WEBVTT

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Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

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So I have a question:

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who here remembers when they first 
realised they were going to die?

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I do. I was a young boy and 
my Grandfather had just died.

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and I remember, a few days later,

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lying in bed at night trying to make 
sense of what had happened.

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What did it mean that he was dead?

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Where had he gone?

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It was like a hole in reality 
had opened up and swallowed him.

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But then the really shocking question 
occured to me,

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if he could die, could it happen to me to?

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Could that hole in reality 
open up and swallow me?

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Would it open up beneath my bed 
and swallow me as I slept?

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Well, at some point all children 
become aware of death.

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It can happen in different ways, of course
and usually comes in stages.

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Our idea of death develops
as we grow older,

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And if you reach back into 
the dark corners of your memory,

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you might remember something 
like what I felt when my grandfather died

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and when I realized it could happen to me too.

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That sense that behind all of this,
the void is waiting.

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And this development in childhood reflects
the development of our species.

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Just as there was a point
in your development as a child,

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when you sense of self and of time 
became sophisticated enough

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for you to realize you were mortal.

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So at some point 
in the evolution of our species

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some early humans' sense of self 
and of time became sophisticated enough

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for them to become the first humans
to realize: "I'm going to die".

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This is, if you like, our curse:

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it's the price we pay 
for being so damn clever.

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We have to live in the knowledge

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that the worst thing that can 
possibly happen, one day surely will.

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The end of all our projects, our hopes, 
our dreams, of our individual world.

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We each live in the shadow 
of a personal apocalypse.

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And that's frightening! It's terrifying, 
and so we look for a way out.

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And in my case, 
as I was about five years old,

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this meant asking my Mum.

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Now when I first started asking, 
"what happens when we die?",

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the grown-ups around me at the time 
answered with a typical English mix

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of awkwardness and 
half-hearted christianity.

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And the phrase I heard most often 
was that Grandad was now

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'up there looking down on us'.

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And if I should die too, 
which wouldn't happen of course,

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then I too would go up there.

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Which made death sound a lot
like an existential elevator.

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Now this didn't sound very plausible.

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I used to watch a children's 
news programme at the time

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and this was the era 
of space exploration.

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There were always rockets 
going up into the sky,

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up into space, going 'up there'.

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But none of the astronauts
when they came back

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ever mentioned having met my grandad.

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Or any other dead people. 
But I was scared.

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And the idea of taking 
the existential elevator

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to see my Grandad sounded a lot better

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than being swallowed 
by the void while I slept.

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And so I believed it anyway, 
even though it didn't make much sense.

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And this thought process
that I went through as a child,

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and have been through many times 
since including as a grown-up,

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is a product of what 
psychologists call a 'bias'.

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Now a bias is a way in which 
we systematically get things wrong,

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ways in which we miscalculate, 
misjudge, distort reality

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or see what we want to see.

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And the bias I am talking about 
works like this:

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confront someone with the fact that 
they are going to die

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and they will believe just about any story
that tells them it isn't true

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and then can instead live for ever.

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Even if it means taking
the existential elevator.

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Now, we can see this 
as the biggest bias of all.

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It has been demonstrated in over
400 empirical studies.

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Now these studies are ingenious but
they're simple, they work like this:

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you take two groups of people who are
similar in all relevant respects

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and you remind one group that 
they're going to die but not the other;

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and then you compare their behaviour.

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So you're observing how it biases behaviour

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when people become aware 
of their mortality.

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And every time, you get the same result:

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people who are made aware
of their mortality

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are more willing to believe stories 
that tell then that they came escape death

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and live forever.

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So here's an example: one recent study 
took two groups of agnostics,

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that is people who are undecided
in their religious beliefs.

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Now one group was asked
to think about being dead,

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the other group was asked
to think about being lonely.

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They were then again asked 
about their religious beliefs:

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those who had been asked 
to think about being dead

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were afterwards twice as likely
to express faith in God and Jesus.

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Twice as likely.

