The Consolations of Mortality: Making Sense of Death 9780300224702

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THE CONSOL ATIONS OF MORTALITY

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ANDREW STARK

The Consolations of Mortality Making Sense of Death

NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

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Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of James Wesley Cooper of the Class of 1865, Yale College. Copyright © 2016 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Janson Oldstyle and Futura Bold types by Newgen North America. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2016934661 isbn 978-0-300-21925-8 (cloth : alk. paper) Quotation from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from the book The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1923, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Copyright © 1951 by Robert Frost. Used by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. All rights reserved. Excerpt from “Aubade” from Collected Poems, by Philip Larkin. Copyright © 1988, 2003 by the Estate of Philip Larkin. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay,” words and music by Otis Redding and Steve Cropper. Copyright © 1968 (Renewed) 1975 Irving Music Inc. All rights for the world outside of the U.S. controlled and administered by WB Music Corp. and Irving Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Music and Hal Leonard Corporation. “Intimacy,” words and music by Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Bruce Roberts. © 1995 Boozetunes and Bir. Copyright © 1992 Reservoir Media Music and WB Music Corp. All rights on behalf of Boozetunes administered by WB Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Music and Hal Leonard Corporation. “Cat’s in the Cradle,” Words and Music by Harry Chapin and Sandy Chapin. © 1974 (Renewed) Story Songs, Ltd. All Rights Administered by WB Music Corp. All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission of Alfred Music. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ansi /niso z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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For Deborah

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Introduction

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1

PA R T 1 | D E AT H I S B E N I G N

one Attending Your Own Funeral

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two How to Rest on Your Laurels

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three Look Who’s Calling Himself Nothing four Bucket Lists

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PA R T 2 | M O R TA L I T Y I N T I M AT E S I M M O R TA L I T Y

five Retiring Your Jersey

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six Regrets? How Much Time Do You Have? seven You Never Know

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eight Making Your Mark

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PA R T 3 | I M M O R TA L I T Y W O U L D B E M A L I G N A N T

nine Is This All There Is? ten Still Life

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eleven A Wistful Backward Glance twelve Making the Sun Run

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Interlude Mortality versus Immortality: Why Not the Right to Choose? 191 PA R T 4 | L I F E I N T I M AT E S D E AT H

thirteen The Big Sleep

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fourteen Stardust and Moonshine

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fifteen Every Time I Say Goodbye, I Die a Little Conclusion My Last Espresso Notes

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Index

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to Hamish Clark, Isaac Clark, Fardowsa Hashi, Vladimir Helwig, Gavin Lee, and Yuki Nishimura for their superb research assistance, and to Jennifer Banks, Laura Davulis, Heather Gold, and Jeffrey Schier of Yale University Press for their support and wise editorial advice. I also thank Don Herzog, Mark Lilla, Patrick Luciani, William Ian Miller, Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, Deborah Moores, Cliff Orwin, Donna Orwin, Rachel Stark, and Zoe Stark for their valuable and insightful comments on earlier versions. I have tried to implement their sage suggestions. I also, with deep appreciation, remind them of Otis Redding’s great truth: “I can’t do what ten people tell me to do/So I guess I’ll remain the same.”

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THE CONSOL ATIONS OF MORTALITY

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INTRODUCTION

For those of us who are not believers—for those of us who suspect that death really is the final curtain—the wisdom of the ages has generated four great consolations for mortality: four distinct ways of persuading us to accept, maybe even appreciate, the fact that we will die. None of the four relies on religious conviction. None invokes the possibility of an afterlife. Each comes in multiple exotic guises. All have been around, in some form or another, for a long time. Centuries. Millennia, even, with sprawling roots in the ancient west, the timeless east, and the modern world. Do they work? Can any one of the four really deliver on its promise to make us feel content, even at peace, with our inevitable demise? It’s an important question. In fact, it’s an urgent one. In 1783 a French noblewoman sat in her carriage at the Tuileries, observing for the first time a hot-air balloon rise into the sky: a demonstration, she thought, of the kind of breakthroughs that science was on the verge of making. But the lady wasn’t happy. “Oh yes, now it’s certain!” she cried: “One day they’ll learn to keep people alive forever, but I shall already be dead!”1 Given the pace and promise of biomedical innovation, a moment may well arrive when great numbers of our species start to feel like the lady: sensing that open-ended human longevity looms as an increasingly imminent possibility, yet fearing that they themselves might just miss out on it. For all who hold this worldview, the question of how to come to terms with their deaths will assume a desperate psychological urgency. And what if such a moment doesn’t arrive any time soon? What if the riddle of mortality continues to elude cutting-edge science? Then the matter of reckoning with our finality will simply maintain the paramount importance it’s always had.

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Either way, we will want consolation. But are the four approaches that the ages bequeath to us up to the task? Does one perhaps work better than the others? Or is it just possible that something else entirely—maybe something that emerges only when the four are considered together—makes a compelling case that dying is better for us than any conceivable alternative? By “us,” I mean we bundles of ego and anxiety who love life, believe that death spells permanent obliteration, and live in the early twentyfirst century. Strong egos that we are, we anguish as our precious selves move, inescapably and second by second, forward in time toward their impending ends. Lovers of life that we are, we agonize as its moments slip one by one, through our fingers, back into the irrecoverable past. How could we ever come to terms with such a reality? The first of the four consolations tells us forthrightly that if we look at our situation in the right light, we will see that death itself is actually a benign or even a good thing. Philosophers from Epicurus to Heidegger to contemporary Buddhists have found different glimmers of this silver lining in our mortal condition. Epicurus, for example, counseled that the relationship between a person and his death is roughly akin—if I can use an analogy that was unavailable to Epicurus himself—to the relationship between Superman and Clark Kent. Whenever one is present, the other is nowhere to be seen. As long as a person is alive, his death has not yet happened. And then once his death occurs, he is no longer around to suffer it. Since our self can never encounter its own demise, Epicurus concluded, death should cause us absolutely no concern. It’s entirely and utterly benign. The trick simply lies, Epicurus felt, in allowing the logical force of this observation to overcome the psychological terror that death inspires. Existentialists and Buddhists assign death a benign countenance for a different kind of reason. As they see it, the relationship between death and the self is more like the Beatles’ songwriting partnership between Lennon and McCartney. Only if Lennon is present in the credits will you find McCartney there too. And if there is no

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McCartney in the byline, then there is no Lennon either. Likewise, only because death is present in the world, existentialists say, are selves present too. Because there is no such thing as the self to begin with, Buddhists counter, there is no such thing as death either. Why, for existentialists, are death and the self joined at the hip? Because only if we remain constantly aware that our time is limited will we feel any urgency to get started in the world, make hard choices about what’s important to us, and carve out the narrative arc of our own singular self. If by contrast no final deadline loomed, then we would endlessly dally and dawdle, failing to make anything of ourselves— or even make our selves in the first place. If we think about it deeply enough, we will see that mortality is thus a good thing. It’s necessary to our very existence. Only because death exists does our self exist too. Buddhism, by contrast, tells us that the self is an illusion. And so death, which is supposedly the destruction of the self, must be naught as well. There’s nothing that it terminates. If there is no self, then all we are is a chain of moment-by-moment memories, experiences, hopes, dreams, thoughts, aspirations, and feelings over time. And all of them can survive our death, living on into the future in anyone who continues to share them. So we lose nothing to death. The trick lies simply in learning how to accept this truth. Despite their stark differences, what philosophers espousing this first consolatory stream all argue—whether they are Epicurean, existentialist, or Buddhist—is that death is benignly irrelevant, maybe even positively good, for the person who dies. And there’s no reference to an afterlife to be found in the lot of them. The second consolatory stream flows in a different direction. According to its various advocates, all of the good things that we associate with death’s alternative—namely, immortality—are actually fully available to us within the confines of our mortal life. Within mortal life as it is, we can acquire all the intimations of immortality we could ever desire. Since a well-lived mortal life offers everything that immortality could, death deprives us of nothing.

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Think of the Microsoft techno-guru Gordon Bell. He promises that one day soon, thanks to 24/7 real-time video and audio recording, we will be able to upload everything that ever happens to us—in effect, the entire contents of our memories— online, to be preserved forever. E. M. Forster was crushed by the thought that once he expired, so too would all the precious reminiscences he cherished of his beloved mother. But, Bell claims, we can now obtain at least that particular benefit of immortality—the eternal preservation of our own irreplaceable trove of knowledge about the past— even if we die. We can all, Bell says, “off-load our memory” and thus gain “a kind of immortality.”2 What other goods do we associate with continuing to live on indefinitely? Well, not only do we want to preserve what we and only we know about the past— our treasured memories—but we also want to know all about the future: we want to know every secret of the universe and God and consciousness that our species might one day discover. We also want to continue not just to know but to shape the future, to stamp our imprint on it, instead of being condemned, as we mortals sadly are, to having all traces of our existence eventually fade away as if we had never lived. And we will always need more time to shape not just the future but the past, to stamp our imprint on it, instead of being condemned, as we mortals distressingly are, to leaving mistakes unrepaired, regrets unamended, and defeats unvindicated. But there are those who argue that if we look at matters in the right way, we will see that each of these good things, too, can be had within a mortal life every bit as much as we could get them (and maybe part of the issue is that we exaggerate how much we could get them) in an immortal life. Death could vanish, and we mortals would gain nothing—at least nothing of any value—that we don’t already have. We should be consoled by this thought. Immortality not only comes with good things, though. It’s also wedded to some very bad ones. You might think that endless life is what you want. But beware of what you wish for. On the third broad stream of consolation, immortality itself would actually be an awful fate,

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and so mortality is much to be preferred. Here again, thinkers have offered an array of possibilities. Assume, for example, that as an immortal you retained an ongoing memory of everything that you experienced over the millennia. Then would you not come to feel, sooner or later as time marched on, as if you had seen everything that there is to see? And suppose, too, that you retained the same unvarying set of core desires and values as thousands upon tens of thousands of years passed. Then would you not come to feel, sooner or later, as if you had done all that you ever cared to do? And so wouldn’t immortality ultimately spell interminable, excruciating boredom? Suppose, though, that you dodged that fate. Suppose, as an immortal, that your oldest memories regularly vanished into the mists of time, so that the world always seemed to offer fresh experiences— experiences you wouldn’t remember having had before. And suppose too that your desires and values repeatedly turned over, to be replaced by entirely new sets of ambitions and aspirations to pursue. Then, yes, you might well cheat boredom. But it would also be as if you were periodically dying to be reborn as someone totally different: someone with remembrances and goals utterly unrecognizable to your prior self, whose own memories and passions would in turn have been completely eradicated, consigned to oblivion. And then would immortality really be any different from mortality? Still others say: maybe immortality would split the difference. Suppose that as an immortal you retained all of your memories from the earliest days onward, and that all your original desires and values, too, persisted indefinitely. You would certainly continue to be the same person. But suppose as well that novel challenges still continued to confront you, thanks to the disruptive mindsets of new generations or the ceaseless upheavals of a volatile biophysical universe. You would never be bored either. And yet even here—with a stable memory, consistent desires, and a continuously novel flow of life events—there’d be a problem with living forever. Sooner or later you would come to feel profoundly antiquated. You’d feel haunted by your memories of bygone days and mired in your old-fashioned desires and values,

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while the world hurtled on in directions you wouldn’t understand or appreciate. You’d become terminally nostalgic. The only remaining immortality scenario would seem to be one in which your memories periodically disappeared to be superseded by entirely new ones, and your desires and values repeatedly fell away over time to be supplanted by wholly unrelated ones, and yet not much that’s new actually ever happened to you. But how enviable would that kind of unending life be? Its closest cousin in mortal life—unstable memory, inconstant desires, rigidly repetitive flow of life events—seems to be a kind of dementia. Maybe, these various braided strands of thought suggest, immortality would be nothing but a kind of box. No matter where they looked, immortal humans would ultimately face a wall: crushing boredom, multiple serial personalities, bitter nostalgia, futile dementia. Perhaps, then, we mortals in fact have it pretty good: as good as it could ever get. And that’s some consolation. A fourth and final consolatory stream takes yet a different tack. It reminds us that the principal evils we associate with being dead routinely happen to us in life anyway. Within life—this vale of tears— we already face everything that we dread about death. In fact life, with its losses, is itself nothing but an intimation of death. List all the evils that you think death inflicts. You will see that life, sooner or later, deals them out as well. If we were clear-eyed about this reality, then death would cease to be a source of terror. Think of one of death’s most stinging deprivations: our having to part forever from the people and things we love. This happens in life all the time anyway. “Husbands walk out, wives walk out,” says Joan Didion.3 We lose cherished jobs, beloved homes, treasured keepsakes, life-sustaining ideals and convictions all the time. Goodbyes are endemic to life, with every turn in the wheel of fortune, just as much as they are to death: so says the fourth consolation for our mortal condition. Of course, there’s one goodbye that death specializes in and that life seems unable to intimate: the goodbye to our own individual con-

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sciousness itself, not simply to all of the people and pursuits and places and possessions that populate it. And yet not only does life, too, contain its own periods when we bid adieu to our consciousness—hence the reference to death as the “big sleep,” which I will discuss—but it threatens something more. Consider the visionaries who have recently led the fight against death, such as Ray Kurzweil, Marvin Minsky, and Hans Moravec. At some point, they say, human life will become “post-human.” By uploading our minds onto supercomputers we will “merge” or “meld” into a single, eternal, universal consciousness of immense power, opening up dazzling insights into hidden patterns of the cosmos that at present remain beyond our ken. Let’s suppose that what these futurists sketchily foresee does come to pass. Isn’t what they herald not so much a form of immortality as it is the final frontier in life’s intimation of death’s losses? After all, individual consciousness—what it is we most value in life—would eventually perish in (post)human life, with its single universal consciousness, every bit as much as it does now with death. It’s just that what disappears would be the “individual” part, not the “consciousness” part. Perhaps we are deeply fortunate to be living mortals now, in the early twenty-first century, before the posthuman era commences. And that’s some consolation.

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Death is benign. Mortality gives us all the goods that immortality would. Immortality would be malignant. Life gives us all the bads that death does. In the pages that follow, I explore these four broad consolations, and the different flavors in which each of them comes. My overriding question is this: Can one or more or all or none of them — or perhaps something else altogether—really and truly reconcile us, we early twenty-first-century bundles of ego and anxiety who love life, to our mortality? A few words about some red herrings. One purported consolation for mortality is that we should welcome death because it puts an agreeable end to the degradations of aging—macular degeneration,

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arthritis, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s. I don’t buy this argument. After all, the reverse claim almost as often gets made: that we should welcome the degradations of aging—macular degeneration, arthritis, and so on—because they make death, which rescues us from them, easier to take, even seem like a blessing. Montaigne, who otherwise had brilliant insights to offer on the topic of mortality, said both of these things. But their circularity suggests that we’d simply be better off without either: without the death that ends the awful degradation, without the degradation that eases us toward accepting terrible death. So my assumption, throughout, is that we are talking about whether mortality is a good or a bad thing for people who otherwise remain healthy. That of course is the toughest case. And we must bear in mind that medical science might continue extending the span over which most of us are able to remain well. True, for a separate set of reasons—population growth, strains on resources, the choking-off of opportunities—the fact that even the healthy aged die might be a good thing for the human species as a whole. But I am concerned here with whether mortality can be a good thing for the healthy person herself who dies. Also: by a mortal life, I mean one that extends to whatever the normal human span happens to be at any point in time. I don’t discuss the merits of mortality when it falls short of a normal span. No one, in our era when a normal life span is approximately eighty, can say a good word about the premature death of an otherwise healthy and flourishing person, say a cancer victim in her twenties, or a six-yearold who is struck by a car and killed. Nor do I discuss the merits of increased longevity, an increase in the normal life span, short of immortality. If a life span of eighty years is good, it’s hard to see why a life span of ninety or one hundred, or perhaps two hundred or two thousand or even twenty thousand or two hundred thousand years should necessarily be bad. I don’t know where the border between increased longevity and for-all-intentsand-purposes immortality can be found. As the geneticist Francis Collins says, “One man’s longevity is another man’s immortality.”4

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An immortal life doesn’t literally have to be endless. But it must feel, to those living it, as if it were endless—and not simply a mortal life of vastly increased longevity. This book, then, pits mortality against immortality while taking no position on how much longevity has to increase before mortality becomes immortality. Put another way, wherever one draws the line between an effectively mortal and an effectively immortal life, the consolations, based as they are simply on the ideas of mortality and immortality, will have the same relevance. Finally, I will look widely at works of philosophy and literature, as well as at popular culture: film, sports, music, letters, memorial plaques, bucket lists, the musings of celebrities, and more. I come to them as someone with a question that’s been dogging me—whether I can reconcile myself to my mortality—searching our collective literary, philosophical, and cultural wisdom for insights that will help me find an answer. And I do so precisely from the perspective not of a philosopher or a literary critic, but of an everyday bundle of ego and anxieties who loves life and is looking to console himself about death. This book is written for those who might be on the same quest. And it offers a way of thinking about—a critical guide to— the main ideas on offer. One last thing. I promised myself, when I began this project, that I would write the most upbeat book that I honestly could. I have kept that promise.

