Memento mori in tech culture. Why founders should think about death
Dear Reader,
This is the final piece of this newsletter series. Thirty essays over roughly two and a half years, working through what I have been able to think about consciousness, technology, non-human minds, the specific patterns of contemporary life, and the specific practices that might preserve human meaning under contemporary conditions. This last piece is about the specific practice that I think holds all of the others together, and that is the most difficult one to write about honestly.
The practice is memento mori. The specific Latin phrase means "remember that you will die." It has been a central practice in various traditions, from specific strands of Stoic philosophy to specific Christian monastic practice to specific Buddhist meditation. What all of these traditions share is the specific insight that keeping death in view changes how you live. Not through morbidity. Through a specific kind of clarity about what actually matters.
I want to write about this specifically because tech culture, more than any other contemporary environment I know, has organized itself around specific denials of death. This is not usually visible as denial. It looks like specific enthusiasm for longevity research, or specific commitment to progress, or specific urgency about important work. All of these are downstream of a specific refusal to sit with the fact that we are going to die, and that this fact is not incidental to how we should live but central to it.
Start with the specific traditions, because they are more careful than most contemporary discussion.
The Stoic version of memento mori is the one most people have encountered, at least in fragmented form. The specific claim of Stoic philosophers was that regular contemplation of your own death would produce specific effects on how you approached daily life. You would become less attached to specific outcomes you cannot control. You would become more focused on specific things you actually can control. You would treat specific relationships with more care, because you would understand that they are limited in specific ways. You would take specific decisions more seriously, because you would understand that the specific time to make them is not unlimited.
Marcus Aurelius wrote about this at length in his private journals, which we now read as Meditations. He was not writing philosophy for publication. He was writing a specific practice for himself, day by day, to remain oriented under the specific pressures of being emperor of Rome. The specific practice included, prominently, regular reminders of mortality. Not to become gloomy. To remain accurate about what he was doing and why.
The Buddhist version is different but overlapping. The specific practice of maranasati, or mindfulness of death, is a specific meditation technique that involves bringing death directly into attention as an object of contemplation. The specific claim is that doing this regularly, in specific ways, produces specific changes in how you engage with everything else. Increased clarity about what matters. Decreased attachment to what does not. Specific freedom from certain kinds of fear that come from avoiding the specific topic that memento mori addresses directly.
The Christian monastic version overlaps with both. The specific practice of praying with a skull, of specific meditation on the four last things, of specific attention to the transience of the world, all served specific similar functions. Not to encourage escape from the world. To engage with it more clearly, by refusing to pretend it is what it is not.
Each of these traditions has produced substantial literature, substantial practice, and substantial evidence of what the practice does for people who engage in it. This is not exotic knowledge. It is one of the specific ancient technologies for living well, and it has been worked out in multiple traditions independently.
Tech culture, specifically, has organized itself in specific ways that make this practice difficult.
The specific dominant narrative of tech is progress. Things are getting better. Specific problems are being solved. Specific new capabilities are becoming available. The future will be different from the past in specific improving ways. This narrative is not entirely false. There has been genuine progress in specific domains. But the specific way the narrative is deployed in tech culture is often as a specific denial of what is not being solved and what cannot be solved.
Death is at the center of what cannot be solved. Longevity research is real and worth taking seriously. It may extend life expectancies significantly over the coming decades. It may not eliminate death. And the specific way it is often marketed and consumed in tech contexts is as if it will. As if death is a specific engineering problem that will yield to specific technical solutions if enough resources are invested. This framing is exciting. It is also, in specific ways, a category error.
The specific pace of tech work is another specific denial. The specific rhythm of working long hours, of moving fast, of building specific things, of scaling specific companies, is a specific rhythm that leaves very little room for the specific quality of attention that memento mori requires. Death cannot be contemplated in a fifteen-minute break between meetings. It requires specific sustained attention that most tech schedules do not have.
The specific ideology of tech is a third specific denial. The specific belief that specific problems are always solvable, that specific innovation always improves things, that specific technical capability is more important than specific wisdom, is a specific belief system that has trouble accommodating the specific fact of mortality. Because mortality is exactly the specific thing that innovation cannot solve, and that technical capability does not touch.
I have spent years in this culture. I have watched myself and others adopt specific patterns of thinking and living that participate in these denials. It is easy to do. The specific rewards for playing along are substantial. The specific costs of stopping to think about death are high, in the specific attention economy that shapes how tech workers spend their days.
Let me tell you about a specific moment when this became vivid for me.
Several years ago I attended a specific tech conference where a specific speaker was discussing longevity research. The specific tone of the discussion was optimistic in a specific way I found jarring. The specific implicit claim was that specific breakthroughs in the coming decades might extend human lifespan indefinitely. That we might be the first generation not to die of natural causes. That specific investments in specific research were the specific rational response to the specific fact of mortality.