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Even though before they were
equally agnostic.

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But put the fear of death 
in them and they run to Jesus.

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Now, this shows that reminding people
of death biases them to believe,

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regardless of the evidence.

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And it works not just for religion 
but for any kind of belief system

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that promises immortality in some form,

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whether it's becoming famous,
or having children, or even nationalism

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which promises you can live on
as part of a greater whole.

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This is a bias that has shaped
the course of human history.

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Now the theory behind this bias 
in nearly 400 studies is called

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terror management theory. 
And the idea is simple, it's just this:

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we develop our world views, that is
the stories we tell ourselves

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about the world and our place in it,

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in order to help us manage 
the terror of death.

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And these immortality stories have
thousands of different manifestations.

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But I believe that behind 
the apparent diversity, there are actually

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just four basic forms that 
these immortality stories can take.

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And we can see them repeating
themselves throughout history.

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Just with slight variations to reflect
the vocabulary of the day.

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Now I am going to briefly introduce
these four basic forms of immortality story

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and I want to try to give you some sense 
of the way in which they're retold

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by each culture or generation,

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using the vocabulary of their day.

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Now, the first story is the simplest:
we want to avoid death.

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And the dream of doing that in this body,
in this world, forever,

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is the first and simplest kind 
of immortality story.

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And it might at first sound implausible,

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but actually almost every culture
in human history

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has had some myth or legend
of a elixir of life,

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or a fountain of youth or 
something that promises

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to keep us going forever.

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Ancient Egypt had such myths, 
ancient Babylon, ancient India,

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throughout European history,
we find them in the work of the alchemists

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and of course 
we still believe this today.

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Only we tell this story using
the vocabulary of science.

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So a hundred years ago, hormones
had just been discovered,

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and people hoped that hormone treatments
were going to cure aging and disease.

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And now instead we set our hopes 
on stem cells, genetic engineering

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and nanotechnology.

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But the idea that science can cure death

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is just one more chapter 
in the story of the magical elixir,

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a story that is as old as civilization.

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But betting everything on the idea 
of finding the elixir

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and staying alive forever 
is a risky strategy.

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When we look back through history

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at all those who have sought 
an elixir in the past,

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the one thing that they now have
in common is that they're all dead.

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(Laughter)

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So we need a back up plan, 
and exactly this type of plan B

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is what the second kind of
immortality story offers,

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and that's resurrection.

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And it's staged with the idea that
I am this body,

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I am this physical organism,

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it accepts that I am going to have to die,

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but says despite that, I can rise up 
and I can live again.

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In other words, I can do what Jesus did.

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Jesus died, he was three days in the tomb 
and he rose up and lived again.

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And the idea that we can all be resurrected
to live again is orthodox belief,

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not just for Christians 
but also Jews and Muslims.

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But our desire to believe this story
is so deeply embedded

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that we are reinventing it again
for the scientific age.

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For example with the idea of cryonics.

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That's the idea that when you die,
you can have yourself frozen,

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and then at some point 
when technology is advanced enough,

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you can be thawed out and repaired 
and revived and so ressurrected.

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So some people believe an omnipotent God
will ressurect them to live again

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and other people believe 
an omnipotent scientist will do it.

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But for others, the whole idea 
of ressurection,

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of climbing out of the grave,
is just too much like a bad zombie movie.

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They find the body too messy, 
too unreliable to guarantee eternal life.

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And so they set their hopes on the third 
more spiritual immortality story,

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the idea we can leave our body behind 
and live on as a soul.

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Now the majority of people on Earth 
believe they have a soul

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and the idea is central to many religions.

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But even though in its current form 
and its traditional form,

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the idea of the soul is still hugely popular,

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nonetheless we are again reinventing it 
for the digital age.

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For example, with the idea 
that you can leave your body behind

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by uploading your mind, your essence, 
the real you, onto a computer.

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and so live on as an avatar in the ether.

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But of course there are skeptics who say
if we look at the evidence of science,

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particularly neuroscience, it suggests 
that your mind, your essence, the real you,

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is very much dependant 
on a particular part of your body

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that is your brain.

