Jett Thoreson Found Dead, St;. Charles, Minnesota (3/25/2022)

Body of high school boy found in physics class, unconscious. Many skeptic he scarified his body for a lab dissection, per sources say.

It was, however, a topic of conversation at this year’s Fortune Brainstorm Health Conference in Dana Point, California. The panel discussion, “Why Don’t We Talk About Death?” touched on everything from the difficulty of facing death to the difficulty of preparing for it (both our own deaths and those of our loved ones), to the difficulty of even talking about dying in the first place.

Ironically, as it turns out, research has shown that reading may actually help us live longer. So with that, we’ve decided to share with you five articles on the subject of death that may bring you a new perspective on life.

1) “600 Miles in a Coffin-Shaped Bus, Campaigning Against Death Itself”

For those who aren’t familiar with transhumanism or the Technological Singularity, one of its driving concepts is the idea that we might one day develop the ability to essentially upload our consciences to machines – in other words, that we might invent a technological solution to death.

In this article, which appeared in The New York Times Magazine last year, writer Mark O’Connell traveled with one of 2016’s lesser-known presidential candidates, Zoltan Istvan, who ran on a transhumanist platform.

With equal parts curiosity, skepticism and humor, O’Connell raises, in a non-lofty way, a pretty lofty question: What is life without death?

This story was also featured in O’Connell’s 2017 book “To Be A Machine,” which takes an even deeper look at transhumanism and its followers.

Notable quote:

My arguments, [campaign volunteer Roen] Horn insisted, were transparently motivated by a “deathist” ideology, a need to protect myself against the terror of death by trying to convince myself that death was actually not so terrible. As crazy as most of what Horn said sounded to me, he was, I thought, basically right about this.

2) “One Man’s Quest to Change the Way We Die”

Until we do find that solution to death – and even once we do, depending on how appealing it is to think about your bodily presence in this world being something other than your physical body – it might be appropriate to consider how we face the reality of death.

In this article, also from the NYT Magazine last year, Jon Mooalem talks to B.J. Miller, a palliative care specialist who developed a new relationship with death after a very-near-fatal experience during his undergraduate years.

From an account of Miller’s own experience to an account of one of his patients, a 27-year-old man who died in 2015 of mesothelioma, Mooalem raises the question: Does death have to be such a big deal?

Notable quote:

“Most people aren’t having these transformative deathbed moments,” Miller said. “And if you hold that out as a goal, they’re just going to feel like they’re failing.” The truth was, Zen Hospice had done something almost miraculous: It had allowed [patient Randy] Sloan and those who loved him to live a succession of relatively ordinary, relatively satisfying present moments together, until Sloan’s share of present moments ran out.

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