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PART 1

Death Is Benign

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one

ATTENDING YOUR OWN FUNERAL

Chulkaturin, the dying “hero” of Turgenev’s Diary of a Superfluous Man, believes that his life has left no mark on the world. He feels like a fifth wheel on a four-wheel cart. The lives of others, and events in general, would have rolled along in much the same way even if he had never existed. But this is puzzling. For as Turgenev tells it, Chulkaturin collides spectacularly with other people, leaving their lives indelibly different. He spends hours, days, weeks in the presence of the woman he loves, Liza, alternatively garrulous and glum without ever pressing his suit, continually exasperating and finally alienating her. Upset with his own dallying, he then provokes a duel with the visiting prince who wins Liza’s heart, wounding him and this time antagonizing the entire community. Chulkaturin might be cowardly and conflicted, and he might have anger management issues. But his life doesn’t seem superfluous, like a fifth wheel on a four-wheel cart. It seems more like a reckless, careening cart itself, leaving a permanent mark on the world and everyone around him. Chulkaturin records these events in his diary as he lies dying of a fatal illness, and his deathbed perspective is key here. He finds himself, even in these final days, languorously dragging his pen across the page much as he had lived his life, “without haste . . . as though I still had years ahead of me”: as if death were nothing to him. That’s why Liza slipped through his fingers. Never grabbing the moment with her, never bringing matters to a head—he thought he had all the time in the world—he awakens one morning to find Liza betrothed to another man. Not, as it happens, the prince (who has spurned her) but the local official Biz’menkov. “Biz’menkov had probably said to Liza exactly what I was going to say to her,” Chulkaturin thinks to

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himself self-torturously, and “she had given him the answer I longed to hear from her.”1 It is as if Biz’menkov had unhorsed Chulkaturin from the saddle of his own life, and Chulkaturin then had to stand on the sidelines and watch that life galloping on ahead without him. In fact, ever since he can remember, Chulkaturin has always felt this way: “Throughout my entire life, I have found that my spot [in it] was taken.”2 And herein lies Chulkaturin’s superfluousness. It’s not that his own life has been irrelevant to the lives of others. It’s that he, Chulkaturin, has somehow become irrelevant to his own life. Because he had banished death from his mind he dawdled and tarried, never seizing the reins himself. Now, as he is about to die, it seems to him that his life is going to continue on very nicely in his absence, albeit under new management. But Turgenev’s Chulkaturin is not literature’s—in fact not even Russian literature’s—most famous superfluous man. That title goes to Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilych who, although both famous and superfluous, is famous not for being superfluous but for something else. He is the most notorious death denier in all of literature. He refuses to believe that he will die. And yet Ivan’s lifelong unwillingness to face his mortality is, like Chulkaturin’s, intimately connected with his own superfluousness, with the sense he feels, as he approaches his untimely end, of being irrelevant to his own life. We have, Ernest Becker famously argued in his 1973 book The Denial of Death, pushed death entirely out of our lives. We know on the most abstract level that we will come to an end. But we do not —and maybe could not—live our lives in the full face of that knowledge. We’d be paralyzed with fear or a sense of meaninglessness. And so we repress our awareness that extinguishment awaits us. We repress it also because it’s simply impossible to imagine our no longer existing. Freud saw death denial as a fact of our individual nature: “At bottom no one believes in his own death . . . in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.”3 The historian Philippe Ariès, along similar lines, diagnosed death denial as a social phenomenon: consider our manner of shuttering death

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out of life by confining the dying to hospitals and consigning the dead to undertakers. In other words, many of us live our lives so as to make them fertile ground for Epicurus’s consolatory idea: the observation that as long as we are here death can’t be and so is irrelevant to us. We know this is true as a logical proposition. But we devote ourselves to making it psychologically real for ourselves by living as if we weren’t going to die—by living so that death can gain no toehold in our daily life and concerns as long as we are here. This is what Ivan does. He thrusts his death out of his life, holds it at bay, so that it becomes as nothing to him. He exiles it to the fringes of his mind, continuously taking on new projects at work, home, and play as if he had no expiry date. A “current of thoughts,” Tolstoy writes—thoughts about tonight’s bridge game, his daughter’s marriage potential, his getting a leg up on his rivals at work— “had always screened the thought of death from Ivan Ilych.”4 The same with many of us. Think of the busy publisher George Weidenfeld, who, in his nineties and still juggling numerous enterprises on the go, conceded that “I think about death,” yet then quickly emphasized: “but I don’t think it through.”5 The more projects you have to think about, the less you will think about death. And the less you think about death, the less inhibition you will feel about continuing to take on new projects. The result is that when Ivan does die, all of those schemes, plans, and hopes—all the major pieces and parts of his life—are nowhere near ready to come to an end with him. All the continuing loose ends of his life spill over far beyond his death. But since he no longer remains alive their fate now rests in the hands of others. Ivan himself dies. But because he has been such a proficient death denier his life continues on, showing him to have become superfluous to it. In little vignettes, Tolstoy reveals what this means. At work, the bureaucrat Alexeev, contemplating Ivan’s mortal illness, daydreams that he will succeed to Ivan’s seat on the Court of Justice and take over his unfinished docket of cases. At home, Ivan’s friend Peter Ivanovich, paying his last respects along with a multitude of others, is damned

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if he’s going to let Ivan’s approaching demise ruin his bridge rubber that evening; the game will go on seamlessly with someone else playing Ivan’s hand. Ivan’s income stream too will flow on after him, in the form of a pension, except that now of course the money will be spent by his widow, Praskovya Fedorovna. Not long before Ivan dies, Praskovya Fedorovna, dressed to the nines, enters his chamber. She reminds him that, months before, they had booked a theater box to watch a Sarah Bernhardt performance that evening. But Ivan is now on his deathbed. So Praskovya Fedorovna informs him that their daughter Lisa’s fiancé, Fëdor Petrishchev, will be taking Ivan’s seat. No wonder it “sometimes seemed to Ivan,” as Tolstoy writes, “that people were watching him inquisitively as a man whose place might soon be vacant.”6 And there was always someone available—Alexeev, Peter Ivanovich, Praskovya Fedorovna, Fëdor Petrishchev—to take that place: to take up Ivan’s own role in what would otherwise have been his own life. At court and at cards, at the marketplace and at the theater, Ivan’s life will continue beyond his death. After all, by denying death any place in his life, Ivan has lived—to borrow from Ernest Becker—in a “forward momentum of activity,” ever onward, never wrapping things up.7 And so as death creeps into it, his life is still going full force, quite capable of carrying on without him. Yet although his life will survive the moment of his demise, Ivan himself, in some ways, has already predeceased it, which is why others are already assuming his place in it. Ivan dies of internal injuries at age forty-five, a few months after a freak accident. He falls from a ladder while hanging drapes. Perhaps you can’t fault Ivan (although Tolstoy does) for not thinking much about his death prior to the accident. He was, after all, a robust man in the prime of life. But his death denial persists into the period when, had he acknowledged he was dying, he could have wrapped up his life’s loose ends. Had he been frank with himself about his mortality, he would have completed his major cases so that they would have been decided his way, not Alexeev’s. He might have prevailed on Fëdor Petrishchev to marry Lisa while he was still on the planet. Perhaps he could have put his income in a trust, so that Praskovya Fedorovna would have spent it in accordance with his wishes, not

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frivolously but conserving an estate for Lisa and Fëdor Petrishchev’s children. And if he had said, “I am dying,” would his wife, daughter, and son-in-law-to-be have traipsed off to the theater that evening? In fact there are two ways for Ivan to look at this reality—the reality that his life will continue on after he himself has departed. One of them is mildly comforting, the other miserably corrosive. Ironically, for all his attempts to anesthetize his mind against death’s sting, Ivan chooses to look at matters in the way that, unfortunately, brings the greater amount of pain. One evening, lying in bed as the household bustles around him as if “everything in the world was going on as usual,” Ivan feels a stab of anguish. It would seem, heartbreakingly, as if he is not going to be missed at all: things will carry on very nicely without him. But then, does he feel any better on those occasions when the household comes to a full stop and his family’s mournful eyes all turn to him? No. Such moments bring home to him, heartbreakingly, that he really is about to die. Each path leads to heartache. His life and its affairs will continue on without him, meaning he won’t be missed, but he himself won’t continue on, meaning he will miss out on them. A shame, because there’s another way to look at it. Since his life will continue on beyond him, as wife, son, and daughter suggest whenever they conduct themselves “as usual,” doesn’t that mean that a sizeable part of Ivan—all the cases, connubial plans, and card-game camaraderie that he commenced, that were so much a part of his life—will in fact cheat death? And shouldn’t that, in some way, warm his heart? He leaves a large, continuing imprint on the world; much of what he worked on and cared about survives him. True, he himself won’t elude the Reaper. But shouldn’t that fact, brought home whenever wife, son, and daughter show distress, confirm how important and irreplaceable he is to them? Why not the best of both worlds—a kind of survival through the ongoing stuff of his life, while feeling that he himself will truly be missed? But unfortunately Ivan doesn’t see matters that way. He feels that he won’t really, viscerally be missed so long as much of his life—his

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projects and pastimes, his connivings and collusions—will be able to march along without him. And yet even though much of his life will survive, he himself won’t. He will die, and miss out on it all. That’s how he feels. The worst of both worlds. Tolstoy’s portrait—and I have looked at Ivan Ilych only for what it says to a nonbeliever, shorn of any of the religious messages or allegories Tolstoy intended—shows how disconsolate a life of death denial can leave a person at the end. The denial of death leaves footprints all around us. So profoundly might we refuse to acknowledge that we will die, so expertly might we forge a life that barrels on long after we have departed, that our survivors, too, may feel compelled to deny our death—a process that Joan Didion has now irrevocably stamped with the term “magical thinking.” For a year following the heart attack that killed her husband, John Gregory Dunne, many of the signs of his life continued unabated. After all, his clothes, his chair, his office were still there— much of the wake he left in the world persisted. Didion says she kept these items and spaces around because of her belief that Dunne might return—that his life was still ongoing—and he might yet need them. But the reverse is also the case. She believed his life was still ongoing because all the signs of it, its objects and spaces, persisted. There was no difference between looking into his vacant office after he had died and looking into it when he had simply gone out of town. His death was easy to deny because so much of his life seemed to persist. If Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking takes one view, there’s a passage in another magical volume, Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, that seems to take the opposing position. As soon as someone dies, Mann observes, the world almost immediately begins to seal up around the space he left. This can happen quickly. So quickly that if he were to magically return but a few days later, even those closest to him would find it disconcerting and irksome. As if a guest from last night’s dinner knocked at the door the following morning to continue the revelry while we are puttering around the kitchen cleaning up.8 This thought might appear to jar with Didion’s. For Mann, it seems as if the world heals up seamlessly around the void you leave as soon

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as you die, while for Didion it keeps a wide berth (your shoes, your office) open for you. But the two thoughts actually dovetail. What Didion shows is that a person’s life—all its projects and pursuits as well as the infrastructure like offices and clothes that supported it— can continue on after his death. What Mann shows is how the person himself immediately disappears at, if not before, his death. If he were then somehow to return, it would seem a gauche intrusion— even into the remnants of his own life, which by now are in the custody and care of others. I used to think that the two magic books were in conflict on this point. Now I see that they are soul mates. Your life continues on after you, but almost immediately it no longer has any place for you yourself. If you were to return, you would be the skunk at your own garden party. A final representative from literature’s gallery of superfluous dying men: Willy Loman. Willy, in Death of a Salesman, persuades himself that for his life to continue—for all his projects and pursuits to be realized, his sons Biff and Happy to succeed, his wife, Linda, to enjoy a stable income, his mortgage to be paid—he has only to remove himself from that life. He simply has to kill himself—kill himself in a car “accident” so that his insurance will provide his loved ones with an annuity. Willy’s choice isn’t “your money or your life.” It’s your “self or your life (with money).” Willy is a death denier. Till the very last, he is still planting seeds whose saplings he will never see. Yes, he knows he is about to kill himself, he knows it’s “late.” But even so he can’t wrap his life up. Instead he keeps, so to speak, his pedal to the metal as if it were business as usual right up till the end. He gives no thought to that end itself, he has nothing to say about his death even as it looms. As long as he is here, his death remains out of view, and he continues to plunge furiously into the ongoing business of his life. And in a way he succeeds. His life does survive him, his projects are realized. The final payment on the mortgage gets made. Linda now has a secure pension; there is a stake for Biff. And with Willy out of the picture, the boys no longer have any reason to stay away from

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Linda or each other, thus healing the family unit. His life forges on so robustly in his absence that Linda, at the funeral, finds it difficult to shed a tear. “Forgive me, dear. I can’t cry. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t cry. . . . It seems to me that you’re just on another trip. I keep expecting you. Willy, dear, I can’t cry.” Willy does, though, achieve something more, something that Ivan Ilych does not. One of Willy’s happiest moments comes earlier in the play when, as he imagines himself talking to his brother Ben, he fantasizes about his own funeral: “Ben,” Willy rhapsodizes, “that funeral will be massive! They’ll come from Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire! . . . [Biff will] see what I am, Ben! He’s in for a shock, that boy!”9 What purpose does this bit of magical thinking serve for Willy? Well, two things perhaps. First, Willy rapturously imagines his life being eulogized, elegized, capped—wrapped up. All the wonderful things they will say about him, what a fitting conclusion, what a high note to end the story on. Second, although his life is wrapped up, Willy himself still manages to be there, as we all must imagine ourselves to be whenever we visualize our own funerals, observing the ceremony from some floating vantage point in the air. His life is done, marked, and missed. Yet he himself somehow still survives, continuing on to enjoy the adulation and acclamation. The best of both worlds. This is just a wish. Perhaps it’s a wish to which death deniers, as we all are to some degree, are particularly prone. But the reality is just the other way around. It is Willy himself who’s gone, while his life continues to soldier on as if he himself had long since ceased to be relevant to it. And just for that reason, he himself will not be missed—not deeply, not in the gut. Because his life so resoundingly marches on, his absence is hard to get a handle on, to viscerally feel. And so Linda can’t cry.10

Hey, I’m Not Done Yet As long as we are here, death isn’t. And then as soon as death comes, we are no longer here to be harmed by it. As logical propositions,

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the two sentences in Epicurus’s consolation for mortality are hard to deny. They also seem utterly consistent with each other. No daylight appears between them. And yet as Epicurus realized, and as contemporary philosophers who debate them as metaphysical propositions recognize, though logically compelling they are far from psychologically gripping. And so they fall far short of consoling us. We can, though, take measures to render them more psychologically convincing. There are ways, as I will suggest, of trying to live our lives so as to make Epicurus’s two sentences more like meaningful realities than arid truisms. But a funny thing then happens. The kind of life we would have to lead to make the first of Epicurus’s sentences psychologically persuasive—as long as we are here, death won’t yet have come and so cannot harm us— conflicts, profoundly, with the kind of life we would have to lead to gain any kind of psychological comfort from the second: as soon as death does come, we will have departed and so no longer remain present to be hurt by it. The more the two phrases stand a chance of consoling us at least to some extent, the less coherent they become. As they grow more deeply psychological and less purely logical, they become less consistent and more mutually contradictory. To grasp this, consider Epicurus’s first sentence, which I will from now on call “Epicurus’s first consolation”: as long as we are here, our death cannot be. This is undeniable as a dry, objective assertion. But if we want to make it a vibrant subjective reality, we must (as many of us do to some degree) lead an Ivan Ilych kind of life, taking on new cases, making new plans for our children, daring our friends to top our latest score in cards— or engaging in fresh romantic adventures, embarking on new political campaigns, training for ever more strenuous bike races—and engross ourselves in all of these activities to such a degree that our death becomes but a faint, indistinct glimmer on the outer edges of our mind. Because we are so very much present, death gets pushed aside, totally out of the picture. It becomes psychologically and not just logically absent for as long as we are here. But there’s an irony. Yes, we will have lived so as to make Epicurus’s first consolation—as long as we are here, death isn’t—as

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psychologically real for ourselves as it can be. But in doing so we will have made Epicurus’s second consolation— once death does arrive, we will no longer be here to be hurt by it—about as psychologically remote as it can be. Think of Ivan. For as long as he is here death is never present—never present to him subjectively, in his thoughts, let alone objectively, as a fact. And so he never gives any consideration to wrapping things up in advance of his demise. The result? Large parts of himself—all the objective parts, the facts in the world that constitute the raw material of his life such as important legal files and betrothals and card matches—will still very much be here, ongoing even after death comes. And it hurts him deeply to think that other parts of himself—his subjective consciousness, his cognitive and emotional capacities—won’t any longer be present to relish or cherish or pursue those cases and weddings and games.11 In this psychological sense, then, it’s not true—as Epicurus’s second consolation would have it—that once death comes, there is nothing of Ivan left and hence that he can’t be harmed. And that’s precisely because Ivan has lived his life so as to take maximum advantage of Epicurus’s first consolation: that as long as he was around, there was going to be no hint of death. So what about Epicurus’s second consolation? What kind of life would we have to live in order to find ourselves maximally consoled by the idea that once death comes, we will no longer be here to be harmed by it? Certainly not Ivan’s. We wouldn’t continually start new endeavors and embark on new projects, as Ivan does, with the risk that our life will continue on without us, long after death ushers our selves out of the picture, depriving us of the capacity to guide and enjoy it. Instead, we’d try to be fast out of the gate. We’d get all our endeavors and projects completed in a hurry, wrapping our life up as soon as possible long before we ourselves take our leave. We’d lobby to get the biggest cases we could try over and done with. We’d push our daughter to marry early. We’d establish a record of uninterrupted card-game victories that no one in our circle could ever match. That way, death would

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be powerless to harm us by cutting short our plans or taking us from projects that are half-completed. Instead, we’d live according to the principle Holderlin invoked in his poem “To the Fates”: “A single summer grant me . . . and a single autumn for fully ripened song . . . once what I am bent on, my poetry, is accomplished, [b]e welcome then, stillness of the shadows’ world!” If we adopted what the philosopher Ben Bradley calls the “Holderlin strategy,” we would make a big success of ourselves as early in our lives as we could.12 We’d get our accomplishments—professional triumphs, romantic affairs, lyric poetry, military glory, hiking to the top of Everest, biking the Tour de France, whatever— engraved on the record. Then we would relax and enjoy the world’s simple pleasures—such as eating, drinking, and making love—that are not graven on the record but that disappear with each day’s sunset, creating the need for them anew. We’d know that death can never destroy the more “important” stuff, the accomplishments that have now moved safely into the past, preserved in amber for us to reflect upon with a secure smile on our faces. And we’d know too that the daily setting of the sun—in other words, life itself—regularly washes away the other stuff, the pleasure of sex or the satisfaction of hunger, so that the only way to quench our need for them permanently would be to die. We’d thus ease into a mindset accepting of death. If we lived this way, then Epicurus’s second consolation— once our death comes, we ourselves will no longer be present to be affected by it—would not simply be a dry logical truism. More important to our psychic well-being, long before our death comes, the life we wanted to lead would be over and done with, invulnerable now to the Reaper whenever he might appear. Any number of people live a life that follows this pattern. Some are able to get it done very early: Björn Borg sought to put it all behind him —five consecutive Wimbledon championships—by retiring at twenty-six. Philip Roth called it a day much later, giving up writing at eighty and becoming “the only living novelist to have his work published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America.”13 Like the writer Clive James, those who seek to ensure that their lives are over before death rears

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its head tend to talk of themselves—and certainly their lives—in the past tense: “I didn’t get a bad ride,” James says; “I managed to square the circle.”14 Suppose that we follow this kind of path. We might well reap the psychic advantages of Epicurus’s second consolation—that when death comes, neither we nor our lives will still be here to be harmed by it. But there’d be a cost. We would then live in a way that flouts Epicurus’s first consolation, according to which as long as we are here, death can have no contact with us and so is nothing to us. For in fact death would be constantly present. Not as an objective reality of course. But subjectively, in our psyche. When I read the memoirs or biographies of individuals who have set their lives in granite, making psychologically real to themselves Epicurus’s second consolation— once death comes, nothing of their lives can any longer be harmed by it—they seem, like Henry Kissinger, for example, as if they are dearly seeking the chance to experience their own posthumous glory. They want to know firsthand what it would be like to look back on their own lives once they’re over. They aspire to live in a kind of death zone that they can experience for themselves— one with all the tranquility and other good things they associate with death but without the actual reality—by retiring at their peak and then reflecting on and burnishing their own success. But in so doing they precisely want it to be the case that even while they remain here among the living, their death has in a sense already happened— contrary to the spirit of Epicurus’s first consolation: as long as we are here, death cannot be. Perhaps that’s why Björn Borg, as he approached the end of his tennis career, looked as if he were already wearing a “death mask.”15 “In the coming years, I have two great calamities to face, death and biography,” Philip Roth says. “Let’s hope the first comes first.”16 But in fact it already has. Roth is famously aware of death. In fact, he invited death into the center of his mind from the outer reaches decades ago. And so he ended his life at eighty, giving himself some time to enjoy it posthumously before he himself departs. His life

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completed, Roth can now help write its complete story—his own biography. He’s collaborating on it. Let me return now to the kind of life we would have to lead to make Epicurus’s first consolation—as long as we are here, death can’t be—as psychologically real to ourselves as we possibly could. What, really, do we have to do to banish death so convincingly from our concerns that it becomes a benign irrelevancy? I will turn to Epicurus’s second consolation in the next chapter.

