Do We Really Care About Death?

All I want is rivalry

The above table is from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and shows the leading 15 causes of death in the United States for the year 2015 — a more normal year, compared to some recent.

These top fifteen causes are responsible for the deaths of more than 2 million Americans each year — triple the deaths of those succumbing to COVID-19 in the last year.

But where are the marches for conquering heart disease? Where is the energy among the vox populi on how to cure cancer (“malignant neoplasms”)? Not since Richard Nixon declared “war” on cancer in 1971. Who can recall the last time they heard a robust stump speech on beating out Alzheimer’s disease?

We turn to causes like the Vision Zero Network, which aim to set a goal of zero traffic deaths. Again, is anyone for the some 40,000 traffic deaths per year in the United States? Does anyone in their right mind support traffic deaths?

Of course not. Which is why no one is interested. Instead of directing our energy toward the leading causes of death that don’t arouse emotional energy for most of us, our minds are much more drawn to the fight, to the bloodlust, to the causes where there can be a good, old-fashioned war.

We love the word “war.” We love to find a war on anything, especially when we know there’s going to be people we don’t like on the other side of that issue. When we use that choice word, our minds become primed to huddle together the allies and target the enemies. Such a framework appeals beyond belief to our tribal, hunter-gatherer past. We must gather together in a tribe and go find another tribe to take down. Even as we come together for a cause, we immediately find the people who are against that cause.

Every death is a loss of life to be mourned and grieved, no matter the cause, even if it isn’t something that unites a tribe, even if it’s an old grandma whose high blood pressure got the better of her. Every death, including these 2 million per year, has ripple effects throughout a community and a society that we cannot even begin to comprehend.

Instead of constantly dragging our feet year after year on rivalry-based causes that go nowhere but get stuck in quagmire even as we expend all the energy we can on them, we can move forward on all the unsexy, non-rivalrous causes that kill far more Americans per year, and do our best not to make those into causes of rivalry but rather seek common ground, in that fresh new and unexplored space.