I sat there thinking about my grandfather, who had died a few years earlier at ninety-four. He had lived a good long life. In the last years, his mind had gone. In the last months, his body had gone. He had died in his own bed, with specific family present, after a specific conversation in which he had said specific things that mattered. His death was not a failure of specific technology to save him. It was the specific completion of a specific life.
I looked around the room at the specific tech people listening with specific enthusiasm to specific promises of specific indefinite life extension. I wondered if they had ever sat with a dying grandfather. I wondered if they knew what the specific work of a specific good death actually was. I wondered whether the specific narrative they were being sold had any specific connection to the specific reality of what dying actually involves for the specific people doing it.
That conference was a specific turning point for me. Not because I decided anything specific about longevity research, which I still think is worth pursuing within specific limits. Because I decided I had to think more carefully about the specific way that tech culture was orienting itself around the specific denial of death, and about what that denial was costing.
Let me name specifically what memento mori does when it is practiced.
The first thing it does is produce specific clarity about what matters. When you actually keep death in view, most of what tech culture treats as urgent turns out not to be. The specific email that felt important becomes less important. The specific meeting that felt necessary becomes less necessary. The specific pressure to work faster becomes visibly ridiculous, because faster is not going to change the specific fact that you are going to die.
What remains, when the specific urgencies drop away, is a shorter list of specific things that actually matter. Specific relationships. Specific work you would regret not having done. Specific experiences you have not made time for. Specific commitments you have been putting off. The list is different for different people. But the specific quality of clarity that memento mori produces is that the list becomes visible as different from the specific list your daily calendar suggests you are living by.
The second thing it does is produce specific patience with slowness. If you are going to die, then hurrying does not save the time. The specific time is limited whether you rush or not. Which means the specific value of the specific things you do depends more on the quality of engagement than on the specific speed. Reading one book carefully matters more than reading three books quickly. Having one long conversation matters more than having three short ones. Making one thing well matters more than making three things quickly. This is not what tech culture teaches. It is what actual mortality suggests.
The third thing it does is produce specific gratitude. Not the specific performative gratitude that has become a self-help cliche. The specific quiet gratitude that comes from noticing that the specific things you have are specifically limited, and therefore specifically precious. Specific mornings. Specific meals. Specific conversations. Specific moments of specific attention with specific people. Each of these is finite. Each of them is worth the specific attention it deserves. Memento mori is what makes this specifically visible.
The fourth thing it does is produce specific courage. Because if you are going to die, then most of what you are afraid of losing is going to be lost anyway. Specific reputations. Specific positions. Specific approvals. Specific comforts. All of these are going to be gone at the specific latest by the specific moment you die. Which means the specific fear of losing them, which shapes so much of daily behavior, is a specific fear of losing something you are going to lose regardless. Which means the specific fear can be released, at least partially, because the specific loss is not the specific meaningful loss it feels like when you are avoiding it.
Let me tell you what my specific practice looks like.
I do not sit in front of a skull for hours. That is not the specific version of memento mori that works for me. What I do is specifically simpler and specifically more integrated into daily life.
I remind myself, at specific moments each day, that this specific moment is one of a specifically limited number. When I sit down to work, I know I have a specific finite number of specific work sessions left. When I eat with my family, I know I have a specific finite number of specific dinners with them. When I make something, I know I am adding one to a specific finite total that I will not know until it is over. This is not performative. It is a specific quiet fact that I have made specific room for.
The specific effect is that my specific engagement with what I am doing shifts. Not dramatically. Slightly. Consistently. Over time, this has changed the specific texture of daily life in ways I would not have predicted before I started the practice.
I also mark specific occasions with specific attention to death. When someone I know dies, I make specific time to think about them, and about my own death, in the context of theirs. When I visit specific places associated with people who have died, I do the same. When I encounter specific images or specific texts that address death seriously, I let them do their specific work on me rather than deflecting.
None of this is dramatic. All of it is optional. Anyone reading this could adopt some version of it, or not. What I want to communicate is that the specific practice produces specific effects that are worth having, and that the specific effects have made my specific life better in specific ways I did not anticipate.
There is a specific philosophical claim I want to make.
The specific dominant narrative of contemporary life, in tech culture and beyond, treats death as a specific failure. Either a failure of technology to save the dying person, or a failure of specific effort to extend the specific life, or a failure of specific health optimization. This framing treats death as a specific problem to be solved by specific action.
This framing is confused. Death is not a specific problem. It is a specific feature of what specifically finite beings are. If you are the kind of thing that lives, you are the kind of thing that dies. The two are not separable. Treating death as a specific failure of specific effort is treating specific finitude as a specific defect. Which is a specific category error that produces specific bad outcomes when it is enacted at scale.
The specific alternative framing is that death is a specific dimension of what makes life valuable. Not because dying is good in itself, but because the specific finitude of life is what gives specific choices weight. If you had infinite time, no specific choice would matter, because you could always make a different choice later. The specific fact that time is limited is what makes the specific choices you actually make significant. Memento mori is what keeps this significance visible.
