Immortality (38 page)

The success of this approach is borne out by experience. The psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom concluded after a career working with the terminally ill that connecting to others was the single most important method for ameliorating death anxiety. And psychologist Roy Baumeister recommends a similar antidote to the problem he is quoted above as identifying: “The most effective solution to this threat [of death] is to place one’s life in some context that will outlast the self. If one’s efforts are devoted to goals and values that project many generations into the future, then death does not undermine them.”

The virtue of connecting with others will help to put our own selves in proper perspective. This is intimately connected with the next problem: our tendency to fill our hours with thoughts of what might become of us in the future and so fail to appreciate the present. When left to their own devices, our minds busy themselves with plans, plots, worries and idle speculation—much of it about things that might go badly for us. The capacity to think about the future is of course enormously useful, but it can also foster angst and seriously undermine our prospects of happiness. By dwelling on all manner of possible threats, we bring death into life, only then to die without having really lived.

This was the position of Gilgamesh when he met the barmaid:
squandering his life with worry that ahead of him lay only death. Her response—“Make merry each day”—is an attempt to pull him back into the present. For as many sages have known, happiness is only to be found in the present moment, as only the present moment is real. The past is gone, the future mere speculation. If you are happy now, then you are happy always, as there is only now. But equally, if you spend each moment worrying about your future happiness, then happiness will always elude you, and your life will be one of anxiety. And, as we have seen, worrying about death—something we can never experience—is the most foolish worry of all.

The French historian Pierre Hadot described the goal of Epicureanism and Stoicism as “to allow people to free themselves from the past and the future, so that they could live within the present.” This would be instantly recognizable to followers of many other religious and philosophical traditions. In Buddhism, for example, it is known as “mindfulness” and is one of the key steps on the path to enlightenment. Buddhists cultivate this virtue through the ancient practice of meditation, which anyone can take up—and which is now also recommended by Western science.

Clinical psychologists have adopted Buddhist mindfulness techniques in order to treat stress, anxiety and depression. Like the practice of gratitude, learning to live more in the moment is proven to bring many benefits. The Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who first documented the phenomenon of being “in the flow,” was perhaps the first to demonstrate this, proving an association between focusing full attention on a task in the present moment and the experience of “pleasure, happiness, satisfaction and enjoyment.” A 2010 Harvard study reinforced this, gathering a great deal of evidence to show that people all around the world make themselves unhappy by continually imagining possible future scenarios, many of them anxiety inducing, and that those who are happiest spend the most time wholly in the moment.

This thought is sometimes expressed as living each day as if it
would be your last. Indeed an awareness that this day might be your last (and who knows, it might be—one day surely will be) does help to focus the mind on the present. But it could of course also lead to abandoning anything that might contribute to longer-term projects. And that you might regret: after all, this day also might
not
be your last. We must find a way of appreciating the present while acknowledging that the stream of moments might extend some way yet. This is a balance. We could put it like this: live so you will have no regrets if you die tomorrow but also no regrets if you don’t. The first part might prompt you to quit the job you hate, but the second should stop you from punching your boss on the way out.

Third, the wisdom literature addresses our natural tendency to focus on the dark side of life. True enough, we have a powerful drive to live on, and true enough, it will be thwarted. That is our curse. But let us look at the flip side of those facts. This urge is part of our evolutionary inheritance, without which our ancestors would not have survived or undergone the trials of childbirth—in other words, without which we would not be here. That an unbroken chain of many millions of ancestors over billions of years all managed to do their bit to bring us into existence, that is our blessing. And it is an extraordinary one, involving more strokes of luck and cosmic coincidences than are possibly countable.

We can barely begin to measure the good fortune that led to the development first of life, then of animals, of mammals, of humans, of your family, and, finally, of you. Complex life—and in particular the life of any individual—is remarkable. Astonishing. Wondrous. And it would not have happened without the cycle of birth and death. If our fishy ancestors some few hundred million years ago had attained immortality instead of making way for the next generation, we would never have come to be. A long, long history of death has made possible the incredible fact that you are alive now.

Added to that, the very faculties that make you aware of death also enable you to love, experience the sublime, appreciate art, connect with other people and with nature, to build and create and understand. Modern science has if anything taught us that these facts—of life and mind—are even more extraordinary than our ancestors might have thought. And what these facts suggest is that before we rue our plight of a short life overshadowed by death, 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.

This is part of what the barmaid was trying to tell Gilgamesh: appreciate what you have. The Bible too, like almost every other religious tradition, contains enjoinders to be thankful. With the Epicureans and the Stoics, gratitude became part of a systematic philosophy. The Greek Epicurean Philodemus, for example, wrote, “Receive each additional moment of time in a manner appropriate to its value; as if one were having an incredible stroke of luck”—something that should be even easier now we know that each moment of life really
is
an incredible stroke of luck. Instead of being resentful that it will end, we should be grateful for every minute of it. Then when your time comes, in the words of Marcus Aurelius, “go to your rest with a good grace, as an olive falls in its season, with a blessing for the earth that bore it and a thanksgiving to the tree that gave it life.”

We have evolved to focus on what we stand to lose—ultimately on the threat of death—causing us to live in fear instead of reveling in the extraordinary good fortune of being. Overcoming such an instinct is not easy: it takes continual work, lest we drift back to the evolved norm. Religions from Christianity to Buddhism have developed practices that help people internalize a grateful attitude, such as daily prayers of thanks. Modern positive psychologists advocate various secular equivalents, such as keeping a daily journal of things for which one might be grateful.

