Immortality

by Stephen Cave

  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.

  Our lives are bounded by beginning and end yet composed of moments that can reach out far beyond ourselves, touching other people and places in countless ways. In this sense, they are like a book, which is self-contained within its covers yet able to encompass distant landscapes, exotic figures and long-gone times. The book’s characters know no horizons; they, like we, can only know the moments that make up their lives, even when the book is closed. They are therefore untroubled by reaching the last page. And so it should be with us.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THE idea for this book goes back to the graduate work I did at Cambridge in the 1990s. I would first like to thank my then PhD supervisor, Eric Olson, who more than anyone has attempted to teach me the business of philosophy and who has continued to advise and encourage me since, including on this work.

  I completed the book in Berlin while on a long secondment from the British Diplomatic Service; my thanks to those in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who allowed this to happen, and to all my friends there who have given support and encouragement.

  I am also grateful to my agents, Matthias Landwehr, Frank Jakobs, Zoë Pagnamenta and Robert Kirby, for their faith in this project and their highly professional work in ensuring it found an audience. And I am particularly grateful to my editor at Crown, Rick Horgan, whose suggestions have made this a bigger and better book than it would otherwise have been.

  I would also like to thank those people who have read or advised on the manuscript and whose comments have helped give some polish to what was at first very rough: Sten Inge Jørgensen, Stefan Klein and the other members of the Berlin Lunar Society; Polina Aronson, Annette Barnes, Elly Truitt and Toby Rouse.

  There are two people without whom this book would be barely imaginable, whose influence reaches from the first word to the last. First, I am very grateful to Samuel Tracey, with whom I have been discussing these questions for nearly two decades and yet who remains an endless source of fresh ideas and good humor.

  And most of all, I would like to thank my wife, Friederike von Tiesenhausen. I and this work have benefited beyond measure from her insightful suggestions and exceptional editing, and even more from her boundless love, patience and support. It is to her that this book is dedicated.

  NOTES AND FURTHER READING

  IN this section are references for all works that have cited, plus others that may be useful for a reader wishing to find out more. Many, many other works have influenced me in the course of my research, both directly for this book and earlier; my thanks to their authors and apologies that they remain here unmentioned.

  CHAPTER 1: A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN HAS COME

  The best popular introduction to Nefertiti is Joyce Tyldesley’s Nefertiti: Egypt’s Sun Queen (Penguin, 2005). There are numerous good accounts of Akhenaten’s life and times. Nicholas Reeves’s Akhenaten: Egypt’s False Prophet (Thames and Hudson, 2001) is well illustrated and readable, if unflattering. There are also many entertaining fictional accounts of both Nefertiti’s and Akhenaten’s lives, including one by Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth, Bantam Doubleday, 2000).

  Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt by John H. Taylor (British Museum Press, 2001) is a comprehensive guide to all things mummy related. The Akhenaten expert Barry Kemp’s How to Read the “Egyptian Book of the Dead” (Granta, 2007) is an excellent short guide to Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife, while the Egyptian Book of the Dead itself is available in many translations. The fascinating idea that Akhenaten was linked to the biblical Moses is made by Sigmund Freud in Moses and Monotheism (Vintage, 1939) and is discussed by the great Egyptologist Jan Assmann in Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Harvard University Press, 1997).

  The schema of the four immortality narratives is my own. Alternative categorizations can be found in Paul Edwards’s introduction to his extremely useful edited collection Immortality (Prometheus Books, 1997); in Corliss Lamont’s equally excellent monograph The Illusion of Immortality (Continuum, 1935), which I will cite frequently in this study; and in the work of Robert Jay Lifton, such as for example Living and Dying, written with Eric Olson (Praeger, 1974).

  The Zygmunt Bauman quotes are from his fascinating book Mortality, Immortality, and Other Life Strategies (Polity, 1992), which I will be citing often. The two quotes by Robert Jay Lifton are from The Future of Immortality and Other Essays for a Nuclear Age (Basic Books, 1987).

  The Richard Dawkins quote is from The Selfish Gene (Oxford University Press, 1976). The Raymond D. Gastil quote is from his article “Immortality Revisited” in Futures Research Quarterly 9, no. 3 (1993). An example of the work of Antonio Damasio connecting emotions to the aim of survival is his book Descartes’ Error (Grosset Putnam, 1994). The James Chisholm quote is from Death, Hope and Sex: Steps to an Evolutionary Ecology of Mind and Morality (Cambridge University Press, 1999). Arthur Schopenhauer’s theory of the will to live can be found in his monumental work The World as Will and Representation (available in various editions, first published 1818). The Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza also expressed the thought that the essence of life was to indefinitely “persist in its own being” in 1676 (in his magnum opus Ethics).

