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So, I know most people 
are terrified of death,

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but I’m terrified of cocktail parties.

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(Laughter)

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I'm not much good
at the usual social chatter,

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so if you put a couple
of drinks inside me,

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there's no knowing 
what I might come out with.

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(Laughter)

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Like what happened at one such event,

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halfway into a second martini.

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I got into a conversation

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with an ardent fan 
of the "end to aging" movement -

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you know, the vision
of a radically enhanced life span

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big with Silicon Valley billionaires
who think they should never die.

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One of them was actually
boasting at the time

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that he was taking
150 nutritional supplements a day

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to ward off death -

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an activity that must have consumed
the better part of an hour,

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let alone the lining of a stomach.

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(Laughter)

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The guy I was talking with

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didn't seem to think
there was anything weird about this.

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He was about half my age -

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less than half, in fact.

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And since death was clearly more of
an imminent reality for me than for him,

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he made the mistake of assuming
that I'd be living in mortal fear of it.

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He seemed quite shocked that I wasn't.

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In fact, he seemed to take my
equanimity of the prospect

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as an admission of some kind 
of failure on my part.

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“How can you accept limits
that don't have to be there?" he said.

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"Biotechnology could mean an end to aging;

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it could even mean
an end to death itself."

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And that’s when it came out.

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(Laughter)

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"But what's wrong with dying?" I said.

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The question startled him into silence,

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and the truth is it startled me too.

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I'd never thought to ask
this specific question before.

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I never put it quite so bluntly,

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but now that it was out there -

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hovering in the alcoholic 
fumes between us -

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(Laughter)

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it seemed to cut 
to the heart of the matter

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because it's taken for granted 
that we're all afraid of death.

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Ask people if they are -

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and I have asked,

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though not usually at parties -

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and most would say, "Yes, of course!"

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and look like they'd rather be
anywhere but in the same room as you.

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There was psychologist William James,

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who called death "the evil background,"

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and "the worm at the core 
of human aspirations to happiness."

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Or with poet Philip Larkin,

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who was very good 
at worms at the core of things

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and wrote of lying awake in terror

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of what he called
the "total emptiness forever."

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But it turns out, I’m as bad 
at things taken for granted

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as I am at cocktail parties.

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When something seems so obvious
it's beyond question,

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that's when I tend to start questioning;

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because what we take for granted

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may really be what we haven't taken
the time to think through.

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I guess you could say

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I haven't had much option but to think
through the matter of my own death

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since I've come pretty close to it
a number of times.

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In the Middle-East, I was shot at
on a journalistic assignment,

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bombed as a civilian,

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threatened by right-wing thugs.

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But the closest I've come
was entirely my own doing.

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I lost control of a car

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on turn three of a race track
in the American Midwest,

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and with what seemed immense slowness

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rolled over,

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and over, and - yes - over again.

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And as I rolled, a single sentence
reverberated in my mind,

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like some kind of mantra.

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"This", I kept thinking,
"is a really stupid way to die."

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(Laughter)

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My first reaction

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when the car came to a stop
and I found myself still alive

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was amazement,

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followed by a surge of gratitude

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to whoever it was 
who invented the crash helmet.

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(Laughter)

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So, it only occurred to me later to ask,

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"What exactly would have been
so stupid about dying this way?"

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I mean, what might I consider
an intelligent way to die?

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(Laughter)

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Why was I even asking
such a question in the first place?

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To which my only answer was:
intellectual vanity.

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I mean, surely I was
far too intelligent to die stupidly.

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(Laughter)

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It seems that not only is my life
immensely significant to me,

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but so too is my death -

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even though if I was dead,

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I wouldn’t be around to appreciate
the significance of that fact.

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In fact, I wouldn't be around
to appreciate anything at all,

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which makes it a good thing
I'm not religious;

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because then, apparently,
I would be around

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in something called "the afterlife."

