Too busy to read?

This chapter has touched on terrifying events: natural disasters (0.1 percent of all deaths), plane crashes (0.001 percent), murders (0.7 percent), nuclear leaks (0 percent), and terrorism (0.05 percent). None of them kills more than 1 percent of the people who die each year, and still they get enormous media attention.

But eventually, just as the Technician warned, your success begins to lose its shine. __People come to discover that the end of death is the death of motivation.__ Too much life, it turns out, is the opiate of the masses. There is a noticeable decline in accomplishment. People take more naps. There's no great rush.

In theory, you could choose to watch anything: the private activities of single people in their apartments, the unfolding plans of saboteurs, the detailed progress of battlefields. But, instead, __we all watch for one thing: evidence of our residual influence in the world, the ripples left in our wake.__

"One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic."

since we live in the heads of those who remember us, we lose control of our lives and become who they want us to be.

death in general, and death in the digital age particularly, is an uncannily useful vehicle for thinking about choices we make in life, considering what's important to us, and adjusting our actions accordingly.