Immortality Read online

  Copyright © 2012 by Stephen Cave

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Publishers,

  an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks

  of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cave, Stephen.

  Immortality : the quest to live forever and how it drives

  civilization / Stephen Cave.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  1. Immortality (Philosophy) 2. Immortality. I. Title.

  BD421.C38 2011

  129—dc23 2011023912

  eISBN: 978-0-307-88493-0

  JACKET DESIGN: WHITNEY COOKMAN

  JACKET PHOTOGRAPHY: © KAMIL VOJNAR, www.kamilvojnar.com

  v3.1

  For Friederike

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface

  1

  A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN HAS COME

  THE FOUR PATHS TO IMMORTALITY

  PART I: STAYING ALIVE

  2

  MAGIC BARRIERS

  CIVILIZATION AND THE ELIXIR OF LIFE

  3

  THE VITAMIN CURE

  SCIENCE VERSUS THE REAPER

  PART II: RESURRECTION

  4

  ST. PAUL AND THE CANNIBALS

  THE RISE OF RESURRECTION

  5

  FRANKENSTEIN REDUX

  THE MODERN REANIMATORS

  PART III: SOUL

  6

  BEATRICE’S SMILE

  WHAT HAPPENS IN PARADISE

  7

  THE LOST SOUL

  REINCARNATION AND THE EVIDENCE OF SCIENCE

  PART IV: LEGACY

  8

  LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY

  EVERLASTING FAME

  9

  THE IMMORTAL SEED

  GENES, GAIA AND THE THINGS IN BETWEEN

  CONCLUSION

  10

  HE WHO SAW THE DEEP

  WISDOM AND MORTALITY

  Acknowledgments

  Notes and Further Reading

  About the Author

  PREFACE

  THIS is a book about life, death and civilization.

  I aim to show how we, like all living things, are driven to pursue life without end; but also how we, alone of living things, have in the process created spectacular civilizations, with stunning artworks, rich religious traditions and the material and intellectual achievements of science.

  All of this, I argue, we have done through following four paths that promise immortality. The final aim of this book is to ask if any of these paths can deliver on that promise and what the answer means for how we should live.

  “History is Philosophy teaching by examples,” wrote Thucydides. I am a philosopher by training, but I have also drawn widely on the examples of history, as well as on insights from many other disciplines, from anthropology to zoology and most in between—universities might divide up neatly into subjects and faculties, but life does not. When making such excursions into other fields, I have attempted broadly to follow consensus opinion—though I have also not shied from taking a stand when necessary for my own argument.

  I am aware of the immodesty of making sweeping claims about such grand matters. Experts will shudder at my simplifications of complex debates, some of enormous antiquity. But it was always my intention to keep the book short and succinct, and I hope that some readers at least will be stimulated to go farther down alleyways of knowledge to which I could only briefly point.

  1

  A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN HAS COME

  THE FOUR PATHS TO IMMORTALITY

  THEY tried to destroy her. Hammers swung to smash the elegant nose and break her long and graceful neck. All across the kingdom, the statues and busts of the great queen were pounded to dust. Her name was chiseled from the monuments, its utterance banned. This embodiment of regal womanhood was never to be seen or spoken of again.

  It was a sentence made to last for eternity: no cult would tend her tomb, keeping alive her soul with incense and offerings; she would not be preserved in dignity so that she might reign in the Otherworld. Her brief dynasty was extinguished. By systematically erasing her from history, the new pharaoh was not only purging Egypt of her ideas and influence—he was knowingly consigning her to cold, endless oblivion. Or so he thought.

  Three thousand two hundred and thirty years later, Ludwig Borchardt, Egyptological attaché of the German Reich, hurried across a dusty, pockmarked plain. His young assistant was waiting impatiently at the entrance to one of the many excavation pits; he explained that they had found the remains of a buried house—though it was once grand, it had seemed that thieves and the passage of time had left little of value. Then a local workman, clearing away thousands of years of muck and rubble, had found a section of wall that seemed bricked up in haste. The age-old blocks had given way at the touch of his chisel, falling into blackness on the other side.

  Borchardt climbed into the ditch and made his way hastily through the dust and shadows to this secret chamber. Reaching the opening cleared by the workmen, he stepped carefully over the broken bricks. Pushing his torch ahead of him, he peered into the small room—and froze. Rows of stone heads gazed out at him like ghosts, lines of shimmering faces, each one unique, each perfectly rendered with the kinks and scars of life—a furrowed brow, a wrinkled smile. It was as if an assembly of these ancient people had gathered to pass on a message from the other side.

  Then he saw her: on the floor, half hidden by a fallen ledge. With his bare hands, Borchardt thrust aside the debris to pull her out. When he held her up to the torchlight, he became the first man in over three thousand years to look upon the full beauty of Nefertiti.

