February 11, 2014 • 42 mins
Humans are haunted by death. It awaits us all with open arms and all we can do is dream of its blissful antithesis: immortality. And so we've constructed a fortress of ideas to protect us against the terror of impermanence: astral bodies, bodily resurrection, reincarnation and the immaterial soul. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie discuss the Terror Management Theory, which holds that fear of death and the quest for immortality command every facet of our lives. Discover how reminders of mortality affect or personal ethics and decision making, from the cash register to the voting booth.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to bow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
you live in Atlanta, Georgia. I live in Atlanta, Georgia,
or we live in to Caatijo, wherever we're in the
vast frawl that that that we call the city of Atlanta.
(00:25):
And uh, you have therefore been to the Bodies Exhibit,
because I think it's been entombed here in the city
for like a decade now. Yeah. Actually, I probably was
one of the first people who was lining up to
see that exhibit, sure that it would be gone within
weeks and I would never have a chance to see
these plastic sized cadavers frolicking around playing basketball. Yeah, we
(00:47):
had no idea that we would see flyers and and
posters for the Body's Exhibit for almost almost the next
ten years. It's it feels like on like every surface
imaginable on the Marta train, it just gets to where
your board with with it. You're just on your commute,
you're you're reading a book. You look up, Oh, there's
a flayed Chinese man. Yeah, although every once in a
while it will sort of catch me off guard. Like
(01:09):
if I come up an escalator and I saw I
see this raw imagery of this physical body in front
of me, I will be kind of shocked a bit
because it's really I mean, it's the human body stripped
to its bare essence. It's a reminder that we die,
that we are this material, and we're ephemeral beings that
this material it rots, it leaves. But the question is
(01:32):
is taking a cadaver, removing its skin, plasticizing it, and
then rearranging it. Is this really a confrontation with death? Yeah?
Because what goes through your mind when you confront this
this image of this this flayed body that's been it's
been essentially turned to plastic, but to retaining all of
its its features and surfaces. Uh, what are we thinking
(01:53):
when we watch it play chess or play basketball or
whatever the pose happens happens to be um, A lot
of the personality is taken away when you remove the
skin from it. It becomes more of an anatomical specimen
than a person. If you have any any lingering concerns
about who was this, this guy, this, this girl, you
know in their former life and and this is something
(02:15):
they wanted for themselves. Those tend that those thoughts that
tend to come later after you have left the facility. Yeah.
According to Jane Desmond, she's a professor of anthropology at
the University of Illinois and an author on a paper
on this very topic, she says, this process of subtraction
that's taken away all the social markers in a sense,
idealizes and universalizes these individuals so that symbolically they come
(02:39):
to stand for undifferentiated humans, which allows us to look
with impunity. Impunity because we're not really looking at the
person or an individual. And she says, in many ways,
we don't see graphic images of death. We see fictionalized
images of death. Yeah. And I would also add that
that the bodies exhibit in the in the way that
these these cadavers are are frozen in time like this,
(03:04):
they're more symbols of life than death. You're seeing like
this eternally living uh sample of physiology before you. You're
not seeing a rotting body. You're seeing this eternally fresh
red uh, you know, just right off the meat counter body.
That's I love the way you put that, because it
really does show you the distance that we have put
(03:25):
between ourselves and death. We think we're confronting it because
we're seeing the human body which is no longer alive,
laid bare, but really we are immortalizing it. Yeah, and
I imagine that's not what the Gunte von Hagens, the
German physician and anatomist uh that created the body's exhibit,
really wanted for us. Uh. Gunther On Haggins seems like
(03:46):
a guy who's all about confronting death. He himself often
talks about his inevitable demise from Parkinson's disease, so it's
it's interesting that he's created something that distances us from
death rather than brings us closer to our under standing
of it. Well, and in a sense too, he's immortalizing
himself through this act right live on in history as
(04:07):
the person who came up with this plastination technique which
allowed people to really view cadavers in various ways, whether
or not they were reconfigured to look like they were
playing sports, or maybe one section of their body was
cut up so much so that you could really see
the tissues in a way that had never really been
displayed before. So I wanted to bring up this this
(04:28):
idea by Burned Heinrich, and I'm reading a book by
him right now called Everlasting Life, and it's about insect
and animal death and it's really interesting, and he says
that human death is becoming more and more divorced from nature.
We pump are dead with polluting chemicals like formaldehyde. We
put them into airtight boxes and then plant them in
precious real estate that could be used for agriculture. We
(04:51):
think we're denying death that way. Yeah, it's ridiculous. I've
I've thought this for some time. It's just look, go
to these remarkable meanings to distance ourselves not only from
the decay of the body, but but also from the
act of dying. I mean, we have whole institutions in
place so that we don't have to confront the realities
(05:11):
of physical death, right so much so to the point
that we're embalming ourselves and this hope that there's some
sort of immortality available to us. And that's what we're
gonna talk about today, This idea of immortality, why it's problematic,
and why we need this story of immortality yea, and
arguably why immortality and the quest for immortality is at
(05:34):
the heart of every human endeavor. Now we'll we'll put
that to you the end of the episode. If you
believe that that the quest for immortality is in fact
such a vital part of who we are as humans,
or if there's a little more to us right like
on a day to day basis, could it be affecting
our decisions? Yeah, we shall see. Now, I feel like
we should before we go further, we should discuss our
(05:56):
own takes on this. I feel like I probably think
about death a lot, and I feel like I've always
kind of thought about death. Um Like, I can't remember
a time when when I when I didn't think about it,
and and and it's not not like I was encountering
death at an early stage in life. You know, my
life was was comfortably death free for for the longest
(06:19):
period of time. But it seems like there's always been
a kind of confrontation of it, at least in the
media that I've consumed throughout my life. So it seems
like I've I've always been there with it. Yeah. I
I have said before that this podcast has had me
thinking about it quite a bit um since we began.
Although I am difficult to work with right, right, I'll
(06:40):
just bring me death, no, but more and from the
route of consciousness, because I equate you know, non consciousness,
not so much sleep or or even coma with death.
But you know, basically, when you start thinking about consciousness
and life and you begin to try to center where
all this is coming from, inevitably you will land on
(07:01):
the death card and start to think about that. So
when we struck upon this talk by Stephen Cave who
has a book out about immortality and and he discusses
these various ways in which we approach immortality, it really
struck me because he says that we can't help it.
(07:22):
We humans have several different ways that we create this
narrative of immortality. And he says, really there are four
different types of it. One really well known. In fact,
it's a pretty historical one. I think everybody is familiar
with resurrection, this idea that you might come back to
life after dying, and this is a belief that is
(07:42):
found in various religions. We're talking about a literal resurrection
of the body, but also a heavenly resurrection or a
recycling of the soul into a new body and time,
which leads to different ideas about what this resurrection could be. Yeah,
this one's pretty pretty fabulous because again it's part of
(08:02):
the three major Judaeo Christian religions, I mean Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam. And it's the idea that resurrection life after
death involves you being born again in this body or
perhaps in another body just like this one, and we
it's it's often, it's often something that you end up
skimming over within those faiths. You end up being told,
(08:24):
all right, yeah, you know there's a bodily resurrection, but
you really end up buying into other ideas of resurrection
that we'll discuss um. Because there are so many complications.
You get into questions of well, which version of me,
which which body is going to come back? And my
coming back is this this rotting body of this uh,
this preserved body. What happens if something happens to the
body of the body is not not not prepared properly
(08:45):
for burial, but it's not buried the right way of
it's lost. You get into all these concerns, and then
you get into all these additional theological concerns, Well, what
happens to my soul when it's not in a body,
is there an intermediate place that it goes to? And
we touched on some of the additional issues in our
our episode on Hell and the problem with Hell when
you start figuring out, well, where does the soul go
(09:06):
when it goes to Hell, because a lot of these
interpretations of hell also require you to have a physical
body again in order for it to work, and then
in some cases your soul is destroyed. It's logistical nightmare
because yes, you, like you said, you know, if the
body didn't come back exactly as it was, what about
the soul? Do they match up? And this is really interesting.
Stephen Cave had pointed this out in his talk that
(09:28):
Romans would get so annoyed with early Christians about this
idea of resurrection that they would say, Okay, you think
this guy's coming back, We'll let me chop him up
to bits and pieces and bury him in various locations
throughout these lands, and we'll see if he gets resurrected bodily,
you know, resurrect that. It was kind of mean spirited
by the Romans, you have to admit though they were
(09:51):
trying to prove a point, But yes, it was um
any anytimes you're anytime you're chopping up a corpse. Just
despite your seria, it's you're you're in a weird area
and you need to rethink where you are. But but
to your point, uh, it does. It's just one slice
of the cake when you're looking at the problems and
trying to square away, um, how bodily resurlection resurrection would work.
