What Now? My 2022 Death Project.

It’s been a year since I started the blog. I’ve read 50 books about mortality (my local library is very concerned for my well-being). I’ve thought about death… a lot. As a happy consequence: I’m much less afraid to die. I can think about death, talk about it, and write about it without deep dread.

To borrow a phrase from Ernest Becker, I am no longer an animal haunted by death.

So, what now?

Guess it’s time to pack it in?

HAHA, never. (*existential sweating resumes*)

I will still read and review books about death – there is no shortage of mortality literature… and what would the poor librarians think of the girl who borrowed all those death books and then disappeared? (Macabre things, that’s what). And I’ve only scratched the surface of the fiction genre. No, there are far too many books still to consume. The death-acceptance muscle needs flexing.

But… I also have a new death-adjacent project.

You see, in that 50-book pile, a theme emerged. It surfaced again and again – sometimes in different permutations, but the same underlying concept. The theme pledges that there is one reliable, effective way for humans to attenuate their death anxiety.

And it’s this: craft a meaningful life that is punctuated with moments of self-transcendence

Okay.

You are either struck by this, or a little bored. I am the former.

What is meaning in life? Can people have purpose without destiny – without a designer? For atheists and nihilists, is creating purpose as impactful and satisfying as believing you’ve found your pre-ordained purpose?

How does living more authentically reduce deathbed regrets?

What are the pillars of meaning-making? What is self-transcendence? Can it be secular? Do I need to be an advanced meditator or a mycologist to manufacture a sense of oneness with the universe… or is there an aesthetic to transcendence available to the sober skeptic? And if a key feature of self-transcendence is selflessness (or self-less-ness), do humility and charity attenuate death anxiety too?

Are non-belief and mysticism compatible? Can spirituality be divorced from superstitious thinking? Is mystery a critical feature of the human experience? And if so, how does mystery co-exist with rationality and reason?

These questions are compelling to me. Not only because as an atheist I always felt I lost something more than belief when I lost my faith, but also because the answers now appear mortally relevant. Allegedly, meaning-making and transcendence are fortresses that keep out mortal terror.

So, the death blog continues, with a renewed focus on rounding out the second part of the description I gave it from the start: secular discussions about mortality and meaning. This is the tantalizing, controversial, delicious death-adjacent tangent I want to explore for the next year.

Get excited, mortal atheists, the blog’s about to get contentious.

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Of course, I didn’t actually wait until 2022. Patience is not a virtue I possess in anything resembling abundance. I’m already on the move.