  Back in his office that night, December 6, 1912, Borchardt scribbled in his diary, “absolutely outstanding; describing is useless, must be seen.” Then he began plotting how he could bring the great queen back to his kaiser.

  THE FOUR PATHS

  ALL living things seek to perpetuate themselves into the future, but humans seek to perpetuate themselves forever. This seeking—this will to immortality—is the foundation of human achievement; it is the wellspring of religion, the muse of philosophy, the architect of our cities and the impulse behind the arts. It is embedded in our very nature, and its result is what we know as civilization.

  Although magnificent in the scale and sophistication of its expression, ancient Egypt’s obsession with eternal life was otherwise no different from that of every society, ancient or modern, Eastern or Western. The dream of some kind of life without end is a universal feature of human experience, common to all cultures across time and place—and still today driving us on toward new achievements that surpass even the pyramids.

  This book will do three things: First, it will show that beneath the apparent diversity of stories about how immortality is to be attained there are just four basic forms—what I will call the four immortality narratives. All attempts at everlasting life that have ever been made—and ever will be—follow one or another of these four. From Egypt to China, New York to New Delhi, people today are following these narratives in the belief that they will deliver them from death, just as people always have. We can imagine them as four paths leading toward the mythical Mount of the Immortals.

  These narratives are responses to fundamental constants in the human condition. Yet different cultures at different times have shown enormous ingenuity in elaborating these basic frameworks; they are a continuous s
ource of inspiration, innovation and creativity. They are the ways in which we channel our most simple urge—to live on—yet they have led to our most sophisticated intellectual, religious and artistic achievements. The second aim of this book is to show how our efforts to clear these four paths and prepare for the ascent up the Mount of the Immortals have thrown up what we know as civilization—the institutions, rituals and beliefs that make human existence what it is.

  But although the summit of everlasting life is where these four paths are pointed, whether they get there is an altogether different question. The peak remains above the clouds; those who reach it do not return to tell the story. Today we are in a far better position than any of our ancestors to map out this terrain and assess whether any of these paths reach their destination. Modern science is giving us fresh insights into the origins of life and the end of the universe; we can peer into brains in search of the soul, and we are developing new technologies that promise to defeat aging. Therefore the third thing this book will do is draw on these new insights to examine which of these four narratives have a real prospect of taking us to where we might live forever.

  ALTHOUGH these four paths explain many mysteries of human behavior, they are also intuitive and straightforward. The first springs most directly from our instincts: like all living systems, we strive to avoid death. The dream of doing so forever—physically, in this world—is the most basic of immortality narratives. I will call this first path simply Staying Alive. It sounds unpromising, absurd even, in the face of the basic fact of death and decay. But it is hugely pervasive: almost all cultures contain legends of sages, golden-age heroes or remote peasants who discovered the secret to defeating aging and death.

  This narrative is really nothing more than the continuation of our attempts to stay young and healthy, to live that little bit longer—an extra year or two or ten. Those aspects of civilization that provide for our bodily needs—the food supplies and city walls—are the first steps along this route, medicine and hygiene the next. But most civilizations promise much more than merely safe passage to old age: they hold out the hope of an elixir that will defeat disease and debility for good. This promise has sustained whole religions, such as Taoism, and esoteric cults, such as that of the Holy Grail, but it has never been more widespread than today. The very idea of scientific progress is predicated on its delivering ever-extending lifespans, and a host of well-credentialed scientists and technologists believe that longevity liftoff is imminent.

  But betting everything on the Staying Alive Narrative is a risky strategy: success rates to date are not reassuring. The second path therefore offers a backup plan: it claims that even if death finds us, we can have a second bite at life’s cherry. This is the Resurrection Narrative, the belief that, although we must physically die, nonetheless we can physically rise again with the bodies we knew in life.

  Though not as basic as the attempt to simply stay alive, the hope of resurrection is also rooted in nature: we are used to seeing the natural world die back in winter, only to return with new vigor the following year. Billions of people around the world celebrate this triumph of life over death in spring festivals such as Easter, with its explicit association with the promise of human resurrection. Unbeknownst to many of their followers, the three great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam all also believe in literal, physical resurrection as a central doctrine—a belief that was crucial to these religions’ early success.

  But as well as these ancient traditions, versions of resurrection are also gaining popularity among those who would rather put their faith in technology than in gods. Cryonics, for example, in which people pay to be frozen on death in the hope of one day being repaired and revived, is one new track on this route. As technology rapidly develops, even more high-tech versions are being proposed, such as the possibility that we will upload ourselves onto computers and then reload ourselves into new bodies or digital avatars.

  Some, however, are not keen to reinherit their old bodies in the next life, even in digital form; the material world they believe to be too unreliable to guarantee eternity. They therefore dream of surviving as some kind of spiritual entity—or Soul, which is the third path. The majority of people on earth currently believe they have one, including two-thirds of people in the United Kingdom and even more in the United States. It has come to be the dominant belief in Christianity and is central to Hinduism, Buddhism and many other religions.