  When quoting the Bible, I have variously used both The New Revised Standard Version (Anglicized Edition) (1995) and the Authorised King James Version with Apocrypha (as published by Oxford University Press, 1997).

  Martin Heidegger’s thoughts on “being-toward-death” can be found in Being and Time (English edition: Blackwell, 1962). The Jorge Luis Borges quote is from his short story “The Immortal,” first published in his collection The Aleph in 1949 (available in translation in a Penguin Modern Classics edition). Mich
el de Montaigne’s thoughts on death are taken from his essay “To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die” (first published 1580, available from Penguin Books, translated by M. A. Screech).

  Freud’s comments on the impossibility of imagining nonexistence are from his essay “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death” (1915, available for example in the collection Civilization, Society and Religion, Penguin, 1991). The Edward Young quote is from his poem “Night Thoughts” (1742–1745). Jessie Bering reports his research into the cognitive mechanisms underpinning belief in immortality in his book The God Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny and the Meaning of Life (Nicholas Brealey, 2010).

  The quote by the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana is from Reason in Religion (first published 1905, reissued by Bibliobazaar in 2009 and available online). Also see the chapter “Death” in the philosopher Thomas Nagel’s The View from Nowhere (Oxford University Press, 1986) for a discussion of the distinction between first-person and third-person perspectives on one’s own death.

  Freud’s disciple Otto Rank did the most to develop the idea that this could be important in understanding human culture, in particular in Psychology and the Soul (first published in German in 1930, available in English from Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). It was Rank’s work that subsequently inspired the anthropologist Ernest Becker to write his Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Denial of Death (Free Press, 1973) and his book Escape from Evil (Free Press, 1975), which portray civilization as a series of “immortality projects.” Becker in turn inspired Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski in their research on the impact of mortality awareness on other beliefs—see for example their paper “Tales from the Crypt: On the Role of Death in Life” (first published in Zygon 33, no. 1 [March 1998], and available online), from which the quotes are taken.

  The quote by Bryan Appleyard is from his entertaining account of the modern quest for medical immortality, How to Live Forever or Die Trying (Simon and Schuster, 2007).

  CHAPTER 2: MAGIC BARRIERS

  There are a couple of introductory biographies of the First Emperor available, of which the best is Jonathan Clements’s The First Emperor of China (Sutton Publishing, 2006). But such biographies largely only retell, with a bit of extra context, the stories told by the only substantial historical source on the emperor’s life: the “historical records” of the Chinese court historian Sima Qian, written in the second century BCE. Those parts of the records that concern the First Emperor have been collected and published in a fine Oxford Classics edition translated by Raymond Dawson and titled The First Emperor: Selections from the Historical Records (Oxford University Press, 2007). The beautiful 2002 film Hero, directed by Zhang Yimou, is a stylized retelling of the assassination attempts on the First Emperor.

  The Borges quote on the Great Wall and the book burning is from his short essay “The Wall and the Books,” first published in 1961 in the collection Antología Personal (this translation by Gaither Stewart and available online).

  The Arthur C. Clarke quote is from Profiles of the Future (Phoenix, 1961).

  The ancient Egyptian elixir recipe referred to is from the Edwin Smith Papyrus, held by the New York Academy of Medicine. The modern research into the use of the Chinese medicinal herb astragalus was reported in the New Scientist on November 13, 2008 (“ ‘Elixir of Youth’ Drug Could Fight HIV and Ageing” by Linda Geddes).

  The Gerald Gruman quote is from his excellent 1965 study, A History of Ideas About the Prolongation of Life (reissued by the International Longevity Center), from which I have also taken the quote by Roger Bacon on alchemy (originally from part 6 of his Opus Majus, translated by Robert Belle Burke, Russell & Russell, 1928). Gruman’s book takes the reader up to 1800; David Boyd Haycock’s Mortal Coil: A Short History of Living Longer (Yale University Press, 2008) picks up the life-extension story in the eighteenth century and takes it up to the modern day. It is from here that I have taken the details and quote relating to the Steinach operation.

  The set of yogurt commercials mentioned is the prize-winning “In Soviet Georgia” campaign from Dannon yogurt, which ran from 1973 to 1978.

  There are numerous introductions to Taoism (also spelled “Daoism”) available. A particularly charming one is Taoism: The Quest for Immortality by John Blofeld (Unwin, 1979), though it is a little old-fashioned. There are also many Taoist texts on immortality available in English translation, such as The Jade Emperor’s Mind Seal Classic: The Taoist Guide to Health, Longevity, and Immortality, compiled by Stuart Alve Olson (Inner Traditions, 2003). The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu is also widely available in translation.

