What happens when a death doula (someone who supports the transition between life and death) watches a series about immortals?
They ask some incredibly pertinent questions.
People are out there doing the research on how not to die and the question that we should really be asking is: what happens if they are successful and we no longer get to die?
- Paul Simard
Death doulas guide individuals and families to consciously engage with death and dying. They create space for grief while bringing meaning to life’s closure. It’s a beautiful concept. The shepherding of someone’s experience in crossing over to ‘the other side’ is an experience that requires patience, empathy, and curiosity for the unknown. What it can give in return, is the feeling of awe.
Yet, I’m not sure I feel entirely comfortable with the concept. As I age, I feel less and less thrilled with mortality in general. Perhaps it’s one of the subconscious reasons I started working in ‘sustainability’ over a decade ago. I want to ‘sustain’ forever and ever and ever…?
When death doula Paul Simard and I sat down to record our most recent episode of Awe Effect, he surfaced the importance of the dying process. There is the obvious argument of making the best use of our time on earth and ‘embracing finitude’; Oliver Burkeman speaks to this in his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, and the message is clear. The more we think about our own deaths, the more we’re likely to enjoy our lives.
And similarly, the more we think about the deaths of the systems that no longer serve our planet, the more likely we are to successfully transition to a new one.
Systemic Hospice Work
Talking about death, facing it, and even making friends with it may also be one of the keys to rethinking our relationship with our linear economy (the system in which people buy a product, use it, and then throw it away).
As paradigms shift and outdated economic structures decline, we need death doulas to midwife necessary changes.
The Berkana Institute’s Two Loop model tries to capture how systems change or paradigm shifts can happen at the level of whole societies. It depicts new “emergent” systems gaining influence while outdated “dominant” systems struggle to survive.
Despite how destructive outdated dominant systems might be, they do require a certain amount of hospicing to put to rest what no longer serves our planet.
As these old structures enter their “hospice” phase, imagine individuals whose role it is to compassionately facilitate the transition, supporting those of us who resist it? In essence, that’s the role of a death doula.
Imagine what economic death doulas might do.
First, they might help us grieve, helping us release attachments to counterproductive models. For example, it can be easy to convince someone that fast fashion is polluting. What is often more difficult is giving space to grieve the death of a hobby (shopping) and all the fun that was once had awaiting a daily shipment of online shopping deliveries.
Truthfully, this can be a sad and uncomfortable transition for a fashion shopaholic. Supporting someone’s grief in this transition might make the difference between that person committing to this change.
Next, death doulas might curate rituals and celebrations to honor the meaningful accomplishments these systems enabled. They might also highlight what remains nourishing to carry forward versus compost.
Most importantly, death doulas dignify the essential mystery that change involves. They ease fears around the unknown future by blessing endings and honoring life’s cyclical nature - death enables new growth.
Designer Death Doulas
It’s not just your imagination. The things we buy used to have a longer lifespan than they do now. When I first moved into my apartment, I was certain I would have to replace the stove from the 1980s, but it’s still running strong.
It’s becoming widely accepted that products just don’t last as long, when in reality it’s designed that way. Designers have immense power to shape aspirations and relationships with the material world.
Designers architect the birth, life, and death of the products they create.
An often-cited example is Apple, who got in trouble a few years ago when accused of slowing the speed of iPhones as the battery depleted, which was seen as a means to trigger people to buy a new one.
The idea of intentionally limiting product lifespan was first proposed in the early 20th century. Manufacturers realized they could boost sales by designing goods to break down or become outdated faster. This "contrived durability" meant products were made with parts meant to fail sooner. It evolved into "progressive obsolescence" - styling products in a way that would go out of fashion quickly so consumers felt compelled to buy the newest version.
Both approaches were meant to shorten product lifespans, ensuring more frequent replacement purchases. This planned obsolescence was seen as a way to stimulate continuous consumer demand through faster turnover of goods.
We went from overtly engineering failure to more subtly manipulating consumer tastes, but the goal was the same - get consumers to replace items more rapidly by intentionally limiting their usable lifespan versus making them as durable as possible.
Design decisions determine what we eat, what we wear, and what we value. They also determine the dying process of the things they design. Designer ‘death doulas’ can fertilize the soil for economies aligned with the living world, by designing products with death in mind.
As we undertake the necessary work of guiding the transition away from our linear economy, here are 3 questions to sit with:
How might we grieve what is dying while also imagining possibilities for what could emerge? The path ahead requires releasing attachments to the current system, while cultivating optimism for the next.
In what ways are we complicit in perpetuating linear systems - as designers, producers, or consumers?
Where might our own behaviors and mindsets need to shift to hospice which no longer serves our planet?
With kindness and curiosity,
Laura
PS. I’d like to spotlight a few individuals who are supporting the process of grief and welcoming a global transition.
Vanessa Machado de Oliveira and her book ‘Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism’
Dr. Renée Lertzman supports people to become Guides, to lead with grace and strength, compassion and empathy with Project Insight Out
Sherri Mitchell and her book Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change