09031 Six Ways to Die
I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens. — Woody Allen
Death is something everyone wants to avoid. The problem with life, of course, is that none of us get out of it alive. Even people who believe in heaven don’t want to die to get there. Fortunately for all of us, there is much that we can do to avoid departing in an untimely manner. Thus, some amount of thinking about death and its risks is necessary and useful.
We’re not actually supposed to do this. We’re supposed to stay in denial about death. Then, when it cannot be avoided, we employ professionals to manage death and help us cope with it. We’re not suppose to talk much about it before it happens. The system doesn’t want anything to interfere with the ongoing consumption program.
When I first encountered the concept of “Six Ways to Die” in the work of permaculture thinker and polymath Vinay Gupta, I thought, “This is too simple, there must be something missing.” Here is what he identifies as the six ways to die:
- Heat
- Cold
- Illness
- Injury
- Hunger
- Thirst
Surely this isn’t a complete list, I thought.
Murder and criminal attack? Deaths by nuclear bombs and poison gas?
All those fall under “injury.”
Cancer? Heart attack? Food poisoning? That would be “illness” and “injury.”
Heat stroke? Death by burning? Those all quality as “heat” related causes of death.
Freezing? Frostbite? Hypothermia? “Cold.”
Starvation? Equals “hunger.”
Amuse yourself a bit and see if you can find an exception to Vinay’s construction. I don’t think you will, but it never hurts to question authority a bit, even if it is a permaculture authority.
In any event, the point of this exercise is to focus your thoughts on the essentials of resilience, persistence, and constancy.
This is about avoiding death and injury, not only to ourselves, but also to the larger systems of our life.
In part, this is a matter of identifying hazards and designing ways to mitigate the danger they pose to ourselves and those we love.
All human populations have infrastructures to protect them from hazards and provide services. Our infrastructures may not be as robust as needed in the face of the challenges and threats of the future. In areas of wealth and development, the infrastructure will be highly developed, technological, and invisible. In places of extreme poverty, the infrastructure may be primitive.
Everyone everywhere has some measure of an infrastructure, because human life is not possible without it. “Primitive” does not mean “not resilient,” as the systems in such areas may have persisted for long times and have done a good job of maintaining the constancy of the human cultures they support.
Because these are not minor casual problems, as part of our lifestyle design we look for patterns of safety, supply, and shelter that can protect us from these threats. The six ways to die apply also to the systems that keep us safe and alive, without which avoiding those six ways to die becomes much more problematic and skitzy.
Hunger and thirst? Infrastructure systems can collapse (die) if starved for the resources they need to operate (which includes liquid fuels).
Heat and cold? Infrastructure systems can die if damaged too much by wild weather driven by an increasingly unstable climate, summer or winter, extreme heat or extreme cold and most points between.
Illness and injury? Infrastructure systems are vulnerable to violence and the basic routine wear and tear of mechanical systems. They can die if damaged too much by war or terrorism or if not maintained properly.
So the Six Ways to Die apply, not only to us humans, but also to the systems that keep us safe and alive.