Over a hundred yeas ago the leading causes of death were communicable diseases and infections, but today, in the industrialized world, the leading causes of death are degenerative diseases of old age like heart disease and cancer. This shift has profoundly altered our experience of death. Basically, we’ve come to expect to live to a ripe old age. Given this expectation, when death comes sooner we experience a radical disruption, as if something has gone wrong. Despite the fact that we know we are biological creatures and that death is inevitable, death comes as a shock to us, whereas it
...more