Something I’ve realized lately is that the role death is playing in our society has changed dramatically in the past few years. What I mean by this is, of course everyone knows we all have to die, but recently the concept of death has become a major part of the national news cycle. It’s something we hear about very often now, and we talk a lot more about than we ever did before. Death has become part of the public conversation, just as much as baseball or the weather or American pie. Even though everyone may be disconnected or far away from each other, we immediately bond over hearing the news that a recent revered celebrity may have passed away. It’s not just human life, it’s used as a marker of time: Betty White was the end of 2021, Bob Saget and Sidney Poitier were the beginning of 2022, for example. That’s how we think about time now, it’s a helpful way to remember things and keep track of when things occurred because of how everything blends together and feels weird these days.
There seems to be a very dark, grim sentiment that has taken over the public consciousness and the culture in general. Recently I was thinking about the difference between what death in the news cycle was like before covid, and what it is like now. You can see this example most clearly by thinking back to certain celebrity deaths that stand out in your past. For me personally, when I was a kid I remember one day in particular that was kind of a “big deal” around several people around me: John Ritter. It stood out as a big one at the time because at that point in my life people didn’t seem to react that strongly to deaths. Perhaps due to the fact that multiple households watched Ritter on television, when he died in 2003, it was like a family member had passed away. This was a man who wasn’t just on TV in the 70s; he was still working and on a different sitcom at the time of his death, decades later. He spanned generations, and it felt like everyone was paying attention.
Fast forward to 2022, 19 years after John Ritter’s death, I feel like I am witnessing that one moment from my childhood play out almost every week. It has been so surreal to hear the news about prominent person after another. Some days it feels so intense it’s like I’m watching some kind of biblical cleansing of everything. It’s definitely sad, but that is only one word to describe it. I strangely also feel lucky to be alive right now, and to witness everything unfold. To be part of a historical moment like this is incredible. But mostly, like I said, it feels very weird to watch death become so mainstream in a society that thrives on the downplaying of death to a major degree. I almost never thought I’d see it become such a frequent point of discussion in my lifetime. I have no problem discussing death or thinking about it in a meaningful way. In fact, I’ve always enjoyed thinking and talking about it a lot, because it’s a fundamental aspect of living. But I have always noticed that the average person does not like doing so. Maybe because they’re scared, dumb, or just prefer not to think of dark and sad shit, the average person does not like to think about it, and that type of thing is considered “impolite” conversation. Lately though, I can’t help but notice this seems to be changing.
In my childhood, people just didn’t seem to talk about this stuff that often. I know it sounds dumb to say, but death felt like it was something that never really happened, because the news didn’t want it to happen, if you catch my drift. It was a delusional, capitalist-built world in which death was limited to the movies and fictional worlds only. Compared to now, it’s become almost like a sick sport whenever you find out a major figure dies: who will be the first to post a tribute on social media? Who will be the first one to tell their friend that someone you know died first? It’s a morbid fascination the public has now that never felt this way when I was a kid. It felt so rare back then, I honestly can’t remember any other major celebrity deaths from my childhood other than the example already given. I can’t help but feel that this is partly because, as a society, we all feel closer to death on some level. The illusion and idea that death has no place in our world is something that has eroded over time.
One of the main reasons an institution like capitalism, which gets a tremendous amount of criticism for being awful (as it should), has continued to exist for so long, is by distracting people from what is really going on and what is really going to happen. People should not really be thinking about paying taxes and being on the treadmill of the system because it’s not natural for humans to do so. It is more natural to reflect deeply on our mortality, not to ponder the significance of our bank accounts and savings. That sounds absolutely silly to put into words like that, but we live in such a dumb world it is worth doing so: we’re forced by the system and people invested heavily in it to abandon nature, and think less of our deaths as a species, even though that is exactly where we’re all headed regardless of paying our taxes and doing the right things, etc.
The average person should not really want to work so hard in a world where they are going to die one day. I mean, if this is all gonna end sometime, why bother spending it doing shit you hate? We’re just passing through, and we should make life more fun. No one should have to work at a factory, drive a truck, clean an old man’s balls, or clean an old person’s shit. These are not jobs that would ever get done if the threat of capitalism and the requirement of earning a living wasn’t looming over people. We think constantly about our lives, when it’s death that should take precedence. Your death should be what guides your behaviour, not your shitty, temporary, fickle, meaningless life. But that’s how the system works/has always worked in the past: to survive in this world, one has to be invested in the system, forget that they’re gonna die to a certain degree, put their head down, and work to pay their taxes.
I think death becoming so prevalent in our everyday lives within the past few years is just one reason why there are things like people quitting their jobs en masse. It’s terrible to work for low wages, and even doubly terrible: to have to work in a pandemic that seems to be getting worse. Not only do you have to work now, but you have to risk your life on top of it. What is the point of doing that when you’re gonna die one day? The distance between life and death feels like it has become much shorter lately, and I think the average person is kinda waking up to that.
Another example of how the prevalence of death has changed everything for me lately: in the past, I used to look at very wealthy people and feel a little jealous. Having a lot of money would be nice, especially during a collapse in which prices are getting higher every day. But when I look at wealthy people now, I feel a strange sort of schadenfreude. Certain rich people have the look of a person that has absolutely nothing going on inside of them. It’s like they’ve traded their entire soul for their prosperity, and forgot about the fact that they’re going to die. It gives me a strange amusement to see a photo of a family full of rich people on vacation somewhere, and think to myself, “You’re all gonna die one day.” When you take everything less seriously and remember all of this is temporary, you can see the joke of life for what it is.
The thing about death that is so important to remember is that it is what makes us human. By shutting it out of your life completely, it’s effectively dehumanizing you and making you seem less real, which is what capitalism forces people to do. That is why death in the past felt like such a big deal: when I was a kid, the illusion of capitalism and success and everything of that sort was intact. Sometime after 9/11, the darkness you see and feel today first took hold in the Western world. Prior to this, whenever there was a big death it was a shock to the system of largely ignoring that bad things happen. Today, bad things happening has become normalized and part of our regular lives again. We have been in a dark world since 2001 that has been getting increasingly worse ever since.
This one was a bit weird, because it’s tough to talk about death without sounding like a weirdo, but I think what I’m trying to say here is: the fact that death is becoming more prevalent in our daily lives is a good thing. Understand the distinction here: I am not saying that people dying is the good thing, I’m saying the fact that death is in the public consciousness now is the good thing. The fact that everyone is thinking about death is a good thing. It is unhealthy to have a society that does not reflect on itself and favours the idea of growth and things constantly moving forward. Sometimes there is no innovation left, and things have to die. Not just people, but institutions and former approaches to life. That’s a natural part of life. This is why some people have been making the case that, “There is no going back to normal, because the old way wasn’t normal.” We are in the process of realizing that now, and learning about death as a society. It all sounds so dark and hopeless, but to deny death in the past was always unnatural. I feel where we are now, or the place we are arriving at, is closer to where we should be in terms of dealing with death properly as a civilization (instead of the delusional state of my childhood we all seemed to be fed).