The Late Me In 2006, the NYU philosopher J. David Velleman delivered a charming lecture at Amherst College called “So It Goes.” It’s the most penetrating account I have seen of the life we must lead if Epicurus’s first consolation—that as long as we are here, death can’t be and so is truly irrelevant to us—is to take full psychological hold.17 Suppose, Velleman says, that you likened the relationship between your “self ” and “time” to the relationship between your body and space. Imagine your body standing up in a particular space—say your living room. Even though your head is closer than your feet to the ceiling, you would never say that your body itself moves closer and closer to the ceiling over the space from your feet to your head. Likewise: even though your eighties are closer to your death than your twenties, there’s no reason to think that you yourself move closer and closer to your death over the course of time from your twenties to your eighties. What exactly does this mean? To begin with, we must understand that Velleman offers this unconventional image in order to challenge a more conventional one: that you are a self who, much like a jogger, runs the course of your life over time from birth to death, with different parts of that course coming into view as you chug along. If that’s how you see things then obviously, as you travel the road of your life, you yourself, the jogger, will get closer and closer to

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death. Death will loom larger and larger on the horizon, creeping ever more menacingly into view, thus deflating any kind of consolation that rests on the idea that as long as you are here, death isn’t and so is an irrelevancy. On this conventional image, then, your life is stretched out in time much as a road stretches out in space. And you—your self, the runner—are pacing through it. What Velleman suggests, in effect, is that you should instead view your self as extended out in time in exactly the way your life is: that you conceive of the two, your self and your life, as stretched out side by side. The part of your self that exists on April 23, 2014, from 4 to 5 PM enjoys the part of your life that’s unfolding on April 23, 2014, from 4 to 5 PM—say the coffee you’re sharing with a friend. Then a different and subsequent part of your self—the part that exists on April 23, 2014, from 5 to 6 PM— savors the next part of your life, the ride home you are giving your six-year-old daughter. Each part of your self lives only in its own moment of your life. On Velleman’s unconventional image, then, there never is a “you” —there never is a whole, entire self—that is moving moment by moment toward death over time. There are only different parts of you at different times. After all, there is no “you” moving inch by inch toward the ceiling in space either. There are only different parts of you—knees, stomach, shoulders—at different heights. No reason, then, for you to think of death as something to which you steadily grow nearer, any more than the ceiling is something to which you steadily grow closer. You can fully avail yourself of Epicurus’s first consolation: as long as any part of your self is here, death is utterly irrelevant. Not only is it not present. You are not even moving toward it.18 Sleight of hand? Velleman’s perspective, and similar “perdurantist” views, makes some other philosophers uneasy. D. H. Mellor captures the nub of the issue. Churchill wrote a book called My Early Life, Mellor notes. He did not title it “Early Me.”19 “I” myself do not come in different parts, earlier ones and then later ones, in the way

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my life does. Instead, “I” as a whole experience each part of my life at its different points, first the earlier ones, then the later ones. Certainly, if Mellor is right—if it’s not just a part of myself but my entire self that exists at 4 PM on April 23, and again at 5 PM on April 23, and so forth—then Velleman is wrong. “I” do grow closer to death as my life stretches out, because I as a whole am running through it. Let’s clear one thing up first: we might not refer to the young Churchill as the early Churchill, as Mellor suggests. But we certainly would at one point have referred to the dead Churchill as the late Churchill. Why so? Whatever the historical origins of this usage of “late”—and they remain unclear—here is a contemporary interpretation. “Late” means two things. First, it means tardy. If someone is late, it generally means that he is not here yet, although he was expected to be. And that might be just how we feel about someone who has died. Like Joan Didion, we might have the persisting sense that he is merely delayed out of town but on his way, not actually dead. He’s late. But of course, this sense of “late” works for a deceased person only if he has died recently. It makes less and less sense to say— or feel— that we are expecting a dead person to arrive, that he is simply tardy, as time passes. And this is where the second meaning of “late” comes in: as a synonym not for “tardy” but for “recent,” as in, “It’s been raining around here of late.” While we might have used the phrase “the late Churchill” in the year following Churchill’s 1965 death, when he had only recently died—when we could still say that he was here of late—we wouldn’t anymore. So the two senses of “late”—not yet here (tardy) but expected to be; was just here (recently) though is no longer—infuse one another in a kind of double image. We think only of the recently dead as tardy, of the lately dead as late. Perhaps that’s why we save the word “late” just for them. For Velleman, though, just because it sounds strange doesn’t mean it’s mistaken to talk of an “early me”—an early part of myself—that experiences my early life. Or of another part of myself—“mid me”—

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that experiences my midlife. Or of still another part—“late me”— that experiences my late life. What would no longer make sense, if we were remaining faithful to Velleman’s imagery, would be to call the early part of my self my “younger self,” or the mid part my “middleaged self,” or the later part my “older self.” That would imply that my self as a whole gets older, it’s been around longer, as time passes. But in fact any part of my self that comes into existence later in life—and of course for Velleman a part is all that exists at any given time—is no older, it’s not been around for any longer, than any other part of my self ever is. The part of my self that exists from 10 to 11 AM on January 29, 2015, doesn’t grow any older than did the part that existed fifteen years earlier, from 10 to 11 AM on January 29, 2000. Nor does that later part grow any closer to death during its existence than does the earlier part. As Montaigne asks, “Why are you afraid of your last day? It brings you no closer to your death than any other did.”20 What does this have to do with Epicurus’s first consolation? Suppose, Velleman says, that we accept with Epicurus that as long as we are here in any way, shape, or form, death must remain offstage— and so in that sense is nothing to us. Even so, Velleman says, it would still make sense for us to feel “anxiety about [our] inexorable approach to death”: the fact that our terminus looms ever larger on the horizon, that we are ineluctably, moment by moment, approaching our end— even if, in the final moment, we will disappear just as death arrives and so won’t actually encounter it.21 We could banish that anxiety, and thus truly feel that death is nothing to us for as long as we’re here, only if we no longer saw ourselves as moving forward in time toward it. And so to fully access Epicurus’s first consolation, Velleman concludes, we must buy into the particular analogy he offers. Our self, in fact, doesn’t move forward in time at all. It simply stretches out over time, its different parts occupying their own different moments. In just the same way our body, say, or a statue, doesn’t move ever upward over space. It simply stretches out over space, its different parts occupying their own different places.

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It’s a stimulating if somewhat mind-bending idea. But it poses a puzzle. Very few of us look at our selves in the way Velleman recommends. And yet most of us happen to be quite adept at forgetting—at shutting out of our minds—the fact that we are drawing closer to death moment by moment. We do manage to treat our finitude as an irrelevancy in our day-to-day life. We rarely operate as if death bulked ever larger on the horizon with the passing of each day. Most of us are Ivans to some extent. How do we accomplish that? The surprising answer: precisely because, contrary to Velleman, we do not—in fact we cannot—treat our self ’s relationship to time as if it were like a body’s relationship to space. Think of the image of the self that Velleman rejects: our self running the race course of our life such that death looms ever larger in front of us. It’s true that when we are running a real race course, a distant object—say a mountain on the far horizon— does grow ever larger in our view. Our eyes give us a sense that we are getting closer to distant spatial objects, via their increasing size and clarity, as we approach them. Our mind’s eye, however, fails to give us a similar sense that we are getting closer to distant temporal events, including our death, as we approach them. We don’t, in our minds, experience future events—we don’t visualize them —as becoming progressively larger and clearer over time as we draw nearer to them.22 And so death deniers like Ivan find it easy to conclude, along the lines of Epicurus’s first consolation, that death has nothing to do with them. Their imagination—that flawed faculty— doesn’t convey a real and vibrant sense of death looming progressively bigger and sharper even as they jog toward it. Until perhaps, as for Ivan, it is right in front of them. It’s helpful to couple this observation with another one, about events not in the future but in the past. When we look back at a particular event from time gone by, we don’t see the intervening years. A memorable incident from long ago can thus feel (as we often say) as if it happened yesterday, as if not much in the way of time has

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intermediated. By contrast, we would never say of an object at a long distance behind us in space that it’s “as if it were right next to us.” We retain a full perceptual sense of all the terrain that intervenes. Distant events in our temporal rearview mirror, however, often appear closer than they are, the past shorter than it is. Our memories fail to give us a sense of the decades in between. And so as we move through our life, the time we have put behind us can continue to feel shorter than the time that still remains—until, perhaps, death is right in front of us. As we run the temporal “race course” of our lives, then, our flawed imaginations make the end of the journey seem perpetually farther away than it is. And our gappy memories make the beginning seem consistently nearer than it is. We thus find it easy, like Ivan, to deny our movement forward in time from birth to death. When we run a spatial race course, by contrast, the end of the journey appears perpetually nearer and the beginning consistently farther away. We could make death irrelevant, Velleman says. All we have to do is deeply, truly come to see that no more does our self move through time toward death than our body moves through space toward the ceiling. But most of us already make death irrelevant. And we do so precisely because we fail to perceive our self moving through time toward death in the way we perceive our body moving through space toward the horizon. Day to day, our memories and imaginations conspire to muffle our sense that we are moving ever forward in time toward death. That muffling is quite effective—so much so that we aren’t totally desperate for a radical alternative like Velleman’s. But the sense we have of ourselves moving ever forward in time toward our ends is also, finally, deeply ingrained; we couldn’t embrace a radical alternative like Velleman’s even if we wanted to. We can’t view our self as stationary in time in the way an object—a statue, say—might be stationary in space. We simply aren’t, as Velleman himself at one point acknowledges, psychologically wired to do so, certainly not we early twenty-first-century bundles of ego

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and anxiety. Day to day we might be Ivans, “little busy bee[s],” as Edmund White says. Yet at three in the morning, in the proverbial “dark night of the soul,” we know we are relentlessly moving toward our end.23 For most of us, Epicurus’s first consolation, on which as long as we are here death isn’t, will finally have little psychological purchase.24

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HOW TO REST ON YOUR LAURELS

The two consolations embodied in Epicurus’s famous observation—as long as we are here death can’t be, and once death does come we are no longer here—seem logically tight with each other. But, as we have seen, they conflict as recommendations for living our life. Consider: to take full advantage of Epicurus’s second consolation— once death comes, we will no longer be here to be harmed by it—we must hasten to wrap our life up before the Reaper comes. The goal would be to leave him no hostages, to live according to the “Holderlin strategy.” Recall, from the previous chapter, Holderlin’s plea: a “single summer grant me . . . once . . . my poetry is accomplished, [b]e welcome then, stillness of the shadows’ world!” Once our accomplishments are done, nothing—not even death— can take them away. Epicurus’s second consolation, which I consider in this chapter, will then have maximal force. Death will arrive, only to find that not just we, but our lives too, are no longer present to be harmed by it. But the price, for anyone who follows the Holderlin strategy, is that Epicurus’s first consolation—as long as we are here, death can’t be—is no longer psychologically available. Why not? Well, consider Jason Miller’s 1972 play That Championship Season. A high-school basketball coach brandishes a trophy to his winning team at their twenty-year reunion: “See the names engraved on it!” Coach bellows at the men. “I carved your names in silver, last forever, forever, never forget that.”1 The greatest moment in the men’s lives—in fact, their lives themselves—finished twenty years earlier. There’s nothing anymore of importance for death to interrupt. Even the Reaper can’t expunge the names carved in the trophy. As Seneca said, their kind of life “can neither be troubled nor snatched away,” even by death. It is an “everlasting and unanxious

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possession.” The teammates have total access to Epicurus’s second consolation: when death comes, not only they—but their lives—will no longer be there to be harmed by it. And yet precisely for this reason, Epicurus’s first consolation—as long as they are here, death can’t be—becomes totally inaccessible to them. For even though their selves are still here, in a crucial sense they have already died. One team member, George, reflecting that his life ended with its high-water mark of twenty years earlier, laments: “Everything is in the past tense. I’m in the past tense.”2 His life is now over, even though he himself still has decades to go. And so it seems to George, contrary to Epicurus’s first consolation, as if death has already arrived while he himself is still here. In fact, ever since his life ended, his existence has in a way been a posthumous one. The Holderlin strategy—the strategy that makes real Epicurus’s second consolation, by ensuring that once death arrives our life is long over and can’t be harmed by it—thus poses a dilemma. It’s one that the thirtyish actor Jonah Hill once nicely illustrated. Reflecting on his life over a beer with the New Yorker writer Tad Friend, Hill mused: “My twenties were one hundred per cent about work. My excess was moviemaking—I made over thirty films. Now I want to focus on being around, physically present, for the possibility of relationships to happen—marriage, kids.” Sounds like the Holderlin strategy— except Hill then immediately anticipates the downside: “I mean, it’s not over, it was great, it is great, it will still be great. I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Cheers!”3 In this chapter, I look at the challenges faced by those who follow the Holderlin strategy, those who seek to live a life that ends before (sometimes long before) they themselves do, a life set in amber so that death cannot touch it. They live so as to gain maximum psychological connection to Epicurus’s second consolation: once death comes, we are no longer here to be harmed by it. Their goal is to achieve as early on in life as possible, and then relax for the remainder. But as Jonah Hill realizes, it’s not easy to rest on your laurels,

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because it involves living in a kind of death zone while you’re still here— contrary to the spirit of Epicurus’s first consolation. But before looking at the relationship between a happy life and one where the high peak of achievement comes at the beginning, let’s examine the relationship between a happy life and one where the high peak of achievement comes at the end.

Call No Man Happy Until He Is Dead “Call no man happy until he is dead,” the statesman Solon is said to have warned King Croesus. At the time, the king was knee-deep in “gold and silver and many precious stones,” Tolstoy tells us in his story Croesus and Fate, “as well as numberless soldiers and slaves.”4 Not surprisingly, for most of his forty-eight years Croesus “thought that in all the world there could be no happier man than himself.” But Solon was right. After remaining happy for a very long stretch, Croesus entered a bad endgame. His son lost his life in an accident. His wife committed suicide. And he himself spent his final days in humiliating captivity. If we accept Solon’s dictum, then we can’t call Croesus happy after all. No matter how good your life may have been, if it ended badly, that’s what counts. Millennia later, the jazz musician Scatman John led a hardscrabble life until well into his fifties, when he released a song that went to number one. “Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop” rocketed the Scatman to fame a few scant years before he died at fifty-seven. Even though he had endured a life of overall hardship, he enjoyed a brilliant if short endgame. So if we accept Solon’s dictum we can call Scatman John happy. True? The question here pits quantity against finality. Is it better to have had a much greater quantity of happiness than unhappiness over the course of one’s life, even though the ending was unhappy— or to have had a happy ending, even if there was a lot more unhappiness than happiness in one’s life as a whole? If we have to choose, is cumulative happiness more to be coveted than “culminative” happiness? Or is it the other way around?

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Neither. The dichotomy between culmination and cumulation is, at least in the most important respect, an illusion. Think of a football game, the Lions versus the Rams. Scoring more points than the Rams in each of the game’s first three quarters, the Lions go into the final fifteen minutes ahead, 30 –5. The Rams then dominate the final quarter, scoring ten unanswered points. Even though things got better for the Rams in the final stretch, and things worse for the Lions, it’s still the Lions who win in the end, 30 –15. That’s because once a point has been scored, it becomes part of the cumulation; it never disappears. Even if the Lions had scored all of their thirty points in the first quarter, those points would have stuck around to dominate at the end. The one who scored more points, cumulatively, is also the one who’s on top in the end, culminatively. In this sense there’s no dichotomy between quantity and finality. We would say that the Lions didn’t end the game happy— even if they dominated the first three quarters— only if, in the final quarter, the Rams scored so much more that they then won the game. But in that case the Lions not only would have culminated badly, they would have had the lower cumulation as well. Finality still matches quantity; there’s no dichotomy. When someone—take Scatman John— ends a life of obscurity with a short period of spectacular recognition, he will often say that it made up for all the years of hardship. What he is saying is that not only did his life have a happy ending, but it did so because the final period was so happy that, in quantitative terms, it outweighed all the previous unhappiness. Culminatively his life ended happy because, cumulatively, total happiness surpassed total unhappiness. As he was dying, Scatman John declared, “Whatever God wants is fine by me . . . I’ve had the very best life.”5 But matters were different for the writer Michael Morpurgo. For the first time, at age sixty-four, Morpurgo had a theatrical success with the play War Horse, based on a little-noticed novel he’d written years earlier. That vindication was not, however, enough for him to pronounce his life happy. “It has changed my life enormously,”

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Morpurgo declared, “but at the wrong end. I’m nearly 70. I’m flattered, but I’m also slightly vexed that it’s the same book that’s been out there for 30 years.” Morpurgo’s late life was better—in fact, “enormously” better—than what had gone on up till that point. But not, cumulatively, by enough so that he was prepared to say, culminatively, that it was likely to end on a happy note: he felt he was still in the red, not fully redeemed.6 If the cumulation of happiness is insufficient, then the culmination won’t be happy either, even if things get considerably happier at the end.7 “No man ever served the Crown in so many and such important posts as the subject of this biography,” the Saturday Review of March 4, 1905, declared in discussing a new book about the illustrious Marquis of Dufferin and Ava.8 The Marquis was by turns Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Under-Secretary of State for War, Governor General of Canada, and, ultimately, Viceroy of all of India. He held a KP, a GCB, a GCSI, a GCMG, a GCIE, and a PC. And yet in the final analysis the reviewer, too, felt compelled to invoke Solon: “Call no man happy until he is dead.” Why so? Perhaps it’s because, as the review’s last line tells us, the Marquis, “like many another, died babbling of the playing fields of Eton.” Not a great ending, true—babbling of Eton after having been a baron of the empire. But then as Thomas Nagel points out, in that sense a “bad end is in store for us all.”9 And yet many of us— despite the difficult and debilitated ending that awaits—would say nonetheless that we should be called happy when we die, as long as we are happy about our life as a whole. Surely, then, Dufferin and Ava’s prodigious accomplishments outweighed, in a cumulative sense, a little babbling at the end. And so wouldn’t he, in a culminative sense, have led a happy life? Why the reference to Solon? Not because of the final month or so of babbling. Rather, following his long string of triumphs, the Marquis was involved in a sensational financial scandal that left the mining firm he had chaired bankrupt and blotted out all the wonderful things he had done. He didn’t die happy, but not because he was blubbering at the very end. He didn’t die happy because in his life, taken as a whole, the sharpness of the

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grief outweighed the smugness of the gratification. The ending was determined by what happened in toto, not simply by what happened at the end itself. So when Solon says, “Call no man happy until he is dead,” what is the best way to understand him? Is it that you have to wait until the final period to determine whether the overall happiness in your life outweighs the unhappiness? Or is it that you have to wait till the final period to determine whether the final period is unhappy— on the grounds that if it is, your life will end unhappily no matter how much good preceded it? The former makes more sense: and so any dichotomy between cumulative happiness over the duration of one’s life and culminative happiness late in life is a false one.

