It’s Boom Time for Death Cults
Three very different mortality movements are surging in popularity across the death-denying West
There may be five stages of grief when a loved one dies, but when it comes to our own death, people tend to pick one reaction and stick to it. Some go with bargaining and pray for protection. Some deny death, even fight it, demanding ever-evolving life-extension technology. Some try accepting mortality, hoping the intervening years will be richer for it.
In the West, three death movements are booming at once, each with strikingly uniform demographics: Devotees of Santa Muerte are overwhelmingly working class, transhumanists are mostly white and male, and the death-positive movement attracts mainly women. At a time when social divisions seem deeper than ever, what can our reactions to mortal terror tell us about privilege?
Santa Muerte
A lit cigarette, a glass of tequila, maybe a top-shelf bottle if the ask is big: Santa Muerte shrines are peppered with offerings as devotees ask an enrobed skeleton — death herself, often depicted holding a globe or an hourglass — to bring death upon…
