为什么现在的年轻人不再避讳死亡？

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俄勒冈州波特兰市的西蒙·索特洛在27岁时就开始自己为自己的身后事做打算。

Simon Sotelo was 27 when she donated her body to science.

西蒙·索特洛在27岁时就决定将自己的遗体捐献于科学研究。

The Portland, Oregon-based graphic designer is still very much alive — and presumably will be for decades to come. She doesn’t have any life-threatening afflictions or high-risk hobbies. But, Sotelo says, signing a contract that grants medical students in the distant future the right to study her body gives her a sense of peace in the present.

这位来自俄勒冈州波特兰的平面设计师还十分健康——大概在未来的几十年里都是如此。她没有什么危及生命的顽疾，也没有高风险的爱好。但是，索特洛说，签订协议，让未来的医学生有权研究她的身体，这给她一种当下的平和之感。

“My goal from the beginning was, how can I just make this as cheap as possible for the people who have to deal with it?” Sotelo, now 31, says. “When I was first planning it, I was like, I have no savings, I have no money.” Oregon Health & Science University seemed to offer the perfect solution: When its research is complete — typically after two years — the college will pay to cremate the remains of its donors and return it to the family. At that point, Sotelo says, she hopes her loved ones will hold a celebration of her life, not a mournful wake. She’d like “The End of the Tour” by They Might Be Giants to play.

“我的初衷是，我要如何让人们尽可能不破费地处理好我的后事呢？”现年31岁的索特洛说，“当我开始计划的时候，我就想到，我没有存款也没有现金。”俄勒冈健康与科学大学似乎提供了最完美的解决方式：当他们（对于遗体）的研究结束——一般两年后——他们会出资将遗体火葬，并将骨灰归还捐献者的家庭。索特洛说，当那一刻到来时，她希望她所爱的人可以为她的生命进行庆祝，而不是悲哀的守丧。她还希望她们为她放一首明日巨星乐团的《旅途的尽头》（The End of the Tour）。

Most Americans don’t plan for their deaths in their 20s — or maybe ever. A 2017 study in the journal Health Affairs found only one in three US adults have an advance directive, including a living will with end-of-life medical instructions, power of attorney naming a person responsible for last affairs, or both. Fewer have planned their actual funeral arrangements: Only 21 percent of Americans have even spoken to their loved ones about their wishes, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.

But “the American way of death,” as journalist Jessica Mitford called it in her 1963 classic book on the funeral industry, is changing. When Mitford first penned her investigation, she found anxiety, aversion, and few real options. Most consumers only interacted with the funeral industry on average every 14 years — and then, only under duress — so they weren’t likely to compare prices or make informed choices. As a result, Mitford argued, funeral directors could convince their hapless customers to spend more money than they had, on things they never wanted.

Today, the internet grants us instant access to lots of information and seemingly infinite options. “Embalm and bury” used to be the only way Americans processed human remains — funeral directors were resistant to cremation (it was much cheaper than burial), and consumers thought burning a body sounded awful and un-Christian. Now, a YouTube channel called “Ask a Mortician” has almost a million subscribers, and we can turn our dead into diamonds.

众多实例显示，年轻人正在领导这场文化变革的黑旗游行。2011年，27岁的殡葬师凯特琳·道蒂创立了提倡积极死亡的组织“善死会”。现在她在洛杉矶经营着自己的殡仪馆。汉萨·伯格沃尔在35岁时开发了一款名为WeCroak的应用程序，一个数字化的死亡警告，它每天会提醒五次它的三万名月度用户他们终将死去——应该是为了帮助他们活在当下。卡特里娜·斯派德30岁时就初步设想成立“重组”（Recompose）公司，该公司计划将人类遗骸变成土壤。

27岁的殡葬师凯特琳·道蒂创立了提倡积极面对死亡的组织“善死会”

In 2017, Nathan Gerard, an assistant professor of health care administration at California State University Long Beach, published a study of 84 millennials and their ability to talk about death. “There’s been a long held assumption that the young are somehow uninterested — or worse, ill equipped — to talk about death, let alone work with the dying,” Gerard said in an email. But he found the majority “had already engaged in a conversation about end-of-life care with a family member, and furthermore, a majority perceived themselves just as willing, if not more willing, as their parents to talk about end-of-life care options.”

Why, those older adults must be asking, do people in the prime of their lives seem to be preparing for their demise? The answers vary widely, from eminently practical concerns, such as crushing debt and climate change, to social factors, like wellness culture, diverse spiritual practices, and the desire of some millennials to “curate their afterlives.”

“We are a generation that is less willing to be shamed for our interests in difficult topics,” Doughty says. “We know that not talking about money has put us in a very difficult financial position, especially those that graduated around the time of the [September 2008 stock market] crash,” she adds. “And we know that not talking about death can lead to a less self-aware life.”

