Tag Archives: death

Analyzing what Americans value by examining lots of obituaries

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How are people remembered? One team of researchers analyzed millions of obituaries. Here is the abstract from the recently published study:

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How societies remember the dead can reveal what people value in life. We analyzed 38 million obituaries from the United States to examine how personal values are encoded in individual and collective legacies. Using Schwartz’s theory of basic human values, we found that tradition and benevolence dominated legacy reflections, while values like power and stimulation appeared less frequently. Major cultural events—the terrorist attacks of September 11th, the 2008 financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic—were systematically linked to changes in legacy reflections about personal values, with security declining after 9/11, achievement declining after the financial crisis, and benevolence declining for years after COVID-19 began and, to date, not yet returning to baseline. Gender and age of the deceased were also linked to differences in legacy: Men were remembered more for achievement, power, and conformity, while women were remembered more for benevolence and hedonism. Older people were remembered more for tradition and conformity than younger people. These patterns shifted dynamically across the lifespan, with obituaries for men showing more age-related variation than legacies for women. Our findings reveal how obituaries serve as psychological and cultural time capsules, preserving not just individual legacies, but also indicating what US society values collectively regarding a life well lived.

This sounds like a novel means by which to examine American cultural values. Obituaries are regularly published and are often accessible to many readers. But to collect and analyze millions of obituaries requires particular skills. This is a big data approach.

The study could also raise multiple additional research questions:

  1. How many of these obituaries were written by the deceased or decided upon before death? Does this change the content?
  2. What is the process by which people writing the obituary after death decide on the words to use and values to emphasize?
  3. How much do these values in obituaries match what people say they value in life at different stages before they die?

Bambi, technology, and avoiding death

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An excerpt from Sherry Turkle’s new book recalls a conversation about how technology could help us move beyond death and attachment to people:

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What was wrong with Bambi? Every kid sees Bambi. Marvin’s response has stayed with me for half a lifetime: “Bambi indoctrinates children to think that death matters. Someday we will conquer death by merging with computers. Such attachments—Bambi’s attachment to his mother, for example—will be unimportant. People need to learn to give that stuff up.” I knew Marvin to be a loving father and husband. But in his mind, attachment would only be an impediment to progress in a world where people and machines evolved together.

Marvin Minsky died in 2016. But I’m still fighting his idea, now more than ever part of the cultural mainstream, that it is good to have devices that can wean us from our dependency on one another. For Marvin, the burdens that come with human bonds were unnecessary and inefficient because an engineering solution was on the horizon—we are ultimately going to mate with machines or evolve into machines or become one with machines.

These ideas are seductive. Of course we want technology to bring us sharper wits and a cure for Parkinson’s. We like the idea that some kind of artificial intelligence can help monitor the safety of isolated elders. And then we are caught short. There is a red line—one I have seen so many people cross. It’s the line when you don’t want children to get attached to their mortal mothers because they should be ready to bond with their eternal robot minders. It’s the line where you take your child as your experimental subject and ignore her, registering her tears as data. It’s the line you cross when one of your classmates commits suicide by jumping out a window and you joke about the laws of physics that were at work in his descent. It’s the line you cross when you know that the car you manufacture has a design flaw and a certain kind of impact will kill its passengers. You’ll have to pay damages for their lives. What is the cost of their lives in relation to that of redesigning the car? This is the kind of thinking that treats people as things. Knowing how to criticize it is becoming more pressing as social media and artificial intelligence insert themselves into every aspect of our lives, because as they do, we are turned into commodities, data that is bought and sold on the marketplace.

At the very moment we are called to connect to the earth and be stewards of our planet, we are intensifying our connection to objects that really don’t care if humanity dies. The urgent move, I think, is in the opposite direction.

The idea of progress through technology is fairly ingrained in the American consciousness. But, is this the sort of progress people want? Death – and social interaction – comes to all people and leaning it these features in life might just lead to better lives.

At the end of this section, Turkle appeals to the environmental movement to help people back toward conversations about social interactions, empathy, and death. It would be interesting to see who from different arenas would be interested in joining a movement back toward empathy and human understanding. Numerous religious traditions? Humanities scholars? Proponents of democracy? People who own small businesses? There is a chance here to make common cause across groups that may be further apart on other polarizing issues.

How should the 1995 Chicago heat wave deaths be commemorated?

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An arts critics think about how Chicago might remember the deaths of hundreds in the 1995 heat wave:

After all, events that caused far fewer deaths have been the subject of remembrances, designed to honor those who died. July 1995 has yet to make into that civic category, but it deserves a spot. Perchance someone may convene a discussion between those who were involved in that crisis and ponder what was learned (I should note that Klinenberg also charges the media, including the management of this newspaper, with some culpability in the tardiness of the connecting of the dots, while acknowledging some formidable reportage).

