There are so many issues and problems that we need our politics to alleviate. Everything from the economy, to health, to environment, to violence. So how do we organize it all, what do we do first?
To me, the most profound and impactful thing that will happen to any of us is death. Death is one of, or perhaps the only thing, we all truly have in common. We all grapple with it. We will all face it. Death is non-discriminatory in that way. Death binds us together. Death is glue.
If death is glue, I’ve wondered what a political framework that acknowledges and is informed by the profundity of death would be. To me, three principles emerge that could help our politics sharpen its focus on what matters most.
The first organizing principle is to prevent senseless death. A senseless death is one that does not have to happen, given what is and is not in our control as a species, right now. Death is inevitable and basically nobody wants to die, so let’s prevent (or at least delay) the deaths we can. So that means we should focus on these data, figure out which causes of death are truly senseless, and address all the underlying determinants of them.
Before we do anything else, lets prevent senseless death - whether it’s from war, from preventable disease, from gun violence, or something else.
The next principle is to prevent a senseless life. What is a senseless life? That’s a difficult, multi-faceted question. But I think the Gallup Global Emotions report has data that are onto something. They ask questions about positive or negative experiences and create an index from the answers - surveying on elements like whether someone is well rested, feels respected, or feels sadness. What we could do is understand the data, geography by geography, to understand why different populations feel like life is worth (or not worth) living. Then, we solve for the underlying determinants.
There are so many reasons that someone may feel a senseless life, these challenges are probably best understood locally or through the lens of different types of “citizen segments” like “young parents”, “the elderly”, “small business owners”, or “rural and agriculturally-focused”.
What’s great about these types of problems which vary from person to person, is that tools from the private-sector marketing discipline - like customer segmentation, consumer insights, consumer experience - are extremely well developed and equipped to make progress on understanding these “senseless life” challenges which affect different populations differently.
The last organizing principle for a politics informed by death is protecting our freedom to prepare for death. Death is so tremendously profound and difficult, we all try to prepare for it differently.
For some, we turn to our faith to cope. For others, we turn to science, philosophy, or self-expression. For others, still, we turn to a life of service. Many of us build our lives around a devotion to family, and that devotion and connection is what helps us prepare for death.
What we have in common, though, is that we all try to prepare for death in some way or another.
I don’t claim to know the single best way to prepare for death, which is why ensure sufficient freedom to allow everyone the choice in how they prepare for death is so important.
To be sure, there are problems with this political framework. Most obviously, controversial issues remain controversial. Take the death penalty for example. Is abolishing the death penalty an act of preventing senseless death or is it an act of enforcing the freedom to prepare for death? These sorts of tensions still remain.
Moroever, envisioning a politics centered around the idea that death is the most profound and binding experience there is, would require a citizenry that accepts death. It would take a culture that is courageous enough to talk about death. It would take all of us doing the hard work of trying to imagine how to minimize regrets on our own deathbed, when we are weakest and most vulnerable. That’s no walk in the park, especially in America where we sometimes seem allergic to talking about death, even slightly.
And yet, I think the adhesion death provides is still so compelling. Death give us some chance of finding common ground on society-level challenges. I want, so badly, to not die from preventable causes. I want, so badly, to live a worthy life rather than a senseless life. And finally, I want, so badly, to prepare for death so its cloud of fear and uncertainty is lined with at least some sense of peace and acceptance. Our shared interest in death and life gives even political adversaries some place of agreement to start a dialogue from.
And even outside of politics in the formal sense, I feel like I owe it to others to act in a way which is mindful of death and our shared struggles with it. As in, I feel like I owe it to you and my neighbor to help you avoid a senseless death. I feel like I owe it to you and my neighbor to avoid a senseless life. I feel like I owe it to you and my neighbor to give you the freedom and to help you prepare for death.
I think I owe it to you to be generous, compassionate, honest, kind and respectful to you to some reasonable degree, because we are all facing death. This shared mortality binds us and obligates something of me to you, whether it’s in the political realm or just in our day to day lives.
A politics that acknowledges and is informed by the profundity of death could be too confusing and volatile to even consider as a teneable framework for political thinking, let alone an electoral strategy. But it could nudge our politics and culture to be more honest, courageous, and compassionate.
Because death is glue.
Photo Credit: Unsplash @claybanks
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