The Great Unspoken: Death

These days we humans have a very strange relationship with death.

Death used to be an everyday part of life. Child mortality rates were very high and adult mortality rates were not much less. Most people died before the age of forty and a great many of those perished before even reaching puberty. Bacterial infections and viruses and everyday mishaps all carried people off, while the rest went on with their lives and hoped their supplications to whatever invisible deities they believed in would magically keep them safe.

Because nothing else could.

As a by-product of the Industrial Revolution and sinful Capitalism, the 20th century changed everything. Antibiotics cut death rates by orders of magnitude. Vaccination programs likewise caused the mortality rate to plummet. Better health and safety awareness slashed workplace accidents and slowly a similar mentality began to reduce household accidents likewise. Eventually cigarettes were priced out of the common pocket and so lung cancer and emphysema deaths began to decline. A parent living in 1970 would expect all of their children to live to adulthood; an expectation never before possible in human history.

Meanwhile we moved death into remote hospital wards. Today the average US citizen fondly imagines they will have a TV death: peacefully lying in bed at home surrounded by…