  Unlike followers of the Resurrection Narrative, believers in the Soul Narrative have mostly given up on this earthly frame and believe in a future consisting of some more spiritual stuff. Though less rooted in nature, this belief also arises intuitively: in dreams and mystical experiences, humans have long had the feeling of leaving their bodies behind. To many, soul or mind has seemed separable from the flesh in which it resides—and therefore able to survive without it.

  Although the idea of the soul has flourished in both East and West, it too has its doubters, particularly among the materially minded. But even they can find solace in what is perhaps the most widespread narrative of all: the fourth path, Legacy. This requires neither the survival of the physical body nor an immaterial soul, but is concerned instead with more indirect ways of extending ourselves into the future.

  The association of fame and immortality was widespread in the ancient world, and many people since have followed the example set by the Greek hero Achilles on the battlefield of Troy in choosing eternal glory over a long life. The Greeks believed that culture had a permanence and solidity that biology lacked; eternal life therefore belonged to the hero who could stake a place for himself in the cultural realm. Today we seem to be as desperate for celebrity as Achilles was for glory; the competition for cultural space is as hot as ever.

  Some of us also leave a more tangible legacy than our reputations alone: children. Our genes have been called immortal because they stretch back millions of years in a traceable line to the very beginnings of life, and if we are lucky will also continue into the distant future. Or perhaps, as some claim, our legacy is to have been part of life on earth—part of Gaia, the superorganism that will remain long after we individually are gone, or even part of the unfolding cosmos itself.

  THESE narratives are manifested in many different forms, from ancient myths to political manifestos, but at least one is present in every culture, providing the milestones and signposts on life’s road. Some civilizations have followed a single path for thousands of years. Others have shifted from pursuing one path to the next. But no civilization has survived unsupported by one of the four: all have immortality narratives, and all immortality narratives fall into one of these four kinds.

  Today in the developed world, all four narratives are as present as ever—though not interwoven into a single story. Rather, they are competing views in a marketplace of beliefs. Some of us shop around, reflecting deeply before taking our pick; others follow the latest fads; while most of us simply do whatever our parents did. But whether we know it or not, the vast majority of us have bought into one or another of the immortality creeds.

  SUNSET OF THE ATEN

  IN the course of this book we will see many examples of the four narratives in action, but there is no better starting place than the banks of the Nile, where the pursuit of immortality achieved an unrivaled sophistication and splendor. The civilization of ancient Egypt survived almost unchanged for some three thousand years. Even after it was conquered—first by the Persians, then the armies of Alexander the Great, then, following Cleopatra’s famous suicide, by Rome—it continued to have immense cultural and religious influence. Among the Greeks and Romans, Egypt stood for ancient wisdom; there was a powerful feeling that the Egyptians had found some truth that other cultures struggled to capture.

  The Egyptians’ pantheon was only finally suppressed when their Roman conquerors converted en masse in 380 CE to a potent new immortality system: Christianity (only for it to be replaced a few hundred years later by its close
cousin Islam). What made the Egyptian worldview so enduring and attractive was its rich and satisfying immortality narrative. And part of what made this particular narrative so impressive is that it interwove all four basic forms into a single whole within its vibrant mythology. As we mentioned, all four narratives are also present today—but as alternatives, not as an integrated story. In other cultures too, all four have been present—but with only one or two in the foreground. Ancient Egypt is unique in weaving all four narratives into a single beguiling thread. It is a spectacular example of the human religious imagination and of bet-hedging on the way to eternity.

  This is why the pharaoh who set out to destroy Nefertiti—Horemheb, a former general—had his work cut out for him: ancient Egyptians might hope to use any of the four paths to live beyond their natural span. First, although they are most famous for their careful preservation of corpses, the Egyptians were also very keen on pursuing the most basic path, Staying Alive. They had a highly sophisticated system of medicine-cum-magic to ward off aging and illness. Herbs, spells and amulets aimed to keep their recipients alive for as long as possible, and preferably forever—numerous surviving papyruses focus on the prolongation of life and reversing aging. For all their colorful accounts of how to make the best of being dead, Staying Alive was very much Plan A.

  Nonetheless, these tactics were clearly limited, so they also set their hopes on the Resurrection Narrative. Mummies are perhaps the strongest symbol of the idea that our physical remains can be made to breathe once more. Egyptians went to enormous lengths to ensure that a body was properly preserved in the belief it could be magically revived. This was a massive industry, entrusted to the priests who would drain the corpse’s fluids, remove and separately preserve the soft organs and then apply natron, a naturally occurring salt, to suck out moisture. They then stuffed the body with cloth or sawdust and wrapped it in hundreds of feet of linen, sometimes treated with resin or bitumen as waterproofing (giving rise to the word “mummy,” which comes from the Persian word for bitumen, mum).