(10:15):
And then you've got that soul, the idea that this
soul might persist. Yeah, this now, the idea that there
is this um, this part of us that is spirit.
That's of course, and it's a very ancient idea. You
look back to the the ancient Egyptians, you look back
to even more primitive models, uh, and you will see
this idea that there's something in us that lives on. Now,
(10:36):
they're sort of cave focuses on just one version of this,
but they're they're according to some other experts, they're they're
kind of two. One is the idea of an astral body. Now,
that's the idea that when we're alive, we're just kind
of this conjoined thing. We have two bodies. We have
a physical body and an astral body living is one.
And then when that physical body dies this astral body
(10:57):
lives on to U two, mourn for our own death too,
maybe haunt somewhere, to say goodbye to loved ones, to
go off wandering through the universe, what have you? Uh.
But and it's and it's worth on. This is the idea,
this is the the immortality, this is the life after
death that is most commonly encountered in works of fiction.
Jacob Marley's ghost that is essentially an astral body. It's
(11:19):
really convenient, yeah, because your your body dies and then
there's this sort of see through you that looks just
like you. It's it's a Hamlet's ghost. And it's also
a kind of version of life after death that we
often end up buying into, at least a little bit,
you know now and again, despite what we believe, uh,
you know, based on our faith, based on our science,
based on our reason as we discussed in our Hell episode. Uh,
(11:42):
it's it's rare for someone to really have one solid
idea of what they think the soul is and what
the the the afterlife may or may not consist of.
We're we're likely to dabble, as humans were likely to
entertain certain ideas or believe in things on one level,
while we don't believe in them in the other, and
the astral body is one of them. Now, from the
(12:02):
astral body, we get into the idea of the immaterial soul. Well, now,
what's the difference. The difference is that the astral body
is like, my body dies, and here's this version of me,
that spirit that looks just like me. But the immaterial
soul doesn't necessarily look like a body. It's just like
it's an energy. It's it can't be perceived by the senses,
and and it and it doesn't need the body to exist. Right,
(12:23):
And that idea dates back at least in a formal
form to Plato. So again, im material soul, astral body.
It's a great literary device, right, because you can really
call into that presence. But there's this idea that we
all have that there's this core to ourselves, you know,
that perhaps could persist beyond us, that what makes me
(12:44):
me certainly couldn't die with my physical body. Yeah, and
Plato is really into it based on two core arguments.
One was the cycle of opposites. This is the idea
that that that everything in the natural world hasn't has
an opposite, And these opposites are often interlocked. So death
comes from life, and therefore life must come from death
and uh, and the other the other argumenting makes is
(13:07):
is reminiscence. And this is the idea that that the
view of learning is really the process of remembering knowledge
from past lives, which, you know, you could take that
in different interpretations. You could just go on with the
straight up um um, you know, hippie dippie past lives
kind of view, where you know, I've been an Egyptian
king in my past life, or you can maybe even
look at that from a sort of a genetic counterpoint.
(13:27):
That's one of the interesting things when you start looking
at at some of these ideas of immortality, like what, uh,
you know, what is reminiscence, but but epigenetic or genetic
influence on who you are, you can sort of go
wild with sort of breaking these down and trying to
apply Yeah, you're not going to have your grandmother's um
sort of our great grandmother's ghostly experiences, but as you say,
(13:49):
you might have epigenetic markers of her physical experience manifest
themselves in you later in physical ways in which genetics
get turned on and off. So that's very interesting. The
third way that Cave says that we are chasing immortality
is that we're trying to solve death. And he says,
this has been going on for time immemorial, and you've
got alchemy and now you have all sorts of different technologies.
(14:12):
Today you have nanotechnology, you have different ways of delivering drugs.
This is and we've talked about this with Aubrey de
Gray who says that the first person UH to live
to five hundred years old has already been born today
because we have these sort of technologies that can maintain
our bodies like a classic car. And you start to
think about this, You think our ancestors lived to be
(14:32):
forty years old. We now have a life expectancy of
eighty years old currently right now. Um, is this a
kind of Moore's law of life expectancy that is emerging
the you know, the Moore's law of the idea that
computer processing can be doubled every two years. So in
the same way, you know, every x amount of decades
(14:54):
is human life extending by twenty years. Yeah. He makes
an impressive argument and uh, and he also takes the
war against death, which is that's the whole topic in itself,
I mentioned, but he breaks it down into into core
arguably winnable battles like this is what death is. This
is what is happening on a physical level to the body.
(15:16):
And here are the areas where we can we could
fight it. We figured, you know, and we discussed in
the past, past episode, So I'll refer you back to
that for all the details are degree in its ways
to vanquish death. Yeah. So the fourth type of immortality
that Stephen Cave says we we are after is narrative.
And this is what we were sort of alluding to
with the body's exhibit. Here we have this kind of
(15:38):
narrative unfolding that will ensure some sort of immortality of
the story of the bodies that are displayed of the
person who created this plascination technique. Yeah, it's the idea
that even though everything that we are is going to
cease to exist at some point, the things that we created,
the things that we influenced, are going to live on, um,
you know, not forever, but at least for a while, right,
(16:01):
and are close enough to forever for the you know,
for that brief life that we have. Yeah. Again, this
idea that through achievement by becoming so famous that your
your name lives on or infamous. Right. You know, if
you can't give the fame, go for the infamy. It's
generally easier to achieve, which, as we will discuss in
a little bit, could be tied up with the ways
(16:23):
that we behave. All right, before we go into that,
in this idea of being terrified of death and something
called terror management theory, let's take a quick break. All right,
we are back, and before we get into terror management theory,
(16:43):
we have to talk about someone named Ernest Becker, Yes,
Ernest Becker, and he is the author of the book
The Denial of Death, and this is where we get
the idea of Terror management theory or t MT. That's right,
he was anthropologies. I actually want to polish a prize
for that work. It's in nineteen seventy three work and
among other things Becker Becker proposed that in times of crisis,
(17:06):
when fears of death are aroused, people are more likely
to embrace leaders who provide psychological security by making their
citizens feel like they are valued contributors to a great
mission to eradicate evil. And that is what this terror
management theory is built on. It was proposed by social
(17:27):
psychologists in nineteen eighties six Jeff Greenberg, Tom Paczynski, and
Sheldon Solomon, and it was initiated by two really simple questions.
The first one was why do people have such a
great need to feel good about themselves? And too, why
do people have so much trouble getting along with those
people who have different ideas from them. Yeah, this is
(17:48):
a fascinating theory and one that really really drives home
a lot of what you end up seeing in the
world around you, especially as far as fearmongering, because when
political voices, when media voices start beating the wards ms
start mongering up all of that fear, they're playing into
t MT, that's right. Sheldon Solomon, who is one of
the authors of Terror Management Theory, in an interview with
(18:11):
John oh Lair for Scientific Americans, said, quote, although self
awareness gives rise to unbridled awe and joy, it can
also lead to the potentially overwhelming dread engendered by the
realization that, wait for this, it's so brutal, that death
is inevitable, that it can occur for reasons that can
never be anticipated or controlled, and that humans are corporeal
(18:33):
creatures breathing pieces of defecating meat no more significant or
enduring than porcupines of peaches. But he says that humans
as ingenious as we are have actually unconsciously solved this
existential dilemma by developing cultural world views. This has been
our savior when we are met with this kind of terror. Yeah,
(18:54):
and the world view doesn't. We're not just talking about
views on what happening to the state of the soul
in the afterlife, but also views about what is important
in life? What is uh, you know, what are the
values I hold to? What what is the the US
group that I'm a part of, and what are the
other groups outside of my world view outside of this
this sphere that I've built for myself with ideas, this
(19:17):
fortress of ideas. Uh. This this whole TMT issue um
terror management theory really brings to mind a scene from
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Willie want them, you know,
the scene where they drink the fizzy lifting uh liquid
for fizzy liquid juice or soda or whatever it's it's called.
They're in this huge cylindrical room, right, they drink this
(19:41):
uh this stuff and they start floating and they're floating
them in the bubbles, and it's all fun and games
until they realize that there is a big circular fan
at the top of the room, and then if they
keep floating up, they're gonna be chopped to pieces. So
as they float up and up, they suddenly become aware.
You know, at first, it's just all dreams and giggles.
Though I'm floating around. It's wonderful. But then they realize
they're going to die, and then so what do they
(20:02):
start doing? Then they start figuring out how am I
going to stop? How am I gonna what am I
gonna do? And so what do you what are you doing?
That state the only thing you can do is reach
out and try and grab the structures around you in
these In this case, the structures are these worldviews that
we've built for ourselves, things that that that seem or
we've certainly built up to be solid, something to to
(20:23):
give us some grounding about our place in the universe,
about what's important, why it's important, and and and and
and why life itself is important. Yeah, Solomon says that
we manage this, this potentially paralyzing terror resulting from this
awareness of death, that fan, that we're being sucked into
and that cultures provide three things, one meaning by offering
(20:45):
an account of the origin of the universe to a
blueprint for acceptable conduct on Earth right. Three a promise
of immortality symbolically um. And it could be by a
creation of say a large monument, great works of art
or science, fortunes having children, and literally literally through various
(21:05):
kinds of afterlives that are central peace of organized religions.
