How would capitalism react to people leaning more toward death and loss?

Originally published on Substack (Nov 2, 2024): https://juditsaez.substack.com/p/how-would-capitalism-react-to-people

Feels like the theme of October 2024 has been death and loss.

Little did I know, when on October 3 my dad told me that my grandpa was in his final days, that I would fly to Barcelona the next day, arriving just in time to say goodbye to him a few hours before he passed away.

Little did I know that on October 7, I would be grieving my grandfather alongside thousands of people in Palestine and Israel, mourning their loved ones on the anniversary of the Hamas attacks that sparked a year of intentional death and destruction in the region.

Little did I know that, in the weeks that followed, many people in my communities would also share that they had recently lost someone in their circles, and that many gatherings and conversations would become spaces where our grief would intermingle.

Little did I know that, on Wednesday the 30th, I would wake up to my partner Adrian saying, "Have you seen the news about these terrible floods in Valencia?" I then began reaching out to friends and acquaintances to make sure they were safe, as the consequences of climate change left behind death and loss in my home country.

All this in alignment with Samhain, Halloween, All Saints, Dia de Muertos... when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is lifted.

I'm not saying anything unusual or exceptional, death is as much a part of existence as life itself. It's just that there are times when death captures our attention more forcefully, while we usually focus on the vibrant energy of life.

Death is the unavoidable ending for life to emerge.

We tend to think of cycles of 'life and death'. And we understand that a beautiful, full-of-life beginning is doomed to finish in the darkness and pain of death.

This is how I grew up, taught that something terrible and ugly accompanies death, and that it's better to stay away from it and not even think about it. As an adult, it took me a long time to learn that, while death is indeed terrible, ugly, and painful, it's something we must face and deal with.

Because, in truth, there is life after death.

What if we think about 'death and life' instead? What if we reframed death as the starting point of the journey? What if we understood that for anything new to rise, there must be a necessary loss that precedes it?

Let go to let in.

This is probably the biggest lesson I take from my regenerative studies and explorations.

Perhaps the most radical intervention we could bring to challenge the current systems is to embrace this idea.

How would capitalism react to people leaning more toward death and loss?
How would a culture that prioritises death awareness affect mental health and well-being initiatives?
How might our definitions of legacy and impact shift if we accepted death as an integral part of life?
How might embracing death and loss reshape our understanding of success in modern society?

I'm holding these questions at the moment.

I don't know what drove me to write my first post here on the topic of death. I wasn't even planning to start a Substack, and when I woke up this morning with the urge to write about it, I intuitively felt that this was meant to mark the beginning of something new.