Has-beens So let’s turn now to another dichotomy, a real one: continuing to stay in the arena to cumulate successes over the duration of one’s life versus going for colossal success early in life and then relaxing. Going for early successes is what the Holderlin strategy recommends. That way, you maximize your psychological access to Epicurus’s second consolation: once death comes, there will be nothing left of your life for it to harm or despoil. Say you played on a storied basketball team near the beginning of your life, as did the men of Jason Miller’s play. You won the state high-school championship with a turnaround jump shot in the last five seconds, the stuff of barroom and billiard-hall legend ever since. Or, to take another example, early on you won the title of Miss America. Should you listen to Holderlin, and decide that “more isn’t necessary”? There’s an advantage and a disadvantage to the “Holderlin strategy,” the strategy of getting life’s accomplishments done early, replacing—as soon as possible—a continuously gnawing anxiety about whether you’ll ever make it with the secure knowledge that in fact you did. The advantage: once you’ve won a basketball championship, or a Miss America title, no one can take that victory away from you. It’s

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emblazoned in the history books. It’s on the record. You can relax for the remainder of your years—at least about your life. As Third Eye Blind rocker Stephen Jenkins puts it, “The Clash, The Police, Led Zeppelin—they all had their moment [on top of the charts], but it’s locked in time.”10 Death comes too late to take it away. The disadvantage: once a new season starts, your championship in the previous season begins sinking into history, receding further and further into the past. Unlike boxing, where the champion can hold his title for as long as he remains undefeated, in high-school basketball, say, or in beauty contests, the champions automatically lose the title the following season without being defeated. Last year’s Miss America gives up the crown to this year’s without losing the contest to her. Likewise the members of last year’s victorious senior high-school basketball team. That championship season is immune to their death, but not to the passage of time. Other socially recognized triumphs, however, do not get set in amber at the cost of slipping ever further backward in time. They reverse the trade-off. They stay evergreen—they don’t slip backward in time—but at the cost of remaining at risk of being wiped off the books at any moment. While commentators refer to (say) Kimberly Aiken as Miss America 1994, or simply as a former Miss America—a beauty queen can win her title only once, and then it begins fading into the past—we do not similarly refer to Tom Hanks as a former best-actor Oscar winner, nor as the Oscar-winning best actor for 1994. We simply call him an Oscar-winning best actor in the present tense. In fact, journalists often refer to Hanks not just as an Oscarwinning best actor but as a two-time Oscar-winning best actor, since he took the statue home not just in 1994 but in 1993 as well. They do this because there are no limits on the number of Oscars a person may win. You can accumulate them, tote them up, for a lifetime score, a score over the duration. The game never ends, never begins receding into history. All of Hanks’s Oscars are still alive. Hanks is a two-time Oscar-winning best actor, top that! But there’s a price. His glory always remains tentative, never engraved in the past or set in amber but ever capable of being upset.

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Unlike Kimberly Aiken, from whom no one can take away her 1994 Miss America title, two-time best-actor Hanks always has to watch his back. An ever-present threat lurks that someone else—say, Daniel Day-Lewis, who in 2013 won his third best-actor Oscar—will “top that!”: will accumulate more statues. If the game or season is never over, then, in one sense, your lead in the game can always be snatched away. And you might die before you have the chance to regain it. Your triumphs are immune to the passage of time, but not to death. No one calls Kimberly Aiken a has-been as a beauty queen. Nor would anyone say, about the men of That Championship Season’s high-school basketball team, that they are has-beens as basketball players. That’s because they aren’t in the game anymore. But a top actor who hasn’t won an Oscar recently, or a professional quarterback who hasn’t won a championship lately? They get called has-beens on a regular basis. That’s because they’re still considered to be in the game, and every occasion on which they don’t win is considered a loss—as Steve Martin once made explicit when he referred to Meryl Streep’s two Oscars and fifteen subsequent nominations as two wins and fifteen losses. “And on the subject of slumps,” the St. Louis PostDispatch asked in 2011, “when the heck is Tom Hanks going to win another Oscar?”11 Kimberly Aiken had no choice. According to the social templates of achievement in the realm of physical beauty, if you want to be a glamour queen you have to adopt the Holderlin strategy. You have to play just a single season, hoping it’s a glorious one as it was for her, since you can be Miss America only once, and early. Her 1993 success was set in amber though it’s hardly evergreen. Tom Hanks too, in a sense, has no choice. A Holderlin strategy is not an option for him. Sure, he might legitimately remain proud of his early success. But for the press and his fans, a single season in the career of a top actor does not a life make. Hanks is still considered to be in some kind of ongoing game, in which any success can continue to remain evergreen but is far from set in amber.

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Within bounds, though, most of us can choose whether to pursue or eschew the Holderlin strategy. Like a boxer, we can opt to play just a single season and retire as champ, but then watch as that moment of glory recedes into the past. Or we can stay in the ring to accumulate more knockouts—but then risk getting knocked out ourselves and losing the title. Either our accomplishments are secure, set in amber, but then they slip back in time, as with the Holderlin strategy— or else they remain currently relevant, evergreen, but also perpetually insecure, as with the lifelong game. That is why, for those who pursue the one strategy, the other will always beckon. Suppose, for example, that you adopted the Holderlin strategy. While still relatively young you won the U.S. Open in golf, and then decided to retire on a high note. No one can take that away from you. You gained hard-won laurels to rest on for the remainder of your life. But then you saw those laurels gradually dissolve into the past. You began to sense people thinking, “That was great, but what has he done lately?” What to do? You don’t want to risk getting back in the game. But that doesn’t mean that your game itself—the U.S. Open you won twenty years ago— can’t get back in the game. Maybe this year’s U.S. Open champ won his match by three strokes. But that’s nothing compared to yours, which you won twenty years ago by seven. Or maybe you won yours after the worst drizzle that ever softened a U.S. Open course. Then your championship game is itself still winning new games, triumphing over other championship games. After all, you’ve found a new ongoing contest in which it continues to reign supreme—still undefeated in the category of best score under postrainy conditions— even though you yourself have long since retired. Or think of a retired U.S. president (and in terms of strict protocol, he should no longer carry the title of “Mr. President,” even though that’s how we typically refer to him).12 Although satisfied with his place in the history books, with his championship season,

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he will have to watch it fade further and further into the past. And so he will begin to compare his presidency with that of his successors in a variety of novel games of his own devising, sending his presidential term out into new matches against theirs. Consider Bill Clinton, thirteen years after leaving office, favorably stacking his record on income inequality up against that of subsequent presidents.13 He aspires to set his presidency in amber, while at the same time keeping it evergreen—always entering new competitions, in which he continues to remain the reigning champion. Those who have adopted the Holderlin strategy, trying to shore up for themselves an early engraved-on-the-books victory—Bill Clinton was the thirdyoungest president—may find themselves restless, prospectively sending that victory out to accumulate fresh conquests in novel games with others. But the reverse syndrome is also evident: those who have rejected the Holderlin strategy, refusing to fade into history but instead struggling to rack up more and more points over time, may find themselves, toward the end, heading toward a life of overall loss. What to do? Perhaps they can reformulate or reframe one of the victories they scored earlier on, retrospectively elevating it to a single golden “championship season.” “Heh, heh,” the reggae star Shaggy chuckled in a 2001 interview with the Guardian; “Not bad at all. . . . I [ may be only] the second biggest Jamaican artist [after Bob Marley, but] I’ve sold more records than Bob Marley did in the same space of time.” Shaggy was thinking of late 2000, when he had a hit album.14 He thus turned a losing strategy for a cumulative life-as-a-whole competition into a peak championship in a particular season, which he now attempts to preserve in amber as a special Holderlin moment, years ago. Donnie Evil, a musician hailing from Bozeman, Montana, is proud of having sold ten records, more than Kanye West did, at Bozeman’s Cactus Records in the week before Christmas 2010. “My life’s goal was to outsell Kanye at something,” Evil told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. “Now I can die happy.” Kanye may have walloped

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Donnie in cumulative lifetime sales. But Donnie, sifting through his life, found his Holderlin moment.15 Neither is pure—the strategy that favors the early triumph nor the one that favors the long haul. Each tugs you toward the other.

A Strange Relationship Between Happiness and Death Death can never harm us, Epicurus said. As long as we are here, death cannot be. And so it’s powerless to interfere with our enjoyment of the goods and pleasures of life. Then as soon as death does arrive, we will have already fled: no longer around to suffer whatever harm or evils it might entail. Throughout the entire process, there will never be a moment when death touches us. Sound vaguely familiar? This idea bears the same structure as another famous dictum. Known in the ancient world, it is now indelibly associated with Schopenhauer. We can never be happy, Schopenhauer said. As long as we have yet to possess the object of our desire—that boy or girl or beachfront property of our dreams— we will continue to feel the pain and anxiety of unrequited yearning and longing. We’ll be driven to distraction by lust or envy and by worries that our quest might fail. And yet as soon as we finally do get our hands on that object, we will discover that our desire for it has fled. The minute we possess it, it will begin losing its capacity to fulfill us, to bring us joy. Almost immediately it will start to bore us or satiate us. We will find fault with it and feel restless. Any fulfillment we reap will be ephemeral, fleeting. Throughout the entire process, there will never be a single moment when complete happiness descends on us. For Epicurus, when the self is here death isn’t; and when death is here the self isn’t. For Schopenhauer, when our desire is present the object isn’t, and when the object is here our desire isn’t. Which raises a question: Does our relationship with death, as Epicurus relates it, in some way mimic our relationship with happiness, as Schopenhauer sees it?

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Long before Schopenhauer, the Stoics had already discovered two passageways out of his vicious circle. First, even as you chase after the object of your desire— even while it still remains infuriatingly beyond your grasp—you could keep reminding yourself that if you do succeed in attaining it, any enjoyment you experience will be ephemeral, evanescent, fleeting. That will cool your jets, relieving some of the yearning and longing you feel even as your desire remains yet to be fulfilled. Second, you could, after you do attain the object of your desire, take measures to keep alive the yearning, aspiration, and ambition—the avid longing—that you felt prior to getting it. Doing so will keep you hot for it even while you have it, making your enjoyment of it more lasting than fleeting. You want to continue desiring your wife? Keep imagining her, the Stoics advised, in the arms of someone else.16 What we seek, in seeking happiness, are those “gorgeous moments” when “the fulfilled future and the wistful past”—the cool disinterestedness we feel once we attain the object and the hot desire we felt when we were chasing it—“mingle.” So said F. Scott Fitzgerald. And he would know.17 Suppose, then, that you do manage to bring some of the cooledoff feeling that comes with actually possessing an object into your mind as you are still desirously chasing it. And suppose too that you’re able to import some of the hot feelings you felt when you were desirously chasing it into your mind once you have it. Then, the Stoics advised, you can slow down or maybe even stop Schopenhauer’s treadmill. Possibly you can even attain those gorgeous moments of which Scott Fitzgerald spoke. And you will thereby find the Holderlin strategy easier to pursue. Once you have had your summer in the sun, you will feel less moved to pursue new desires. You’ll foresee how short-lived will be the enjoyment that results from fulfilling them. And you will remain happy with what you have, with that one glorious summer, because you’ll take measures to keep alive the pangs of desire you felt for it when it was but a dream lying in the future.

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I can’t say whether this Stoic strategy for happiness will work for you. It’s obviously an individual thing. What I do want to suggest, and it’s only a speculative suggestion, is this: to the extent that the Stoic recipe for happiness does work for you, then the Epicurean consolation for death is less likely to. For many of us, Epicurus’s break between our selves and our death—as long as we are here death isn’t, and then as soon as death is here we are not—remains too clean and sharp. Our self and its death do meet, at least in a couple of ways. First, and most obviously, we cannot help but bring a sense of the poignant ephemerality that death portends for us into our mental state well before we die. Though we remain very much alive, we are all too painfully aware of the personal evanescence that our death signifies. And so death is hauntingly present, in our minds if not as an actual fact in the world, even while our selves are still here. Second, our self ’s longings and yearnings inevitably extend to facts that will occur in the world well after we die. Will our longing that our grandchild marry her lover and have kids be realized? Will our yearning that Venice not sink into the sea, and the decades of effort we expended on that project, bear fruit? Death makes it impossible for us any longer to enjoy, or ensure the realization of, our self ’s dearest hopes and wishes. Epicurus is refuted then: psychologically if not logically. As long as we bring a sense of ephemerality—the ephemerality that death inevitably delivers—into our minds even before we die, and extend our longings to events that will occur in the period after we die, death and our selves will, painfully, overlap. But likewise so is Schopenhauer refuted. As long as we bring a sense of ephemerality— the ephemerality of fulfillment that a desired object will inevitably deliver—into our minds even before we attain it, and extend our longing for that object into the period after we attain it, then we can be happy. So advised the Stoics. To the extent that we develop a keen and ever-present sense of evanescence and ephemerality, and robust and durable yearnings and

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longings, we will lament death. But we will also find some measure of (Stoic) happiness. Maybe our capacity for happiness and our sadness about death are connected at some deep level. Or at least the kind of happiness that Holderlin strategists seek after summer’s gone.18

That Championship Season Now let’s say you’ve got off on the right track for a Holderlin strategy. You’ve scored a big triumph early on, and you can then rest on your laurels. Or put it another way: in terms of Epicurus’s second consolation your life is now over, in the sense that the narrative arc of your accomplishments has been inscribed safely on the books. It’s incapable henceforth of being interrupted or effaced by your demise. Once death comes not only will you, your self, have already left the building, as Epicurus says. Your life, too, in the most crucial sense will have long since been wrapped up. Death won’t be able to touch it, to play havoc with it. That’s the great advantage of the Holderlin strategy. But remember: the Holderlin strategy also comes with a disadvantage— one that threatens to creep into your posttriumph period. You might have won the Masters this year. But this year will become last year, then the year before last, then . . . won’t you eventually begin to ask yourself, “Great, but what did I do for me lately?” Doesn’t that championship season, or summer of the gods, or moment when we were kings, necessarily begin to recede back in time to the point where, after we’ve been dining out on it for a few years, it would no longer sustain us as it vanishes over the horizon into the past? No, maybe not necessarily. Think again of the difference between a self and a life. Think of the image of your self— of you—as a jogger, running along the course of your life, whose extension in time is represented by a race track that stretches out in space. The first ten miles correspond to your childhood, the next ten to your adolescence, and so on. J. David Velleman, whom I discussed in the previous chapter, imagines what it would mean if, instead of running along the course

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of your life, your self was also stretched out in time right alongside it. If you could see things that way, Velleman argues, then you would avoid the feeling that you were steadily jogging toward your death. Instead, each part of your self would simply focus on whatever part of your life coincided with it, and death would remain completely out of the picture. If you adopted his strategy, Velleman says, then you could more fully avail yourself of Epicurus’s first consolation: as long as your self is here, death can’t be. It would be wholly irrelevant. Now think of the Holderlin strategy—the strategy of getting your accomplishments done early and thus gaining psychic access to Epicurus’s second consolation: once death comes, nothing of you will be around to be harmed by it. Begin again with the image of yourself running the course of your life. But this time, imagine each mile in the race course of your life, as you run through it, getting up and beginning to trot right alongside of your self. That high-school championship season doesn’t remain behind. It jogs abreast of you in lockstep. It endures just as you do. On this image, that graven-on-the-record period of your life becomes invulnerable not just to your death but even to the passage of time. Your completed and hermetically sealed moment of glory keeps you company apace, and your self can happily trundle on with it close as ever. That championship season needn’t recede into the past after all. Not only is it set in amber—no one can dispute the record—but it’s also evergreen, so that you need not ask yourself, “What have I done for me lately?” It’s as fulfilling to you now as it was when it happened. You will feel no gnawing impetus to seek more triumphs, getting back into the arena where death waits to foil you and interrupt your plans. Your over-and-done life will continue to live on with you. You can then gain the fullest possible psychological access to Epicurus’s second consolation: once death comes, both you and your life will lie beyond its clutches. Is this possible—and if so, how? In one of the more profound moments on The Simpsons, a successful pushcart vendor named Frank recalls how he had once mistak-

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enly believed that he was unsuited for the business of street hawking. That was “the old me,” Frank says, “which was, ironically, the young me.” It’s a deep remark. Why do we refer to the time of Socrates and Aristotle as the Age of Antiquity, when in fact civilization was in its infancy then? Why, as Francis Bacon asked, don’t we instead think of our own contemporary time as “the true antiquity . . . inasmuch as it is a more advanced age of the world, and stored and stocked with infinite experiments and observations?”19 Perhaps the answer is this: Suppose that we analogize the past 2,500 years of human history to a race course, and humanity itself to an athlete running it. Then certainly humanity—the athlete—is much older now than it was when it was traversing the early parts of the course, such as the time of Socrates and Aristotle. In those days, the Golden Age of Greece, humanity was much younger. But now suppose that we think of that early part of the race course itself—the time of Socrates and Aristotle, with all its literary and cultural riches—as having got up as humanity ran through it. Dusting itself off, that golden-age-of-Greece era began jogging right alongside humanity, accompanying it into the future instead of disappearing into the past behind it. By now, 2,500 years later, that time will seem ancient. Hence we call it “antiquity,” even though humanity itself was much younger when it happened. At some level, then, it does make sense to say that a past period of time, whether the Golden Age of Athens or, perhaps, our own championship season, can itself endure, can continue to exist—in our minds, of course—as time passes. It can continue to live, and hence grow older, indeed ancient, just as we do. It needn’t immediately recede into the past, dead and gone. But when does it make sense to look at moments in time this way—as living and growing old with us instead of dead and gone? What kind of thinking is involved? An object in space—the Parthenon, say, or the high-school basketball court— doesn’t disappear once it’s completed. Rather, with each passing year and for as long as it exists, it grows older; it has been with us all the longer. If a given moment in time can somehow

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be analogized to an object in space, then it too—the Golden Age of Athens, say, or our own championship season—needn’t disappear once it’s completed either. Instead, that moment itself can stay with us all the way along, growing older with each passing year. Coach, in Jason Miller’s Championship Season, seems to have made precisely this kind of equation between a moment and an object. He treats the state championship game twenty years earlier not as an event that has long since receded into the past, but—like the trophy that still sits on his shelf—as an object that has accompanied him, very much present and growing old with him, over the years.20 Often, though, we mean something very different when we describe events, as opposed to objects, as old. Think, for example, of an event like Damon Runyon’s “oldest permanent floating crap game in New York.” This kind of event grows old by continuing on indefinitely in time, by never coming to a completion. It doesn’t come to an end as did the Golden Age of Greece or the championship game and then—instead of receding back in time—somehow begin growing older along with us the way an object does. Other kinds of events, while they do come to an end, then become old precisely because they slip back in time, not because they continue living and aging along with us. Think, for example, of the “old” world record in the 100 meters: the record race (9.79 seconds) that Maurice Greene ran in 1999. This usage of “old” does not imply that the record is still with us, that it’s gotten older year by year, and that we call it old because of its age as we do an antique object. Instead “old” here implies just the opposite—that something “new” has ended it, that the “old” record has receded in time and is no longer with us. A new record (Usain Bolt, 9.58 seconds) has supplanted the old and left it in the past. It became old precisely because the new terminated it. So what we’re looking for are events that are “old” not because they’ve never come to a completion like Damon Runyon’s “oldest” permanent floating crap game, or because they’ve slipped back in time like Maurice Greene’s “old” running record. On the contrary: we’re looking for events that we would call “old” because they have come to a completion and yet stay with us over time—like an object. Like

