Death Is Rare And Expensive (So It’s Easy To Ignore)
The weird thing about our modern relationship with death is that it’s a side effect of a really, really amazing human story. In short, there’s simply less bucket-kicking. The average world lifespan in 1900 was 32. The average world lifespan in 2020? Around 72. That’s multiple extra lives — like we’ve all eaten fictional mushrooms and got enlightened with real ones. There were amazing breakthroughs (think heroic polio vaccine), and boring fixes won by collective action (think heroic municipal sewer systems) that made it possible.
Not only are we really, really good at keeping older people alive, but we’re also really, really good at ensuring that kids don’t die. In 1900, 30% of all American deaths were under five; a century later, it was 1.4%. Children that used to die right out the gate are saved routinely. We’ve seen this story play out pretty much everywhere people exist.
My own kids were in the NICU for months after they were born, and they were 3.3 pounds each, average healthy babies being around twice that. They weren’t even the smallest kids in the NICU either; the smallest ones were around a pound. Doctors have sent babies home at half that size. Without modern medicine, all of them would’ve died.
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“Lady, I’m a librarian. I haven’t touched a football in years.“
Advances in medical science also mean that death plays out differently.
Back in the day, disease wasn’t a long road of maybes and treatments and possible healing; it was a short cliff because there was nothing medical science could do for you. Even the medical interventions available meant that you would die quickly — it turns out you don’t live very long in a doctor’s care if mercury’s a go-to medicine. Today, there’s usually something a doctor can do to prolong a life, even if we’re not taking the quality of that extended life into account.
On top of all that, death’s hella expensive. To say nothing of medical bills, the single most common cause of bankruptcy in the US, the average funeral in the United States is over $7k. That’s when most people can’t come up with $500 for an emergency expense and increasingly turn to crowdfunding to help cover the cost of a funeral. And if there’s one thing that we don’t want to discuss with anyone, it’s not death; it’s money.
“It was what she would’ve wanted.”
Put all of this together, and people will go to absurd lengths not to talk about death.
Not Facing Death Has Huge Consequences (While You’re Alive)
All of this would be fine if there weren’t any consequences. I mean, we put off stuff all the time, and it doesn’t come back to bite us. Right? Right?
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