All Deaths Are Not Equal

All death does not seem to be equal

2,813,503 people die each year
or 7,708 per day (in the US)

How does contemplating death or danger in general influence our lives? Are we being rational? Are their external inputs influencing our judgement?

Death, like pooping, is a difficult subject to discuss and consider, which is a little strange because they are among the few things 100% guaranteed. Death is bad, and it wreaks havoc on families, changes lives and history forever. However, it seems from our behavior we don’t view all death the same.

“A man with outward courage dares to die;
a man with inner courage dares to live.”

- Lao Tzu, The Art of War

Interestingly, Mr. Tzu uses the word courage to reference both death and life. It’s well understood and respected that young soldiers demonstrate incredible courage to defend our lives with their own, but “the courage to “live”, what is that all about?

My goal is to examine life through the scrutiny of death. Fun, right? If you live your entire life in fear and worry, you cannot live your life fully. You’re unable to be fully joyful, have peace of mind or even help others to the full extent. But easier said than done.

It’s less about that last date and more about the dash in the middle.

What is the effect of fear on our lives?

For me, the best way to gauge how I’m living is to question whether I have regrets in my life. At least once a month, I do a simple exercise. I imagine I’m going to die in 30 days, then I explore how I feel about my life, and how I’ve used my time. My conclusions have varied over time, sometimes I’m satisfied, and sometimes, I’m not. But many times it has redirected both my thought process and life choices.

For example, in 2010, I was living in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with my wife and two kids, ages 7 and 4. Jen and I were having a dinner date-night, and perhaps a few glasses of wine, and we did this exercise together. We discovered both of us wanted to take a life-adventure of travel for an extended period and, regretted not doing so. Fast forward 90 days (yes, we are impulsive), we sold our house, all our belongings, bought an RV and traveled the US for one year visiting 33 states and driving 11,000 miles… while homeschooling our kids. If you want to read more about that trip, we blogged along the way here.

To this day, we talk about that trip and had the time of our lives. The trip would not have happened without that simple exercise, and frankly, if we considered all the possible things that could have gone wrong or the challenges we would face.

We are not making rational decisions

First, let me speak to all control freaks out there, calm down for just a minute and read this objectively. There is a crazy concept called cognitive bias, I didn’t make it up, humanity did. It clearly demonstrates we are NOT in control as much as we think and our expectations and perceptions greatly influence our lives.

The general concept of cognitive bias is when individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the inputs around them. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, can dictate their decisions and behavior. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality. Wait, I know this person, do you?

The best book I’ve read on the subject is Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He did some crazy experiments that clearly demonstrate how a variety of inputs, or external factors influence our decisions.

Experiment #1

Ariely conducted an experiment on MIT students showing the effect of expectations on choice. They let students taste two different beers, and then gave them the option to get a free pint of one of the brews after the experiment. Brew A was Budweiser, Brew B was Budweiser, plus 2 drops of balsamic vinegar per ounce.

When students were not told about the nature of the beers, they overwhelmingly chose the balsamic beer. When students were told about the true nature of the beers, they overwhelmingly chose the Budweiser without vinegar. This experiment is a strong demonstration of the power of suggestion and how our expectation highly influences our choices.

Experiment #2

In another experiment, he demonstrates how merely changing the price of something can significantly influence a physiological reaction.

Ariely made up a fake painkiller called Veladone-Rx (VR) and hooked up students to an electric shock device to deliver different levels of pain. In the introduction, the subjects were told 92% of patients receiving VR reported significant pain relief in 10 minutes, with relief lasting up to 8 hours. Keep in mind, the painkiller was 100% fake, or a placebo.

They tested two groups, one was told the drug cost $2.50 per dose. The other group was told the drug cost $0.10 per dose. Nearly all of the subjects in the first group reported pain relief as they were shocked with higher and higher levels of electricity. Shockingly (see what I did there), only half the second group, where the price per dose was low, reported pain relief when going through the exact same electric shock treatment.

