Immortality (Stephen Cave)
OVERVIEW
“Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization” by Stephen Cave comes in as death book #26. This was one of the most stimulating and insightful books I’ve read to date for this blog and it’s done more to alleviate my fear of death than any other. It’s a long review, but worth the wordcount.
Homo sapiens and its big brain is burdened with a Mortality Paradox: the will to live, but the knowledge of death (Cave describes this paradox as a “personal apocalypse,” which feels pretty accurate). We are the only species that has a feeling of self and that can conceptualize the future, and are therefore the only species that can understand that the will to live is ultimately thwarted. And so, we seek out belief systems that permit us to believe we will endure. Cave doesn’t think this seeking is driven entirely by fear, he claims that because we cannot conceive of ourselves not existing, deep down we don’t really believe we can die. Try it for yourself, imagine non-existence. [Pause for personal experimentation]. It’s an impossible task because your imagining summons you into virtual being; you can’t remove yourself as a spectator. You will always populate the non-existence you’re trying to imagine. Many great psychologists, philosophers, and poets have therefore reached the same conclusion: deep down, we all believe we’re immortal.
So what of these belief systems that appeal to our bid for immortality, which is to say, our desire to not die? Cave says there are four Immortality Narratives – endeavours to achieve life everlasting that all cultures have subscribed to, in whole or in part, since time immemorial. They are:
1. Staying Alive – not dying
2. Resurrection – dying but then resurrecting in the same physical body (or digital consciousness)
3. The Soul – surviving the death of the physical body as a spiritual entity
4. Legacy – leaving a mark on the world, either cultural (ideas, good deeds, memorials) or biological (children)
Each chapter is dedicated to one of the four Immortality Narratives and explores how they shaped ancient and modern civilization. We learn why the Resurrection narrative was so appealing to early Christians, how rising popularity of the Soul narrative led to Western individualism and the concept of personal autonomy, and even why our collective representation of “heaven” changed from theocentric (eternal contemplation of the divine) to anthropocentric (an eternal afterparty with loved ones) in the early 1900s. Perhaps more obviously, we also learn why we’re so obsessed with green smoothies and Peloton classes. Cave is in good company when he says that the pursuit of immortality is what built civilization, which is just “a collection of life-extension technologies.” Agriculture, clothing, medicine, tools, architecture, infrastructure… all were invented to stave off death (Stay Alive). Music, art, folklore, theatre, and even war helped us achieve symbolic immortality (Legacy). And the connection between religion and immortality (Resurrection/Soul) needs no introduction. Death anxiety and the desire for immortality is what creates culture, and the most successful and long-lasting civilizations have been those with the most robust immortality narratives.
In addition to exploring the societal impacts of each Immortality Narrative, Cave also argues that they are all false. You will die eventually, your body and your consciousness can’t be resurrected in a way that would preserve your individuality, the soul does not exist, and legacy (even if your Facebook profile lives on) is not real immortality. Death is real, and final, and inevitable. We cling to immortality illusions like security blankets, but they are just that, illusions.
It’s not all doom and gloom. Cave says real immortality would be a veritable hellscape. Philosophers and poets have known this for centuries. Physical immortality would lead to a life devoid of meaning, suffused with inconceivable boredom at best, violent insanity at worst (not to mention overpopulation). Ditto to spiritual immortality (though perhaps without the overpopulation). The appeal of immortality is inversely proportional to the time spent thinking about it. In addition, Cave argues that clinging to these narratives fosters xenophobia, racism, and all-around self-centeredness. Science backs him up on this too. So immortality is not just an illusion, it’s a destructive illusion. Okay, but that doesn’t automatically make mortality attractive. What’s our replacement?
WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)
Sneaky sneaky Stephen Cave was hiding a fifth option from us, the Wisdom Narrative. Unlike the other four, which deny death, the Wisdom Narrative says there is a way to accept and live with mortality. Cave breaks it down for us in three steps.
Step 1: convince yourself that genuinely unending life would be a terrible curse
We touched on it above, but do some thought experiments. In a million years you could accomplish everything you’d ever wanted to do, and you would still have trillions and trillions and trillions of years to go. You’d survive to see the oceans boil and the universe freeze – and how long before that would you have grown tired of your partner’s jokes? If, after hard contemplation, you’re still having trouble accepting this truth, might I recommend:
· Stephen King’s short story The Jaunt
· The Japanese tale of Xu Fu and Sentaro
· Karel Capek’s play The Makropulos Affair
· The Greek myth of Tithonus
Even the Black Mirror TV series is a great exploration of digital immortality and what horrors lie there. So have a think. Get real uncomfortable. Let the terror of true eternity wash over you.
