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