Let's Talk About Death - Stephen Cave at TEDxBratislava

Death. It's kind of a heavy subject. And, according to Stephen Cave, we fear it so much that we avoid thinking about it at all costs -- even when death is exactly what we think we're talking about. At TEDxBratislava, he outlines the four common narratives that cultures throughout history have used to dodge thinking about dying, and gives us a reason to stop getting caught up on dying and start focusing on living.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

So I have a question:

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

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

and I remember, a few days later,

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

What did it mean that he was dead?

Where had he gone?

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

But then the really shocking question
occured to me,

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

Could that hole in reality
open up and swallow me?

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

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

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

Our idea of death develops
as we grow older,

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

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

and when I realized it could happen to me too.

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

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

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

when you sense of self and of time
became sophisticated enough

for you to realize you were mortal.

So at some point
in the evolution of our species

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

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

This is, if you like, our curse:

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

We have to live in the knowledge

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

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

We each live in the shadow
of a personal apocalypse.

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

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

this meant asking my Mum.

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

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

of awkwardness and
half-hearted christianity.

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

'up there looking down on us'.

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

then I too would go up there.

Which made death sound a lot
like an existential elevator.

Now this didn't sound very plausible.

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

and this was the era
of space exploration.

There were always rockets
going up into the sky,

up into space, going 'up there'.

But none of the astronauts
when they came back

ever mentioned having met my grandad.

Or any other dead people.
But I was scared.

And the idea of taking
the existential elevator

to see my Grandad sounded a lot better

than being swallowed
by the void while I slept.

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

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

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

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

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

ways in which we miscalculate,
misjudge, distort reality

or see what we want to see.

And the bias I am talking about
works like this:

confront someone with the fact that
they are going to die

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

and then can instead live for ever.

Even if it means taking
the existential elevator.

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

It has been demonstrated in over
400 empirical studies.

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

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

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

and then you compare their behaviour.

So you're observing how it biases behaviour

when people become aware
of their mortality.

And every time, you get the same result:

people who are made aware
of their mortality

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

and live forever.

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

that is people who are undecided
in their religious beliefs.

Now one group was asked
to think about being dead,

the other group was asked
to think about being lonely.

They were then again asked
about their religious beliefs:

those who had been asked
to think about being dead

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

Twice as likely.

Even though before they were
equally agnostic.

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

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

regardless of the evidence.

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

that promises immortality in some form,

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

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

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

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

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

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

about the world and our place in it,

in order to help us manage
the terror of death.

And these immortality stories have
thousands of different manifestations.

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

just four basic forms that
these immortality stories can take.

And we can see them repeating
themselves throughout history.

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

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

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

by each culture or generation,

using the vocabulary of their day.

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

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

is the first and simplest kind
of immortality story.

And it might at first sound implausible,

but actually almost every culture
in human history

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

or a fountain of youth or
something that promises

to keep us going forever.

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

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

and of course
we still believe this today.

Only we tell this story using
the vocabulary of science.

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

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

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

and nanotechnology.

But the idea that science can cure death

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

a story that is as old as civilization.

But betting everything on the idea
of finding the elixir

and staying alive forever
is a risky strategy.

When we look back through history

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

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

(Laughter)

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

is what the second kind of
immortality story offers,

and that's resurrection.

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

I am this physical organism,

it accepts that I am going to have to die,

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

In other words, I can do what Jesus did.

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

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

not just for Christians
but also Jews and Muslims.

But our desire to believe this story
is so deeply embedded

that we are reinventing it again
for the scientific age.

For example with the idea of cryonics.

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

and then at some point
when technology is advanced enough,

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

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

and other people believe
an omnipotent scientist will do it.

But for others, the whole idea
of ressurection,

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

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

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

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

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

and the idea is central to many religions.

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

the idea of the soul is still hugely popular,

nonetheless we are again reinventing it
for the digital age.

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

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

and so live on as an avatar in the ether.

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

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

is very much dependant
on a particular part of your body

that is your brain.

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

and that is legacy.

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

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

so that he might win immortal fame.

And the pursuit of fame is
as widespread and popular now

as it ever was.

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

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

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

(Laughter)

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

children for example.

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

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

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

Woody Allen for example, who said,

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

I want to live on in my apartment".

(Laughter)

And if you want to live on
in your apartment

you need a elixir of course.

Which was our first kind
of immortality story.

So those are the four basic kinds
of immortality stories

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

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

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

but in such different belief systems,
suggests I think

that we should be skeptical

of the truth of any particular version
of these stories.

The fact that some people believe

an omnipotent God
will ressurrect them to live again,

and others believe
an omnipotent scientist will do it,

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

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

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

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

in a way that is shaped
by fear and denial?

Or can we overcome this bias?

Well the Greek philosopher Epicurus
thought we could.

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

Death, he said, is nothing to us,

because when we are here, death is not,

and when death is here, we are gone.

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

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

So two thousand years later
another philosopher, Ludovic Wittgenstein,

put it like this:

death is not an event in life,

we do not live
to experience death.

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

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

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

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

Now overcoming this bias is not easy

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

Yet when we see that
the fear itself is not rational

and when we bring out into the open

the ways in which
it can unconsciously bias us,

then we can at least start to try

to minimize the influence
it has on our lives.

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

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

so our lives are bounded
by birth and death.

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

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

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

the characters within it
know no horizons.

They only know the moments
that make up their story,

even when the book is closed.

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

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

And so it should be with us.

Imagine the book of your life, its covers,

its beginning and end
are your birth and your death.

You can only know
the moments in between,

the moments that make up your life.

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

whether before your birth,
or after your death.

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

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

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

Thank you.

(Applause)