And so the testable idea here is, if you confront
someone with death, are you going to can you actually
observe them reaching out and clinging to that structure, clinging
to those worldviews that they might have, you know, otherwise
otherwise drift a comfortable distance away from And is this
(21:26):
immortality narrative is it on some level destructive? Yeah? And
then the hidden question, and that is our most world views,
in their in their more little interpretation, destructive. But I'll
leave that to to our listeners to consider. Yeah. I mean,
because again we're talking about conceiving of death and very
abstract terms. Um. So when we fly too close to
(21:46):
that son of death, you know, we we we do
get singed by it, and we recoil and back into
ourselves and back into that immortality narrative. And the thing
that makes us fly too close that son of death
is something called mortality salience. Yeah, and that's just straight
up that moment when you realize, hey, I'm gonna die,
(22:08):
the closer you are to the reality uh and the
the well, maybe not acceptance of death, but at least
the confrontation of death. Now. Solomon says that there's a
huge body of evidence that shows that's just that momentarily, uh,
thinking about death typically by asking people to think about themselves.
Dying intensifies as people strivings to protect and bolster the
(22:31):
aspects of the world views that they coddle and hold dear. Yeah,
I mean it's we all encounter little bits of this
in our own life. You know, something, something bad happens
in the world. Are you hear you hear a story
about someone else in in your city or your neighborhood
dying or suffering, uh, some sort of bad bit of luck.
And then suddenly you're a little more like, well, maybe
(22:52):
I should, uh you know, maybe I should go home
and check on the house. Maybe I should uh you know,
upgrade the security systems. Maybe I should do this to
the other Suddenly the threats in life become a little
more real and it's changed your behavior. Right, you go
out and you get in his security systems. There have
been three hundred independent studies about mortality salience in whether
(23:12):
or not effects our behavior and in twenty different countries
that has lent support to this idea of terror management theory.
But perhaps one of the first studies is the most
startling in its ability to show people doubling down on
their beliefs when they think that they've been violated and
they're reminded at death at the same time. And Solomon
(23:32):
in his team pursued this with a group of judges. Yes,
this took place in Tucson, Arizona, and uh and involved
it involved actually recruited court judges because they wanted people
who whose job it is in theory to make unbiased
decisions about about issues of well, if not mortality, than
(23:54):
at least ethics and law rational thinkers. Yeah, so, so
what do they confront them with? A nice sort of
a nice gray area, a nice a nice mortal quandary
for anyone to to chew over prostitution of course, Okay,
we're talking about twenty two municipal court judges, and they
were told that in the study that the team was
(24:17):
studying the relation between personality traits, attitudes and bond decisions.
Bond decisions, of course, being that sum of money that
judges will assign that a defendant pays prior to trial
so that they can be released from prison. So what
did they do Well. They gave judges a set of
questionnaires that consisted of the standard personality assessment instruments, but
(24:38):
they also squeaked in a couple of those mortality salience
in there. And they did it by asking um them
to say, please briefly describe the emotions that the thought
of your own death arouses in you. And the second
one was jotted down as specifically as you can what
you think will happen to you as you physically die
and once you're physically dead. Now, only half of those
(25:00):
twenty two judges were given these sort of doctored personality
questions that had that mortality mortality salience in them. So
they each of the judges review the brief. They they
review this case of this individual brought in on a
prostitution charge, and they have to decide where they're going
to set the bond, right, how much money is the
is the is the individual going to have to pay
(25:21):
in order to walk the streets? Again, that's right. Judges
in the control conditions set an average bond of fifty dollars.
These are the people who did not have the reminders
of death, and that's a typical charge for this kind
of case. But the judges who thought about their death
set an average bond of four hundred and fifty five dollars. Yes,
so I'd like to like for you can imagine that
(25:43):
that room in the Willy Wonka movie, and here are
the judges. He's flow here, she is floating free am
in the bubbles, you know, and and they they're thinking, oh, well, prostitution,
it's a it's a great it's a very complicated issue. Uh.
You know, a nice low bond is a is an
acceptable place, uh from to to to to decide on
this particular topic. Then there made to look up. They
(26:04):
see the fan, they think about in imminent death, and
what do they do. They reach out. They hold onto
that structure that that that worldview structure that's made out
of morals and uh and ethics and ideas about what's
wrong and right in life. Maybe some of these ideas
are things that they have they've drifted away from a
lot in their life, you know, they they've drift away
from in their professional career. But just thinking about death
(26:26):
makes them clinging back to that, uh, that skeleton of
ideas and then make this, uh, this, this rougher call
on what the bond should be said at. And the
problem is that it can really cloud your thinking, right,
and it can actually like this is the real problem,
It can cause a person to be easily manipulated. And
this is where Becker's early work really comes into play
(26:47):
concerning fear and politics, and it's something that Solomon actually
followed up on with experiments in which participants were told
to review statements from and vote for one of three
political cool candidates. Okay, and they had different leadership styles.
We're talking about charismatic, task oriented in relationship oriented. The
(27:09):
participants then selected the candidate that they would vote for. Now,
in the control condition, those people who didn't get the
death reminders, only four of participants voted for the charismatic candidate. Now,
for those people who were given the the death reminder,
there was an almost eight hundred percent increase in votes
(27:31):
for the charismatic leader. And Solomon again followed up with
several other studies concerning President Bush the Second and John
Kerry and found again and again that when those death
reminders were sublime early or overtly inserted, bushes support levels
sword the charismatic candidate. So again we're reminded of death,
(27:53):
we end up clinging to these worldviews. It's it's it's
fascinating and frightening to think about, because it really breaks
down what's happening in the world around is I'm I'm
both a large and a small level. Certainly when we
see the media or a politician, uh, you know, mongering
up those feelings of insecurity and fear, but but also
(28:15):
like the smaller moments in life, like when you see
some sort of really severe attitude on something suddenly come
out of a person that and you didn't expect it
by For instant example, this I was I was, I
was hearing about somebody talking about encountering this guy who
suddenly out of nowhere. Um mentioned that he didn't think
that his his son should wear pink, just in case
(28:35):
it would have some sort of a negative influence on
his character. For for an infant to wear the color pink.
Uh and and the the individual who said this was
somebody that when they would normally look at them and think, oh,
this this is just a normal dude. This guy doesn't
have any weird hang ups. But but now that after
I've you know, really read about this, this t M
(28:56):
T about t MT and its effects. Honest, you can
easily imagine, uh, this this being a guy who maybe
grew up with that kind of severe worldview in his
in the backbone of his of his his views on life,
he's drifted away from him. And then something like having
a child, uh bring him a little closer to that mortality,
make him have to think about that and therefore force
(29:18):
him to cling to some of these, uh, these ideas
and notions that he normally would have drifted away from. Yeah,
and you can look at heteronorms really that the basis
of that is being um motivated from fear, fear of
the other. So and by the way, pink used to
be a color that men war like back in the day.
(29:39):
I think Josh Clark usually has an article on that. Uh.
So to delightful color. I wish, you know, I wish
everyone would be cool with it. Yeah, except for that
pepptal bismol one. Yeah, that and that just reminds you
of throwing up. Yeah, and that's a shade that's often
found in hospitals, to which I find really disconcerting. But anyway,
that's for another day. Yea color color theory. That's that
(30:00):
would be a whole other episode that we should probably
do someday. We probably should. Um. But the thing is
is that we can't help but cling to these immortality myths,
these narratives. And his piece for The New York Times,
Cave actually wrote this opinion opinion piece that looks at
the BBC show Torchwood, which examines immortality and death and says,
(30:22):
what would happen to all our death defying systems? If
there were no more death, we would have no need
for progress or our faith or fame. Suddenly we would
have nothing to do. Yet, in the greatest of ironies,
we would have endless eons in which to do it.
Action would lose its purpose, in time, its value. This
is the true awfulness of immortality. Yeah, this is this
(30:44):
is where we get into the really deep far future
gazing stuff where for for a while that there's been
that idea. Okay, if we can live forever, we just
get bored. What would we do now? On one hand,
I definitely buy that because I I like to think
of of books. For instance, Uh, we've all read a
book that's that really strikes a chord with us. We're
really digging, and on some level we think, Man, I
(31:06):
wish this book would never end because I'm enjoying it
that much. But of course books follow a certain pattern.
There's a narrative arc, there's a there's a story that
has to be told, their pinpoints that have to be hit.
There's rising action, there's following action, there's a climax, uh, etcetera.