This is not a new insight. It is one of the specific insights that traditional wisdom traditions have converged on across cultures and centuries. Contemporary culture has largely forgotten it, at specific cost. Recovering it is one of the specific practices worth doing, both individually and collectively.
I want to close this newsletter series with something specific.
I started writing these pieces two and a half years ago because I wanted to think carefully about what specifically was happening in the current moment, and about what specific practices might help. Thirty essays later, I have a specific set of provisional conclusions that I want to name, briefly, as the specific summary of what this whole project has been about.
The current moment is producing specific patterns that damage specific human capacities. This is not incidental. It is systematic. The specific patterns include attention capture, dopamine hijacking, algorithmic mediation of experience, erosion of shared reality, and destruction of specific meaning-making practices. All of these are documented. All of them are getting worse. All of them are downstream of specific economic and technological forces that individual choice cannot fully counter.
The specific response to this situation is not despair. It is not reckless optimism either. It is specific engagement with specific practices that preserve specific human capacities that would otherwise be lost. Making things directly. Reading long books with attention. Having long conversations with specific people. Spending specific time in nature. Doing specific ritual work. Engaging with specific symbols in specific ways. Contemplating death. Each of these is a specific practice with specific effects. Together they constitute a specific mode of being human that the current environment does not automatically support.
The specific reason to engage with these practices is not that they will save the world. They will not. The specific reason is that they preserve specific things worth preserving, in you and in the specific communities you are part of, and that the specific preservation is worth doing regardless of the specific broader outcome. Whether or not civilization figures out how to handle the transition it is currently in, specific individual choices to preserve specific human capacities will produce specific outcomes for the specific people making those choices. And those specific outcomes are the specific things you actually have control over.
This is my specific position after thirty essays. It is not optimistic. It is not pessimistic. It is a specific practical stance available to anyone who wants to take it. I have tried to describe it clearly enough that other people can decide whether it fits their specific situations. If it does, I hope this newsletter has been useful. If it does not, I hope it has at least been specifically clear about what it was trying to do.
There is one specific thing I want to say directly, in closing.
Thank you for reading. The specific fact that you have engaged with these pieces, over whatever period you have been engaging with them, is one of the specific things that has made writing them worthwhile. This has never been a project for a mass audience. It has been a project for the specific people who wanted to think carefully about specific things that most contemporary discussion does not handle well. Whoever you are, if you have made it this far, you are one of those specific people.
I am going to keep writing. The specific form may change. The specific topics may expand. But the specific commitment to writing carefully, and to preserving the specific capacities that require careful writing, is not going to change. If you want to keep reading, I hope you will. If this specific series has been complete for you, that is also fine.
Either way, thank you for the specific attention you have given this work. Attention is the specific scarce resource I have been writing about throughout this series. That you have given some of it to my specific writing is a specific gift. I have tried to be worth it.
— Transmission Sent —
Niklas Hanitsch
Reference materials
- Marcus Aurelius — Meditations (c. 170-180 CE)
- Seneca — Letters from a Stoic (c. 65 CE)
- Epictetus — Enchiridion (c. 125 CE)
- Frank Ostaseski — The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully (2017)
- Stephen Batchelor — Living with the Devil: A Meditation on Good and Evil (2004)
- Atul Gawande — Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (2014)
- Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman — The Daily Stoic (2016)
- Sherwin Nuland — How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter (1994)
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori
Continue reading
- Alchemy, symbols, and why 🜏 still means something
- Post-human futures: Three scenarios I can actually believe
- Ritual is not superstition. It is technology for the soul
- The Purpose Behind FALSE GOD
- Waking Up Without Numbing Down
Frequently asked questions
What does memento mori mean? Memento mori is a Latin phrase meaning "remember that you will die." It refers to a specific practice, found in Stoic philosophy, Buddhist meditation, and Christian monasticism, of regularly bringing your own mortality into attention as a way of clarifying how to live. The specific practice is ancient and cross-cultural.
Is memento mori depressing? Done well, no. The specific practice is not about becoming gloomy. It is about becoming clear. People who practice it regularly typically report increased gratitude, better relationships, and more confidence in their choices. The specific psychological effect is the opposite of what most people expect before trying it.
Why is this practice relevant to tech culture? Because tech culture has organized itself around specific denials of death, from longevity ideology to the specific rhythm of daily work life. These denials have specific costs. Remembering that you will die is a specific practice that counteracts these costs and produces specific clarity about what actually matters.
How do I actually practice memento mori? The specific form depends on your situation. Some people meditate specifically on death. Some read philosophy that engages with mortality. Some keep specific objects as reminders. Some simply pause at specific moments to remember that this specific moment is one of a finite number. What matters is that the practice is regular enough to actually change your baseline orientation.
Why is this the final essay in this newsletter series? Because memento mori is the specific practice that holds all the other practices together. It is the specific reason to engage with sustained attention, meaningful relationships, ritual, art, and everything else this newsletter has been recommending. If you take the specific fact of your mortality seriously, the specific work of preserving what matters becomes obviously worth doing. This is the specific note the series was building toward from the beginning.