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And this is, to put it mildly,
a sobering thought to live with;

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since the idea is not only 
that you never really die,

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but that what you do in this life

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determines your fate
in a hypothetical next one.

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In other words,
the life you're actually living

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has no intrinsic value in and of itself;

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or actually, not in other words

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but in the words of motivational
mega-pastor Rick Warren,

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he of The Purpose Driven Life:

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"Earth," he says -

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and I'm not making this up -

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"Earth is the staging area, the preschool,
the tryout for your life in eternity."

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Life as a practice session?

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I mean, that's one way 
to utterly trivialize it.

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And here’s another;

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because what’s on offer from
the Silicon Valley apostles of immortality

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really comes down to a secular 
version of the same thing.

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Even if for them you stay in your body

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instead of evaporating
into some kind of disembodied state.

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And so, we have 
Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel

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saying - and I quote -

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"If people think they're going to die,
it's demotivating."

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(Laughter)

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There's more!

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(Laughter)

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"The idea of immortality," 
he says, "is motivational."

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As one of those people absurd enough
to imagine she's going to die,

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I find Thiel's glibness astonishing.

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He reduces human existence
to the language of corporate management,

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to motivational path.

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He seems to think our lives are
invalidated by the fact that we'll die,

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and he assumes that life
is a matter of what else but metrics;

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its value determined by something
as easy to calculate as years.

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In Thiel's world,
what gets us up in the morning

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is not the enjoyment of the life
we're actually living,

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but the hope that we'll go on
getting up in the morning forever.

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I for one can think of
few things more depressing.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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Thiel's dream is my nightmare.

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(Laughter)

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And if you think about it a moment,

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it might turn out to be yours too.

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Let's leave aside 
practical considerations,

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like who can possibly 
afford to live forever.

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I mean, I guess that might be
less of a consideration

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if you are a billionaire,
but only slightly less,

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because any number of billions of dollars


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is still barely a drop
in the financial ocean of eternity.

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Instead, I'd ask you to think
what it might mean to live forever,

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what it would be like
to just keep on going,

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like that pink toy rabbit
in the old commercial for batteries,

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banging away on its tin drum.

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(Laughter)

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And in fact, we do have some idea
of what it would be like.

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It's there in the way we talk.

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When we say we sat through a lecture

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that just went on and on
like it would never end,

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or we complain of incessant chatter,

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or describe a bad movie as interminable.

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Consciously or not,
we realize that without an end,

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life would become a flat,
featureless expanse:

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just one thing after another,
literally ad infinitum.

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Endlessness would suck 
the vitality out of existence,

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eviscerate it of meaning.

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It would leave us with that sense
of tedium and pointlessness

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that's the hallmark of chronic depression.

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So the last thing I'd ever want
is to never die.

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I have zero desire to live forever,

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because immortality is not
something devoutly to be wished for,

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on the contrary: it's a curse.

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Think of Greek myth,

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where Sisyphus is forever
rolling his boulder uphill,

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never to reach the top.

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Or of ghost and vampire stories,

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where the walking dead are condemned
to spectral half lives without end.

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Or even of a comic book 
hero like Superman,

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destined never to have
a regular Clark Kent life;

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never to live, love and die
like a normal human being.

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We need endings

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because the most
basic ending of all is built into us:

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our ability to die,

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our mortality,

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is a defining part
of what it is to be human.

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We are finite beings within infinity,

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and if we are alive to this,

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it sharpens our appreciation
of the fact that we exist,

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gives new depth to the idea
of life as a journey.

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So, my mortality does not negate meaning,

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it creates meaning.

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It's what wakes me up to life.

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It's what says,

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"Appreciate it!

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Don't take it for granted!

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Write the next book!

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Laugh with your friends!

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Go explore!

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Eat another dozen oysters!"

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(Laughter)

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Because it's not how long
I live that matters;

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it's how I live,

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and I intend to do it well -

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to the end.

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Thank you!

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(Applause)