And and so it has to follow that basic pattern
in order to be effective. And that's why you're loving
(31:28):
it so much, because because it is obeying a form
and function. If it went on forever, then it would
lose that form and function, and then it would lose
its effect to to to entertain you. So and I
feel like life is sort of like that. You know,
there has to be a short amount of time in
which to accomplish things. There has to be um uh,
the rising action and following action for it all to
(31:48):
make sense. But then on the other hand, when when
mortals say, oh, immortality probably sucks because you probably would
get bored, it does sort of sound like um like
us non celebrity us, non you know, super rich people
thinking oh, well those rich people, they're they're just all miserable. Anyway,
we're in deep down. We we like to think. But
if I had it, if I had that money, if
(32:10):
I had an immortality, well, I could probably do something
proper with it. Yeah, the lottery might destroy the average
person because it's just too much money and and just
totally destroys their lives. But me, I think I might
be able to pull it off because I'm I'm a
little more grounded, and I feel like we we all
have those feelings. That is, it's the fantasy. It's again
(32:30):
the immortality fantasy that we all have that if we
could just reach it, we would do something worthwhile with it. Now,
in the meantime, we have mortality to deal with, and
so the question becomes, is there a better way to
deal with our own mortality rather than play into fear.
I mean, narratives of immortality are great, but is there
a way to be rational about death and not disince
(32:53):
ourselves from it, really examine it and be okay with it. Well,
I think what you're talking about here is simply and
we talk about it. Can we have conversations about death?
And can we you know, if not actually dragged the
bodies out into the open and um, you know, and
pull them apart. Can we at least drag the topic
out in the open and pull it apart? Yeah? No. Um.
(33:13):
Becker of The Denial of Death, which was written at
teen seventy three, said, stripping away the destructions of death quote,
with the right intensity and scope of shock, we might
even ask ourselves what are we to do with our lives?
We might then begin to think of how again to
give to people a secure feeling that their lives count,
that there is a heroic human condition contribution to be
made to cosmic life. In a dialogue with the community
(33:37):
of Once Fellows, that was very nice. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,
in a way, it's it's about taking the punch out
of death, you know, because in all this distancing ourselves
from it, which we've done just throughout human history, we
end up giving it so much more power. We i mean,
the very active personifying death of creating this kind of
(33:57):
like grim reaper image that either exist as an actual
symbol or listen on abstract symbol in the human psyche.
It comes from from this point in our time where
we we get away from the idea that death is
something that our body does, and rather it's something external.
Death is something that happens to it's death is something
that's done to us. It's an enemy that can be
thought and can be defeated and should be feared rather
(34:20):
than a natural part of the ark. You can actually
meet up at something called a death cafe if you
wanted to discuss this, and if you go to death
dot com you will be met with the message. At
death cafes, people drink tea, eat cake and discuss death.
Our aim is to increase awareness of death to help
people make the most of their finite lives. You can
(34:40):
find meetups in your city. I would hope we all listen,
we all wear black and listen to eyesters into New
Button as well. Like it seems like that would be
a good, good vibe. I'm getting a very German vibe
from all of this. I don't know, I'm getting some
like some red hat society people. Yeah, yeah, why not
cheerful discussions? Yeah, instead of going to nonsense and um, celebrating,
(35:01):
you know, with your passage into menopause, why not go
to the death cafe. That may be something that I
do instead of doing the red hat thing. Yeah, yeah,
I'm planning ahead. Well, you know, you should definitely check
one of these out and then report back. I mean,
our listeners should do the same. I was thinking about that. Actually,
you know. The one thing I always come back to
is a is something my dad told him, and he said,
(35:23):
and he was talking about death at some point, and
he said, well, you know, everybody does it, so it
couldn't be that big of a deal. And uh and
and certainly that's the case. Everybody dies. And I don't
even necessarily buy into this idea that there there's anyone
alive today that's going to live to see six years old,
or much less that six thousand year point. That actuaries
have have figured out that if you could live forever
(35:45):
like six thousand, it's pretty much the maximum you get
to without dying in a car wreck or something. Um. Yeah,
I saw that, but then I don't know, there's so
many problems I have with that. Um, it's the other
way of looking at it, in a more sort of
cosmic way to think about it is you have existence
and you have non existence, and throughout human history, each
(36:06):
of us has not existed, and then for just an
instant we've existed, and then we're gonna not exist again.
We have so much experience that not existing that we
were gonna be able to handle it just fine. This
is not gonna be really a new state for any
of us. It's gonna be returned to the status quo. Uh.
And and then another way to look at it, too
is to think about the nature of time. Uh. And
(36:28):
you know when we talk about oh, living forever, uh,
that we want to be something that that lasts in
this universe. But as we've discussed before, if you if you,
if you look at time and space and you you
take away the human perspective, uh, in time and space
are one, and there's no moment that has been or
will be or is right now that has any uh
(36:50):
any any special privilege in the time space continuum. So
in a sense, everything is currently uh nothing really was
or will be. So everything is immortal. I mean, it's
all part of the fabric of the universe. I always
think about this way. You think that Oprah is sort
of an immortal being right, everybody knows her, all corners
(37:12):
of the earth, perhaps Bill Gates even maybe there uh,
these sort of iconic images will laugh for five hundred years,
a thousand, maybe ten thousand, doubt it. But you know,
all of this, even this, even these immortality narratives that
we come up with our finite except for Gilgamesh, because
that one, which is, you know, one of the like
(37:34):
the oldest story about the quest for immortality, it sticks
with us. But otherwise the Osmandiez principle definitely applies to everybody.
No matter how awesome you are, no matter how much
of an impact you make on this life, you're probably
gonna be forgotten eventually. Now, if anybody's interested in that
six thousand year figure that we dropped, the actuaries are saying, hey,
(37:55):
that's a possibility. I believe that's from the Economist article
that features Stephen Cave. I'm sorry, I don't have the
title with me right now, but if you want to
check that out, you can just go to Economist dot com.
All right, so we have presented you with a lot
of food for thought about immortality, about the nature of
the human soul, about our about how terror management theory
(38:15):
um effects us? I mean, does the fear of death
and the quest for immortality really influence us at such
a deep and impressive level? Uh, it's it's certainly a
strong argument. Um. Also, what would happen if we if
we could live forever? That's a wonderful question to explore.
Do you think that we would get bored? Uh? And
uh and and just lose interest? Do you think that
(38:36):
we'd find enough stuff to occupy our minds for three
hundred years, six thousand years? Or what have you? Do
you believe you follow the philosophy of Emmanuel? Can't that
who who stated that if that without a belief in
God and a belief in the immortal nature of the soul,
that there would there'd be no virtue in the world
at all. That it's ultimately that that fear of of
(38:59):
what will happened to us and what will happen to
us long term, that it that informs human morality? Or
is there a kinder way for for humans to organize themselves? Also,
would you want to live forever? I would love to
see what the results are from you guys on that one. Well,
on that note, let's call over the robot because I
have a related bit of listener mail to share here.
(39:19):
This coming to us through Facebook. Alec writes in and says, Hi,
my name is Alec. I love your podcast so much
that I've been going back and listening to all the
old ones. I recently listened to the death on Ice
podcast and this brought up so many what if scenarios.
One I thought of is what if someone is signed
up to be put on ice, you know, crime frozen,
(39:41):
but committed a horrible crime and are put to death
by the state. Will they be allowed to be frozen afterwards?
Does that count is serving their sentence even if revived later.
The other interesting scenario I thought of, UH could make
a good future drama or sitcom where the guy's wife
dies and his frozen, then he marries again and him
and his current wife or frozen later and all three
(40:01):
year brought back at the same time. That'd be crazy,
and that would indeed be for make for an awesome
futuristic sitcom. But indeed, when we start talking about the
idea of living forever or uh coming back to life
in some sort of scientific sense and all with all
of its complications, then does life after death and or
(40:23):
resurrection and or immortality. Do these things become basic human
rights or these just privileges for the elite? Yeah, we
talked about this before that there's a service called Virtual
Eternity which will actually give people different levels of access
to your history and maybe even personal messages you want
to give to people in your life after you are gone.
And it brings up this whole idea of how you'll
(40:45):
be represented in this other way once you are gone.
Not to mention even just the ability one day to
try to download memories or you know, the synaptic uh
flashes that format. And if you want to see a
really cool fictional examination of that scenario, check out the
(41:05):
Black Mirror episode. I'll be right back, really top notch.
