Top ten regrets in life by those about to die. (Is this about new politics? You betcha.)
One of our earliest slogans in A/UK comes from the great Brazilian-American philosopher, Roberto Unger, who says that “how can we live in such a way that we die only once?”
This means (we think) that the point of a vital life is to be connected to your activities, to feel your days are filled with purpose and meaning, to be “unalienated”. You don’t “die” every day from feeling misdirected or unfulfilled. You die only once.
It’s an amazingly high bar - but we feel that our 21st century politics should operate at that level. And that this aspiration should be available to every multitudinous human being. And that we should have institutions, systems and legislatures that bend themselves to this ideal.
We came upon this graphic today (click here for full graphic, click on graphic for expanded version) on a very idealistic educational website, titled The Gentle Revolution.
From Addicted to Success
From the perspective of the end of human life, and what matters to people on their death-beds, it couldn’t resonate better with Unger’s injunction. [See also this overlapping piece from the Guardian, on the 5 things that a hospice nurse recorded as lifetime regrets from her patients].