Grappling with death is as old as the Fall, but a new generation of smartphone apps offers a modern twist. By combining predictive factors such as age, smoking habits and body mass index these apps predict when a user will give up the ghost.
To be fair, some of these “death” apps do more reminding than predicting. WeCroak, for example, is inspired by a Bhutanese saying that “to be a happy person, one must contemplate death five times daily.” Users receive “five daily invitations” with quotes that remind them that death is inevitable.
On one hand, these apps attempt to fix a cultural wrong. The idea for WeCroak, for example, came to co-founder Hansa Bergwall through his addiction to the popular mobile game Candy Crush. Sick of wasting time, he hoped that being confronted with his own mortality would help him use his time more wisely. Apps like WeCroak are sometimes called “anti-apps.” In other words, they attempt to undo what technology does best: distract us.
Distraction, of course, is the primary way that Westerners tend to cope with the prospect of death, and it takes many forms. A $500 billion-dollar beauty industry glamorizes youth and promises immortality. A thriving commercial economy allows us to pursue our dreams to the extent that was impossible for most people throughout human history. We may have a God-shaped hole in our hearts, but the sheer variety of stuff available keeps us occupied in trying to fill it. And, when death finally comes, we can outsource it to the professionals: care homes, hospice workers and morticians.
By contrast, some Eastern traditions go the opposite way and try to embrace death completely. Some Buddhist monks, for example, practice “maranasati,” or death contemplation. In some traditions, this takes extreme forms, such as spending weeks in cemeteries observing corpses in various states of decay. Awareness is a central pillar of Buddhist teaching, which promises escape from the suffering of our unmet desires.