The Politics of Death The Politics of Death People who talk a lot about the fact that we must die usually have a religious message to sell. If you believe in the right God in the right way, you need not be afraid of death.
Believers reap their reward in eternal life, while sinners suffer eternal damnation.
As the old song goes, there'll be pie in the sky by and by. But even if one is not religious in any orthodox sense, death is still worth thinking about. It's not only that doctors, hospitals and undertakers minister to the dying and the dead behind closed doors and speak of dying in euphemisms. There is a kind of natural illusion of immortality that comes to us as conscious beings. We cannot imagine ourselves not being alive, for to imagine something is to imagine experiencing it.