After so many years of conducting interviews and writing studies about the way people relate to death and dying, I’m not at all sure they (we) are paralysed with fear.
In the latest, say, 30-35 years, life has been dramatically – and hysterically – overrated.
The mechanisms of modernity have enforced the discipline of “living well”. Such commandment is not objectionable. It’s been, in fact, so dictatorially imposed, that people started to actually grow suspicious and – what a paradox! - began to feel… unsafe.
The conspiracy of silence (“no death-talking , please!”), the firm edicts condemning people to never-ending youth and continuous health led to growing feeling of guilt of those unable to fulfil such “dictatorial” precepts.
Therefore, I believe a poisonous thought popped up in many people’s minds: what if my own sense of adventure is sabotaged? what if they kill my thought of death so they could take away my freedom?
And, all of a sudden, fantasizing about beyond-life ventures or simply feeling comfortable with speaking about The Big End has become a matter of self-dignity and existential rectitude. I believe it is a way of rejecting the seemingly unlimited, autocratic power of life.
I have a hunch that late modern people no longer believe in playing safe by rejecting death; just as they never really believed in betting everything for immortality. They’d rather play both ends against the middle.
PS: Splendid evening, splendid song by Eels. Now you’re really living.

