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a trophy or a stadium. It’s those kinds of events that make possible a Holderlin-style life— one that’s over and done but that’s still sufficiently present to us that we feel no itch to keep doing more, thereby giving death something to frustrate. But what kinds of events qualify? Alas. Let’s look a little more closely at the kinds of events that we deem to have grown “old” because, after coming to an end, they then aged along with us, like objects. Most in fact are more like units of time than events proper: the good old days, olden times, the age of antiquity. While they did come to an end they were never—as events always can be—terminated. Units of time can’t be terminated. They’re already terms, the basic terms, of time. Tuesday wasn’t terminated by Wednesday, nor was 2013 terminated by 2014 —nor was the presidential term of George Bush terminated by the presidential term of Barack Obama—in the way that, say, an old running record gets terminated by a new one. So when we identify a past moment as an “age,” or as “times” or “days,” we are no longer treating it as an event but rather elevating it out of that realm altogether and conceiving of it as a kind of unit, a basic building block, of time: something that comes to an end but without something else—as can always happen with an ordinary event—putting an end to it. Depending on its meaning to us—whether cultural as with the age of antiquity or sentimental as with “old times”—it can then grow old along with us like a cherished object.21 But a specific event like “that championship season”? The men of That Championship Season—this is their tragedy— can’t seem to see their golden moment the way Coach does. They can’t seem to see it as an event that, having ended, then ages along with them like an object, a trophy: something that they can pick up and cradle twenty years later every bit as much as on the day it was won. For some of the men that championship game did end, but then—having been terminated by the final buzzer—it immediately began moving further and further back in time like an old running record. You “can’t sit around fingering the past” as if the past were an object, one teammate says.22 For others, it’s as if that championship season is still going on;

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they’re still delusively living it. It’s gotten older simply by never having ended, just like the oldest permanent floating crap game in New York. None of the men can seem to see that championship season as over, ended, and yet companionably growing older with them. Except, of course, for Coach. He alone seems to be able to keep that moment, that event, set in amber and yet still evergreen. He follows Seneca’s advice: he treats it as an object, an “everlasting and unanxious possession.” But in fact his tale is the most cautionary. Social psychologists tell us that the events, or experiences, in our lives—trips, concerts, a great meal—actually make us happier than the objects: cars, necklaces, a snazzy coat. True, experiences vanish in time as soon as they happen. But we often get a warm glow whenever we think of the people with whom we shared them. Objects, by contrast, might last over time. But they tend to be sources of invidious status. We value them, often, precisely because we don’t share them with others; we prize them because they distinguish us—they separate us—from our peers. Also, events or experiences, such as the vacation at Yosemite we took last year, tend to be unique. They’re less easily compared with alternative events, such as the holiday in Yellowstone we didn’t take instead. After all, that trip to Yellowstone never came into existence to begin with, and so no real pound-forpound comparison is possible. But we can always compare the object we chose—the toaster we bought—to the one we didn’t, and feel regret.23 Because they are both less communal and more comparative, objects generally fail to make us as happy as experiences do. But the distinction between objects and experiences is not a clean one. Psychologists note that many objects—a flat-screen television, for example— can also be the source of great experiences or events shared with others.24 And, as with Coach, the arrow would also seem to go the other way. Sometimes great experiences, great events in our lives, become like treasured objects to us. They tend to be precisely those events or experiences, such as championship seasons, that most

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resemble objects. They are invidious triumphs over competitors. And they do have comparators, such as the scores achieved by others. Unfortunately, as eventually happens with most of the objects in our life, we inevitably grow tired of and disappointed in such events— and in a way we don’t when we treat them as the experiences they are and simply allow them to slip back in time once they’ve happened. Coach encounters precisely this kind of fatigue and disillusionment at the end of the play. The event that he has treated as an object to cherish and coddle—that championship game—finally, after the coup de grâce of a disillusioning evening with his now-middle-aged team, becomes, like any object eventually will, cold and dull. In fact it crumbles. It utterly loses its capacity, as psychologists tell us many an object ultimately will, to make him happy. Far better that he had treated it as an event, an experience, and—allowing it to begin sliding back in time the moment it was done—then struck out for new ones. He might have felt wistful about it. But he wouldn’t have mourned it, as he does when that championship season finally dies to him. Events are not supposed to persist in time the way objects like trophies do. Instead, once over, they are meant to disappear backward in time beyond our grasp. Not only is that how most of us unavoidably do look at the moments of our lives, it’s how (and here Coach is a cautionary tale) we ought to look at them. But in that case, Epicurus’s second consolation—that once death comes there will be nothing of ourselves that it can harm —will finally have little psychological resonance with us. We can try to get our life over and done with so that death can’t harm it, as the Holderlin strategy recommends. But then we must watch it recede ever further into the past. And so we risk becoming the chief mourners of our own life.25

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LOOK WHO’S CALLING HIMSELF NOTHING

An old joke: A rabbi enters the synagogue sanctuary and, looking around to make sure no one else is present, gets down on his knees, beats his breast, and cries “O Lord, what am I compared to thee? I am nothing. Nothing!” He rises and is about to leave by a side door when in comes the cantor, who, not seeing the rabbi, also falls to his knees, gazes heavenward, and moans, “Lord, compared to thy greatness I am nothing! Nothing, do you hear me? Nothing!” Getting up and brushing himself off, the cantor moves to the side door where he sees the rabbi; the two exchange pleasantries and are about to leave when in comes the beadle—the synagogue caretaker. Furtively glancing around and, not seeing the rabbi and the cantor, he too kneels, throws back his head, and wails, “In thine eyes my Lord, what am I? I am nothing! Nothing, I tell you! Nothing!” At which point the cantor turns to the rabbi, elbows him playfully in the ribs, and scoffs, “Look who’s calling himself ‘nothing.’” I think of this joke when I reflect on the Buddhist consolation for death. To spend our life tenaciously pursuing a set of self-focused projects and attachments, Buddhist wisdom argues, is to court suffering whenever they end in disappointment. And they inevitably will. Far better to abandon any concern with our self. Indeed, far better to recognize, with the help of various Buddhist insights, that there is no such thing as the self to begin with. It’s a mere mental construct, a figment of our mind. It is, in fact, nothing. We need not suffer from worldly pain and loss because we— our selves— do not exist. There is no subject that undergoes any such pain and loss, no subject to whom that suffering belongs. The trick is simply to see this.1 There’s an added bonus: Since our self is the very thing that we are supposed to lose when we die, death— once we understand that the self doesn’t exist to begin with—will then become a nonevent

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for us, not worth fretting over. This is the Buddhist consolation. Its central idea of self-abandonment—not Buddhism as a whole in all its richness—is my topic here. It’s not true, as some critics of Buddhism argue, that by abandoning our sense of self we cease to have any reason to live. Even if our self—along with our ego, our selfishness, our anxieties for our own success— disappear, our life—its sensuality, its compassion for others, the joy we feel when we use it to repair the world— continues. “Have I ever hated life?” Thomas Buddenbrook asks—“pure, relentless life? Folly and misconception! I have but hated myself, because I could not bear it. But I love [life].”2 There’s a contrast to be made between the Buddhist consolation and Epicurus’s first consolation, at least as ways of life. By barring all thoughts of death from our minds as we do when we follow Epicurus’s first consolation—as long as we are here, death cannot be and so remains irrelevant—we risk failing to wrap our life up. As a result, while our self ends at death, much of our life, with its uncompleted projects and unresolved relationships, continues on without it. On the Buddhist consolation, however, our self ends long before we die. It ends at the moment we realize it doesn’t exist, while our life, with its sensuousness and richness, continues on without it. Buddhism, of course, is a religion. Many of its tenets rely on spiritual or mythological claims that go beyond this world and so, too, beyond the premises of my discussion here. I will, consequently, look at the Buddhist consolation ultimately through the lenses of Western philosophers such as Oxford’s Derek Parfit and Princeton’s Mark Johnston, who have adapted its teachings for a nonbelieving audience, and who, personally, find them consoling. I focus, then, on the simple core of the Buddhist consolation—no self, no death—and I look at it in a freestanding way, detached from its central role as part of the Buddhist progression from samsara to nirvana. The “self is nothing,” one Buddhist scholar writes.3 The “self is nothing but an illusion,” the self is nothing more than a “conditional semiotic construct,” “there is no self per se at all,” say others.4 The “self does not exist”; “the self is nothing.”5 I am uneasy about this.

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I imagine Death, relaxing in an armchair, thumbing through recent writings on Buddhist views of the self. Shaking his head, Death chuckles quietly: “Heh, heh, heh . . . look who’s being called nothing.” But perhaps this is unfair to the Buddhist consolation. The other “death is benign” consolations, too, try to defang nothingness. Either they deny the horror of the nothingness that awaits after death or they celebrate the beauty of the various nothingnesses to be found during life. Each does so in its own way. In Epicurus’s first consolation—as long as we are here, death can’t be—“nothingness” comes off as utterly harmless. By definition, death’s “nothingness” can’t ever be experienced. There’s no such thing as a subject of nothingness. After all, if there is anything— anything at all, even a bare subject—then there isn’t nothing. Nothingness, then, is self-neutralizing and so completely benign. In Epicurus’s second consolation— once death comes, we are no longer here to be harmed by it—“nothingness” is actually a consummation devoutly to be wish’d. The best thing we can do is try to get all our accomplishments, the Sturm und Drang of life, behind us as soon as possible. We would then abide for the remainder of our days in utter calm and imperturbability. After all, we’d have nothing to lose to death, simply because there would be nothing anymore to our lives. And once we understood that this attractive state of nothingness in life doesn’t really differ all that much from the nothingness of death, we’d easily glide from one nothingness into the other. Finally in existentialism, nothingness—just like death—is necessary for the very existence of our self. “Nothing,” of course, is the opposite of “everything.” And so Sartre applies the term “nothingness” to our human capacity to negate reality, to transcend everything that actually exists and think about what doesn’t. Without the possibility of nothingness, we couldn’t follow our own authentic choices. Instead they’d be dictated by the existing reality around us.6 Each consolation, in its own way, thus slyly domesticates nothingness, making it serve the purposes of its own key idea.

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According to the Buddhist consolation, the self—the ostensible victim of death’s nothingness— doesn’t exist. It’s nothing itself: a mental illusion. According to Epicurus’s first consolation, a subject—an ostensible victim — of death’s nothingness can’t exist. It’s nothing itself: a metaphysical impossibility. According to Epicurus’s second consolation, nothingness is a good thing. It’s synonymous with imperturbability and calm. According to the existentialist consolation, nothingness is a good thing. It’s synonymous with imagination and creativity. The four consolations, without ever intending it—they certainly weren’t consulting each other on the matter—have each tried to take nothingness back from death. Buddhism is not alone in this regard. Put another way: death might find something to chuckle about in each of the four consolations.7

Breath and Shadow Since I—and possibly you—will never know what the Buddhist experience of self-less-ness (or no-self ) is like, it’s worth considering the metaphors that Buddhist saints and scholars use to convey it to the noninitiate. Those metaphors originate in the need to depict life in the absence of all of the motives, cognitive structures, and passions that make up the self. No motives or cognitive categories or passions, in other words, no self. No self, no selfish desire. No selfish desire, no suffering—because suffering comes from the frustration of desire. And of course no self, no death. So here, I look at what it means to abandon the self, to abandon all our motives, cognitive categories, and passions, while still remaining alive. Consider first what it could mean to live without the motives that are so definitive of a self.8 Denuding ourselves of all motives, all motivation, would allow us to cultivate an indifference to whatever happens, thus deflating desire. Critics of Buddhism retort that by becoming demotivated we would simply render life passive and inert. Buddhist scholars, as I read them, reply that there’s

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a world of difference between motivation and animation. We can still be animated by the energy of life without being motivated by our own selfish schemes and desires. To convey what this means— to show how we can banish selfish motivation and yet still remain animated—Buddhist writings metaphorically cast a selfless life as a kind of “breath,” “wind,” or “spirit.”9 Breath, wind, and spirit certainly resonate with the idea of pure animation—they move—but without motivation: they are empty. Yet they are revealing metaphors because at their core they gesture to a kind of equivocation, a borderland or netherworld. A breath, wind, or spirit is neither air nor liquid but something hovering in between: air— empty, devoid of animus—but air that flows like a liquid, that’s animated. A spirit too, in ancient Greek and Hebrew, is a fluid vapor.10 Now hold that thought, and consider next what it means to banish the cognitive categories that so structure the self. How would doing so diminish our desires, and hence our suffering? Suppose that we came to understand that the objects that we chase after, the objects that we think would fulfill our desires—wealth, status, material things, beautiful men or women— do not really exist. They, and hence the very idea of desire-fulfillment, are but chimerical concepts that we impose on the raw flow of experience. All that such cognitive categories ultimately do is lure us into the false belief that the desiderata they conjure up are actual realities—and hence encourage us only to desire and cling to them.11 We can explode these illusions, these figments, if we learn to engage the world directly in their absence. What would that feel like? Buddhist writers have offered provocative images for what remains when life’s experiences flow unstructured by the desiring self ’s cognitive categories. The raw flow of experience resembles “salt in brine,” “oil in sesame seeds,” or “butter in curds.”12 Notably, these and similar images gesture toward something that is neither liquid nor solid, but rather a mixture of the two. And it makes sense that Buddhist thinkers would gravitate to such metaphors. For to grasp the idea

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of life as a flow of raw experience, we need the viscous imagery of a no-man’s-land between liquid—flow—and solid: all the phenomena that make up the people and objects of experience, but that swirl into each other when there are no conceptual borders separating them. Finally, consider what it would mean to rid ourselves of the roiling passions that so deeply constitute the self. You can sap the power of desire, Buddhist wisdom says, by learning to perceive or “notice” the events of your life dispassionately, as if from a distance. View your own life, in other words, as if you were an external spectator to it. In that way, you will develop no self-interested passionate or emotional response to what you perceive—although you could still feel the same third-party compassion concerning your life’s events as you would for any other life’s. As far as you are concerned, then, your life would simply be a series of perceptions— or awarenesses— devoid of affective significance for you.13 The Dalai Lama once illustrated this principle in his usual gently captivating way. Occasionally, when he sees a woman who tempts him, His Holiness quickly calls himself up short, reminding himself “I am monk!” and emotionally distancing himself from that “image of the eye.”14 What metaphors do Buddhist writers use to convey a sense of such a life— one that we would simply perceive as “images of the eye” without reacting to its events in a selfishly passionate way? They describe such a life as an ongoing interplay of reflections and shadows. Or light and shade.15 Those seem like reasonable images to convey the idea of pure perceptions, devoid of the capacity to provoke emotional response. But what, in turn, are reflections and shadows? They’re simply entities that flirt with the boundary between solid and air— different kinds of solids that are no more substantial than air. One cannot, ultimately, be told directly and literally what a selfless life would be like. If we seek to know it truly and non-metaphorically, only years of practice will suffice. Even so, Buddhist metaphors for depicting to the noninitiate what remains when the self dissolves—for depicting life without a self, or a selfless life—are keenly revealing.

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What they disclose is a struggle to get across the idea of a life that’s animated but not motivated, experienced but not in a cognitive way, and perceived but not in a passionate manner. That’s what life shorn of the self would be like. But crucially, the struggle to get it across to the noninitiate has come to center on a kind of symbolism that’s almost not of this world—that exists at the interstices of air, liquid, and solid: not any of them, but somehow betwixt and between. A selfless life is a kind of liquid air—breath, wind, spirit, and moving vapor— or a solidish liquid—runny butter, viscous sesame oil, water clouded with particulate salt— or an airy solid: shadow, light, reflection, and shade. Neither air nor liquid nor solid. If the self truly doesn’t exist, does it not seem as if life barely would either?16

Self-Effacement Celebrities often refer to themselves in the first-person plural, as “we.” “For two years,” Garth Brooks said in an interview with the Independent in 2007, “we couldn’t find anything that we wanted to be an actor in.”17 Other famous people speak of themselves not in the first-person plural but in the third-person singular: “I’ve been very careful that Deborah Norville does the right thing,” the TV personality Deborah Norville once told the Seattle Times; “Deborah has been pretty clever about managing her associations.”18 These rhetorical tics are far from uncommon. Martha Stewart shows a partiality for using the first-person plural, “we,” to refer to herself. Regis Philbin opts for the third-person singular, “he.” And the actor Richard Dreyfuss uses both.19 Perhaps, one day, he will simply start referring to himself as “they.” Viewed one way, these two modes of referring to oneself seem aligned with Buddhist notions of self-abandonment or self-effacement. Each allows a person to refer to himself without, actually, referring to his self. And indeed some Buddhist thinkers do explicitly advocate dissolving the self—the “I”—into the first-person plural, into the “we.” An

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individual should identify his aims and projects with those of mankind as a whole, the Buddhist writer David Loy says. Once a person recognizes that there is no “I” but only the ongoing flow of human life, Loy claims, the “I” will become “us.” Other Buddhist writers, arguing for a detached view of the self, in effect recommend that we each view ourselves in the third-person singular, as a removed “he” or “she.” Observing our self from a distance, as if it were somebody else, we will become emancipated from the suffering it undergoes. When pressed, celebrities who refer to themselves in these two no-self ways, as either “we” or “s/he” instead of “I,” do give a more or less Buddhist account of their usage. The singer Neal McCoy is fond of referring to himself in the first-personal plural, as “we.” In doing so he claims to be acknowledging, in a self-deprecating way, that his success results from a team effort requiring an entourage of managers, agents, writers, and directors.20 There is no “I” involved in McCoy’s projects and plans, no ego or self, only “we.” Meanwhile the baseball player Wade Boggs, in using the thirdperson singular “he” to denote himself, says that he does so lest it seem that, by referring to himself as “I,” he would be boasting. Whoever it is that has achieved baseball glory, Boggs is saying, it is not I. Instead, Boggs self-effacingly places himself at a remove from the “he” who has those feats to his credit.21 The elder George Bush went halfway in this direction, not referring to himself as “he” but dropping the “I” so as to distance himself modestly from whomever it was who scored all his accomplishments. Both McCoy and Boggs claim to be jettisoning the self in more or less Buddhist fashion. But that’s not how we hear it. After all, we have come to think of the use of “we” and “he” to refer to oneself as just the opposite of Buddhist-style self-effacement: such coinages are about as self-aggrandizing as you can get. They are poster children of unrestrained ego. Referring to yourself as “we” suggests not that you have submerged yourself in the onrush of humanity but that—as with the “royal we”—you have submerged humanity in your grandiose self, that you view yourself and your needs as equal

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to theirs, or perhaps more: that they are there to serve yours. You are large; you contain multitudes. Likewise, referring to yourself as “he” or “she” suggests not an admirable and self-effacing detachment from your own accomplishments, but a sense of yourself as something so prodigious that you, too, have to step back agog with the rest of us and admire or worship it. Liza Minnelli refers to her self— her public persona—as “her,” to signify an entity that’s transcended the narrow confines of any mere individual and become a legend of gargantuan proportions.22 The language of no-self, then, can easily be subverted and taken over by the self, the ego. The most self-distancing terms we can possibly use to refer to ourselves have become the most self-aggrandizing. All of this is a sign that self and no-self don’t necessarily constitute poles on a spectrum, with the path from one to the other long and arduous. Rather, they are often the starting and ending points on a circular route, a hair’s breadth from each other. Hence the notion of “small ‘b’ Buddhism”—the idea that you must take care not to develop an ego about how well you’ve abandoned your ego, to not exult in how justly you have managed to call yourself “nothing.”23 For many, the two extremes sit right next to each other, the strongest selves and the strongest no-selves just an emotional toggle away from each other. “Narcissism,” one psychologist notes, “has variously been referred to as [among other things] compulsive self-effacement.”24 The mythical Narcissus, of course, did not think he was the greatest and expect everyone to love him. Instead, he saw his reflection in a pool, thought it was the greatest thing he had ever seen, and fell in love with it. His self-love began in self-detachment, self-effacement. Meanwhile, at the far opposite place on the circle, 180 degrees away from the point where extreme self-love and extreme self-effacement meet, lies a moderate balance of the two: a low-key self-confidence. But at neither location is the Buddhist consolation of true self-abandonment possible. Certainly not for a bundle of ego and anxiety like me, and perhaps you too.