The results of this experiment dramatically show the effect of setting an expectation undeniably can change our reaction.

Are external inputs feeding our fears?

Finally, back to death. Can we agree constantly worrying about dying, or something bad happening, diminishes life?

Let’s be clear about one thing, fear is deeply embedded in our brains as a survival mechanism, without fear, many more people would die. We naturally avoid cliffs, fire and screaming knife-wielding men. BUT what I’d like to explore is controlling fear and more importantly recognizing how external inputs feed and influence our fears.

I feel very strongly many external inputs are feeding our fears, today more than ever. Primarily the media and social media. The media and social media have different incentives to perpetuate and fuel fear.

The media has a huge profit incentive to keep people watching and tuning into their programs. They figured out a long time ago emotional strings are key to viewers, ratings and clicks. And the shortest, and laziest, route to emotional strings is fear. If it “bleeds, it leads”, they like to say.

The right and left leaning media go-to fears

The right tries to convince us every day that our country is under threat from outside invaders, and if you don’t do anything, our wives and children will all die. While the left focuses on inside forces, mainly repeating that corporate america and the rich will take and kill our wives and children. Both are very effective and compel people to watch their shows out of a perceived “responsibility” to stay “informed”. Those are not real quotation marks, I’m using “air” quotes when writing those words.

There is an incredible incentive to twist or exaggerate the truth, which is done frequently. My definition of truth comes from our legal system and is worth pondering, because only by this definition is truth accurate. (it’s weird I have to use an adjective to qualify “truth”).

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

For example, during a time of crisis, like the current virus scare, when the media only gives the worst case scenario and doesn’t also provide the best case scenario, this is not the whole truth. It’s an overt strategy to sensationalize a situation, to evoke an emotional response, which in turn creates a panic, which in turn increases viewership. I’m not talking about their responsibility to keep us informed, if that was their sole agenda, don’t you think we’d be better served with the “whole truth”.

Media outlets DO NOT have your best interest in mind when deciding what programing to show and not show. They are making conscious editorial decisions what part of the truth to show and what part to omit.

A great example of how data was misrepresented or the “whole” truth was not declared is from a UK based Professor named Neil Ferguson. Early in the Corona virus scare, he published only the stats from his worst case scenario. He showed 2/3’s of the people with the corona virus would die, see article. It’s important information, but not a complete set of possible outcomes. He quickly added more of the “whole” truth because of the reaction it caused.

There are plenty of other examples. President Trump likes to repeatedly declare the total costs of illegal immigration and how much it hurts our country. But he never gives any data on the services and money immigrants provide the country that off-set his narrative. Again, not the “whole truth”.

Social Media on the other hand is still motivated to increase clicks and make more ad dollars, but tends to be more about individuals either grand-standing or self-actualizing. People wanna feel important by correcting or humiliating others, and have an intense need to be right, rather than get it right. I beckon back to a time when all those strong, uninformed, biased opinions stayed at the diner table and bar stools.

All death does not seem to be equal

Can we please get back to death.

In the US, 2,813,503 people die each year and 7,708 each day. However, the bottom line is we don’t treat all death in the same way, or at least how the possibility certain deaths affect us. We clearly worry about some death more than others, and because this is true, is it possible we can worry less about death or scary things all together?

My theory is there are two things at play here. First, how we think about and fear death is highly influenced by outside inputs. And second, much of our state of mind and actual behaviors are not rational.

let’s put death in context

Did you know this many people die each year for each category? Do all of the following cause the same level of anxiety or worry for you? How much do you change your life to avoid each potential category of death for you and your family?

The Table of Death

Cause of Death	Yearly Deaths		Cause of Death	Yearly Deaths
2009 H1N1 Swing Flu	12,270	vs	Heart disease	647,457
Choking	5,051	vs	Shark attacks	64
Cancer	599,108	vs	Diabetes	83,564
Falling	26,009	vs	Unintentional poisoning	64,796
Automobile accidents	40,231	vs	Common flu	56,000
Smoking cigarettes	480,000	vs	Liver disease	40,326
Taking selfie photos	259	vs	*HIV deaths	16.350

These statistics are all from the United States and combine stats from the years 2009 -2019, for example some yearly deaths are from 2017 and some from 2019. * Over 30 million people have died from HIV since the 80’s, that’s half as many that died in World War II.