Before the internet, people hoping to get their affairs in order had to find financial planners, lawyers, and local funeral directors in the phone book, then set up in-person consultations. But people have an “aversion to talking to strangers about important things,” says FreeWill co-founder Patrick Schmitt, whose site streamlines the process of generating a will, healthcare directives, and powers of attorney. Technology means they no longer have to. With sites like Schmitt’s, it’s possible to generate a legal will in 20 minutes, no human interaction required.

Since these essential forms used to be made on paper and in private, there’s little historical data about who had a will and who didn’t. But for the team at FreeWill, that information is readily available. Among its users, the number of people age 18 to 24 crafting wills is low, but shoots up among 25- to 44-year-olds, Schmitt says.

“Younger people are less likely to have assets. People make the joke, ‘I don’t know who to pass my debt onto,’” Schmitt says. But “you’ve got big shifts around religiosity, home ownership, overall wealth at this age, marriage rates, birth rates, and these things are really going to shape views on estate planning and death.”

年轻人的资产往往不多。人们常常开玩笑说“我都不知道由谁来继承我的债务，”施米特说。但是“宗教信仰、房屋所有权、这个年龄段的整体财富、结婚率、出生率等方面都发生了重大变化。这些变化真的会影响人们对遗产规划和死亡的看法。”

In The American Way of Death, Mitford described a funeral industry that operated like an autocracy. The all-knowing funeral director guided the guileless consumer to the most expensive burial options — the most luxurious casket, the hardiest burial vault. Some things about dying haven’t changed, including the expense: The average cost today is $6,500.

But the death industry has diversified since 1963. Approximately 60 percent of students in mortuary science programs today are female, up from 5 percent in 1971. And new trends, like the home funeral movement, are led by “an assemblage of different groups of people, different beliefs, different practices,” says Phil Olson, a technology ethicist at Virginia Tech specializing in death studies.

Church membership is declining, and the number of Americans who say they are atheistsis on the rise. (Right now, it’s hovering around 10 percent.) Though young people today may diverge from their parents’ or grandparents’ approach to death and the afterlife, many find other philosophies to guide them.

Bergwall co-founded WeCroak — the death reminder app — in 2017 as part of his own meditation practice.He quotes a Bhutanese folk saying that states, “To be a truly happy person, one must contemplate death five times daily.” The practice, which Buddhists call “maraṇasati,” or death awareness, is supposed to help people embrace uncertainty and feel the spiritual urgency required to change your life for the better. Monks in some parts of Asia meditate over dead bodies to accomplish this. Bergwall thought an app would be easier.

2017年，伯格沃尔参与创建了死亡提醒的应用程序WeCroak，作为自己冥想实践的一部分。他引用了不丹的一句民间俗语：想要成为一个真正快乐的人，你必须每天思考死亡五次。佛教信奉者们称这种做法为“玛拉阿萨提”，即死亡意识的实践，旨在帮助人们接受生活的不确定性，并感受到把生活变得更好所需要的精神紧迫感。亚洲一些地区的僧人们通过冥想死者来达到这个目的，但伯格沃尔认为一个APP会更加方便。

While wills and advance directives are important, Bergwall thinks his app attracts people with a broader definition of “death preparedness.” Instead of who will get what, “the conversation is more about, how can we have our affairs in order — emotionally, spiritually, relationship-wise — so we can enjoy our life now,” he says. If it sounds like we’re in the midst of a wellnessification of death, well, we probably are, Bergwall adds. In lieu of crystals and green drinks, you’ll find memento mori, “grief retreats,” and green funerals.

Anna Swenson is the communications manager for Recompose, the Seattle-based company that developed a method for human composting — and got it legalized by the Washington state legislature. She suggests that many of the changes in the death industry, and the speed at which they’re unfolding, could be driven by climate anxiety. As ecosystems collapse and the future no longer feels guaranteed, some people may feel more conscious of their own mortality. They may also feel more conscious about their impact on the planet, alive and dead.

In the United States, more than 90 percent of people are buried or cremated. But both methods have their downsides. Along with our dead, Americans also bury 20 million feet of wood, 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluids, and 1.6 million tons of reinforced concrete each year, according to the New York Times. Cremation, once marketed as an eco-conscious alternative, releases approximately 534 pounds of carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas — per person. But newer, greener methods are emerging, from human composting to the “mushroom death suit” — available in human and pet sizes — that uses fungi to aid in decomposition.

奥尔森也看到了临终消费在其他方面的逐步发展。他说：“千禧一代希望他们的‘独一无二’或者说是‘特立独行’即使是在最后的告别中也有所体现。”虽然人们已经做了很多关于千禧一代的研究，并且认为他们更倾向于可以拍出好看照片的葬礼，但奥尔森认为，这种对于个人主义的强调也许反映出了更深刻的社会问题和个人焦虑。“这是一种掌控死亡的方式，”他说道，“也是一种直面自身死亡的方法——审视它，规划它，努力让死亡处于自己的掌控之下。”

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