© Arnold Vandenbroeck

If immortality were the rule…

1. How do you picture yourself as

immortals? Old and with ailments?
Forever young and healthy?

2. Given unlimited time will you in due

time not be hit by an earthquake,
typhoon or meteor?

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 If immortality were the rule…

3. What kind of society will develop

among people who are all going to
live forever? How will immortals
deal with one another?
4. When all will live forever what
would be the use of procreating?
Having children? Grandchildren?
Change of purpose of sex?
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 If immortality were the rule…

5. What would keep you motivated in

an unending life? Would life be
worth living? Boring? What would
you strive/life for?

6. Is immortality that desirable?

Would it be a gift or a curse?

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 If immortality were the rule…

7. How to deal with crime,

punishment, ethical standards
among immortals? Or will being
immortal make you altruistic?

8. Would immortality not be a great

step to enable interplanetary
travel? Rather than getting stuck
here on earth?
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
While mortality is still the name of
the game…
9. What comes to mind when you
imagine yourself dead? A casket
surrounded by family & friends?
Complete darkness and void?

10. Can you consciously simulate what

it is like not to be conscious? Can
you envision what it is like to be
dead?
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Sigh…!

• “It is quite impossible

for a thinking being to
imagine nonbeing, a cessation of
thought and life,” Goethe said two
centuries ago.

• We all know that we are going to

die but we can’t envision actually
not existing.
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 “Mortality Paradox”
Stephen Cave:
• “On one hand, our powerful
intellects come unavoidably
to the conclusion that we, like all
living things, must one day die.”
• “On the other, our minds cannot
imagine a state of nonexistence; it’s
literally inconceivable.”
• “Death therefore presents itself as
both inevitable and impossible.”
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Mortality Paradox
• “We are blessed with powerful minds
yet at the same time cursed, not only
to die, but to know that we must.”
• “Our overblown intellectual faculties
seem to be telling us
both that we are eternal
and that we are not.”
- Stephen Cave,
Immortality: The Quest to
Live Forever and How It Drives
Civilization
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 How to Deal with the M.P.?

• To deal with it
communities,
cultures,
civilizations
have developed
• mortality
coping mechanisms by means of
immortality narratives.
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Immortality Narratives
Stephen Cave speaks of:

• Fixed number of paths or

routes or tracks
to immortality

• Followed by peoples and

cultures everywhere

• Used throughout the ages

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Path 1: Staying Alive
Don’t stop living…!
Humans have always tried
- to prevent themselves from dying,
- to stretch their lives more and more.

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
Staying Alive
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
Staying Alive

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Staying Alive

Chromosomes are protected by telomeres © Arnold Vandenbroeck

Staying Alive

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Path 2: Resurrection
The idea, rooted in
nature, that humans
can be brought back
from the dead.

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
Resurrection
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Resurrection

Central in
Abrahamic religions

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
Resurrection

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
Resurrection

Reincarnation © Arnold Vandenbroeck

 Resurrection

Reincarnation
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Resurrection
• Cryonics the
modern way to
resurrect

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Path 3: Soul
The idea that some part
of our humanness lives on
forever in some capacity.

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Soul
• Origin: To many, soul
or mind seem separable
from the body and
therefore must be able to survive it.

• Astral body,
spirit,
consciousness,
NDE, OBE,…

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Soul

• Dominant belief in Christianity,

Hinduism, Buddhism: surviving as some
spiritual entity, personal or impersonal.

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Soul
• Transmigration: to go from one
state of existence to
another;
the soul to pass at
death from one body
or being to another
(deathless
soul)

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Path 4: Legacy
• Idea that we can live on through our
children, our works, the memory of us
or of whatever we leave behind…
• Eternal life in the cultural sphere.
• Most widespread narrative.

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Legacy

Memory

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 History

Legacy

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
Legacy

Heritage

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
Legacy

Literature

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
Four Paths

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Immortality Narratives
• Followed for thousands of years...
• Civilizations have shifted from one
path to another, made combinations...
• All immortality narratives fall into one
of these four kinds.

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 SRSL
• Egypt maximized all.
• Obsessed with afterlife. Legacy
• Became potent attractant and
inspiration for other peoples
and cultures...
© Arnold Vandenbroeck

Ka (soul) Phoenix-resurrection
 Where do the paths end…?
• All four narratives ultimately fail to
deliver everlasting life…
• All path or tracks in the
end lead to nowhere…

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Staying Alive?
• Science is nowhere near re-engineering
the body to stay alive beyond 120 yrs.
• Life as we know it is per definition
passing it on from one generation to
the next.
A tree is born,
a tree dies;
the forest
lives forever.
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Arrogance
of
Immortality

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Temporary survival machines
In The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins
encourages us to see ourselves as just
temporary “survival machines” that serve to
propagate the genes within us from
generation to generation – forever.

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Soul Slayer?
• Neuroscience shows your
mind (consciousness,
memory, personality,…)
cannot exist without
your brain.
• When your brain dies of
injury, stroke, dementia,
Alzheimer…
your mind dies with it.

• No brain, no mind; no body, no soul.

© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 Soul/mind–brain dependence
• Modern science demonstrates that
the mind has a physical base which is
the brain. A functioning mind needs a
functioning brain.

• Supported by strong
evidence from hard
experimental data
of physiological
psychology. © Arnold Vandenbroeck
 No immortality,
but striving is what counts…
• “Our culture is based on striving for
immortality (SFI).
• It shapes what we do
and what we believe;
• it has inspired us to
found religions, write
poems and build cities.
• ..If we were all immortal, the motor
of civilization would sputter and stop.”
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 SFI = Essense of Life
• All life forms have in common:
determination to preserve &
reproduce, to extend into the future.

• They struggle with what seems to be

a single purpose: to just

• This striving to perpetuate is the

essence of life.
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
 SFI = Primal Urge
• Philosopher Schopenhauer calls our
primal urge simply “the will to live.”
• Biological anthropologist James
Chisholm: “This is not limited in time.
It is “the will to live forever,” or the
will to immortality.”
• Chisholm:“The sake
for which bodies
exist is indefinite
continuance.”
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
• To extend into the future.
• To just keep going.
• Striving to perpetuate
• The will to live
• The will to live forever
• Indefinite continuance
• But it’s a continuance
across generations….
Not of individuals…
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
© Arnold Vandenbroeck
© Arnold Vandenbroeck