More useful, though, might be an artistic response.

A commissioned symphonic piece, perhaps played outdoors. A concert honoring those who died. A dance work. Some stirring poetic words. Some deep collective thoughts from city leaders as to if, or how, the city has changed since then and where there still is work to be done. Some consideration of whether we now do a better job of taking care of each other, whatever the weather outside. It is worth the attention of the city’s artists. And politicians.

“Marking it as a historic event is important,” Egdorf said. “If only to remind people to look after their neighbors.”

Three quick thoughts:

1. Given the demographics of those who died, such a commemoration could also go a long ways toward addressing social divisions such as those involving age, class, and race. Important figures are often commemorated but what about a mass number of average residents?

2. For the social forces that contributed to who died in this particular heat wave, I recommend Heat Wave by sociologist Eric Klinenberg.

3. The idea of having an artistic response to this disaster is an interesting one. We often have solemn commemorations but this presents an opportunity to create something new of tragedy.

Noted architects often have uninspiring graves

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A new book suggests while noted architects may have designed important buildings, their gravesites don’t often reflect their skills:

I was inspired to visit Graceland, located at 4001 N. Clark St. and home to the graves of many other notable Chicagoans, by the new book, “Their Final Place: A Guide to the Graves of Notable American Architects.” This slim, self-published volume is no masterwork, but it raises an intriguing question: How, if at all, do architects, who spend their working lives creating monuments for clients, choose to memorialize themselves?…

What Kuehn discovered is surprising: The aforementioned memorials at Graceland, which distill the essence of their subjects’ architectural style and achievements, are the exception, not the rule. Many architects are buried beneath simple headstones. Some look as if they were ordered from a catalog.

“It seems strange that these great architects, who created landmark structures during their lives, put so little thought into how they themselves would be memorialized for time eternal,” Kuehn writes. “Apparently most of these architectural giants, like most of us ordinary people, either did not feel like dealing with death or felt that a lasting memorial for them was not important.”…

Yet he notes a countertrend: Many architects have had their ashes scattered on bodies of water, on landscapes or in buildings that have special meaning. There’s no memorial to Chicago architect Harry Weese at Graceland; Weese, a sailor, wanted his ashes scattered on Lake Michigan. In another interesting tidbit, Kuehn reports that the ashes of Paul Rudolph, a former dean of Yale’s architecture school, were distributed in several places, including the ventilating system of the Rudolph-designed Yale Art and Architecture Building (now called Rudolph Hall).

Perhaps these architects put all they have into “living” buildings or the scale of a memorial is simply too small? The flipside of an analysis like this would be to then look at the people who do make elaborate plans for their graves and death. If they aren’t architects, are there patterns to those who do prepare?

I do wonder how more elaborate memorials might be received. I’ve seen a few articles over the years criticizing larger gravestones or mausoleums, tying the excessive size and cost to McMansions. The key here might be to create tasteful, innovative, and relatively small graves.

Despite “info gap,” good number of Canadians still believe in life after death

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A sociologist and a researcher note that although people have little information about life after death, a good number of Canadians still believe in it:

Our surveys confirmed the hunch. Close to 40 per cent of Canadians say they “definitely” or “possibly” will see people again who have died. Some 30 per cent say they don’t know, and only about 30 per cent have actually closed the door on the possibility, including just one in two of those who have “no religion.”

But what we have been taken aback by is the remarkable extent to which people believe that individuals who have died are interacting with us.

More than five in 10 Canadians think the deceased see us, know what we are up to, and share in our lows and highs. About four in 10 claim that they themselves “have been in touch with someone who has died” – up, by the way, from 25 per cent around 1980. Differences by age and religion are negligible. Similar levels and patterns are also found in both the U.S. and Britain – which have very different religious histories and trajectories – leaving us scratching our heads as to where these beliefs come from…

The findings underline a paradox in the Information Age: We know more than enough about just about everything in life. But we continue to know very little about what happens after death. Credible expertise is scarce. Academics are reluctant to touch the topic, and religious leaders tend to have little to say. The extensive market is left largely to channelers and charlatans, with the predictable result that claims are trivialized and claimants stigmatized.

Three thoughts:

1. The argument here is that there is not “credible expertise” about life after death. The implication is that people today tend to need such hard data to believe in things. Where is the evidence? Personal stories might be more influential than people think.

2. There are also hints here that while people in Canada and the United States are less inclined to identify with traditional markers of religion, some still hold to religious beliefs. Religious ideas may just have longer lives in individuals beyond formal institutions.

