How to live happily until you die

Religious believers have dogmas that comfort when death stares them in the face. Resurrection of the body. Eternal survival of the soul.

Some secular "survivalists" hold onto equally unfounded hypotheses: that their body can be kept alive for a really long time through a health/medical breakthrough, or kept frozen and reanimated in some advanced technological future. 

(Uploading of one's brain contents to a back-up brain or computerized alternative is another dream of those who desire immortality outside of religion.)

In his "Immortality," a book I've blogged about recently here and here, Stephen Cave persuasively demolishes the efficacy of these three approaches to immortality -- Staying Alive, Resurrection, Soul.

He also is skeptical, though not to the same degree, of the Legacy approach: continuing on through children, creative works, professional achievements, social/scientific accomplishments, positive memories in the minds of family and friends, etc. etc. 

Yes, we can sort of live on through the legacy we leave behind. But not really. We're dead and gone, so we don't know how our legacies are being treated. Cave asks the reader, do you even know the names of your great-grandparents, much less the details of their lives?

(My answer: no.)

So how do we deal with what Cave calls the Mortality Paradox, without fooling ourselves that we've cheated death via the unworkable approaches of Staying Alive, Resurrection, Soul, and Legacy? The Mortality Paradox is simply stated:

Awareness of your mortality and an inability to conceive of ourselves as not existing.

ln a concluding chapter, Cave turns positive. Here, he says, is what can actually work to relieve our fear of death. 

First, "unending life would most likely be a terrible curse." He offers up good reasons for this statement, but it won't convince believers in an eternal, or timeless, heavenly realm where the soul or resurrected body never tires of divine delights.

The second step, then, is to accept "that the fear of actually being dead is nonsensical." Why? Because that fear is only present while we're alive. When we're dead, we're not conscious of anything, naturally including fear.

To talk of "being dead" is just a shorthand for saying they have ceased to exist. ..."Life has no end." That is, we can never be aware of it having an end -- we can never know anything but life.

This may seem obvious. However, now that I've finished Cave's book I realize that while my inescapable inability to know what it is like to be dead is just that, obvious, I hadn't fully embraced the meaning of this understanding.

Reading about Cave's third step, "to cultivate virtues that undermine those aspects of our nature that lead to both the will to persist forever and the corresponding existential angst," pointed me in a direction that fits with where my ever-increasing churchlessness has been leading me.

Here they are, The Three Virtues. I like them.

Naturally Cave says more about The Three Virtues than I've been able to share here. But this will give you a good idea of how secular wisdom concerning how to deal with death is akin to aspects of various spiritual "wisdom traditions," such as Buddhism and Taoism.

Identifying With Others.

Awareness of self might be important, but excessive concern with the self only exacerbates the fear of death, or loss of self, and leads some to a life of self-absorption. In order to combat this, we should cultivate selflessness, or identifying with others.

...This obsession with the self grew out of the doctrine of the immortal soul.

...We have seen that by taking the fear of death at face value, all four immortality narratives exacerbate the very attitudes that underpin that fear. By encouraging people to obsess about their own health, or the state of their own soul, or their particular legacy, they encourage the very self-centered, future-oriented and negative view that caused the fear in the first place.

...Bertrand Russell put it well: "The fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble. The best way to overcome it -- so at least it seems to me -- is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life."

Focus on the Present.

Similarly, picturing the future helps us to plan a successful life, but excessive concern with the future causes us to focus on the tribulations that lie ahead of us -- and we forget to live now. Therefore we should learn to live more in the present moment.

...When left to their own devices, our minds busy themselves with plans, plots, worries and idle speculation -- much of it about things that might go badly for us... By dwelling on all manner of possible threats, we bring death into life, only then to die without having truly lived.

...If you are happy now, then you are happy always, as there is only now. But equally, if you spend each moment worrying about your future happiness, then happiness will always elude you, and your life will be one of anxiety. And, as we have seen, worrying about death -- something we can never experience -- is the most foolish worry of all.

Gratitude.

Imagining all the things that could threaten our existence might help us to avoid them, but in excess it leads us only to worry about what we might lose rather than appreciate what we have. Therefore we should cultivate gratitude.

...That an unbroken chain of many millions of ancestors over billions of years all managed to do their bit to bring us into existence, that is our blessing. And it is an extraordinary one, involving more strokes of luck and cosmic coincidences than are possibly countable.

We can barely begin to measure the good fortune that led to the development first of life, then of animals, of mammals, of humans, of your family, and, finally, of you. Complex life -- and in particular the life of any individual -- is remarkable.