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And such skeptics can find comfort 
in the fourth kind of immortality story,

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and that is legacy.

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The idea that you can live on
through the echo you leave in the world.

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Like the great Greek warrior Achilies, 
who sacrificed his life fighting at Troy

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so that he might win immortal fame.

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And the pursuit of fame is 
as widespread and popular now

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as it ever was.

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And in our digital age, 
it's even easier to achieve.

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You don't need to be a great warrior 
like Achilies or a great king or hero,

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all you need is an internet connection 
and a funny cat.

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(Laughter)

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But some people prefer to leave
a more tangible, biological legacy,

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children for example.

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Or they like, they hope, to live on 
as part of some greater whole

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a nation, or family, or tribe,
their gene pool.

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But again there are skeptics, who doubt 
whether legacy really is immortality.

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Woody Allen for example, who said,

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"I dont want to live on 
in the hearts of my countrymen,

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I want to live on in my apartment".

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(Laughter)

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And if you want to live on 
in your apartment

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you need a elixir of course.

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Which was our first kind
of immortality story.

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So those are the four basic kinds
of immortality stories

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and I've tried to give just some sense
of how they're retold by each generation,

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with just slight variations 
to fit the fashions of the day.

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And the fact that they reccur in this way,
in such a similar form

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but in such different belief systems,
suggests I think

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that we should be skeptical

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of the truth of any particular version 
of these stories.

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The fact that some people believe

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an omnipotent God 
will ressurrect them to live again,

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and others believe 
an omnipotent scientist will do it,

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suggests that neither are really believing
this on the strength of the evidence.

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Rather we believe these stories because 
we are biased to believe them,

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and we are bias to believe them because 
we are so afraid of death.

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So the question is, are we doomed 
to lead the one life we have

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in a way that is shaped
by fear and denial?

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Or can we overcome this bias?

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Well the Greek philosopher Epicurus
thought we could.

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He argued that the fear of death
is natural but it is not rational.

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Death, he said, is nothing to us,

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because when we are here, death is not,

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and when death is here, we are gone.

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Now this is often quoted but it's difficult 
to really grasp, to really internalise,

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because exactly this idea of being gone 
is so difficult to imagine.

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So two thousand years later 
another philosopher, Ludovic Wittgenstein,

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put it like this:

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death is not an event in life,

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we do not live
to experience death.

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And so he added, in this sense 
life has no end.

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So it was natural for me as a child
to fear being swallowed by the void,

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but it wasn't rational, because 
being swallowed by the void

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is not something that any of us 
will ever live to experience.

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Now overcoming this bias is not easy


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because the fear of death is 
so deeply embedded in us.

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Yet when we see that 
the fear itself is not rational

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and when we bring out into the open

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the ways in which 
it can unconsciously bias us,

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then we can at least start to try

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to minimize the influence
it has on our lives.

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Now, I find it helps to see life 
as being like a book.

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Just as a book is bounded by its covers,
by beginning and end,

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so our lives are bounded 
by birth and death.

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And even though a book
is limited by beginning and end,

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it can encompass distant landscapes, 
exotic figures, fantastic adventures.

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And even though a book is limited
by beginning and end,

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the characters within it 
know no horizons.

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They only know the moments
that make up their story,

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even when the book is closed.

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And so the characters of the book 
are not afraid of reaching the last page.

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Long John Silver is not afraid of you
finishing your copy of Treasure Island.

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And so it should be with us.

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Imagine the book of your life, its covers,


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its beginning and end 
are your birth and your death.

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You can only know
the moments in between,

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the moments that make up your life.

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It makes no sense for you to fear
what is outside of those covers,

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whether before your birth, 
or after your death.

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And you needn't worry 
how long the book is,

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or whether it's a comic strip or an epic.

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The only thing that matters is 
that you make it a good story.

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Thank you.

00:15:35.593 --> 00:15:39.623
(Applause)