3. I’m intrigued by the suggestion that “religious leaders tend to have little to say” about life after death. Really? All religious leaders?

Just curious: do “channelers and charlatans” equal Hollywood movies like Heaven is for Real?

Traffic deaths predicted to be 5th leading cause of death in the developing world

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Even as the conversation about safer autonomous cars picks up in the United States, traffic deaths are an increasing problem in the developing world:

It has a global death toll of 1.24 million per year and is on course to triple to 3.6 million per year by 2030.

In the developing world, it will become the fifth leading cause of death, leapfrogging past HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other familiar killers, according to the most recent Global Burden of Disease study.

The victims tend to be poor, young and male.

In one country — Indonesia — the toll is now nearly 120 dead per day; in Nigeria, it is claiming 140 lives each day…

In 2010, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for a “Decade of Action for Road Safety.” The goal is to stabilize and eventually reverse the upward trend in road fatalities, saving an estimated 5 million lives during the period. The World Bank and other regional development banks have made road safety a priority, but according to Irigoyen, donor funding lags “very far below” the $24 billion that has been pledged to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

It sounds like while diseases are well known and relatively well-funded, not many people have caught on to the problems of traffic deaths. This is all about social construction: where are the Bill Gates of the world to come in and tackle traffic problems in poorer nations?

Perhaps this gets less attention it is because cars are viewed as things that may help developing countries improve: owning them means citizens have more economic power and have more independence to get around as well as help their own economic chances (can carry things around, etc.). Particularly from an American point of view, cars are generally good things. But, of course, cars bring other problems in addition to safety concerns: pollution (a huge problem in many large cities), clogged streets, and an infrastructure that may not be able to handle lots of new cars on the roads (maintaining roads, having enough police, driver training, cities that have to redevelop areas to accommodate wider roads).

It will be interesting to see if this gets more attention in the coming years. It is one thing to discuss longer-term consequences of cars like increasing pollution but it is another to ignore large numbers of deaths each day.

Does urbanization in America explain the declining deaths by lightning strike?

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Here is an interesting research question: is urbanization responsible for the sharp decline in Americans who die by lightning strike each year?

In the lightning-death literature, one explanation has gained prominence: urbanization. Lightning death rates have declined in step with the rural population, and rural lightning deaths make up a far smaller percent of all lightning deaths. Urban areas afford more protection from lightning. Ergo, urbanization has helped make people safer from lightning. Here’s a graph showing this, neat and clean:

And a competing perspective:

I spoke with Ronald Holle, a meteorologist who studies lightning deaths, and he agreed that modernization played a significant role. “Absolutely,” he said. Better infrastructure in rural areas—not just improvements to homes and buildings, but improvements to farming equipment too has—made rural regions safer today than they were in the past. Urbanization seems to explain some of the decline, but not all of it.

“Rural activities back then were primarily agriculture, and what we call labor-intensive manual agriculture. Back then, my family—my grandfather and his father before that in Indiana—had a team of horses, and it took them all day to do a 20-acre field.” Today, a similar farmer would be inside a fully-enclosed metal-topped vehicle, which offers excellent lightning protection. Agriculture has declined as a percent of total lightning-death-related activities, as the graph below shows, but unfortunately it does not show the per capita lightning-death rate of people engaged in agriculture.

Sounds like more data is needed! I wonder how long it would take to collect the relevant information versus the payoff of the findings…

More broadly, this hints at how human interactions with nature has changed, even in relatively recent times: we are more insulated from the effects of weather and nature. During the recent cold snap in the area, I was reminded of an idea I had a few years ago to explain why so many adults seem to talk about the weather. Could it be related to the fact that the weather is perhaps the most notable thing on a daily basis that is outside of our control? As 21st century humans, we control a lot that is in front of us (or at least we think we do) but can do little about what the conditions will be like outside. We have more choices than ever about how to respond but it prompts responses from everyone, from the poor to the wealthy, the aged to the young.

Uptick in McMansion type cemetery plots and mausoleums?

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Sales of big houses are on the rise as are sales of expensive cemetery plots:

The generation that brought us the McMansion is now reviving the McMausoleum. As more boomers contemplate their final years, some are spending sums of $1 million or more to buy or build spacious resting places in exclusive historic graveyards, as Stefanos Chen of The Wall Street Journal reports this week. The result, says Chen: An eruption of bungalow-sized luxury tombs, flanked by colorful statuary (think roller skates and Fender Stratocasters) in memorial parks previously known for their grim sobriety…

For Americans, big spending on burial today is more an issue of location, location, location. Older cemeteries that already host the remains of prominent people are able to command premium prices for their dwindling supply of plots. Ray Brandt, a 66-year-old attorney, talks with Chen about his $1.1 million mausoleum in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans—where the plot alone can cost $250,000. How do you get from there to seven figures? For starters, the lot is bigger than any New York City apartment I ever lived in, at 1,024 square feet, with resting space for 12. “There will be two sets of bronze doors, one of which will open to a back patio with picnic-style furniture and a view of a lagoon,” explains Chen. “I guess it’s the last house I’ll buy,” says Brandt.