Step 2: convince yourself that fearing being dead is nonsensical
I am the wrong person to write this advice (because my brain won’t accept it yet), but here I go anyway. Epicurus was the first to point out that we shouldn’t fear being dead. The pain or emotional distress of dying aside, the fear of death is irrational. Death is not a state you will ever experience, nor is it a transition. Many people (present company included) in not being able to grasp the prospect of non-being describe death as the absence of all that we know in life. Infinite darkness, endless oblivion – a black abyss, an empty void, a bottomless chasm… complete annihilation. You can see how these perfectly describe a state devoid of life, but not a state devoid of you. We cannot grasp the prospect of nothingness, so we project our nightmares of anti-life there instead (and to be honest, these are basically descriptions of space, not death). We must abandon this misplaced description. Cave encourages us to think of it like an ocean wave breaking on the shore. We don’t describe the wave as “dead” or an “ex-wave.” The wave didn’t go anywhere, it’s just gone. “When humans die, they do not enter a new state of death, they cease to be.” Living things can never know anything but life. Death is an ending, “and that, when properly understood, is exactly why we should not be afraid.” Step two is to convince yourself there’s nothing to be frightened of.
(I’m just going to re-read this paragraph over and over and hope it sticks)
Step 3: cultivate virtues that undermine existential angst
So now we’ve seen that living forever is not so good and death is not so bad. Still, “powerful instincts are at work that distort our perceptions of mortality and the way we use what time we have. The third step of the Wisdom Narrative is to cultivate virtues that hold these instincts in check.” Here are the three instincts (/and how to keep them in check):
1. Excessive concern with self / cultivate selflessness
“Excessive focus on oneself is a powerful cause of the fear of death.” Psychologists and death researchers know this. The most self-absorbed personalities are the most fearful of dying. To combat this, cultivate selflessness. Engage with your friends, family, and community. Make it a duty to love and have compassion for everyone. Bertrand Russell advised to “make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.” Dr Irvin Yalom, who spent his career working with the terminally ill, concluded that connecting to others was “the single most important method for ameliorating death anxiety.”
2. Excessive concern about the future / cultivate presence
Planning, plotting, and worrying are unhappy pastimes of the ruminating mind. All of our preoccupation with death anxiety comes from speculating about the future (if you’re alive to speculate, death can’t be an immediate problem). The antidote to this is presence, or mindfulness. Cave says: “live so you will have no regrets if you die tomorrow but also no regrets if you don’t.” There is no shortage of literature to guide you in cultivating presence of mind – so go find it!
3. Excessive concern with threat / cultivate gratitude
Lastly, “imagining all the things that could threaten our existence might help us avoid them, but in excess it leads us only to worry about what we might lose rather than appreciate what we have.” Persistent searching for threat is a recipe for stress and death anxiety. Counteract this tendency by practicing gratitude. Set aside time each day to list the things you’re grateful for, or start a gratitude journal. Think of the unbroken chain of events stretching back billions of years that made you possible, and what incredible good fortune you’ve had. “We should be grateful – very, very grateful – that we have a shot at life at all, and with a brain capable of appreciating and creating so much wonder.”
To recap: There’s no escaping death, but that’s okay because immortality would be an unending horror. Death may seem scary, but because you can never experience it there’s no need to fear being dead. Despite these truths, your brain is still wired toward excessive concern with self, the future, and threat, all of which contribute to death anxiety. Keep these mental faculties in check by cultivating selflessness, presence, and gratitude.
IN SUM:
Is this book entirely secular? There is considerable examination of religion and mysticism, but it’s mostly presented to be critiqued – so I’ll say Yes. (Cave’s review of the whereabouts of heaven will have you dying of laughter).
If you had to describe the book in one sentence? Humans want to live forever, and there’s generally 4 ways we think we can achieve that… but we can’t.
Who should read this book? Anyone afraid of death, who suspects that death really is final, and is ready to explore alternative comforts.
Check out my interview with Stephen Cave here.