But in the meantime, you want to check out all
sorts of podcasts that we've done, all the videos, the
blog post, what have you, links to our various social
media accounts including Facebook, Twitter and all that. You need
to go to stuff to blow your mind. Dot com Uh,
that's where you find everything. That's the mothership. Oh and
I want to add real quick to if you're a
(41:26):
long term listener or a new listener, uh, and you
dig our show and you're an iTunes user, go to
iTunes and give us a positive rating because the show
has been around for a long time and uh, and
there's their views on there from our very early days
when we had a different title, different set up and
we were just learning the ropes. Uh, So we could
use a little boost in the algorithm there every now
(41:47):
and then. So, so check us out, indeed, and if
you'd like to send us a note, you can do
so at Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Does It
How Stuff Works dot com MHM
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to bow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
you live in Atlanta, Georgia. I live in Atlanta, Georgia,
or we live in to Caatijo, wherever we're in the
vast frawl that that that we call the city of Atlanta.
(00:25):
And uh, you have therefore been to the Bodies Exhibit,
because I think it's been entombed here in the city
for like a decade now. Yeah. Actually, I probably was
one of the first people who was lining up to
see that exhibit, sure that it would be gone within
weeks and I would never have a chance to see
these plastic sized cadavers frolicking around playing basketball. Yeah, we
(00:47):
had no idea that we would see flyers and and
posters for the Body's Exhibit for almost almost the next
ten years. It's it feels like on like every surface
imaginable on the Marta train, it just gets to where
your board with with it. You're just on your commute,
you're you're reading a book. You look up, Oh, there's
a flayed Chinese man. Yeah, although every once in a
while it will sort of catch me off guard. Like
(01:09):
if I come up an escalator and I saw I
see this raw imagery of this physical body in front
of me, I will be kind of shocked a bit
because it's really I mean, it's the human body stripped
to its bare essence. It's a reminder that we die,
that we are this material, and we're ephemeral beings that
this material it rots, it leaves. But the question is
(01:32):
is taking a cadaver, removing its skin, plasticizing it, and
then rearranging it. Is this really a confrontation with death? Yeah?
Because what goes through your mind when you confront this
this image of this this flayed body that's been it's
been essentially turned to plastic, but to retaining all of
its its features and surfaces. Uh, what are we thinking
(01:53):
when we watch it play chess or play basketball or
whatever the pose happens happens to be um, A lot
of the personality is taken away when you remove the
skin from it. It becomes more of an anatomical specimen
than a person. If you have any any lingering concerns
about who was this, this guy, this, this girl, you
know in their former life and and this is something
(02:15):
they wanted for themselves. Those tend that those thoughts that
tend to come later after you have left the facility. Yeah.
According to Jane Desmond, she's a professor of anthropology at
the University of Illinois and an author on a paper
on this very topic, she says, this process of subtraction
that's taken away all the social markers in a sense,
idealizes and universalizes these individuals so that symbolically they come
(02:39):
to stand for undifferentiated humans, which allows us to look
with impunity. Impunity because we're not really looking at the
person or an individual. And she says, in many ways,
we don't see graphic images of death. We see fictionalized
images of death. Yeah. And I would also add that
that the bodies exhibit in the in the way that
these these cadavers are are frozen in time like this,
(03:04):
they're more symbols of life than death. You're seeing like
this eternally living uh sample of physiology before you. You're
not seeing a rotting body. You're seeing this eternally fresh
red uh, you know, just right off the meat counter body.
That's I love the way you put that, because it
really does show you the distance that we have put
(03:25):
between ourselves and death. We think we're confronting it because
we're seeing the human body which is no longer alive,
laid bare, but really we are immortalizing it. Yeah, and
I imagine that's not what the Gunte von Hagens, the
German physician and anatomist uh that created the body's exhibit,
really wanted for us. Uh. Gunther On Haggins seems like
(03:46):
a guy who's all about confronting death. He himself often
talks about his inevitable demise from Parkinson's disease, so it's
it's interesting that he's created something that distances us from
death rather than brings us closer to our under standing
of it. Well, and in a sense too, he's immortalizing
himself through this act right live on in history as
(04:07):
the person who came up with this plastination technique which
allowed people to really view cadavers in various ways, whether
or not they were reconfigured to look like they were
playing sports, or maybe one section of their body was
cut up so much so that you could really see
the tissues in a way that had never really been
displayed before. So I wanted to bring up this this
(04:28):
idea by Burned Heinrich, and I'm reading a book by
him right now called Everlasting Life, and it's about insect
and animal death and it's really interesting, and he says
that human death is becoming more and more divorced from nature.
We pump are dead with polluting chemicals like formaldehyde. We
put them into airtight boxes and then plant them in
precious real estate that could be used for agriculture. We
(04:51):
think we're denying death that way. Yeah, it's ridiculous. I've
I've thought this for some time. It's just look, go
to these remarkable meanings to distance ourselves not only from
the decay of the body, but but also from the
act of dying. I mean, we have whole institutions in
place so that we don't have to confront the realities
(05:11):
of physical death, right so much so to the point
that we're embalming ourselves and this hope that there's some
sort of immortality available to us. And that's what we're
gonna talk about today, This idea of immortality, why it's problematic,
and why we need this story of immortality yea, and
arguably why immortality and the quest for immortality is at
(05:34):
the heart of every human endeavor. Now we'll we'll put
that to you the end of the episode. If you
believe that that the quest for immortality is in fact
such a vital part of who we are as humans,
or if there's a little more to us right like
on a day to day basis, could it be affecting
our decisions? Yeah, we shall see. Now, I feel like
we should before we go further, we should discuss our
(05:56):
own takes on this. I feel like I probably think
about death a lot, and I feel like I've always
kind of thought about death. Um Like, I can't remember
a time when when I when I didn't think about it,
and and and it's not not like I was encountering
death at an early stage in life. You know, my
life was was comfortably death free for for the longest
(06:19):
period of time. But it seems like there's always been
a kind of confrontation of it, at least in the
media that I've consumed throughout my life. So it seems
like I've I've always been there with it. Yeah. I
I have said before that this podcast has had me
thinking about it quite a bit um since we began.
Although I am difficult to work with right, right, I'll
(06:40):
just bring me death, no, but more and from the
route of consciousness, because I equate you know, non consciousness,
not so much sleep or or even coma with death.
But you know, basically, when you start thinking about consciousness
and life and you begin to try to center where
all this is coming from, inevitably you will land on
(07:01):
the death card and start to think about that. So
when we struck upon this talk by Stephen Cave who
has a book out about immortality and and he discusses
these various ways in which we approach immortality, it really
struck me because he says that we can't help it.
(07:22):
We humans have several different ways that we create this
narrative of immortality. And he says, really there are four
different types of it. One really well known. In fact,
it's a pretty historical one. I think everybody is familiar
with resurrection, this idea that you might come back to
life after dying, and this is a belief that is
(07:42):
found in various religions. We're talking about a literal resurrection
of the body, but also a heavenly resurrection or a
recycling of the soul into a new body and time,
which leads to different ideas about what this resurrection could be. Yeah,
this one's pretty pretty fabulous because again it's part of
(08:02):
the three major Judaeo Christian religions, I mean Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam. And it's the idea that resurrection life after
death involves you being born again in this body or
perhaps in another body just like this one, and we
it's it's often, it's often something that you end up
skimming over within those faiths. You end up being told,
(08:24):
all right, yeah, you know there's a bodily resurrection, but
you really end up buying into other ideas of resurrection
that we'll discuss um. Because there are so many complications.
You get into questions of well, which version of me,
which which body is going to come back? And my
coming back is this this rotting body of this uh,
this preserved body. What happens if something happens to the
body of the body is not not not prepared properly
(08:45):
for burial, but it's not buried the right way of
it's lost. You get into all these concerns, and then
you get into all these additional theological concerns, Well, what
happens to my soul when it's not in a body,
is there an intermediate place that it goes to? And
we touched on some of the additional issues in our
our episode on Hell and the problem with Hell when
you start figuring out, well, where does the soul go
(09:06):
when it goes to Hell, because a lot of these
interpretations of hell also require you to have a physical
body again in order for it to work, and then
in some cases your soul is destroyed. It's logistical nightmare
because yes, you, like you said, you know, if the
body didn't come back exactly as it was, what about
the soul? Do they match up? And this is really interesting.
Stephen Cave had pointed this out in his talk that
(09:28):
Romans would get so annoyed with early Christians about this
idea of resurrection that they would say, Okay, you think
this guy's coming back, We'll let me chop him up
to bits and pieces and bury him in various locations
throughout these lands, and we'll see if he gets resurrected bodily,
you know, resurrect that. It was kind of mean spirited
by the Romans, you have to admit though they were
(09:51):
trying to prove a point, But yes, it was um
any anytimes you're anytime you're chopping up a corpse. Just
despite your seria, it's you're you're in a weird area
and you need to rethink where you are. But but
to your point, uh, it does. It's just one slice
of the cake when you're looking at the problems and
trying to square away, um, how bodily resurlection resurrection would work.
(10:15):
And then you've got that soul, the idea that this
soul might persist. Yeah, this now, the idea that there
is this um, this part of us that is spirit.
