Nik’s blog

The Future of Death

This was originally posted at Future Thoughts.

The ways that human cultures have dealt with death are immensely varied. However, one thing is constant – death has for the vast majority of human history been a very real concern. The way we think about death helps to define our reasons for living, our relationship to the material world, our moral code, and our relationships with other humans. Since the mass slaughter of the first half of the 20th century, we in the West have succeeded in avoiding any real cultural engagement with the fact that our lifespans may be limited. While it doubtless happens to people around us, it is a private tragedy, one whose implications are seldom aired in public, and whose rituals are conducted out of the public gaze (with a few exceptions, of course, Jade, MJ and Diana). Some find religion in the face of imminent death. Others despair. But individual choices are not what concern us here.

This avoidance of the subject of death has coincided with, and may have some causal link with, the cultural power of the baby boom generation and the worship of youth that accompanied it. If most cultural output, power and attention is concentrated on the young, then thoughts of death will naturally fade from prominence. This is particularly true when this fixation on youth is reinforced by rising lifespans, making space for the delusion that we may one day be able to live forever. Finally, alongside these phenomena the second half of the twentieth century also witnessed a sharp decline in religious observance, at least in Europe. One of the roles of religion in society is to help us cope with the idea of death, and one of the ways it reinforces its necessity is to remind us that all things must pass, and that certain behaviours in this life (chiefly religious observance) are necessary to secure a decent death.

I would also argue that an awareness of death, a conviction that it will one day happen to you, and perhaps a belief in some form of afterlife served in the past as essential brakes on consumption. The ancient wisdom that “you can’t take it with you” derived its power from people’s willingness to confront their limited lifespans. Is there a correspondence then between a culture dominated by youth, a lack of interest in death and the acquisitive impulse that defines consumerist society? (The simpler explanation – that it is simply mass affluence that drives consumption – is obviously more compelling, but both can be true.)

My question for the future is, will ageing baby boomers, as their friends begin to fall around them, and modern medicine ceases to outpace Father Time, turn their thoughts (and thereby all of ours, as they have done before) towards death, and away from acquisitiveness? A secular society does not offer the same consolations as religion. Some may turn to new-age spiritualism, others will rediscover the old religions. But secularism runs deep in many. Will Warren Buffett (not a boomer, but still) and Bill Gates be pioneers of a new secular form of life after death? This generation has unprecedented levels of wealth, but will surely baulk at building themselves pyramids for the afterlife. Will their children be sufficient targets for their benefaction, or will we see a flowering of foundations intended to carry something of their founders into the next age?