The word death is used 70  times in the book First Principles and First Value. Before exploring what the book says, I would like to reference what I said about a year ago in my essay About Nihilism and Death. As I reread my own words now, it provides excellent background for this essay.

First Principles and First Value offers a much needed solution to the metacrisis which threatens our civilization.

Industrialized means of extraction and pollution have reached planetary scale and are now pushing the very limits of global ecological boundaries, dysregulating the biosphere as a whole. As much scientific research has demonstrated, this will quite possibly lead, within a generation or so, to the crossing of multiple tipping points, resulting in an unstoppable degradation and simplification of all Earth systems, as the biosphere cascades into a self-re-enforcing death spiral: dead oceans, desertification, the ending of seasonal rhythms, and a catastrophic depletion of biodiversity. This is the death of Gaia—the end of the biological life support system of Earth—and if humans continue to survive, it will be in conditions of unimaginable extremity.

Proposition 2 - Our Species Faces Two Forms of Existential Risk: The Death of Humanity and the Death of Our Humanity

But I take exception to one point the book makes.

The human being’s initial awareness of their own death is what we refer to as the “first shock of existence,” the moment when the fear of death is born into reality… The shock also occurs during every individual life…

No, it does not, but it should. Denial of death is rampant in our culture, but not in this book. The discussion of death in the early chapters of the book is very good.

Proposition 4 - The Second Shock of Existence Is About the Self-Induced Extinction of Our Species

Existential risk, or the second shock of existence, means not the death of the individual human being, but awareness of the potential death of humanity.

But just as many people live as if they will never die, it seems to me that many people are still in denial of the potential collapse of civilization.

But the second shock of existence can either result in the fulfillment of a dystopian vision, or it can provoke the emergence of a New Human and New Humanity—which we discuss below as the evolution of Homo sapiens into Homo amor. We are in a new moment in history because, as discerning eyes can see, plausible paths to dystopia—leading to the genuine death of civilization—are very real.

Perhaps I am in a contrarian mood today, but I am not convinced. The worldwide coronavirus pandemic has divided humanity more than ever. Most of the world seems to be in denial of the possibility of viruses that are both extremely contagious and extremely deadly. People seem to be drawn to conspiracy theories more than to the possibility of Homo amor. I wonder whether even a nuclear WWIII would be a sufficient shock for humanity to change direction.

We today must remember what it means to give of ourselves to tomorrow. It is, actually and finally, the only way there will be a tomorrow.

Yes.

But there is another threat of growing concern.

Proposition 41 - TechnoFeudalism Is Our Default Future: The Death of Our Humanity

…the existential risks that face us—in this case, the death of our humanity, as the species is subject to profoundly manipulative technologies, built as part of a social world unmoored from First Principles and First Values.

The death of humanity and the death of our humanity, our goodness, our creativity, are two different things. AI could suck the life out of us, change what it means to be human. Or civilization could collapse with humans surviving as a species but living in a Mad Max world.

But let’s end this essay with an inspiring quote from First Principles and First Value. 

Proposition 42 - CosmoErotic Humanism Is a Response to the Possible Death of Our Humanity

...intrinsic value is a constitutive and indispensable aspect of the Cosmos... value and consciousness are to be placed alongside space, time, matter, and energy as basic elements of the Universe, or reality itself... Such a story provides a new context for integrating wisdom traditions with modern thought... the new Story of Value realizes the empirical truth that humanity lives in a field of value, that Cosmos is encoded and suffused with inherent value.