That's of course, and it's a very ancient idea. You
look back to the the ancient Egyptians, you look back
to even more primitive models, uh, and you will see
this idea that there's something in us that lives on. Now,
(10:36):
they're sort of cave focuses on just one version of this,
but they're they're according to some other experts, they're they're
kind of two. One is the idea of an astral body. Now,
that's the idea that when we're alive, we're just kind
of this conjoined thing. We have two bodies. We have
a physical body and an astral body living is one.
And then when that physical body dies this astral body
(10:57):
lives on to U two, mourn for our own death too,
maybe haunt somewhere, to say goodbye to loved ones, to
go off wandering through the universe, what have you? Uh.
But and it's and it's worth on. This is the idea,
this is the the immortality, this is the life after
death that is most commonly encountered in works of fiction.
Jacob Marley's ghost that is essentially an astral body. It's
(11:19):
really convenient, yeah, because your your body dies and then
there's this sort of see through you that looks just
like you. It's it's a Hamlet's ghost. And it's also
a kind of version of life after death that we
often end up buying into, at least a little bit,
you know now and again, despite what we believe, uh,
you know, based on our faith, based on our science,
based on our reason as we discussed in our Hell episode. Uh,
(11:42):
it's it's rare for someone to really have one solid
idea of what they think the soul is and what
the the the afterlife may or may not consist of.
We're we're likely to dabble, as humans were likely to
entertain certain ideas or believe in things on one level,
while we don't believe in them in the other, and
the astral body is one of them. Now, from the
(12:02):
astral body, we get into the idea of the immaterial soul. Well, now,
what's the difference. The difference is that the astral body
is like, my body dies, and here's this version of me,
that spirit that looks just like me. But the immaterial
soul doesn't necessarily look like a body. It's just like
it's an energy. It's it can't be perceived by the senses,
and and it and it doesn't need the body to exist. Right,
(12:23):
And that idea dates back at least in a formal
form to Plato. So again, im material soul, astral body.
It's a great literary device, right, because you can really
call into that presence. But there's this idea that we
all have that there's this core to ourselves, you know,
that perhaps could persist beyond us, that what makes me
(12:44):
me certainly couldn't die with my physical body. Yeah, and
Plato is really into it based on two core arguments.
One was the cycle of opposites. This is the idea
that that that everything in the natural world hasn't has
an opposite, And these opposites are often interlocked. So death
comes from life, and therefore life must come from death
and uh, and the other the other argumenting makes is
(13:07):
is reminiscence. And this is the idea that that the
view of learning is really the process of remembering knowledge
from past lives, which, you know, you could take that
in different interpretations. You could just go on with the
straight up um um, you know, hippie dippie past lives
kind of view, where you know, I've been an Egyptian
king in my past life, or you can maybe even
look at that from a sort of a genetic counterpoint.
(13:27):
That's one of the interesting things when you start looking
at at some of these ideas of immortality, like what, uh,
you know, what is reminiscence, but but epigenetic or genetic
influence on who you are, you can sort of go
wild with sort of breaking these down and trying to
apply Yeah, you're not going to have your grandmother's um
sort of our great grandmother's ghostly experiences, but as you say,
(13:49):
you might have epigenetic markers of her physical experience manifest
themselves in you later in physical ways in which genetics
get turned on and off. So that's very interesting. The
third way that Cave says that we are chasing immortality
is that we're trying to solve death. And he says,
this has been going on for time immemorial, and you've
got alchemy and now you have all sorts of different technologies.
(14:12):
Today you have nanotechnology, you have different ways of delivering drugs.
This is and we've talked about this with Aubrey de
Gray who says that the first person UH to live
to five hundred years old has already been born today
because we have these sort of technologies that can maintain
our bodies like a classic car. And you start to
think about this, You think our ancestors lived to be
(14:32):
forty years old. We now have a life expectancy of
eighty years old currently right now. Um, is this a
kind of Moore's law of life expectancy that is emerging
the you know, the Moore's law of the idea that
computer processing can be doubled every two years. So in
the same way, you know, every x amount of decades
(14:54):
is human life extending by twenty years. Yeah. He makes
an impressive argument and uh, and he also takes the
war against death, which is that's the whole topic in itself,
I mentioned, but he breaks it down into into core
arguably winnable battles like this is what death is. This
is what is happening on a physical level to the body.
(15:16):
And here are the areas where we can we could
fight it. We figured, you know, and we discussed in
the past, past episode, So I'll refer you back to
that for all the details are degree in its ways
to vanquish death. Yeah. So the fourth type of immortality
that Stephen Cave says we we are after is narrative.
And this is what we were sort of alluding to
with the body's exhibit. Here we have this kind of
(15:38):
narrative unfolding that will ensure some sort of immortality of
the story of the bodies that are displayed of the
person who created this plascination technique. Yeah, it's the idea
that even though everything that we are is going to
cease to exist at some point, the things that we created,
the things that we influenced, are going to live on, um,
you know, not forever, but at least for a while, right,
(16:01):
and are close enough to forever for the you know,
for that brief life that we have. Yeah. Again, this
idea that through achievement by becoming so famous that your
your name lives on or infamous. Right. You know, if
you can't give the fame, go for the infamy. It's
generally easier to achieve, which, as we will discuss in
a little bit, could be tied up with the ways
(16:23):
that we behave. All right, before we go into that,
in this idea of being terrified of death and something
called terror management theory, let's take a quick break. All right,
we are back, and before we get into terror management theory,
(16:43):
we have to talk about someone named Ernest Becker, Yes,
Ernest Becker, and he is the author of the book
The Denial of Death, and this is where we get
the idea of Terror management theory or t MT. That's right,
he was anthropologies. I actually want to polish a prize
for that work. It's in nineteen seventy three work and
among other things Becker Becker proposed that in times of crisis,
(17:06):
when fears of death are aroused, people are more likely
to embrace leaders who provide psychological security by making their
citizens feel like they are valued contributors to a great
mission to eradicate evil. And that is what this terror
management theory is built on. It was proposed by social
(17:27):
psychologists in nineteen eighties six Jeff Greenberg, Tom Paczynski, and
Sheldon Solomon, and it was initiated by two really simple questions.
The first one was why do people have such a
great need to feel good about themselves? And too, why
do people have so much trouble getting along with those
people who have different ideas from them. Yeah, this is
(17:48):
a fascinating theory and one that really really drives home
a lot of what you end up seeing in the
world around you, especially as far as fearmongering, because when
political voices, when media voices start beating the wards ms
start mongering up all of that fear, they're playing into
t MT, that's right. Sheldon Solomon, who is one of
the authors of Terror Management Theory, in an interview with
(18:11):
John oh Lair for Scientific Americans, said, quote, although self
awareness gives rise to unbridled awe and joy, it can
also lead to the potentially overwhelming dread engendered by the
realization that, wait for this, it's so brutal, that death
is inevitable, that it can occur for reasons that can
never be anticipated or controlled, and that humans are corporeal
(18:33):
creatures breathing pieces of defecating meat no more significant or
enduring than porcupines of peaches. But he says that humans
as ingenious as we are have actually unconsciously solved this
existential dilemma by developing cultural world views. This has been
our savior when we are met with this kind of terror. Yeah,
(18:54):
and the world view doesn't. We're not just talking about
views on what happening to the state of the soul
in the afterlife, but also views about what is important
in life? What is uh, you know, what are the
values I hold to? What what is the the US
group that I'm a part of, and what are the
other groups outside of my world view outside of this
this sphere that I've built for myself with ideas, this
(19:17):
fortress of ideas. Uh. This this whole TMT issue um
terror management theory really brings to mind a scene from
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Willie want them, you know,
the scene where they drink the fizzy lifting uh liquid
for fizzy liquid juice or soda or whatever it's it's called.
They're in this huge cylindrical room, right, they drink this
(19:41):
uh this stuff and they start floating and they're floating
them in the bubbles, and it's all fun and games
until they realize that there is a big circular fan
at the top of the room, and then if they
keep floating up, they're gonna be chopped to pieces. So
as they float up and up, they suddenly become aware.
You know, at first, it's just all dreams and giggles.
Though I'm floating around. It's wonderful. But then they realize
they're going to die, and then so what do they
(20:02):
start doing? Then they start figuring out how am I
going to stop? How am I gonna what am I
gonna do? And so what do you what are you doing?
That state the only thing you can do is reach
out and try and grab the structures around you in
these In this case, the structures are these worldviews that
we've built for ourselves, things that that that seem or
we've certainly built up to be solid, something to to
(20:23):
give us some grounding about our place in the universe,
about what's important, why it's important, and and and and
and why life itself is important. Yeah, Solomon says that
we manage this, this potentially paralyzing terror resulting from this
awareness of death, that fan, that we're being sucked into
and that cultures provide three things, one meaning by offering
(20:45):
an account of the origin of the universe to a
blueprint for acceptable conduct on Earth right. Three a promise
of immortality symbolically um. And it could be by a
creation of say a large monument, great works of art
or science, fortunes having children, and literally literally through various
(21:05):
kinds of afterlives that are central peace of organized religions.