Tacky as this might sound to some, the effects can be extraordinary.

Robert Emmons, a leading researcher into the effects of gratitude, after surveying the evidence concluded that “gratitude is positively related to such critical outcomes as life satisfaction, vitality, happiness, self-esteem, optimism, hope, empathy, and the willingness to provide emotional and tangible support for other people, whereas being ungrateful is related to anxiety, depression, envy, materialism, and loneliness.” It is no coincidence that gratitude is one of the common themes throughout the world’s wisdom literature and a powerful antidote to the fear of death. As the Greek Stoic Epictetus put it, “He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”

T
HE
difference between those who swallow 250 dietary supplements per day and the rest of us is not that they will live forever and we will not. No: we will all die, even the transhumanists. The difference is that they tell themselves a story about achieving “longevity escape velocity,” which helps them to alleviate their existential angst. They are therefore following a long tradition of elixir seekers, resurrectionists, reincarnationists and others who have attempted to deny the fact of death.

Most of this book has been concerned with exploring how these immortality narratives have shaped civilization—for good and ill—and whether they have any plausibility. The conclusion is that whatever plausibility they have, it is not enough: they are all fatally (if you excuse the pun) flawed. But more than that, we have seen that by taking the fear of death at face value, all four immortality narratives exacerbate the very attitudes that underpin that fear. By encouraging people to obsess about their own health, or the state of their own soul, or their particular legacy, they encourage the very self-centered, future-oriented and negative view that caused the fear in the first place.

The fact is, we have not evolved to be carefree and joyful; we have evolved to strive to perpetuate ourselves—at the expense of everything else, including our happiness. The immortality narratives only fuel this striving and its underlying causes. Although these narratives might sometimes succeed in assuaging our existential angst, they are not otherwise a recipe for contentment. The Wisdom Narrative is different: instead of dismissing existential anxiety by denying death, it attacks the underlying attitudes that make us think we ought to be afraid of death in the first place. By doing so, it aims to cultivate an appreciation of this life and this world, as it is, right now.

This is not easy: as we have seen, the attitudes and virtues we need run contrary to powerful impulses. They must therefore be actively developed. This is something the ancient philosophers knew: the Stoic teacher Epictetus, for example, believed that any doctrine that was merely theoretical was pseudo-philosophy—the real thing had to be practiced daily. Stoics therefore followed daily exercises to train themselves in wisdom—an approach to life that will be familiar to many religious practitioners. Even the Dalai Lama will tell you that compassion for all living things does not always come easily.

I am not claiming that all people would be happier if they gave up their immortality narratives. No doubt some people are muddling along just fine with, for example, their reassuring belief in an immortal soul. But I am claiming that giving up these narratives need not lead to nihilism and despair—that, contrary to Tennyson, we need not hurl ourselves into the sea. The Wisdom Narrative is a powerful alternative to these beliefs, one that balances a positive love of life with managing the fear of that life’s end. And by focusing our attention on the here and now and on the world outside of the self, it might also help to make the one life we have a better, richer, more meaningful one.

But will civilization grind to a halt if the masses stop their ceaseless pursuit of eternity? We have seen many times in this study how the pursuit of immortality has motivated almost every aspect of our
cultural development. Nonetheless, this need not mean that if we accept mortality we will all be back living in caves. For a start, there is nothing in the Wisdom Narrative that undermines the value of a long and secure life: we still have a reason to build strong houses and take our medicine, even to pursue a cure for cancer. And we will still have reason to partake in those civilized activities that bring us joy, whether making music, playing football or tending roses. Some of these pursuits might have developed as means to perpetuate ourselves into the future, but that does not mean we can’t enjoy them knowing they won’t. If we have evolved to take pleasure in having children, then we should continue to do so—and relieved of the illusion that they are our immortality vehicle, we (and they) might even enjoy it all the more.

We would also have reason to practice those activities that give meaning to life, such as caring for others or furthering knowledge. Even spirituality: although most religions have a strong immortality narrative, they mostly also have other elements that fit in the wisdom tradition. We have seen that this is the case with those religions that consider the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible to be scripture, and it is also the case with Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism and most forms of New Age and alternative spirituality. But the virtues of gratitude, mindfulness and empathy with others are also all compatible with naturalism—that is, a worldview that rejects the supernatural—and can bring what we might consider a spiritual dimension to this philosophy.

There are ways in which a civilization that rejects the immortality narratives might even be better than those we know. We have seen that a focus on this world rather than the next has unleashed hugely positive social reform—those who know this life is their only shot are less likely to tolerate injustice and oppression. Perhaps some people would work less hard to create a name or fortune or other legacy that might outlive them—but this is as often done through destructive means as constructive, so it too might be no bad thing.
And it is easy to see how the cultivation of empathy could lead to progress: the world would probably be a better place if we in developed countries worried a bit less about whether we will live to one hundred and a bit more about whether children born in the poorest countries will live to see their first birthday.

A civilization of those who face up to their mortality is therefore one worth striving for. Indeed, combining this with the rest of the Wisdom Narrative, we could even boldly claim that awareness of mortality offers the best of all possible situations: knowing that life will have an end puts a limit on our time and so makes it valuable. The fact of mortality imparts to our existence an urgency and allows us to give it shape and meaning—we have reason to get up in the morning and engage with the world while we can; we have reason to make this the best of all worlds, because we know there is no other. Yet that which sets the limit—death—is not something we can ever suffer from or in any way experience. As essentially living things, we cannot even literally be dead. All we can ever know is life, and by accepting that it is finite, we can also know to treasure it.