After reading the Tony Walter paper, it was very apparent how death has evolved culturally and physically over generations of religion and medicine.
It feels like death is now more of an individual event as you could hold the attention of those around you for the short amount of time it took to die in the past. But now in a society where individualism is promoted and the nuclear family dominates with globalisation, the chance of maintaining this attention throughout chronic disease is almost impossible. So the individual and death consistutes a stronger relationship than it has before. Promoting the need for more autonomy over decisions regarding death to allow more power in this often lonely relationship.
Maybe this functions to take the responsibility for those dying from society and shifts it to the individual. Allowing those who are healthy to remain productive and less distracted by death?
