Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization (edition 2012)

Cave claims that the Staying Alive Narrative, the Resurrection Narrative, the Soul Narrative, and the Legacy Narrative exhaustively cover all ideas about achieving immortality. He successively finds all four to be illusionary and ends up trying to advance a Wisdom Narrative for happily living with that fact. I'd say he errs by placing mind uploading under Resurrection (partly because people dying today would have to be cryonically preserved to have a shot at it when and if it becomes possible in the future): As suggested by philosopher David Chalmers in an important 2012 paper in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, a version of uploading that eschewed *copying* the brain/mind in favor of gradually and fine-grainedly *transforming* it into a much more durable form could conceivably quash concerns about personal-identity discontinuity and constitute a non-illusionary form of Staying Alive. Cave is generally too hard on transhumanists, I'd say, and not hard enough on religionists.

A pithy review of this book would be “Immortality: not going to happen” maybe followed by “Deal with it (here are some ways)”. Cave looks at various ideas of immortality and philosophically analyzes them. He finds them all lacking and suggests some alternative life-strategies. I would imagine that there’s not too much new here as Cave ponders ideas of religion, resurrection and the soul. It’s clearly presented and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to someone interested in the topic though this isn’t a book to get excited over. At times, I questioned his interpretations but they are usually interesting. I hoped Cave would look at pursuits of immortality in various cultures but except for a couple cases, he mainly references Western history, religion and well-known narratives (Frankenstein, Ozymandias). There’s more emphasis on the philosophical and theoretical aspects.

Cave divides “immortality theories” into four distinct ideas – one of literally living forever, one of a physical resurrection, one the existence of an immortal soul and the last the idea of an everlasting legacy. Each section is further divided – often into a religious/spiritual section and a scientific/biological one. Cave associates a historical or fictional story with each chapter. I was hoping there would be more examples but I can’t fault Cave for using history more as an illustration of ideas since that’s clearly what he interests him. Often, he comes off as an enthusiastic professor who really admires certain religions or ideas because of their successful “advertising” while also showing a bit of a stereotypical condescension.

In “Staying Alive”, the author describes the pursuit of the elixir of life by referring to the story of the king of Qin, the first Emperor of China. I wasn’t necessarily convinced that immortality was the driving force of civilization as Cave states in this section. However, this chapter does cover a number of ideas about the elixir which I found interesting. The other half of the idea of living forever looks at the scientific pursuit of immortality, illustrated by Linus Pauling’s attempt to cure his wife with vitamins. Advances in science and medicine that led to the current longevity are discussed, then Cave focuses on the ideas of the transhumanists who believe science will be able to cure aging through genetic engineering, nanotechnology and stem cell technology. He points out the problems with the engineering solution and the fact that longer lives wouldn’t necessarily be healthy ones. It would also create tension between those with access to the technology and could exacerbate overpopulation problems.

In the “Resurrection” and “Soul” sections, Cave looks at Christianity – noting that initially part of its appeal was the idea the that the dead would bodily return but that later the idea of a soul, which had been around long before Jesus, became more popular. He analyzes the idea of the dead being resurrected in detail – as I have not given that too much thought, it was interesting. Some problems – if a cannibal eats you, can you still be resurrected? Will it have to be the exact atoms you had when you were living? Would it be your 5 year old or 20 year old self? The problems, Cave concludes, led to its current unpopularity though bodily resurrection is still a tenet of some religions. Even the idea of digitally downloading your consciousness or cloning, the scientific version, would only create something like an identical twin. The soul has had more traction. Cave reasons that there’s nothing that could be a soul, as the mind and body are inextricably linked, and that specific brain functions are responsible for all of you. The science seemed simplified in some cases, but this is a short book. As for heaven – Cave thinks the current idea of heaven as a family reunion/mall/orgy can’t hold up as no one could take that for eternity and the idea of heaven as nonstop God-worshipping would only be a static disappointment.

I had the most problems with the “Legacy” section as religion and philosophy aren’t my areas but here Cave describes fame-seeking and child-having today. His arguments against looking for fame are that the “you” that survives through fame is not you (this is obvious and Cave goes over this a bit too much), that fame can come at the cost of unhappiness or death, and that those who seek fame often do evil. I thought many of the arguments were hardly as final as Cave claimed and his idea that the side benefits of fame (wealth, power) were negligible doesn’t seem correct in the current environment. Achilles, while not a bad metaphorical example, isn’t the best choice to illustrate Cave’s points as rarely does a person know, as Achilles did, that the choice is between kleos and death or a long, happy life. In pinning our legacy on children, tribe, nation or giant Earth consciousness, Cave notes that a person is barely remembered after a few generations, nationalism can lead to xenophobia and Nazis, and Gaia consciousness doesn’t look likely. Also, the universe is going to end. The idea of becoming a part of something bigger than yourself is also too close to one of Cave’s solutions. Another one – reading Gilgamesh. Other than that, Cave has familiar ideas – life is valuable because it is finite, death is an end but not frightening, self-absorption contributes to death anxiety so cultivating selflessness, gratitude and living in the present moment will help. ( )

Stephen Cave argues in his latest book that it is mankind’s obsession with living beyond the body’s death that drives civilization. From the great monuments to the pharaohs built by the Egyptians to modern cryogenics, innovation and civilization result from the quest for immortality. Cave explores four major routes to immortality and whether he thinks they are achievable. They are:
- Staying Alive: prolonging the lifespan of the physical body
- Resurrection: the idea that the dead will one day be reanimated in their physical bodies
- Soul: the individual consciousness survives in a form beyond death
- Legacy: living on in human memory or through descendents

For each immortality narrative, he looks first to history for examples of men and women who believed this version of extending life or an afterlife, and then looks to modern technology and the future to see what humanity is able to do. Cave also studies art, literature, poetry and other aspects of society for the influence of these narratives.

I liked many of the examples Cave chose to illustrate his four main ideas. For “Resurrection” he looked to St. Paul and the early Christian church, who believed that the physical body would be brought back to life, just as Christ’s body was resurrected after three days in the grave. Alexander the Great’s conquest and his emulation of the hero Achilles frame the arguments for “Legacy”.

Depending on your point of view, this is either an extremely pessimistic or optimistic book. As a philosopher, Cave’s weapon of choice is logic, and he uses this to destroy each of the four narratives. Or, to put it more gently, he sticks purely to scientific evidence when seeking proof of the viability of each scheme, so when it comes to concepts like that of a ‘soul’, he rejects it because there is no physical evidence for it. But a soul as most people understand it wouldn’t be provable scientifically.

While the book is moves with a smooth rhythm, with even a little humor thrown in, every once in a while Cave becomes very patronizing, as he did during the discussion of souls: “No doubt some people are muddling along just fine with, for example, their reassuring belief in an immortal soul.” The word choice rubbed me the wrong way, but I generally enjoyed the book and was glad to read it, because it made me really consider some of my deepest-held beliefs. ( )