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Whoever Has the Most When He Dies, Wins To eradicate loss from our lives, Buddhist wisdom says, we must accept that the self does not exist. Once we recognize that the self is an illusion, we will understand that there is nothing to suffer loss in the first place. And of course once we realize that the self is an illusion, then death too will be nothing to us, because we will see that there is nothing to be lost by it. No longer will the self be either the subject or the object of loss. But aren’t there other ways for busy, ambitious people to interpret their lives so as to banish loss? Aren’t there, in fact, innumerable socially provided templates for whisking loss out of the picture, without our having to abandon the self ? Think of wealth accumulation—the epitome of scorekeeping in which losses count. Think of the t-shirt slogan: “Whoever has the most when he dies wins.” That person is not simply the one who earned the most money over the course of his life, not if he ultimately lost much or all of it. The person who has the most when he dies has subtracted all his losses from his winnings and yet still comes out ahead of everyone else. But that can be a pretty unforgiving way of thinking about one’s life, even for those who make financial success their standard for selfesteem. And so over time the business world has created narratives for wealth accumulators that allow them to omit the losses. Consider the blossoming phenomenon of Businessperson Halls of Fame, Entrepreneur of the Year prizes, and CEO of the Year honors. The “Global Energy CEO of the Year Award,” according to its official criteria, goes to “a leader who is highly respected by [her] peers” for her “vision, judgment and motivational skills”; it is explicitly “not an award for . . . revenue and profits growth.” You could lose a bundle and still win this accolade. Similarly, the “Northern California Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award” recognizes “original, imaginative, or innovative programs” in marketing, hiring, and office management, regardless of whether you were hemorrhaging money. Businesses may boom and bust, profits might be wiped out by losses,

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but a CEO of the Year award is forever—winning it this year is never cancelled out by the fact that you’ll lose it next year.25 In business the money you lose is remorselessly subtracted from the money you win. Perhaps, then, that is why businesspeople have begun to create prizes in which winnings do not have to be balanced against losses. Conversely, in athletics, the prizes you win are often weighed against the prizes you lose. Perhaps that is why the sporting world has begun to take note of total money won without taking into account money lost. If you look at their golf matches in 2003, you will see that Tiger Woods did better than Vijay Singh. Woods won five and lost thirteen of his tournaments. Singh won only four and lost a whopping twenty-three. Fortunately for Singh, though, there was another metric. He made $7.57 million in 2003, exceeding Woods’s total by $900,494.26 And for golfers, unlike for businessmen, a dollar metric takes into account just money won, not money lost. We don’t say that Singh won $7.57 million and lost tens of millions, even though that’s the total amount of money he did lose—and lost in exactly the same way that he lost the twenty-three tournaments we do count. And so while golfers are routinely rated on their win-loss ratio when it comes to prizes, golf honors like the PGA Tour Money Leader take into account only money won, not money lost. If you’re Vijay Singh, and you shift your life narrative from prizes to money, you cease to be a loser. The Buddhist doctrine of no-self, too, is a way of reinterpreting one’s life to expunge losses. Of course, there’s a big difference: it aims to wipe out not just losses of money or prizes but all losses. The governing idea is that the sooner we can reframe our life so that we no longer have a self, the sooner we will abandon the entire category known as loss, because there will no longer be any entity that suffers it. But for those of us who value the self, the Buddhist consolation will seem like a Faustian bargain. Except that instead of giving up

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our soul for unlimited gains, as Faust does, we give up our self for the extinguishment of loss. True, there’s one additional benefit that comes from abandoning the self as a whole. The benefit is that we banish death too. But can that really work?

A Parfit Gentle Night In defending the Buddhist view of no-self, the Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit invites us to imagine an advanced form of teletransportation from Earth to Mars. First, a scanner here on Earth “destroys”— vaporizes—your body and brain. Then a document describing your entire cellular composition “is beamed to Mars.” Finally, using that blueprint, a replicator there “makes a perfect organic copy” of you. That copy includes a new brain containing all the contents of your earthly mind, conscious and unconscious, as it was the moment before you were destroyed: all its memories, plans, projects, beliefs, and feelings. Your “Replica on Mars will think that he is [you], and he will be in every way psychologically continuous with [you].”27 Have you yourself survived the process? For Parfit, a “thought experiment” like this furnishes a litmus test for the Buddhist consolation. If there is nothing more to you than your memories, plans, projects, passions, commitments, and so forth —nothing more to you than the contents of your mind—then, it would seem, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t survive.28 After all, what else is there to you? If you can’t point to anything, then you must accept that there is no such thing as a self, something further that underlies all those memories, plans, projects, beliefs, and feelings. Those memories, plans, projects, and attachments amount to the life that you have led. But you can’t find a self anywhere in them. And if you can’t point to anything that’s lost in the process of teletransportation, then you can’t point to anything that permanently perishes in death either—anything that death destroys. True, unlike with teletransportation, when you die your memories, thoughts,

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hopes, and plans aren’t being re-created in an organic copy of you, here or on Mars. But that’s not the point. The point is that— assuming they could be and you would then regard that person as you—you’ve accepted that there’s no underlying self that’s uniquely your own, and that death would destroy. There’s no “you” to take ownership of all those thoughts, feelings, and memories; no “you” to whom their termination would be a loss. But there’s more: they needn’t terminate, even if they aren’t replicated on Mars. For if you have children who share your memories of summers picnicking at Centre Island, and friends who share your love of Zydeco, and colleagues who share your quest to preserve Venice from sinking into the sea, then you know that, in some form, your life—your memories, passions, thoughts, and quests—will continue on after you die. True, they won’t persist in exactly the form they currently do in your mind. But then neither would they if you didn’t die. Your memories, passions, thoughts, and quests are always being modified and eventually jettisoned to be replaced by new ones. And if that’s all there is to you—if the self is a myth—then death inflicts no losses that life wouldn’t also inflict. Everything about you, even the subjective stuff like your memories and thoughts and feelings, can live on. “Now that I have seen this,” Parfit writes, “my death seems to me less bad.” The logic is persuasive to him. True, he’s aware that psychologic is another matter. Psychologically, something will still trip most of us up in accepting the idea that the person on Mars would be us: that nothing would be lost in the process, that there really is no self. Even “Buddha,” Parfit notes, “claimed that [it is] very hard” to accept this view without years of mental practice.29 So what is it that makes us rebel against the idea that there is no self to begin with, especially in light of Parfit’s challenge to point to it? Think again of teletransportation. If we are inclined to believe that we wouldn’t survive it—that something, call it a self, disappears and never makes it to Mars—the reason obviously has nothing to do with the fact that there’s a tremendous spatial gap between Earth and

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Mars. It has to do with the fact that there’s a temporal gap, however small, between the end of our earthly life and the beginning of our Martian life. Parfit reckons that that gap would last about an hour.30 But it could be vanishingly small and we would, many of us, still feel that something had ended on Earth that wasn’t re-created on Mars. Interestingly, though, Parfit relies not on temporal but on spatial imagery throughout his discussion. He equates the contents of our mind over the course of our life to a chain. The individual links in that chain represent whatever memories, thoughts, feelings, plans, sensations, and perceptions are on our mind at each successive moment of our existence. Certainly, the link representing the contents of our mind in the final moment before we get vaporized on Earth, and the link representing the contents of our mind in the first moment when we materialize on Mars, are closely connected and similar—as connected and similar as any of our mental contents on Earth itself ever were moment to moment. After all, our entire mind—just as it was on Earth at the instant before it was destroyed—gets re-created on Mars. No question, then, that the Martian version picks up immediately where the Earth version left off. The chain continues, in the way it always has. And beyond this, Parfit asks, what else is there? Beyond the contents of the chain’s links, the contents which obviously do make the Earth-Mars transition with no difficulty, there seems to be nothing else to us—nothing that existed on Earth but that might be missing on Mars. There’s no evidence, in particular, of a “deep further fact” as Parfit says—by which he means a bare self—underlying the chain of our minute-by-minute thoughts, feelings, memories, and perceptions on Earth but that might not have made the move to Mars. David Hume, whose view of the self ’s nonexistence supports Parfit’s “Buddhist” understanding, said that, try as he might, he could never “catch” a glimpse of any such bare self underlying all the minute-by-minute memories, thoughts, intentions, and sensations that made up his life. All that Hume could see, when he introspected, were those memories, thoughts, intentions, and sensations themselves. He couldn’t see anything beneath them. And so he concluded

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that there is no such thing as a deep, further self. Hume would have agreed that we survive teletransportation. All there was to him —all there is to us—is the chain. The phrase that Parfit uses to describe what the self would be if it existed—a “deep further fact”—is an interesting one. “Deep” and “further” are spatial terms. They encourage us to think of the bare, essential self as something that, if it existed, would lie “deeper and further” beneath our chain of moment-by-moment memories, perceptions, sensations, thoughts, and feelings, containing the chain like a kind of long tray. Given that that’s what the self would be if it existed, and given that no such “deep further fact” is evident, there is—Parfit says—no self. All we are is the chain, whose links represent our moment-by-moment mental contents. And the chain picks up on Mars right where it left off on Earth without missing a beat— or a link. My intention is not to take issue with Parfit’s position as a metaphysical matter. Instead, I’m interested in the question—a question he poses but doesn’t in my view adequately answer—as to why it’s so psychologically difficult for many of us to accept that we’d survive our teletransportation. My suggestion is that Parfit’s image of our mental contents, all our moment-by-moment memories, thoughts, plans, and feelings, as a chain—and the implication that the self, if it existed, would be something “further” and “deeper,” something lying underneath the chain like a tray—is misleading. In day-to-day life, we rarely treat our self on the one hand, and our ongoing mental contents on the other, as if they resembled trays and chains. We don’t treat them as objects overlapping in the same area in space, our self beneath our mental contents. Instead, we tend to polarize our self and our mental contents in time, consigning our self to the future and our mental contents to the past. At any given moment, when we look back to our past for a sense of personal continuity, what we have in view is just a series of mental contents. We think of the thoughts, experiences, memories, feelings,

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sensations, plans, and so forth that made up our life, second by second, up to that moment. We of course can recall only a fraction of them. But anything that we do remember of our past is a type of mental contents: a thought, an emotion, a perception, an experience, a dream, or, more likely, some intricate combination of them. We don’t think of our self, when we look backward, as a bare self persisting through time till the present moment; such a self nowhere appears in view.31 Instead, when we look to our past for a sense of personal continuity, what we have in mind is simply the life we have led to date—all the memories, dreams, experiences, thoughts, feelings, and desires that we have had. But when at any given moment we look to the future for a sense of personal continuity what we conceive is, precisely, a bare self, a bare subject, moving ever forward in time. After all, when we look to the future, we can’t tell what our mental contents— our thoughts, perceptions, desires, and sensations—will be over that stretch. They haven’t yet happened. Yes, we can imagine what a fraction of them might be like. We can bring to mind some semblance of next Thursday’s dentist appointment. But in fact we can’t know if that appointment will even happen, the future being full of radical uncertainties, nor that—if it does— our experience of it will be anything like what we envisage. And so because we have not yet had the experiences, thoughts, plans, perceptions, sensations, and the like that lie ahead, we think of our future continuity, by default, simply in terms of a bare self moving ever onward in time. That bare self, as we conceive it from the present moment, has no mental contents. Any sense we have of its continuing on in time cannot, then, come from the connections or similarities between its various thoughts, memories, plans, perceptions, and so forth moment by moment: between one link in the chain and the next. It doesn’t yet have any. Instead our bare self can, as we think about it now, continue on into the future only if it persists uninterruptedly in time second by second. That’s all there is to our sense of our continuity into the future. As we look ahead, if

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there ever comes a moment when that bare self would for some reason cease moving forward, as it would in the instant of vaporization preceding teletransportation, then we die. The Buddhist consolation says that if we look at matters in the right way, we will put our self behind us. Thus liberated, we will become simply a flow of related mental contents—sensations, perceptions, experiences— on into the unending future. But in an important way that gets things backward. It is when we look behind us at any given moment that most of us see a flow of mental contents—the perceptions, experiences, and sensations we had in the past. And it’s when we look forward that we unavoidably see only a bare self moving onward into the future. If that self ever stops moving, then we die. In fact Parfit’s teletransportation case itself nicely validates this way of looking at the temporal polarization between our self and our mental contents. Think of the post-teletransportation person, the one who materializes on Mars. Looking backward in time, and finding himself possessed of all my mental contents—my memories, beliefs, emotions, sensations, thoughts and so forth—he would think that I have survived, i.e., that he is me. That’s because for him, as for most of us, the sense he has of himself when he looks to the past can come only from his mental contents over time, and he finds that he has all of mine. But now think of the pre-teletransportation me here on Earth. Looking forward in time, even though I know that all my memories, plans, attachments, and so forth will be re-created on Mars, I would still equate teletransportation with my annihilation. That’s because for me, as for most of us when we look to the future, the sense I have of myself continuing on is precisely that of a bare self, a subject, not a chain of memories, plans, attachments, and experiences. And if that subject ever ceases moving forward second by second in time, as it does with teletransportation, it dies. The fact that my mental contents—all my memories, plans, thoughts, dreams, and attachments—might continue on in a Martian equivalent after teletransportation, or more roughly in those who are close to me after

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my death, ultimately fails to give me a sense of personal continuity on into the future. After all, at whatever moment I occupy, I don’t base my sense of future continuity on my future mental contents, or on the notion that they might bear connections and similarities that link them into a chain. How could I? I haven’t yet had them.32 According to the Buddhist consolation, my death is nothing because my self is nothing. All there is to me are the memories, desires, perceptions, and thoughts that form links in the chain representing my life. There’s nothing further, nothing deeper—no bare self—to be found underlying them. But for those of us who think that something ends with teletransportation—and that something ends with death— our ongoing mental contents don’t lie on top of the bare self as a chain might lie on top of a tray in the same stretch of space. Instead, our self and our mental contents occupy two entirely different stretches in time, the bare self moving on into the future and our mental contents—the memories, perceptions, thoughts, and sensations we have already had—trailing back into the past. That’s why teletransportation, which ends the movement of our bare self on into the future even though all of our mental contents continue on in a replica, is for us just another word for death. And it’s why death, which also ends the movement of our bare self on into the future even if our mental contents continue on in those who were close to us, really does terminate us.33 In the end the Buddhist consolation loses psychological purchase with me. I cannot go gentle into Parfit’s good night.

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four

BUCKET LISTS

The “bucket list”—a list of things to do before you kick the bucket —has come into its own as a literary genre. And it’s a revealing one. Consider the two kinds of items that bucket lists typically feature. First, there is the desire to experience something—usually, it’s something countless others have also experienced—and to know for oneself how it feels. Typical examples: “Attend Loy Krathrong in Thailand.” “Be at Chitzen Itza on December 12, 2012.” “Swim naked in the Caribbean.” “Be at the Feria de Cali Salsa Festival.” “See the Rockettes.” “See Lil Wayne in concert.” “Make the kora around Mt. Kailash in 2014.” “Watch all 100 of [the American Film Institute’s] greatest hits.” “Visit the Kiyomizu temple.” And, on more than one bucket list to be found online, “Meet Lindsay Lohan.” Then there is the desire to do something unique, to make a mark, to act on the world, to change it in some singular way. Examples: “Write a book.” “Break or set a world record.” “Be on the cover of a magazine.” “Create a definitive film for every genre in cinema.” “Become a published author.” “Invent a board game.” “Do stand-up comedy.” A difference in tone characterizes the way the two kinds of items get expressed. Desires to experience some mass event— or one that many others have undergone—tend to be vivid and concrete. Many concern specific places and dates: “Be at Chitzen Itza on December 12, 2012”; “Make the kora around Mt. Kailash in 2014.” By contrast actions, plans to change the world in some singular way, tend to be recorded abstractly and vaguely. Many seem phoned in. “Write a book.” Good idea—but on what? “Appear on a magazine cover.” Great. But what will you do to earn the honor, precisely? Experiences, almost all of them widely shared, tend to involve the definite article—“the”—indicating a very particularized aim: swim naked in

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the Caribbean, attend the Feria de Cali Salsa festival. Actions, plans for making an inimitable imprint on the world, commonly incorporate the more indefinite “a”—invent a board game, break a world record. Our knowledge that we will die, the existentialist consolation says, is what compels us to create a self. Our finitude, our awareness that our time will soon come to an end, spurs us to get off the couch and out into the world. Otherwise we would never get started. And so we owe our self ’s very existence to the fact that we will die. Of course, this doesn’t happen automatically. It requires work on our part. To forge a self, the existentialist philosopher Paul Tillich says, we must view death not merely as “the scissors that cuts the thread of our life,” but as “one of those threads that are woven into the design of our existence, from its very beginning to its end.”1 Only by remaining continually aware that we could die at any moment, not simply that we are going to die at some point, will we create a life that is both singular—authentic to our own values because we have no time to waste on anyone else’s—and vivid, one that uses each second to the hilt because time is scarce.2 But if we are to judge from bucket listers, something goes awry with death’s supposedly galvanizing impetus to self-creation. After all, who if not a bucket lister consciously engages her own death, bringing it into her daily life plans? Bucket listers more than anyone give death its proper existentialist due. They treat the Reaper as a kind of life coach, a whip-cracker urging them ever onward in the project of shaping their lives. By rights, bucket listers should be living embodiments of the existentialist principle, crafting singular, vivid selves. And yet what’s vivid in their plans isn’t singular; it’s generic: experiences like Loy Krathrong or the kora around Mt. Kailash. By the same token, what’s singular—“Write a book,” “Appear on a magazine cover”—seems anything but vivid; it seems colorless, bland, washed out. Not the singularity and vividness we expect, or so the

