This graphic is a new accompaniment to The Promised Landing: A Gateway to Peaceful Dying. It contextualizes what the book presents. A version of this graphic appears for the first time in the May 2018 revision of The Promised Landing, on page 169.
21st Century end-of-life Milieu
The top gear set depicts the end of life totality in simpler times—most of human history; these elemental aspects remain our fundamental experience. The bottom gear set represents conventional modern guidance for people wanting to minimize their exposure to the downside risks of late life medical overtreatment. The middle gear contains aspects of 21st century dying that all of us experience briefly or at length, smoothly or with difficulty. These interrelated obstacles to peaceful dying are an inescapable part of our engagement with modern medicine; spinning the bottom gear set and experiencing the top gear set inevitably engages the middle realm and its internal gears—personal and systemic obstacles to peaceful dying.
