The industrialized West doesn’t know how to deal with death. Culturally, we only seem capable of engaging with the end of a human being’s life in one way: as a problem. That problem can be “solved” by medicalizing it into a million little pieces, throwing money and fantasy at it, or simply turning away from the people facing its natural approach. Rituals of acceptance, dignity, or even beauty around death are not part of our social firmware–which is why a project like Philip Nitschke’s Sarco may seem sincere, obscene, crass, and humane all at once.
