Unpopular Opinions About Death | Generated by AI
Question: What are some unpopular opinions about death?
Answer:
Here are some genuinely unpopular or counter-cultural opinions about death that regularly provoke strong pushback when expressed openly:
- Death is not tragic in itself — only dying young or in great pain is tragic. A full natural lifespan ending peacefully is a neutral or even positive event (completion rather than loss).
- Most grief is performative or socially pressured. A significant percentage of people secretly feel relief when certain relatives die (especially difficult or abusive ones), but society forbids admitting it.
- Cry-insisting “everyone processes grief differently” is often a polite fiction to avoid confronting this.
- Immortality would be a nightmare for almost everyone, yet people claim they want it because they confuse “not wanting to die at 80” with “wanting to live a billion years.” Most couldn’t handle even 300 years without catastrophic boredom or psychological collapse.
- Funerals and elaborate mourning rituals are largely a scam. Cremate me for $800 and throw a party — anything more is conspicuous consumption dressed as respect.
- “Good deaths” (quick, painless, asleep) are overrated. Many people who’ve had near-death experiences or worked in hospice report that a slower death with awareness gives more closure to both the dying and the family than a sudden one.
- We should bring back public execution and public mourning (viewings in the town square, etc.). Hiding death behind hospital curtains and closed caskets has made modern societies emotionally infantile about mortality.
- Cryonics and other “defeating death” efforts are delusional coping mechanisms for rich people who can’t accept they’re animals that rot. The probability of future revival is effectively zero, and even if it worked you’d wake up as a refugee in a world that doesn’t care about you.
- Suicide can be a rational choice more often than we admit, especially with terminal illness or unbearable chronic pain. The taboo against saying this out loud causes far more suffering than it prevents.
- Children should be exposed to dead bodies early and often (open-casket funerals, hunting, butchering, etc.). The current practice of shielding kids from death until they’re teenagers produces adults who are terrified of the one inevitable thing.
- Reincarnation is a more cruel belief than annihilation. Eternal return or cycling through endless lives (usually involving immense suffering) is arguably worse than just ceasing to exist.
These views tend to be unpopular because they clash with comforting cultural scripts about the sanctity of life, the universality of grief, and the idea that death is always an enemy to be fought at any cost.