And so the testable idea here is, if you confront
someone with death, are you going to can you actually
observe them reaching out and clinging to that structure, clinging
to those worldviews that they might have, you know, otherwise
otherwise drift a comfortable distance away from And is this
(21:26):
immortality narrative is it on some level destructive? Yeah? And
then the hidden question, and that is our most world views,
in their in their more little interpretation, destructive. But I'll
leave that to to our listeners to consider. Yeah. I mean,
because again we're talking about conceiving of death and very
abstract terms. Um. So when we fly too close to
(21:46):
that son of death, you know, we we we do
get singed by it, and we recoil and back into
ourselves and back into that immortality narrative. And the thing
that makes us fly too close that son of death
is something called mortality salience. Yeah, and that's just straight
up that moment when you realize, hey, I'm gonna die,
(22:08):
the closer you are to the reality uh and the
the well, maybe not acceptance of death, but at least
the confrontation of death. Now. Solomon says that there's a
huge body of evidence that shows that's just that momentarily, uh,
thinking about death typically by asking people to think about themselves.
Dying intensifies as people strivings to protect and bolster the
(22:31):
aspects of the world views that they coddle and hold dear. Yeah,
I mean it's we all encounter little bits of this
in our own life. You know, something, something bad happens
in the world. Are you hear you hear a story
about someone else in in your city or your neighborhood
dying or suffering, uh, some sort of bad bit of luck.
And then suddenly you're a little more like, well, maybe
(22:52):
I should, uh you know, maybe I should go home
and check on the house. Maybe I should uh you know,
upgrade the security systems. Maybe I should do this to
the other Suddenly the threats in life become a little
more real and it's changed your behavior. Right, you go
out and you get in his security systems. There have
been three hundred independent studies about mortality salience in whether
(23:12):
or not effects our behavior and in twenty different countries
that has lent support to this idea of terror management theory.
But perhaps one of the first studies is the most
startling in its ability to show people doubling down on
their beliefs when they think that they've been violated and
they're reminded at death at the same time. And Solomon
(23:32):
in his team pursued this with a group of judges. Yes,
this took place in Tucson, Arizona, and uh and involved
it involved actually recruited court judges because they wanted people
who whose job it is in theory to make unbiased
decisions about about issues of well, if not mortality, than
(23:54):
at least ethics and law rational thinkers. Yeah, so, so
what do they confront them with? A nice sort of
a nice gray area, a nice a nice mortal quandary
for anyone to to chew over prostitution of course, Okay,
we're talking about twenty two municipal court judges, and they
were told that in the study that the team was
(24:17):
studying the relation between personality traits, attitudes and bond decisions.
Bond decisions, of course, being that sum of money that
judges will assign that a defendant pays prior to trial
so that they can be released from prison. So what
did they do Well. They gave judges a set of
questionnaires that consisted of the standard personality assessment instruments, but
(24:38):
they also squeaked in a couple of those mortality salience
in there. And they did it by asking um them
to say, please briefly describe the emotions that the thought
of your own death arouses in you. And the second
one was jotted down as specifically as you can what
you think will happen to you as you physically die
and once you're physically dead. Now, only half of those
(25:00):
twenty two judges were given these sort of doctored personality
questions that had that mortality mortality salience in them. So
they each of the judges review the brief. They they
review this case of this individual brought in on a
prostitution charge, and they have to decide where they're going
to set the bond, right, how much money is the
is the is the individual going to have to pay
(25:21):
in order to walk the streets? Again, that's right. Judges
in the control conditions set an average bond of fifty dollars.
These are the people who did not have the reminders
of death, and that's a typical charge for this kind
of case. But the judges who thought about their death
set an average bond of four hundred and fifty five dollars. Yes,
so I'd like to like for you can imagine that
(25:43):
that room in the Willy Wonka movie, and here are
the judges. He's flow here, she is floating free am
in the bubbles, you know, and and they they're thinking, oh, well, prostitution,
it's a it's a great it's a very complicated issue. Uh.
You know, a nice low bond is a is an
acceptable place, uh from to to to to decide on
this particular topic. Then there made to look up. They
(26:04):
see the fan, they think about in imminent death, and
what do they do. They reach out. They hold onto
that structure that that that worldview structure that's made out
of morals and uh and ethics and ideas about what's
wrong and right in life. Maybe some of these ideas
are things that they have they've drifted away from a
lot in their life, you know, they they've drift away
from in their professional career. But just thinking about death
(26:26):
makes them clinging back to that, uh, that skeleton of
ideas and then make this, uh, this, this rougher call
on what the bond should be said at. And the
problem is that it can really cloud your thinking, right,
and it can actually like this is the real problem,
It can cause a person to be easily manipulated. And
this is where Becker's early work really comes into play
(26:47):
concerning fear and politics, and it's something that Solomon actually
followed up on with experiments in which participants were told
to review statements from and vote for one of three
political cool candidates. Okay, and they had different leadership styles.
We're talking about charismatic, task oriented in relationship oriented. The
(27:09):
participants then selected the candidate that they would vote for. Now,
in the control condition, those people who didn't get the
death reminders, only four of participants voted for the charismatic candidate. Now,
for those people who were given the the death reminder,
there was an almost eight hundred percent increase in votes
(27:31):
for the charismatic leader. And Solomon again followed up with
several other studies concerning President Bush the Second and John
Kerry and found again and again that when those death
reminders were sublime early or overtly inserted, bushes support levels
sword the charismatic candidate. So again we're reminded of death,
(27:53):
we end up clinging to these worldviews. It's it's it's
fascinating and frightening to think about, because it really breaks
down what's happening in the world around is I'm I'm
both a large and a small level. Certainly when we
see the media or a politician, uh, you know, mongering
up those feelings of insecurity and fear, but but also
(28:15):
like the smaller moments in life, like when you see
some sort of really severe attitude on something suddenly come
out of a person that and you didn't expect it
by For instant example, this I was I was, I
was hearing about somebody talking about encountering this guy who
suddenly out of nowhere. Um mentioned that he didn't think
that his his son should wear pink, just in case
(28:35):
it would have some sort of a negative influence on
his character. For for an infant to wear the color pink.
Uh and and the the individual who said this was
somebody that when they would normally look at them and think, oh,
this this is just a normal dude. This guy doesn't
have any weird hang ups. But but now that after
I've you know, really read about this, this t M
(28:56):
T about t MT and its effects. Honest, you can
easily imagine, uh, this this being a guy who maybe
grew up with that kind of severe worldview in his
in the backbone of his of his his views on life,
he's drifted away from him. And then something like having
a child, uh bring him a little closer to that mortality,
make him have to think about that and therefore force
(29:18):
him to cling to some of these, uh, these ideas
and notions that he normally would have drifted away from. Yeah,
and you can look at heteronorms really that the basis
of that is being um motivated from fear, fear of
the other. So and by the way, pink used to
be a color that men war like back in the day.
(29:39):
I think Josh Clark usually has an article on that. Uh.
So to delightful color. I wish, you know, I wish
everyone would be cool with it. Yeah, except for that
pepptal bismol one. Yeah, that and that just reminds you
of throwing up. Yeah, and that's a shade that's often
found in hospitals, to which I find really disconcerting. But anyway,
that's for another day. Yea color color theory. That's that
(30:00):
would be a whole other episode that we should probably
do someday. We probably should. Um. But the thing is
is that we can't help but cling to these immortality myths,
these narratives. And his piece for The New York Times,
Cave actually wrote this opinion opinion piece that looks at
the BBC show Torchwood, which examines immortality and death and says,
(30:22):
what would happen to all our death defying systems? If
there were no more death, we would have no need
for progress or our faith or fame. Suddenly we would
have nothing to do. Yet, in the greatest of ironies,
we would have endless eons in which to do it.
Action would lose its purpose, in time, its value. This
is the true awfulness of immortality. Yeah, this is this
(30:44):
is where we get into the really deep far future
gazing stuff where for for a while that there's been
that idea. Okay, if we can live forever, we just
get bored. What would we do now? On one hand,
I definitely buy that because I I like to think
of of books. For instance, Uh, we've all read a
book that's that really strikes a chord with us. We're
really digging, and on some level we think, Man, I
(31:06):
wish this book would never end because I'm enjoying it
that much. But of course books follow a certain pattern.
There's a narrative arc, there's a there's a story that
has to be told, their pinpoints that have to be hit.
There's rising action, there's following action, there's a climax, uh, etcetera.
