk the streets of Taipei during ghost month without seeing anyone burning any ghost money at all. Rather than spending so much effort on dead ancestors, who don't even notice, let's think more about our descendants, who won't thank us for ruining their world for them. Toast the dead in your heart, or if you insist "burn" some virtual money online, but leave clean air and living trees for yourself and your children.