What if We Knew When We Were Going to Die?

Another Sunday, another Life & Death blog post. Let's get things started on a positive note.

You and everyone you’ve ever known will someday die. According to some psychologists, this uncomfortable truth constantly lurks in the back of our minds and ultimately drives everything we do, from choosing to attend church, eat vegetables and go to the gym to motivating us to have children, write books and create companies.

For healthy people, death usually lurks in the back of our minds, exerting its influence on a subconscious level. “Most of the time, we go through our days unaware, not thinking of our mortality,” says Chris Feudtner, a pediatrician and ethicist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania. “We cope by focusing on the things more directly in front of us.”

What would happen, though, if the ambiguity surrounding our own demise were taken away? What if we all suddenly were told the exact date and means of our deaths? While this is, of course, impossible, careful consideration of this hypothetical scenario can shed light on our motivations as individuals and societies – and hint at how to best spend our limited time on this Earth.

First, let’s establish what we know about how death shapes behavior in the real world. In the 1980s, psychologists became interested in how we deal with the potentially overwhelming anxiety and dread that come with the realization that we are nothing more than “breathing, defecating, self-conscious pieces of meat that can die at any time”, as Sheldon Solomon, a psychology professor at New York’s Skidmore College, puts it.

Terror Management Theory

Terror management theory, the term Solomon and his colleagues coined for their findings, posits that humans embrace culturally constructed beliefs – that the world has meaning, for example, and that our lives have value – in order to fend off what would otherwise be paralyzing existential terror.

In more than 1,000 peer-reviewed experiments, researchers have found that, when reminded that we are going to die, we cling harder to foundational cultural beliefs and strive to boost our sense of self-worth. We also become more defensive of our beliefs and react with hostility to anything that threatens them.

Even very subtle nods at mortality – a 42.8 millisecond flash of the word “death” across a computer screen, a conversation that takes place within sight of a funeral home – are enough to trigger behavioral changes.

What do some of those changes look like? When reminded of death, we treat those who are similar to us in looks, political slant, geographic origin and religious beliefs more favorably. We become more contemptuous and violent towards people who do not share those similarities. We profess a deeper commitment to romantic partners who validate our worldviews. And we are more inclined to vote for heavy-handed charismatic leaders who incite fear of outsiders.

We also become more nihilistic, drinking, smoking, shopping and eating in excess – and we are less concerned about caring for the environment.

Should everyone suddenly learn the date and means of their demise, society could – and likely would – become more racist, xenophobic, violent, war-mongering, self-harming and environmentally destructive than it already is.

This isn’t pre-ordained, however. Researchers like Solomon ultimately hope that, by becoming aware of the expansive negative effects that death anxiety triggers, we might be able to counteract them.

In fact, scientists have already recorded a few examples of people bucking these general trends.

Buddhist monks in South Korea, for example, do not respond this way to reminders of death.

Researchers looking into a style of thinking called “death reflection” also have found that asking people to think not just about death in a general, abstract way, but to think about exactly how they will die and what impact their death will have on their families, elicits very different reactions.

In that case, people become more altruistic – willing, for example, to donate blood regardless of whether there is a high societal need for it. They are also more open to reflecting on the roles of both positive and negative events in shaping their lives.

Given these findings, learning our death date may lead us to focus more on life goals and social bonds rather than responding with knee-jerk insularity.

This would especially be true “if we promote strategies that help us to accept death as part of life and integrate this knowledge into our daily choices and behavior,” says Eva Jonas, a psychology professor at the University of Salzburg. “Knowing about the scarcity of life may increase the perception of life’s value and develop the sense that ‘we’re all in the same boat’, promoting tolerance and compassion and minimizing defensive responses.”

Regardless of whether society as a whole takes a nasty or nice turn, how we would react on an individual level to knowledge about our death would vary depending on personality and the specifics of the big event.

We would also have to grapple with new laws and norms. According to Rose Eveleth, creator and producer of the podcast Flash Forward (an episode of which explored a similar hypothetical death date scenario), legislation may be drafted around death date privacy to avoid employer and service-provider discrimination. Public figures, on the other hand, may be compelled to share their dates before running for office (or may cause a furor by refusing to do so). “If a presidential candidate is going to die three days into the presidency, that matters,” Eveleth points out.

And even if not legally required, some individuals may choose to get their death dates tattooed on their arm, or wear them on a military dog tag, so that – in the case of an accident – emergency medical technicians will know whether or not to bother trying to revive them, Eveleth says.

The funeral industry would be profoundly impacted as well: it would cater to the still-living rather than to their bereaved families. “Funeral homes would no longer be able to prey on people in their time of grief to get as much money as possible,” Eveleth says. “It puts power in consumers’ hands in a way that is good."

On the big day itself, some people might throw carefully curated parties, as those choosing to undergo humane euthanasia are beginning to do in real life. Others, especially those who will die in a manner that could put people in harm’s way, may feel ethically or emotionally compelled to isolate themselves. Still others, Eveleth says, may choose to use their death for a higher artistic or personal purpose, taking part in a play in which everyone actually dies in the end or staging a literal die-in for a cause they believe in.

Should we come to learn the time and manner of our individual demises, our ways of life would be profoundly changed.

“Human civilization truly has developed around death and the idea of death,” Doughty says. “I think this would completely undermine our system of life.”

What's your thought on this topic? Would you want to know how and when you were going to bite the dust? Leave it in the comments.

I'll see you all tomorrow.

Buh-bye.