And and so it has to follow that basic pattern
in order to be effective. And that's why you're loving
(31:28):
it so much, because because it is obeying a form
and function. If it went on forever, then it would
lose that form and function, and then it would lose
its effect to to to entertain you. So and I
feel like life is sort of like that. You know,
there has to be a short amount of time in
which to accomplish things. There has to be um uh,
the rising action and following action for it all to
(31:48):
make sense. But then on the other hand, when when
mortals say, oh, immortality probably sucks because you probably would
get bored, it does sort of sound like um like
us non celebrity us, non you know, super rich people
thinking oh, well those rich people, they're they're just all miserable. Anyway,
we're in deep down. We we like to think. But
if I had it, if I had that money, if
(32:10):
I had an immortality, well, I could probably do something
proper with it. Yeah, the lottery might destroy the average
person because it's just too much money and and just
totally destroys their lives. But me, I think I might
be able to pull it off because I'm I'm a
little more grounded, and I feel like we we all
have those feelings. That is, it's the fantasy. It's again
(32:30):
the immortality fantasy that we all have that if we
could just reach it, we would do something worthwhile with it. Now,
in the meantime, we have mortality to deal with, and
so the question becomes, is there a better way to
deal with our own mortality rather than play into fear.
I mean, narratives of immortality are great, but is there
a way to be rational about death and not disince
(32:53):
ourselves from it, really examine it and be okay with it. Well,
I think what you're talking about here is simply and
we talk about it. Can we have conversations about death?
And can we you know, if not actually dragged the
bodies out into the open and um, you know, and
pull them apart. Can we at least drag the topic
out in the open and pull it apart? Yeah? No. Um.
(33:13):
Becker of The Denial of Death, which was written at
teen seventy three, said, stripping away the destructions of death quote,
with the right intensity and scope of shock, we might
even ask ourselves what are we to do with our lives?
We might then begin to think of how again to
give to people a secure feeling that their lives count,
that there is a heroic human condition contribution to be
made to cosmic life. In a dialogue with the community
(33:37):
of Once Fellows, that was very nice. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,
in a way, it's it's about taking the punch out
of death, you know, because in all this distancing ourselves
from it, which we've done just throughout human history, we
end up giving it so much more power. We i mean,
the very active personifying death of creating this kind of
(33:57):
like grim reaper image that either exist as an actual
symbol or listen on abstract symbol in the human psyche.
It comes from from this point in our time where
we we get away from the idea that death is
something that our body does, and rather it's something external.
Death is something that happens to it's death is something
that's done to us. It's an enemy that can be
thought and can be defeated and should be feared rather
(34:20):
than a natural part of the ark. You can actually
meet up at something called a death cafe if you
wanted to discuss this, and if you go to death
dot com you will be met with the message. At
death cafes, people drink tea, eat cake and discuss death.
Our aim is to increase awareness of death to help
people make the most of their finite lives. You can
(34:40):
find meetups in your city. I would hope we all listen,
we all wear black and listen to eyesters into New
Button as well. Like it seems like that would be
a good, good vibe. I'm getting a very German vibe
from all of this. I don't know, I'm getting some
like some red hat society people. Yeah, yeah, why not
cheerful discussions? Yeah, instead of going to nonsense and um, celebrating,
(35:01):
you know, with your passage into menopause, why not go
to the death cafe. That may be something that I
do instead of doing the red hat thing. Yeah, yeah,
I'm planning ahead. Well, you know, you should definitely check
one of these out and then report back. I mean,
our listeners should do the same. I was thinking about that. Actually,
you know. The one thing I always come back to
is a is something my dad told him, and he said,
(35:23):
and he was talking about death at some point, and
he said, well, you know, everybody does it, so it
couldn't be that big of a deal. And uh and
and certainly that's the case. Everybody dies. And I don't
even necessarily buy into this idea that there there's anyone
alive today that's going to live to see six years old,
or much less that six thousand year point. That actuaries
have have figured out that if you could live forever
(35:45):
like six thousand, it's pretty much the maximum you get
to without dying in a car wreck or something. Um. Yeah,
I saw that, but then I don't know, there's so
many problems I have with that. Um, it's the other
way of looking at it, in a more sort of
cosmic way to think about it is you have existence
and you have non existence, and throughout human history, each
(36:06):
of us has not existed, and then for just an
instant we've existed, and then we're gonna not exist again.
We have so much experience that not existing that we
were gonna be able to handle it just fine. This
is not gonna be really a new state for any
of us. It's gonna be returned to the status quo. Uh.
And and then another way to look at it, too
is to think about the nature of time. Uh. And
(36:28):
you know when we talk about oh, living forever, uh,
that we want to be something that that lasts in
this universe. But as we've discussed before, if you if you,
if you look at time and space and you you
take away the human perspective, uh, in time and space
are one, and there's no moment that has been or
will be or is right now that has any uh
(36:50):
any any special privilege in the time space continuum. So
in a sense, everything is currently uh nothing really was
or will be. So everything is immortal. I mean, it's
all part of the fabric of the universe. I always
think about this way. You think that Oprah is sort
of an immortal being right, everybody knows her, all corners
(37:12):
of the earth, perhaps Bill Gates even maybe there uh,
these sort of iconic images will laugh for five hundred years,
a thousand, maybe ten thousand, doubt it. But you know,
all of this, even this, even these immortality narratives that
we come up with our finite except for Gilgamesh, because
that one, which is, you know, one of the like
(37:34):
the oldest story about the quest for immortality, it sticks
with us. But otherwise the Osmandiez principle definitely applies to everybody.
No matter how awesome you are, no matter how much
of an impact you make on this life, you're probably
gonna be forgotten eventually. Now, if anybody's interested in that
six thousand year figure that we dropped, the actuaries are saying, hey,
(37:55):
that's a possibility. I believe that's from the Economist article
that features Stephen Cave. I'm sorry, I don't have the
title with me right now, but if you want to
check that out, you can just go to Economist dot com.
All right, so we have presented you with a lot
of food for thought about immortality, about the nature of
the human soul, about our about how terror management theory
(38:15):
um effects us? I mean, does the fear of death
and the quest for immortality really influence us at such
a deep and impressive level? Uh, it's it's certainly a
strong argument. Um. Also, what would happen if we if
we could live forever? That's a wonderful question to explore.
Do you think that we would get bored? Uh? And
uh and and just lose interest? Do you think that
(38:36):
we'd find enough stuff to occupy our minds for three
hundred years, six thousand years? Or what have you? Do
you believe you follow the philosophy of Emmanuel? Can't that
who who stated that if that without a belief in
God and a belief in the immortal nature of the soul,
that there would there'd be no virtue in the world
at all. That it's ultimately that that fear of of
(38:59):
what will happened to us and what will happen to
us long term, that it that informs human morality? Or
is there a kinder way for for humans to organize themselves? Also,
would you want to live forever? I would love to
see what the results are from you guys on that one. Well,
on that note, let's call over the robot because I
have a related bit of listener mail to share here.
(39:19):
This coming to us through Facebook. Alec writes in and says, Hi,
my name is Alec. I love your podcast so much
that I've been going back and listening to all the
old ones. I recently listened to the death on Ice
podcast and this brought up so many what if scenarios.
One I thought of is what if someone is signed
up to be put on ice, you know, crime frozen,
(39:41):
but committed a horrible crime and are put to death
by the state. Will they be allowed to be frozen afterwards?
Does that count is serving their sentence even if revived later.
The other interesting scenario I thought of, UH could make
a good future drama or sitcom where the guy's wife
dies and his frozen, then he marries again and him
and his current wife or frozen later and all three
(40:01):
year brought back at the same time. That'd be crazy,
and that would indeed be for make for an awesome
futuristic sitcom. But indeed, when we start talking about the
idea of living forever or uh coming back to life
in some sort of scientific sense and all with all
of its complications, then does life after death and or
(40:23):
resurrection and or immortality. Do these things become basic human
rights or these just privileges for the elite? Yeah, we
talked about this before that there's a service called Virtual
Eternity which will actually give people different levels of access
to your history and maybe even personal messages you want
to give to people in your life after you are gone.
And it brings up this whole idea of how you'll
(40:45):
be represented in this other way once you are gone.
Not to mention even just the ability one day to
try to download memories or you know, the synaptic uh
flashes that format. And if you want to see a
really cool fictional examination of that scenario, check out the
(41:05):
Black Mirror episode. I'll be right back, really top notch.
But in the meantime, you want to check out all
sorts of podcasts that we've done, all the videos, the
blog post, what have you, links to our various social
media accounts including Facebook, Twitter and all that. You need
to go to stuff to blow your mind. Dot com Uh,
that's where you find everything. That's the mothership. Oh and
I want to add real quick to if you're a
(41:26):
long term listener or a new listener, uh, and you
dig our show and you're an iTunes user, go to
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there's their views on there from our very early days
when we had a different title, different set up and
we were just learning the ropes. Uh, So we could
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(41:47):
and then. So, so check us out, indeed, and if
you'd like to send us a note, you can do
so at Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com for
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