ARE WE THINKING ABOUT DEATH WRONG IN THE WEST?

Everyone who’s alive now – you, your friends, your family – one day won’t be. It’s an unavoidable fact and yet we often go to great lengths to avoid acknowledging it. JULES HOWARD explains why that might be a mistake

- JULES HOWARD

According to data from the company Statista, just 11 per cent of us consider death in our daily lives. Most of us are clearly busy with the subject of life, perhaps only considering the subject three or four times a year. We in the West are, in the words of one philosopher, masters of “burying existential anxieties under a mound of French fries”. But that’s understandable, right? Death is horrible. We live. We die. And then it ends. What possible reason could there be for thinking about death more? Plus, French fries are delicious.