...And what these facts suggest is that before we rue our plight of a short life overshadowed by death, we should be grateful -- very, very grateful -- that we have a shot at life at all, and with a brain capable of appreciating and creating so much wonder.

...We have evolved to focus on what we stand to lose -- ultimately on the threat of death -- causing us to live in fear instead of reveling in the extraordinary good fortune of being.

...It is no coincidence that gratitude is one of the common themes throughout the world's wisdom literature and a powerful antidote to the fear of death. As the Greek Stoic Epicurus put it, "He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has."

Comments

[tucson]

Cave says:

The second step, then, is to accept "that the fear of actually being dead is nonsensical." Why? Because that fear is only present while we're alive. When we're dead, we're not conscious of anything, naturally including fear.

--That logic is useless because it is not being conscious of anything that people are afraid of. It's like saying don't be afraid of death because when you're dead, you're dead.

However, I think Cave's Three Virtues are helpful advice.

Good post.

[Adrian Mendoza]

Well, I have to say that in recent days I just open 3 web pages when I open the web browser: hotmail, facebook and church of the churchless, I identify with the topics depicted here so much. Thanks for blogging Brian.

Now regarding the topic here, I should say that Tucson has a point, speaking for myself I can say that my fear is exactly about not being conscious of anything at all.

On the other hand I had spent countless nights thinking about the horror of living forever, yes, I think it would be horrific I've even thought that being the case I would really like to sleep for a long period of time and then wake up, I feel terrified by the idea of living forever, so that's another conclusion I got after thinking about it over and over again.

I have to say that the knowing our grand grandparents life is something I always face when I see the family portraits that are hanging from the walls of my grandfather's house, I usually stop to think that I don't know anything at all about all that people and they are partially responsible for me being here alive, so, yes that's something sad but true and real, this thought has also made me move towards the nihilist point of view at times I just can't control pessimism and I usually start comparing myself with the people in the portraits and how life doesn't have any value because in a 100 years nobody will care, so this post was interesting to me because I have been thinking about that for a long time now.

[Willie R]

The primal duality is existence and non-existence. Inasmuch as there cannot be one without the other, each state endlessly implies the other.
Everyone already knows exactly what it is like to be dead. It is the same as being alive.
I recently read a trivial blurb about how many human beings have preceded the seven billion currently decimating the planet. Ostensibly, the figure accepted (by those who actually give a toss) is 105 billion. The starting point used for mathematical extrapolation was 50,000 years ago.

Not one of them has a thing to say about being dead. Probably, because there is nothing to be said about it.

[Robert Paul Howard]

My store of (personal) memories/experiences begins at about age three. I have experienced being unconscious both in sleep and on the operating table in hospitals. I, therefore, "know" what it is to be "unconscious." (And I find it acceptable - even though it is essentially "nothing there.") In my store of memories/experiences, however, I have never been "dead." I've seen others who were (physically) "dead." I've read books/tales of what others claim they "know" about the "dead" and about "being dead." Some claim to have been "dead" and returned to life (medically/physically speaking).

I don't know the experience - whether "[i]t is the same as being alive" or not. "Alive" I am experiencing right now. The experience of being "dead" I do not personally know. I only know of the tales/claims others make.

Robert Paul Howard

[Boo]

Endel Tulving

"nowhere is the benign neglect of consciousness more conspicuous than
in the study of human memory"

he also discusses amnesia how folks who can't remember the past are marooned in the present, and their ability to envision their future is subsequently hazy and confused.

interesting

anyhow fear of death is all about personal memory --- anticipating the shattering of an autobiography. Hey, dogs don't hold an autobiography, thus are not afraid. (With the exception of shaking around immediate danger)

http://alicekim.ca/17.CanPsy85.pdf

and another interesting discussion to peek in on

http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/continuation-of-consciousness-after-death-41439-4.html

[Janya Barrish]

"The second step, then, is to accept "that the fear of actually being dead is nonsensical." Why? Because that fear is only present while we're alive. When we're dead, we're not conscious of anything, naturally including fear."

Tuscon makes an excellent point. I would like to add that our fear of death and the ensuing, supposed loss of consciousness happen because of our attachment to others, including non-humans. If I were the only woman in existence the prospect of death and eternal non-existence would become irrelevant to me. What difference would being dead or alive make?

Also, assuming that when we are dead, we are not aware of anything, is preposterously unfounded. How does Cave know this? Has he gone through death and come back to give us this wisdom?