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existentialist consolation advises, when a full awareness of our finitude compels us to go out and craft an authentic and vibrant self. Something seems off here. What does it mean, exactly, to weave your death into your life, to have it with you at every moment as the existentialist consolation recommends? It means recognizing, as Heidegger says, that while your death certainly will happen, you can never know exactly when it will happen. It could strike this afternoon. Then again it might hang back for the next twenty or fifty years.3 That’s why its possibility must be with you at every step of the way—a constant presence. And if you do manage to bring your death fully into your life in this “I know I will but not when” way, then, Kierkegaard advises, your mortality will “give [you] energy to live as nothing else does.” Constantly aware of your death—aware that it might happen today, but then again possibly not for years—you will, Kierkegaard says, live “each day as if it were the last and, at the same time, the first in a long life.”4 In other words, death’s ever-present possibility will vitalize you because it will force you to reconcile those two great, but contradictory, morsels of fortune-cookie wisdom: live each day as if it were your last. And today is the first day of the rest of your life. For although you do know that death will happen, you don’t know when. It could be today. But you could just as easily have another twenty or forty years. But can you do both things—live each new day as if it were your last, but also as if it were the first day of the rest of your life—at once? Yes. Here’s how it works. And two considerations are key. First, look for experiences that require no time to get under way. Even if you were to die tomorrow, there’d still be time to pack another one in. What kind of experiences? Ready-made ones that require no extended action on your part to plan or get going. Like swimming naked in the Caribbean. Or attending a Lil Wayne concert. The great advantage of such generic experiences, experiences that the world presents to you without your having to engineer them, is that if you don’t die tomorrow—if you do die in twenty years—then you

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can keep on packing them in for as long as you live. Something more unique, by contrast—scaling Everest backward and blindfolded, for example—is not the kind of thing you plan if tomorrow could be your last day. Nor would scaling Everest backward and blindfolded have been advisable if you happen to live for another twenty years, and you then find yourself looking back wistfully on that glorious moment in the way that Holderlin strategists, say the men from That Championship Season, do on theirs. Only with experiences like meeting Lindsay Lohan or attending the Feria de Cali Salsa Festival would you, when you finally do die, have lived each day right up to the hilt, leading a life that’s as vivid, as colorful, as possible. That’s great as a method for taking in the experiences that the world has to offer you. But what about what you have to offer the world, the ways in which you could act on the world to shape it and leave a singular imprint? Well, again, remember that you could die either today or in twenty years. The most logical thing to do, then, would be to sketch out some extremely vague, bleached-out, long-range plans. Like “write a book.” Or “invent a board game.” For suppose by some chance that you do happen to live for the next twenty years or so. Then you just might realize such plans, open-ended as they are. But suppose instead that you die tomorrow. Well then, not much would be lost with plans of such a nebulous, long-run nature. Nothing much would have been invested and so there would be no sense of poignant interruption: of having the blade fall just as the goal was in reach. By remaining at the vague, wholly unexecuted “write a book” or “invent a board game” stage, if you do happen to die tomorrow you will leave no half-executed projects, no flailing loose ends of your life, as Ivan Ilych does. Nothing to be finished by others in ways you might not have: nothing that would no longer bear your singular stamp. After all, the whole idea is to make sure everything that matters most to you was singular: done your way. “Would you rather die in the middle of a book and have some bastard finish it for you,” Julian Barnes asks, “or leave behind a work

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in progress that not a single bastard in the whole world was remotely interested in finishing?”5 The bucket lister says, “Neither. If I die tomorrow I won’t have started it, and if I die in twenty years, I’ll have finished it.” Either way, it won’t be nipped in the bud or left for others to mangle or ruin. The possibility that the bucket lister could die tomorrow means that there’s no point in getting started today. The possibility that he might die in twenty years means that there’s no need to get started today. With each new sunrise, the two questions elicit the same answers. Like pincers, they squeeze out any intermediating alternative. For what if he dies in between tomorrow and twenty years from now, say in two or five or seven years? Well either that’s not enough time to finish it, so there’d be no point in getting started now. Or it’s more than enough time to finish it, so there’s no need to get started now. The bucket listers, then, are living the existentialist consolation, in practice. They are doing exactly what any person would do if he had made death’s ever-present possibility a continuing thread in his life, living as if the end might come either tomorrow or in twenty years. But does such a life amalgamate the singular with the vivid, as the existentialist consolation would also have it? No. It separates them. What’s vivid is generic; what’s singular seems to have no pulse. Instead, if you want to lead a life that does fuse the singular and the vivid, then you’d do better to think of death in precisely the way that Paul Tillich counsels us against: as a scissors at the end of your life, not a constant thread within it. Like Ivan Ilych, you would then perpetually plunge into new projects: projects that do not remain at the vague, sketched-out stage—after all, the thought that you might die this afternoon is wholly foreign to you—but that as a result might well be in midair when death does cut with its scissors. Or, like a Holderlin strategist, you might rush to get all your projects over with as quickly as possible—after all, you’re not about to take the chance that you’ve got years and years ahead of you—so that the scissors won’t snip them. At least Ivan’s

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and Holderlin’s projects, when they are happening, blend singular action with vivid experiences. The downside of the Ivan and Holderlin strategies? Your life might not end precisely when you do. It risks either continuing on to be completed by others, eventually sapped of its singularity (Ivan) or finishing long before, drained of its vividness (Holderlin). The upside? You stand a chance that at least some of what you do will be both singular and vivid. You will have lived a life that, in its prime moments, was uniquely and vibrantly yours. You want a real self, a self that’s led a maximally singular and vivid life? Maybe the existentialist consolation is not for you.

“It’s a Wonderful Life” versus “Life Is Beautiful” One of Citizen Kane’s best scenes occurs early in the film. Bernstein, the financial codger played by Everett Sloane, muses about his dealings with Charles Foster Kane while puttering around his desk, consulting his office ticker-tape and doing the other kinds of business that got the movie hailed for its deeply naturalistic performances. At one point, Bernstein interrupts his reminiscences about Kane with a deeper reverie about a young woman he had glimpsed, one day many years before, on a ferry. “I only saw her for a second,” Bernstein says with a faraway look in his eyes, “but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.” We can be certain that the girl has no idea of the singular mark she left on Bernstein’s life. And what is true of her is true of us all. Every day, we each change the lives of friends, family, and strangers— provoking thoughts, entering lines of sight, figuring as the topic of conversations—in countless ways that we don’t know about. We take the last carton of milk at the 7–11, unaware that we thereby cause the young man behind us to drive four miles to Kroger’s. There he runs into his long-lost girlfriend; they marry and have a child who grows up to be a game-changing secretary of state. Sum up such incidents, large and small, over the course of anyone’s life. It’s hard not

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to conclude that the vast bulk of the singular footprint our actions leave upon the world—the way it is different for our being here— will never come into our own consciousness, never form part of our own experience. Conversely, the vast bulk of what does appear vivid in our awareness, our experience, involves things that we ourselves do not act to bring about. Many are common or shared events, things that would happen anyway even if we were no longer present to be conscious of them. Think of the winning lottery numbers we’ll check this evening. Or the elevator Muzak we’ll hear tomorrow. Or the World Series we plan to watch next year. We ourselves are the recipients, the end point, of such experiences, of the impressions the world makes on us; and so we feel them vividly. But nothing we have done—no action of ours—was necessary to originate them, to bring them about. So any given person’s life throws off two large penumbras. First, there are all of the ways she singularly acts upon and uniquely shapes the world but that she will never experience herself. And second, there are all of the things that she, in common with others, experiences about the world, but that she herself has no role in bringing about; in no way do they reflect her own actions. We try to delude ourselves, to bring the penumbras into alignment. Think of the Frank Capra film It’s a Wonderful Life. Jimmy Stewart’s character, George Bailey, learns, with the help of an angel, what a hell-on-earth life would have been for so many had he never existed. Or think of Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful. Benigni’s character, Guido Orefice, transforms a hell on earth that he had no part in making—life with his son in a Nazi concentration camp— into a beautiful drama for the boy, pretending that it’s a gigantic game that Guido himself has orchestrated to introduce adventure into his child’s life. George Bailey wants to bring the imprint he has stamped on others more fully into his own consciousness; he needs to be able to see the world he has made. Guido wants to view the world that’s pressing in on his consciousness as one that somehow reflects his imprint; he

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needs to feel that he has made the world that he sees. In the most wonderful kind of life, then, the consequences of our own actions would play a far more prominent role in our daily experience. And in the most beautiful kind of life, our everyday experiences would be far more traceable to the consequences of our own actions. Yet before the angel visits him, George must live with the fact that the consequences of most actions he takes almost immediately begin to dissipate into the grander scheme of things, impossible for him to discern. Is it so surprising, then, that he begins to wonder what he himself will lose on the day when he can no longer take any actions at all? Given that whatever singular marks he carves on the world remain so vague and murky to him, it seems to George as if no difference would be made if he were no longer there. That’s why he thinks of killing himself. By the same token, Guido knows that almost all of what he is able to experience—what’s vividly real to him —would occur whether he were there or not. Is it so surprising, then, that he begins to wonder how many, exactly, of the unfolding events of his life will be lost on the day when he himself is no longer present to experience them? The one event that might not have happened, had Guido not been on the planet, is his own death. On the day the camp is liberated, he marches comically in front of a Nazi soldier so as to keep up the charade for his son, and is then killed. Otherwise, everything in the rest of the film goes on as it would have even if he had remained alive. And that includes the illusion of the game: the following day, Guido’s son gets rescued by an American tank. And Guido had promised the boy that a tank would be his reward for completing the “game” successfully. According to the existentialist consolation, a full awareness of death is what forces us to create a vivid and singular self, one that’s bold and sharply etched. But as George and Guido suggest, a full awareness of how pale and indistinct our self actually is against the background of the world— of how little of our own actions we vividly experience and how much of our own experience has nothing to do with our

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singular actions— can make us feel how little would be lost when we die. What’s singular to George fails to be vivid to him; what’s vivid to Guido has nothing of his singular stamp on it. Even the president of the United States experiences only a fraction of the difference that his actions have made in other people’s lives, while the vast bulk of what he does experience results from actions other than his own. Perhaps that accounts for the peevishness that critics like Maureen Dowd saw in Barack Obama during his term of office.6 George and Guido feel their own invisibility—the paleness and indistinctness of their own selves—in an extreme way. And it’s precisely that feeling of invisibility that makes them willing to die, because they can’t see what would be lost. But that poses a serious question for the existentialist consolation. Suppose that an awareness of death does cause us to go forth into the world and carve out an authentic and vibrant self. Suppose we do hammer out a self whose singular actions bring it deeply vivid experiences, and whose vivid experiences result from its own singular acts. Why should that make us more reconciled to death? Shouldn’t we be less reconciled? After all, we will be keenly aware of what will be lost when we die.

“Somewhere Towards the End” Focus on the fact, the existentialist consolation counsels, that no one else can die your particular death. It is your own specific string of experiences and actions that your death will put to an end, nobody else’s. And so you alone bear the burden of “care,” to use Heidegger’s phrase, for your own life. You bear the responsibility for using each minute in whatever way means the most to you. Recognize all of this, and then you will be primed to carve out your own authentic and vivid path. But now suppose that you actually are near the end. Suppose that you know not just that you will die but also, with a shocking precision, pretty much when. Suppose that “the first days of the rest of your life” have, at long last, simultaneously become the last days of your life. You’ve received the doctor’s diagnosis.

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Impending death has little to recommend it. And yet two silver linings do frequently get mentioned in the reflections of those in life’s endgame. They point, though, in just the opposite direction from the existentialist consolation. “Death,” Claudian said, “renders all equal.” As we approach the terminus of our life, everyone has the short end of the stick. No matter how good our high-school rival once had it, toward the finale his life will come to resemble ours too. As William Ian Miller observes, “death is democratizing.” And so is the approach to it, when people of average looks enjoy a quiet smile “at seeing that the nice-looking people who treated them with contempt are now not differentiable from themselves in the eyes of the young.”7 To fully view death as the common fate of mankind—instead of an intensely individual experience that we each face alone, as the existentialists counsel—is one of the few psychic releases (even if it doesn’t rise to the level of a full-fledged consolation) available to the dying. Life may present us with many common or mass experiences along the way, from Loy Krathrong to a Lil Wayne concert. Dying, though, is the king of universal human experiences. We’re all in this together. And yet the existentialist consolation insists that we not so see it. The fear is that we would then fall prey to Ivan Ilych’s abstract view of mortality, by which death is something that happens to mankind in general: a perspective that obscures what it really means for oneself in particular, eroding our impetus to use our time wisely and carve out an authentic life. It is, though, one of the few privileges reserved to those who actually are dying to see themselves as living in a land of true universal equality. And one can do that only by grasping that death is a general human condition, not, as the existentialist consolation counsels, an entirely individuated human fate.8 And here is impending death’s second gift. At the end of life, it becomes not “care”—the ever-present pressure to use each minute in the most meaningful way—but carefreeness that more potently promotes authenticity. We can finally tell our neighbor what we really think of her because we won’t be around to experience any

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serious blowback. We can wear our trousers rolled because it doesn’t matter anymore what people say. Having arrived at this late stage, the full consequences of our actions will escape our experience not only because they usually do in life anyway, but simply because we will die before they fully blossom. A newspaper article on hospices in Roanoke reports that “patients given only ‘a year’ of life suddenly were freed to live. Masks and defenses fell away. They noticed colors and clouds, felt sorrow and joy.”9 It is one of the few privileges of the dying to live in a land of carefree freedom.10 Some of us more than others, depending on fate and our dispositions, will enjoy access to this death-shadowed republic of universal equality and carefree freedom. But none of us will gain entry as long as we abide by the existentialist consolation: as long as we fix on the idea that we each die our own distinct death, and that we must relentlessly maintain the ever-vigilant burden of care that comes with that mindset. Clinging white-knuckled to the existentialist consolation throughout our lives to the very end, we will miss a kind of sweetness, a kind of all-in-the-same-boat equality and carefree liberty, that the final approach to death—in fact, only the final approach to death— can bring.

Memento Mori We should applaud our mortality, the existentialist consolation tells us. Without death we would feel no sense of urgency: nothing forcing us to use each moment wisely, no compulsion to craft a life. And not just any life, but a full and authentic one. Given true awareness of our limited time, why would we squander even one moment on anything we don’t really care about? Our finitude—as long as we keep it front and center in our minds— compels us to choose the life path that matters most to us. But something crucial would seem to follow from this. Once we have come to the end of that path, we would then, ideally, die. Our self, Nietzsche says, should expire at the point where the life it led

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also comes to an end. “Many die too late and some die too early,” Nietzsche’s Zarathustra spake; “Die at the right time.”11 Yet short of suicide, how can we arrange for self and life to terminate at the same time? There would seem to be two possibilities. One of them we’ve already seen. Knowing that we will eventually die but having no clue as to when, we would live as if death might come at any moment. We would, as Kierkegaard suggests, live each day as if it could be our last (because it could be), but also as if it were the first day in the rest of a long life (because it could be that too). This is what the bucket listers do. On each day they continue to cram in as much as they can by way of new experiences before they die, unlike Holderlin strategists, who have brought their life to a conclusion long before their self exits. But bucket listers also never start an action plan that might be seriously interrupted by death, unlike Ivan Ilych, whose life’s loose ends thrash about long after he himself has departed, now in the hands of petulant relatives and vain colleagues who will handle them in ways he would deplore. In this way, given that their self ’s departure could come at any time, bucket listers try to ensure that whenever that should happen, their life will end too, instead of either before it or after. But there’s another strategy available for dying neither too early nor too late. Instead of an awareness that our death will certainly happen but without a clue as to when, we could adopt the reverse perspective. We could operate as if we know when our deaths are likely to take place, while remaining uncertain as to whether we in fact ever will die. And, in effect, this is what most of us do. Most of us have in mind a rough life plan based on a normal human span of seventy to eighty years. Yet until almost the very end, we conduct ourselves, as Freud observes, as if we’re not at all sure whether our existence actually will terminate. “No one believes in his own death,” Freud says, or “to put the same thing in another way, in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.”12

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A full confrontational awareness of death’s certainty, of what it really means to die, would be paralyzing, Freud believes, not galvanizing. Yet this strategy— operating with a sense of when we will die while remaining uncertain as to whether we actually will— does have one eminently reasonable feature. It’s completely consistent with the way we view most other events that lie in the future. We have a sense of when they will happen while at some level remaining uncertain (the future being open and unforeseeable) as to whether they actually will. Our mental picture of the future appears to us as a kind of blueprint. It roughs out the time when certain things are expected to occur— our dentist appointment next week, our summer vacation, our graduation from university, our becoming a parent—assuming of course that they do occur. And we repress the thought (it just becomes part of the background) that for any number of reasons those things quite possibly never will happen. We have little choice but to conduct our lives on the assumption that we know when a particular future event is going to happen, while keeping under wraps the lingering uncertainty as to whether—because no one knows the future, so who can say?—it actually will. So why shouldn’t we treat death the same way? Because, the existentialist consolation says, our death is the only future event that flips around this otherwise appropriate approach to what lies ahead. We know for sure that our death will happen, even though most of us, for most of our lives, have no idea of when. In insisting that we view our earthly departure in this way, though, the existentialist consolation actually treats death more like a past than a future event. After all, our memories are full of episodes that did in fact occur, even though we can’t say exactly when most of them actually happened—the date, or even the year or how old we were.13 Similarly, as existentialists rightly say, we know that our death will in fact occur, even though we cannot say when: the date or the year or how old we’ll be when it happens. Maybe the phrase memento mori—“remember that you will die,” which the existentialist consolation places front and center of our consciousness—is a particularly apt usage. Death, alone among all the events that lie ahead of us,

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resembles our remembrances of what lies behind. As with them we have greater certainty about the event’s actual occurrence than about the timing— even if, with all other future events, we have greater certainty about the event’s timing than we do about whether it actually will occur.14 Yet the existentialist consolation can still work for those of us who operate as if we know when we’ll die, while never believing with absolute certainty that we actually will. With the incentive of an approximate death date in mind, almost all of us still get rolling and create a self. It’s just that we make decisions that assume a life span of a certain length. We marry at a certain time. We have children at a certain time. We retire at a certain time, nag our children to have their own children at a certain time, and seek pensions and insurance appropriate to that span of time— even as we suppress the knowledge that we could die either well before that life is done, or long after. That we could, as Nietzsche’s Zarathustra says, depart either too early or too late.15 At its most universal, this existentialist idea—that it makes sense to talk about a self either predeceasing or postdeceasing its own life —assumes the image, the age-old image, of life as an arc: “the curve of our life,” as Sartre called it.16 The arc’s peak is the moment in a person’s life when he might say, “Lord, take me now.” For some of us, the peak might come very early, with the arc’s ascent fast and dizzying: you become an international rock star at the age of thirty. For others, the peak might come later, somewhere in midlife, with the arc’s descent slow and gentle: you retired at the height of your game at sixty-two as a globe-trotting consultant, and then gradually fell out of the loop, lost contact with colleagues, stopped traveling because there were fewer places you wanted to see, and started to spend hours sitting on the porch of your time-share staring out at the lake. Or then again, as with the actor Bruce Dern, you might enjoy “an unlikely career peak at the age of 77.”17 Ideally, the logic of the existentialist consolation suggests, your self should depart when your life is at its peak, however you define

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it. Too early, and you will be cheated by the fact that you won’t have finished the great authentic accomplishments or enjoyed the most intense experiences of your life. Too late, and you will be tormented by the reality that nothing you do anymore will be as significant; nothing you experience anymore will be as vibrant. Ideally, as Sartre said, you would die when your life has reached the final notes of a brilliant melody, after which the only appropriate thing would be silence.18 Or, as Nietzsche urged, you would die when your life has attained its maximal moment of ripeness, like a fruit just before it begins to rot. The peak of your life’s arc determines when your self should end. Ideally, your self should terminate neither before nor after. In contrast, for the bucket listers, it is the self ’s departure that determines when their life should end. Ideally, if they have chosen the right items for their list, their life will end neither before the self nor after. But actually, as we shall now see, someone who views her life as an arc almost certainly will want to die either too early or too late.

