Western movements now use casual cafés to normalize talking about death

Evidence

In 1980, Derek Humphry founded the Hemlock Society to lobby for laws that support a person’s right to a peaceful, dignified death. In 2004, Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz organized “Mortal Cafés” in Switzerland, Belgium, and France—casual gatherings held in coffee shops and restaurants at which individuals talk about death in a comfortable environment hosted by social workers and chaplains. Jon Underwood exported the “Death Café” to England and the United States in 2011. Participants “are people who definitely want to talk about death,” Underwood observed. “For nearly all of them, engaging with dying, even for a short time, is a positive and life enhancing process.” — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 795

Categorization

• SEED: A ‘Death Café’ piece: the social-ritual design problem of hosting mortality conversation — furniture, facilitation, and the psychology of the format.
• CANDY: Easy dinner-party fact: there are real ‘Death Cafés’ modeled on coffee shops where strangers gather to talk about dying.