How to Think About Death
My students weigh in
I’ve taught a third-year undergraduate course called Death & Dying five times. We now spend half the course on theory questions such as ‘How can death be bad for the one who dies?’ and the second half on applied issues, including whether suicide can be rational and assisted dying ethics and policy.
In previous versions, I’ve been happy with the course content, but I’ve found it too cerebral. Death raises many important, interesting philosophical questions, so we dig into those. But I also want students to feel their mortality and think about how that should affect their lives. The feeling part isn’t what analytic philosophy is good for. You can talk all day long about whether immortality would be a good thing, but not actually reflect on the fact that you’re going to die. Most people don’t think about their mortality enough.1
So, this semester, I made an assignment called Living with Death. Here’s the intro of the assignment description:
The goal of this assignment is to find ways to make you think about your mortality. You are encouraged to experiment with different strategies and to document your experiences. There is no specific outcome we are looking for, besides that you try to find ways to reflect on your mortality. You might find that it makes you more empathic, or that it is motivating, sad, scary, or disheartening, or many things all at once. You also might find that different approaches make you think about death in different ways.
Students had to try at least two strategies, document their experiences, then present their findings in writing, a podcast, or video. I’m proud to report that they really went beyond what I was expecting, and some of them said it was their favourite university assignment.
The course has almost a hundred students in it. I gave them some strategy ideas beforehand, but they were encouraged to choose strategies that were meaningful to them. As I say in the description above, the goal was to think about death, but part of what’s interesting about the results is how varied their experiences were, and how people’s responses changed as they did it more.
Here are some of the things they did.
WeCroak. One of my suggestions was an app called WeCroak, which sends a notification five times a day that says, “Don’t forget, you’re going to die.” You can then open the app for a quotation. I first tried it out years ago and found it valuable. I used it again for a few weeks this semester, but didn’t get the same response. I don’t have social media or email on my phone, so the notifications became annoying this time instead of profound. Students had mixed experiences with it.
Personal Reminders. One student decided it would be more impactful to have her brother remind her once a day that she’s going to die. She said it was effective!
Countdowns. Some other apps that have ‘life clocks’: you enter your age and how long you expect to live for, and it creates a countdown timer. This one produced the widest range of experiences. Some people said it immediately made them cherish moments and feel motivated. Others described getting stressed out and shutting it off.
Death Conversation Game. A few students tried the Death Conversation Game, which I hadn’t heard of. It involves prompts to discuss different aspects of death. All the students who used it said it was a strange experience to talk so openly about death.
Death Cafe. If you haven’t been to a death cafe, you should. They’re meet-ups held around the world with the goal of talking about death without any agenda. I’ve really enjoyed going. You can find one near you here.
Interviews. People spoke to physicians, nurses, a person with stage four cancer, a funeral home director, and family members.
Other Media. A student discovered Thanatos Review, “A death-positive literary magazine encouraging writers, artists, and readers to explore their own mortality by openly questioning, challenging, talking, reimagining, and learning about dying and death.” Others read poetry or books, some watched movies or television shows. The Good Place was a common one.
Ghusl Mayyit. A couple students participated in Ghusl Mayyit, the ritual bathing of a deceased Muslim, for the first time.
Race Car Driving. One of my students owns a race car with her brother. She went to the track and made an audio story about how racing makes her think about death.
Practicing Death. Two students separately managed to get access to a coffin to lie in. Another made a pseudo-coffin at home. She described planning to lie in it for one hour (!), but then figured that her alarm must not have gone off, only to realize that it had been only fifteen minutes. Another student designed his own tombstone.
Death is useful to think about, but it’s also interesting how many different thoughts and emotions it gives rise to. In some moments, you feel scared or sad. In others, you feel gratitude. All of these are worth feeling.
If you have other ideas I can recommend to students next year, leave a comment below or contact me.
Quick Hits
Many stories caught my attention this week.
One of the interesting trends in healthcare reform is the way providers are reimagining how they work. This story in the Times talks about physicians and pharmacists in the United States unionizing. Last week, I mentioned this story about Ontario physicians considering job action. In my interview with health economist Rosalie Wyonch, she discussed how physicians are less interested in being small-business owners than they used to be.
The Globe ran an article about a study comparing healthcare in Canada to four other OECD countries. The upshot: We need more doctors, or at least we need to use them more effectively.
Tyler Black, a suicidologist and psychiatrist, had an excellent thread on Canadian suicide rates since the pandemic. Contrary to what many experts predicted, suicides went down a lot during and since the pandemic.
A hospital appeal board upheld the firing of a physician in British Columbia who was suspended during the pandemic for failing to get the Covid vaccine. The board found her refusal constituted neglect of her obligations. Since conscientious objection is incompatible with patient-centred care, this approach should be used much more broadly.
Gurwinder has a new ‘30 Useful Principles’ post. It includes a passing mention of Roemer’s Law: “Patients expand to fill hospital beds”.
Some people think about death too much. Students who felt this wasn’t a good time to take on this sort of project did an alternative paper.