  The Japanese fairy tale about Xu Fu and Sentaro is usually known as “The Story of the Man Who Did Not Wish to Die” and can be found in numerous collections, including for example Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki (1908). Another entertaining, if old-fashioned, source of Chinese and Japanese folklore is Donald MacKenzie’s China and Japan: Myths and Legends (Senate, 1923), which includes many of the tales of elixirs and immortal islands.

  The Susan Ertz quote is from her novel Anger in the Sky (Harper and Broso, 1943). Karel Capek’s 1922 play The Makropulos Affair can be found in English in the collection Toward the Radical Center: A Karel Capek Reader (Catbird Press, 1990). Thought-provoking discussions of the desirability of immortality can be found in two short introductory books on the philosophy of death: Death by Geoffrey Scarre (Acumen, 2007) and Death by Todd May (Acumen, 2009), and the slightly more technical The Philosophy of Death by Steven Luper (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

  CHAPTER 3: THE VITAMIN CURE

  There are various biographies of Linus Pauling available: Linus Pauling: A Life in Science and Politics by Ted Goertzel and Ben Goertzel (Basic Books, 1995) is interesting for the fact that one of the authors—the cognitive scientist Ben Goertzel—has gone on to be a leading prophet of our immortalist future. Thomas Hager’s Force of Nature: The Life of Linus Pauling (Simon and Schuster, 1995) is more comprehensive while remaining accessible. But the interested reader might just as well turn to the writings of Pauling himself: his How to Live Longer and Feel Better (Avon Books, 1986), for example, is still widely available and a good introduction to his views on the importance of vitamins, whereas Linus Pauling in His Own Words: Selections from His Writings, Speeches and Interviews (edited by Barbara Marinacci, Touchstone, 1995) includes extracts on science, politics and medicine.

  The ancient Egyptian medical papyrus referred to is the Ebers Papyrus at the University of Leipzig, Germany. The Linus Pauling quote on life as a relationship between molecules is from the above-mentioned biography by Thomas Hager. The quote by Nicolas de Condorcet is from his classic treatise on the idea of progress: Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind (available in various editions and online, 1795). Ivan Illich’s pathbreaking account of the spread of “medicalization” can be found in his book Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health (Pelican Books, 1975). The Zygmunt Bauman quotes are from his aforementioned Mortality, Immortality, and Other Life Strategies.

  The seekers of medical immortality are well represented by the gerontologist Aubrey de Grey, whose book Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2008, written with his assistant Michael Rae) details his Engineering Approach to defeating aging. Another enthusiastic and readable immortalist is Ray Kurzweil, as reflected in his many books and articles on the subject, most notably Fantastic Voyage: Living Long Enough to Live Forever (with Terry Grossman, Rodale, 2004), Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever (also with Terry Grossman, Rodale, 2009) and The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking, 2005).

  The Immortality Institute, an organization dedicated to promoting radical life extension, has also published a collection of articles on the science and philosophy of the immortalists (including by Kurzweil and de Grey) called The Scientific Conquest of Death: Essays on Infinite Lifespans (Li
bros en Red, 2004). At the time this book went to print, this collection was also available to download for free from imminst.org/book.

  A philosophical defense of radical life extension is offered by the work of John Harris, for example in Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making People Better (Princeton University Press, 2007), whereas those altogether opposed to such attempts are well represented by Francis Fukuyama in his book Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (Profile Books, 2002).

  Bryan Appleyard’s aforementioned How to Live Forever or Die Trying and Jonathan Weiner’s Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality (HarperCollins, 2010) both give good (somewhat skeptical) layman’s accounts of the modern life-extension movement’s aims and leading personalities.

  The demographer who calculated that curing cancer would add only three years to our lives was S. Jay Olshansky, and the pessimistic view of the possibility of radical life extension can be found in his book (with Bruce A. Carnes) The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging (W. W. Norton, 2001). An excellent overview of the science of life, death, aging and immortality can be found in The Living End by the gerontologist Guy Brown (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

  The figures cited for the average life expectancy of medical immortals calculated by Professor Steven N. Austad are taken from personal correspondence with the author. His book Why We Age (John Wiley & Sons, 1997) is a very good introduction to the aging process—including why it is unlikely we will ever be able to fully defeat it.

  The former British astronomer royal and president of the Royal Society, Martin Rees, has written a terrifying account of the many ways in which our species might be doomed: Our Final Century: Will the Human Race Survive the Twenty-first Century? (Heinemann, 2003).