If you don’t hear about something horrific, does it still affect you?

Let me ask you, do you think about and stress about traffic deaths daily? Do you remember the 2009 H1N1 Swing Flu scare vividly, and as a national crisis? How often do you worry about HIV these days?

The old adage holds true here, “if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it really fall”. Well, of course it did, but the difference is you didn’t think about it because you didn’t hear it. Same holds true for many atrocities in the world that occur each day that you don’t hear about. For example, a women was just murdered as you read this (400,000 people are murdered a day, or 277/minute), but you don’t know who she is and where she was murdered, therefore it doesn’t affect you. This is a brutal example, but it’s just true.

I propose this is due to the influence of outside inputs, primarily from our media, and fueled by a profit-focused, self-actualization-power-grab, with undertones of a political agenda. For the record, I’m a libertarian-compassionate-capitalist and therefore don’t mind profit driven motives. But allowing them to influence or negatively impact my life is the issue and should be yours too.

What are you willing to give up to save lives?

Turns out, much of the time, not much. At first thought, you’ll probably think, “almost anything” all lives are valuable and of course I’d give up basic conveniences and freedoms to save your life or mine. Strangely, that’s not the case in many of life’s day-to-day choices. We are willing to sacrifice lives for convenience, short-term pleasure, and economic gain.

Let’s get real and ponder these choices referring back to the Table of Death above.

• Do you swim in the ocean?

• Do you and your kids get in a car daily?

• Do you fly in an airplane?

• Do you hike?

• Do you visit older people and hug them?

• Do you exercise and eat well each day?

• And the ultimate example, would you support lowering speed limits back to 55 mph?

Farmer Insurance company found that a 5 mph increase in the maximum speed limit was associated with an 8 percent increase in the fatality rate on interstates and freeways (read more). In total, over the 25-year study period, there were 36,760 more deaths than would have been expected if maximum speed limits hadn't changed over that time. Public opinion very strongly supports higher speed limits and they easily pass in election decisions.

“Driving 70 instead of 65 saves a driver at best 6½ minutes on a 100-mile trip," Farmer says.

We are unwilling to add 6 1/2 minutes to a 100 mile drive, which would save 1,000s of lives. Because I’m a math guy, that’s 153 lives per minute.

Are we slowly dying or are we living?

Let’s have the courage to live.

All death is serious, that’s not what I’m talking about, it’s about how we deal with it and how it affects our lives while we are living. I’m interested in maximizing my time on earth and my most important role in life is husband and father. Part of my role is to keep those in my family from dying, I don’t take many things seriously, but protecting my family I do. But I also made a very conscious decision to teach my kids how to live… while taking risks

I’ve taught my kids when you’re climbing on a 20 foot wall, focus, don’t fool around, because you can die. Where as, when climbing on a 5 foot wall, have fun, you can only brake an arm.

Recently my teenagers started doing five hour mountain hikes by themselves with friends. Multiple-mile hikes can be dangerous, there are mountain lions, you can get lost, stranger-danger, and simple injuries can change a situation quickly. I’ve taught them that warmth and water is most important. They bring water (always), a lighter, have basic survival skills, they know panic is survival’s mostly significant killer. They bring pepper spray for mountain lions and bad guys. These experiences are literally a rite of passage, where kids become confident and go through trial and error moments that define who they are, and ultimately reduce their fear.

Please consider monitoring and filtering the loud noise of outside inputs and their influence on your mindset. With a little discernment, it’s possible is to be informed, and not manipulated. And be aware of irrational behavior, the force is strong in all of us.

I’m going to die one day, until then, I’m going to live.