Some time ago I read Irving Yalom's book, Staring At The Sun, which dealt with the whole idea of "death anxiety", which apparently is a psychological and emotional trouble on the rise, particularly among more affluent sections of US society in middle age, and one of the ways of countering this apparently is to reframe it as "death awareness", therefore you do things like objective calculations of likely time scales until your demise, plan and progress life goals to do with career, family, friendships/relationships, community involvement etc.
What do you think about this? Is it a recent development or does each generation go through a version of this? Have you gone through a version of this? Do you think you're ever likely to go through a version of this? Is the majority of human effort throughout human history about the "Denial of Death" (I've been reading the famous book of that title and found it has more to do with the author's love of Otto Rank and musings about the hero and heroic in human history than it has to do with what I expected from reading the title or wikis about it)? Is everything merely a distraction or diversion from the inevitability of the deaths of loved ones and then the death of your self?
What do you think about this? Is it a recent development or does each generation go through a version of this? Have you gone through a version of this? Do you think you're ever likely to go through a version of this? Is the majority of human effort throughout human history about the "Denial of Death" (I've been reading the famous book of that title and found it has more to do with the author's love of Otto Rank and musings about the hero and heroic in human history than it has to do with what I expected from reading the title or wikis about it)? Is everything merely a distraction or diversion from the inevitability of the deaths of loved ones and then the death of your self?