Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization

By Stephen Cave

If you could live forever, would you want to? Both a fascinating look at the history of our strive for immortality and an investigation into whether living forever is really all it’s cracked up to be.

A fascinating work of popular philosophy and history that both enlightens and entertains, Stephen Cave investigates whether it just might be possible to live forever and whether we should want to. He also makes a powerful argument that it’s our very preoccupation with defying mortality that drives civilization.
 
Central to this book is the metaphor of a mountaintop where one can find the Immortals.  Since the dawn of humanity, everyone – whether they know it or not—has been trying to climb that mountain.  But there are only four paths up its treacherous slope, and there have only ever been four paths.  Throughout history, people have wagered everything on their choice of the correct path, and fought wars against those who’ve chosen differently.
 
In drawing back the curtain on what compels humans to “keep on keeping on,” Cave engages the reader in a number of mind-bending thought experiments.  He teases out the implications of each immortality gambit, asking, for example, how long a person would live if they did manage to acquire a perfectly disease-free body.  Or what would happen if a super-being tried to round up the atomic constituents of all who’ve died in order to resurrect them.  Or what our loved ones would really be doing in heaven if it does exist.
 
We’re confronted with a series of brain-rattling questions: What would happen if tomorrow humanity discovered that there is no life but this one?  Would people continue to please their boss, vie for the title of Year’s Best Salesman? Would three-hundred-year projects still get started?  If the four paths up the Mount of the Immortals lead nowhere—if there is no getting up to the summit—is there still reason to live?  And can civilization survive?
 
Immortality is a deeply satisfying book, as optimistic about the human condition as it is insightful about the true arc of history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9780307884930

Reviews for Immortality

[alen2379 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

A ghastly superficial book. When he called Islam a "cousin" of Christianity is when I stopped reading. Moron

[marthajeanne · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Cave has decided that he doesn't agree with the possible ways of seeking immortality as he understands them, and that they basically do more harm than good anyway. This is not the book described in the cover blurbs. I do wish that people who don't want religion for themselves would just ignore it, rather than insist that it is meaningless. He is so busy with his polemic against religion that he doesn't really get around to how the search for immortality drives culture, even though that is what the book is sold as.I read this book in the German translation.

[diefledermaus · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.