Even boomers with smaller budgets are influencing the look and layout of cemeteries. In the Hollywood Forever cemetery in Los Angeles, one of the most common requests is to be buried near the grave of Johnny Ramone (born John Cummings), whose plot features a bust of the late punk rocker wailing on his guitar. (Ramone, who passed away in 2004, isn’t actually buried there yet, but the cemetery says his ashes will be moved there along with his wife’s after she dies.) Those who can’t be near such monument statuary are increasingly asking for equally distinctive décor, Chen reports, custom-ordering, say, a bust of a Greek warrior or a frieze of flamenco dancers.

Some thoughts:

1. I think this is a convenient story-line: boomers who like McMansions also like big burial sites. While there is an attempt in the second paragraph of the story to suggest other American generations have also liked big plots, the hook to the story is that the boomers spend excessively.

2. There is little to no data in this story suggesting there is a real uptick in the sales of these large plots.

3. Does this mean that even more than ever those with money to purchase such monuments will be remembered much more than people who choose cremation?

4. This story hints at another issue: historic cemeteries are running out of space. This means they can drive up the asking price but does it also mean they are very nearly “dead” institutions? With the rise of cremations, is there a glut of space in newer cemeteries or on the whole are cemeteries slowly easing out of existence?

Can changes in states bring about “zero deaths” by car crash?

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It may be a very difficult goal to reach but a number of states are aiming for no deaths in car crashes:

So the immediate focus is on putting an end to crashes that lead to fatalities. The roots of the program can be traced to Sweden, where 16 years ago safety officials declared that zero crash deaths is the only morally acceptable goal.The Illinois Department of Transportation adopted the goal of zero roadway fatalities in 2009 when it revised the state’s strategic highway safety plan. About 30 states have established their own programs aimed literally at driving down the death toll to zero.

A new study by the University of Minnesota evaluating the effectiveness of zero-death programs found that the states that have worked the longest promoting the four “E’s” of safety — enforcement, education, engineering and emergency medical services — have been the most successful at reducing crash fatalities.

Washington State in 2000 and Minnesota in 2003 were the first states to adopt the zero-fatality goal, the study said. Utah and Idaho also operate successful programs in which the study determined that a statistically significant fewer number of crash fatalities occurred after the zero-death initiatives were introduced.

While the research suggests pursuing this goal cuts the number of deaths, is there a point of diminishing returns or where the number is more “acceptable”? Perhaps this cause might join with other long-term wars in the US: the “war on auto deaths.” There could be some interesting work for sociologists to do here about the social construction of these goals. As the article notes, pursuing no deaths is at leaset partly a “morally acceptable goal.”

Another possible takeaway from the article which notes there has not been a death in four years on a commercial aircraft in the US: people should be more afraid of driving than flying.

Sociological study: NYT obituaries have more celebrity deaths over the decades

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Here is a unique place to look for American’s obsession with celebrities: examine the “Notable Deaths” section of the New York Times since 1900.

Sociology researchers at the University of South Carolina analyzed obituaries in the New York Times from the same 20 randomly selected days in 1900, 1925, 1950, 1975 and 2000. From this sample, they ranked how much attention was given to the deaths of people in certain occupations in each year. They found that obituaries of entertainers and athletes marched steadily to the top in rank — from seventh in 1900, to fifth in 1925, to third in 1950 and first in 1975 and 2000; in 2000, celeb athletes and entertainers accounted for 28 percent of obituaries in the newspaper, the researchers said.

Meanwhile, the researchers said the number of obituaries for public figures in manufacturing and business halved over the century. Similarly, religious obituaries fell from fourth place in mid-century to last in rank, and the researchers said they did not find a single notable death article for a religious figure in their sample for the year 2000.

“Most striking are the simultaneous increases in celebrity obituaries and declines in religious obituaries,” lead researcher Patrick Nolan said in a statement from the University of South Carolina. “They document the increasing secularization and hedonism of American culture at a time when personal income was rising and public concern was shifting away from the basic issues of survival,” added Nolan, who details the research in the journal Sociation Today.

So have celebrities replaced some of religion?

It would also be interesting to see whether the New York Times did this consciously and if so, how exactly this conversation went. Did readers actually suggest they wanted to see more celebrity news in the deaths section?