The post that caught my attention is "The Future Of Dying" but I really thought that was negative, true, but negative. MediaPosts Engage: Boomers focusses on a part of life we all have to deal with....death and dying....
"Anticipate meteoric growth for hospice services in the next few decades. Hospice provides palliative care for those diagnosed with terminal illnesses. Services include pain control, nursing care and spiritual counsel. Many prefer this pathway to eternity over "death by technology."
An emerging trend is "slow medicine," in which those confronting difficult medical choices slow down the process to assess fully the restorative potential of yet another medical procedure. Life-prolonging medical intervention has its value when the outcome allows greater life quality if not extension of time remaining, but when medical procedures only promote more pain and weakness without recovery, then many Boomers will put the brakes on "heroic medicine."
Healthcare policymakers and marketers can expect this generation to test inflexible traditions that reduce the fullest possible expression of life experiences during final months and weeks. Like Dr. Pausch, many Boomers will make their concluding days as meaningful as possible by recording and preserving their legacies. This will lead to dramatic growth of personal historians and online resources for those with terminal diseases to "upload" life experiences, values, philosophies, photographs, videos, insights and hopes for humanity.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have isolated the psychoactive compound in the hallucinogenic mushroom psilocybin, one of the drugs some Boomers experimented with during the sixties. Researchers have tested the synthesized medication on adults who have never experimented with recreational drugs.
In various studies, those who took the synthesized hallucinogen have reported experiencing some of the most profound spiritual events of their lives. Someday, hospices and nursing homes may offer psilocybin or other mind-altering medications for patients seeking divine experiences but are unable to get to this state of consciousness through prayer or meditation.
Over half of those who die in another 20 years will choose cremation. This will have considerable impact on the funeral and cemetery industries. Some Boomers will have their carbon ashes compressed into synthetic diamonds. Others will choose "green" cemeteries, in effect becoming "Dust in the Wind," where remains are buried on public land and inside cardboard boxes with only GPS coordinates for grave markers. Others will choose to have their cremains buried offshore in artificial reefs."
Interesting article, I hadn't thought of the changes that will take place because this generation was taught to "Die The Way You Lived"