“A society that cannot face death will never grow up.
And a civilization that refuses to die wisely cannot live wisely.”
For too long, our economic, medical, and moral systems have treated death as a failure to be avoided— postponed indefinitely, hidden away, pathologized. In doing so, we have trapped millions in lives they no longer want, stretched our healthcare and aged-care systems to breaking point, and blinded ourselves to a deeper truth: limits are not enemies—they are part of life’s design.
Death is the engine of evolution. Without death, biology would stagnate. Innovation would freeze. The new could not emerge. As the saying goes, we progress one funeral at a time. It is through endings—personal, generational, and civilizational—that growth, renewal, and adaptation become possible.
FIT begins where most political visions end: with the right to choose a dignified death.
This is not about despair. It is about ownership of life.
When a society embraces this—when people are free to leave life gently, without punishment or guilt—it changes everything:
The right to die is not the end of politics.
It is the beginning of an intelligent, compassionate civilization.
From that foundation, we can rethink the economy, our relationship with technology, our stewardship of the Earth, and our responsibilities to one another. But we start here. Because a society that cannot face death will never understand what it means to live.
A society that is mature enough to face death is also mature enough to evolve—economically, ecologically, and ethically.
Why? Because post-growth is the economic equivalent of mortality. It asks us to release our addiction to “more,” just as death asks us to release our hold on life. It requires a civilization to accept limits, endings, and transitions—not as failures, but as phases in a deeper rhythm.
Just as death enables renewal in the biological world, economic maturity creates room for social, ecological, and cultural renewal. A society that no longer runs from death can also stop running from enough.
We are no longer building systems that deny finitude. We are ready to live well within limits.
We are ready to design for meaning, not just for motion.
Around the world—and nowhere more clearly than in Japan—we see a troubling imbalance. Populations are ageing rapidly, while younger generations are shrinking, overworked, underpaid, and emotionally exhausted.
This is not a story of malice, but of misaligned systems. When people are kept alive indefinitely without the capacity to choose death, society begins to treat existence as an entitlement—no matter the cost to others.
The elderly, through no fault of their own, extract time, money, energy, and emotional bandwidth from the young—
with no clear endpoint.
FIT's stance is compassionate to all generations:
This is not about encouraging death. It is about inviting wisdom—the wisdom to know when life is complete, and to step aside with grace.
A civilization that has no place for endings will never make room for new beginnings. FIT offers a path that honors both.