New Ethics and Practices for Death and Dying from an Analysis of the Sociocultural Metacontingencies

Abstract

As long as mystical concepts of life, behavior, and humankind prevail, their implications will be respected in social practices. Such a divorce from reality has led to horrible suffering and vast confusion maintained through misguided cultural practices pertaining to slow dying. By confronting these events from the perspective of the natural sciences, new ethics and practices can emerge by which to cope with the problems of dying. These new practices assuage the often prolonged fear of dying, substantially reduce the actual suffering when the time comes, and integrate the business of dying into the cultural economy.