Live Fast, Die Young For rock superstars, the arc of life rises precipitously. It looks as if it will peak early, perhaps at thirty or forty. You might think that an existentialist psychology would counsel us, if we are a rock superstar, to hang on at least until that high-water mark. But not necessarily. In fact, the more precipitously the arc rises, the more the existentialist dynamic will pull us toward checking out before we have reached the peak. Allow for the idea that the arc of life begins, say, when we’re twenty. That’s how old we are when our band busts out of our garage and catches the interest of the music mogul Clive Davis. In the first two-year interval under Davis’s management our arc rises dramatically. We go from zero to sell 500,000 records. In the next two-year interval, we rise even higher, but—given the way arcs are shaped— a little less dramatically: we go from 500,000 to 800,000 records

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sold. In the next two years, we rise even higher but by an even less dramatic amount: we go from 800,000 to 1,000,000 sales. That’s the thing about arcs, especially precipitously rising ones. Long before they have risen to the peak, their first derivative—the amount by which they rise in any given period—itself peaks. That’s essentially true too if, instead of an arc, we think of our rock career as a bell curve: yes, at the very early stages, our rate of increase might itself increase. But soon enough it begins to diminish as we head toward the peak. And so, supposing it’s desirable to die when your arc is at its peak, as Nietzsche suggests, a question: Shouldn’t it be even more desirable to die still earlier, when your rate of increase—the slope of your ascent—is at its peak? Suppose it’s a letdown to have to soldier on long after your life has crested. Then why isn’t it also a letdown to have to do so long after the increments by which your life rises have crested? And then wouldn’t you want, after having lived fast, to die young? At about age twenty-seven? Think of the so-called Forever 27 club. Its members include rock stars—principally, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse—who died at that age. Of Joplin, her friend Jerry Garcia judged that twenty-seven “was the best possible time for her death . . . [she was] going up . . . like a skyrocket.”19 A skyrocket—the kind that carries fireworks—initially launches at a precipitous angle. But almost immediately that angle of incline begins to diminish. Long before the rocket actually peaks and then starts to descend, its rate of ascent will have started to slow. So the best possible time for Joplin’s death, Garcia is saying, was well before the peak, when Joplin was at her highest rate of ascent. After all, as Joplin herself remarked, “If you think I’m good now, wait ten years, boy. I’ll blow your fuckin’ mind. Whoooo! . . . If I ain’t ten years better than this ten years from now, you know, I’m gonna start selling dope again.”20 Joplin’s goal wasn’t simply to be better in ten years. It was to be ten years better—to rise by the same amount in the next decade as

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she had in the previous one. The shape of the arc dictates that that isn’t going to happen.21 But Joplin rejected that reality: her life was never going to “level off . . . it’s going to go straight up and when I’m eighty, I’m going to die.”22 The only way that it could go straight up, unfortunately, was for her to die at twenty-seven. In the autumn of 1970, the journalist John Tabler told Jim Morrison that Morrison’s band, the Doors, had produced an “epic” first album, and that subsequently the music had “certainly progress[ed].”23 It sounds like Tabler is describing someone on the upward ascent of an arc, but Morrison was not happy. He took the comment to mean that his rate of ascent was declining: he’d started off great, and then got even better—but the increment of “better” was not as big as the initial increment of “great.” Morrison himself acknowledged that “the music has gotten progressively better,” but that wasn’t enough: “I think that that great creative burst of energy that happened 3 or 4 years ago was hard to sustain.” He professed himself “dissatisfied.”24 And thus Morrison lived fast and died young. “Die at the right time,” Nietzsche said. But many, adopting his logic, interpret the right time to be well before the peak.

I Never Can Say Goodbye Now let’s move from precipitously rising to gently descending arcs. What made Nureyev “want to dance . . . for so long past his peak,” the journalist Christopher Bowen once wrote, “is a question many in the dance world—and beyond—have asked.”25 What happened to quitting while you’re on top, at the apex of the arc? Late one October night in 2002, Dennis DeYoung of the rock group Styx could be found singing his 1979 hit “Babe” to a small audience in a Las Vegas casino. DeYoung wanted to make it “possible for a few hundred people to believe, with their eyes closed, that they [had] been transported back at least a couple of decades.” Nineteen-eighty was “probably the very peak for Styx,” DeYoung acknowledged, but his later shows had “told me that people didn’t forget the songs I wrote.”26 It’s not that DeYoung’s postpeak life was a sad decline from

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his peak performances so much as a reminder of them. In a way, his life did stop at the peak, precisely as Nietzsche recommended, and then it turned into a memorial—not an object in space like most memorials, but a series of events in time. Had DeYoung stopped performing at the peak, his fans would have stopped thinking of that peak. His later concerts didn’t obscure but rather recalled it. Attending a fall 2000 performance by the rock group Kiss (peak year, c. 1973), the journalist Frank R. Pieper encountered forty-something parents with their kids made up as Kiss members, listening to the band’s 1974 hit “Cold Gin.” It had become “embarrassingly obvious how mediocre the band’s musical talents really are after 27 years,” Pieper reflected; “their vocal harmonies were often out of tune, guitar riffs repetitive and uninspired, bass and drum rhythms sophomorically basic and ultimately monotonous.” So what was the point? It was probably revealed by guitarist Paul Stanley. As “Kiss took its final bows, Stanley almost begged his audience, ‘Don’t forget us.’”27 Well into his eighties, Ed Koch, whose career peak as mayor of New York had ended two decades earlier, could be found out on street corners stumping for Democratic candidates in local elections. “Do you remember me?” the former mayor would ask a voter. And then, getting a hesitant nod of affirmation, Koch would lean in, grasp hands, lock gazes, and put the real question: “Do you remember me . . . fondly?”28 The peak of the arc, then, seems to be surrounded by two slippery slopes. On the one hand, the same anxiety that shudders at the thought of a postpeak decline can cause a person to rebel—long before he has even reached the peak—at the mere thought of a declining rate of ascent. Hence the “forever twenty-seven” club. On the other hand, the same desire that keeps a person ascending right to the peak can cause him to linger on during a long descent, simply to remind others of the summit he once occupied. Die right at the peak, Nietzsche recommends. But his own logic takes those who would otherwise depart at the peak of the arc and draws them magnetically toward either end.

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Strange Fruit Die at your life’s peak, Nietzsche counsels. Yes, certain logics might pull you away from the peak on either side. But still, the best kind of life ends at the moment the pinnacle has been reached. Or, to switch to another metaphor, one Nietzsche also deploys: the best life ends at its point of maximal ripeness, just before it begins to rot. But let’s look at the fruit metaphor a little more closely. The idea is that a person’s life begins with the sour greenness of young fruit (“What was youth, at best?” Dorian Gray asks himself, “a green, an unripe time . . . ”), ripens and sweetens into a choice apple or pear or plum —its best-by date—and then slowly rots and festers. Folk wisdom tells us that at the moment of its maximal ripeness and sweetness, a piece of fruit will fall from the tree and hence— cut off from its source of nutrients— can be said to have died. Ideally, that’s how it should be for us as humans. At least that’s how it should be if we seek existential solace for death—the solace that comes from knowing that we are departing neither before nor after our point of maximal ripeness, but rather precisely at it: that death is good for us because it compelled us to live the most rich, authentic life we could, and now is taking us as soon as things would have started going south. “When the ripe fruit falls,” in the words of D. H. Lawrence, it’s the same as “when fulfilled people die”—implying that when people have long since gone beyond their point of peak fulfillment, it’s the same as if a fruit has begun to rot on the tree.29 But something about the fruit metaphor is not quite right. To signify a child who takes after its parents, we say that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” This suggests that when the apple falls, it’s not dead but rather at the prime of its youth, with its life still ahead of it. We can push this backdating even further, equating the fruit’s fall from the tree not with death or even youth but with birth. A fruit, as Diane Ackerman notes, is actually an ovary or placenta.30 It’s a placenta for the seeds it carries, which themselves—and not the fruit—represent the life in question. Far from ending at maturity when the ripe fruit falls, the real life in question—the seed—is just

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being born, and the rotting of the fruit is nothing but the disintegration of its prenatal life support system. On this image, it is the seed which is life and the fruit the source of its nourishment, not the fruit which is life and the tree its conduit of its sustenance. The moral of the story? Apples and pears and peaches go through a green-ripe-rot cycle, but not a birth-life-death cycle—not in the way human beings do. At any given moment, it’s impossible to say whether a piece of fruit is dying, living, or being born. And conversely, human beings go through a birth-life-death cycle but not a green-ripe-rot cycle—not in the way fruit does. At any given moment, it’s impossible to say whether a person is ripening, fully ripe, or rotting. Our life’s highest point does not come bearing a sign identifying itself as such. Many a life reaches a peak, appears to be declining, but then peaks again. Second acts, third acts, abound. Her friend Alice’s life wasn’t an arc, as Diane Athill writes in her late-life memoir Somewhere Towards the End; it “swung in arcs.” To die at the moment of “ripeness” may preclude rotting, but it may also preclude still further moments of ripeness. But then, as Willy Loman said, “A man is not a piece of fruit.”

Seize the Day If we weren’t going to die, we would never do anything at all. With all the time in the world, we would keep putting off till tomorrow what we might otherwise do today. We would face no tough trade-offs, the kind that give a life its distinctive contours and edges, since we could do anything and everything we wanted whenever we got around to it. And so in fact we would have no life—and no self. It’s not a constant awareness of death that would be paralyzing, says the existentialist consolation. No, it’s the absence of death that would be paralyzing. This assumption lies at the existentialist consolation’s very core. Let’s put it to a test. Imagine that Barack Obama is immortal. Would he have said, in 2006, “No need for me to run for president

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in 2008. I’ve got all the time in the world. I’ll just wait till 2016. In fact, why not wait till 2116?” Unlikely. The event of running for president in 2008 was unique and unrepeatable. It carried its own characteristic risks and odds for success. For a whole host of reasons, it differed from the event of seeking, and holding, the presidency at any other time. Even if we were immortal, there would always be tides in the affairs of men and women. If Obama had waited till 2016, some other Democrat might have come to prominence. Or possibly some other Democratic president, elected in 2008, would have brought in the health-care bill that Obama wanted for his own legacy. Events in time come with innumerable ligatures, filaments, and tendrils connecting them to other events in time. They cannot simply be moved from one point in time to another.31 To think that they can is to treat them as if they were as portable as objects in space. I can move a chair from the living room to my office and it remains the same chair. I cannot move a term as chair of my department from this year to five years from now—when the budgetary environment, the dean I report to, and the enrollment numbers could be profoundly different—and expect it to remain the same chairmanship. But I have to believe that I could, if I am to be consoled by the thought that, without awareness of my mortality, I would feel no heat to create a life. Otherwise, the ever-shifting character of events in time—when they’re not viewed as objects in space—is capable of providing all the heat I need. In important matters it’s always now or never, even without death. Look up articles on ProQuest that contain phrases like “the opportunity won’t come again” or “the chance won’t come again.” I did, one November day in 2013. I found newspaper pieces discussing athletes training all-out for an event. Or politicians throwing their hat into the ring. Or businessmen pursuing a deal. Or actors vying for a choice part. Or humorist David Sedaris getting up the courage to make a pass at somebody he fancied. But none of them were doing these things because of their mortality. It wasn’t that they worried that the chance might not come again in their lifetime; it wasn’t because they worried they might die before the opportunity returned

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once more. It was, in each case, because the chance would not come again, full stop. It was because of the uniqueness of the opportunity itself as they saw it. We, most of us, view our opportunities as momentary events that time offers and then tears away. We don’t look upon them as objects that persist over time such that, absent death, we would always be able to exploit them when we got around to it. All we need is the never-ending flux of time, not the finality of death, to get us moving.32 Knowing that events— opportunities and possibilities—are momentary, we feel a continual urgency to get out into the world, to act and to experience, even without thinking of death or our eventual finitude. Yes, absent death—if we lived forever—perhaps at one point we would become sated and bored, sapped of the will to do anything. But if that ever happened, then death—if it were reintroduced—wouldn’t compel us to get off the couch. Instead, we would welcome death as an escape from the interminable boredom of a world in which life, itself, no longer presented sufficient novelty to get us moving. All of which brings us to the one philosopher who looms over the existentialist consolation almost as much as death, according to that consolation, looms over life.33 For Martin Heidegger, only if we maintain a constant awareness of death, of our limited time, will we spring into action and forge a self. It’s not that we should remain continually immersed in death in a subjective sense, aspiring to live in a kind of posthumous tranquility as Holderlin strategists do. It’s that we must remain continually aware that death is present at every moment of life in an objective sense. It can happen at any second. If we truly understand this, then death’s ever-present possibility will goad us into action, spurring us to recognize and seize the authentic possibilities that life affords us before it’s too late.34 But what does Heidegger have to say about that other goad to action, not death but time itself ? Why wouldn’t the fact that time presents its possibilities for only a limited moment before yanking them

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away—that there is always a tide in the affairs of humankind—suffice to get us moving even if we lived on endlessly? And if it would, why would we need death in order to shape our self ? Wouldn’t Obama have seized the day in 2008, even if his life span was indefinite? No, not for Heidegger. The passage of time doesn’t create possibilities for the self. Instead, it’s the self ’s possibilities that create the passage of time. It’s a mistake, Heidegger says, to think that a self ’s possibilities and opportunities come hurtling at it from the future, passing by like brass rings to be grabbed in the momentary present before disappearing forever into the past. Time does not serve up and then snatch away the authentic self ’s possibilities moment by moment. Instead, the authentic self creates its own possibilities—its own plans and projects—and these in turn beat out their own tempo, their own way of measuring time. Each of a person’s significant possibilities fuses future, present, and past moments into a single unique phase in his life. Each possibility melds that part of the future into which the self projects her plan for realizing it, that part of the past during which she developed that plan, and a present that amalgamates that future and that past. Any given possibility extends as far into the future as we project it and as far back into the past as when we began preparing for it. Such possibilities are our authentic units of time.35 Take this a little further. If possibilities are not momentary events that we must seize or let go of forever, then what are they? They’re like persisting things, Heidegger says: tools and materials always ready to hand, objects that simply abide.36 While events are here and gone, we can pick up and set down tools and materials like mallets and boards for as long as we like.37 Instead of “vanish[ing]” in time, “continually passing and coming along,” the Heidegger scholar Carol J. White writes, “possibilities” for Heidegger are more like “a tree or hammer,” things in “space” that “remain . . . present or can be made present again and . . . again.”38 Think of someone who wants a career in the law. For her, that possibility always exists because no matter how successful or unsuc-

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cessful she is at being a lawyer, there is always more she could do to realize it; the possibility persists because it is never fully actualized. Whether she has yet even to pass the bar or, having practiced for twenty years, has yet to argue before the Supreme Court, being a lawyer is still and always an unrealized possibility. “Casting myself as a lawyer,” William Blattner writes in a study of Heidegger, “does not terminate in accomplishment or failure, because it does not terminate. . . . as long as I . . . cast myself as a lawyer, being a lawyer is a possibility that stands before me.”39 Like an object persisting in time, not an event flowing back in time. You may or may not see life this way. The point is that Heidegger did. In a way he had to, if he was going to view death as the only prod available for us to get out and craft a self. Only death, threatening moment by moment to end all our possibilities, can spur us to seize them. Time’s passage alone won’t do the trick. That’s because, if we are true to ourselves, time will have no power to present and then withdraw possibilities from us moment by moment, as if they were ephemeral events. Our authentic possibilities are prior to time, persisting like objects, available always or for as long as we choose. And so only death can crack the whip.40 But many of us will reject the equation of opportune possibilities with persisting objects, like hammers and shovels. In our experience possibilities continually emerge and then disappear back in time— moment by moment, day by day, month by month. The passage of time would be enough, even without death, to get us moving. Here, Sartre departs from Heidegger: “Human reality,” Sartre says, “would remain finite even if it were immortal.”41 That woman, that man, that time with the children when they were young, that sunset, that writing assignment—they aren’t going to be available to us forever. The novel we are brimming with today might not come out the same way in five years or five hundred. And to the extent that we so view matters, the existentialist consolation—that without death we would not go out and seize the day, crafting a self—will gain little true psychological purchase with us.

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For us, the churning passage of time, life itself, provides more than enough impetus to create a self. We don’t owe our very selves to the fact that we die. And we have no reason to be grateful for death on that account.42

*

Is death benign? Maybe even good for us? Certainly nothing to us? It all depends on how we look at things. Suppose we view our self ’s relationship to time as if it resembled a statue’s relationship to space. Then we needn’t think of ourselves as moving, minute by minute, forward in time from birth toward death. After all, we don’t think of a statue as moving, inch by inch, upward in space from the floor toward the ceiling. Just as no part of a statue—its neck, say, or its ankle—is taller than any other, no part of our self—the 8–9 PM June 18, 2017, part, say, or the 1–2 AM May 2, 1998, part—grows older than any other. If only we came to see things this way, J. David Velleman says, then Epicurus’s first consolation could take full psychological hold. Death would be irrelevant to us for as long as we are here. It would remain completely offstage. After all, never would we feel like we were moving even one iota closer to it. Suppose, with That Championship Season’s Coach, that we view the moments of our life—and especially our moments of triumph—as trophies and jewels, objects that persist with us in time, as real now as on the day they happened. We could then wrap our life up early and relax, without feeling that our best days were slipping ever further back into the past, turning us into has-beens. And in that way Epicurus’s second consolation could take full psychological hold. Once death comes, not only would we no longer be here to be harmed by it; our life would no longer be here either, having long since been happily completed. Suppose, with Derek Parfit, that we view our self ’s relationship to time as if it resembled a chain’s relationship to space. Suppose we saw that there’s nothing more to our selves than a series of connected links, each one containing whatever thoughts, sensations, feelings, and per-

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ceptions occupied our mind at successive moments in our life. Once we see that there’s nothing more to us than that chain—no deep further self to whom the chain belongs—then, the Buddhist consolation says, we will understand that there’s nothing that death brings to an end. After all, each link in our chain can continue on in all those who shared the same memories, passions, experiences, and beliefs. Suppose, with Heidegger, that we view the moments of our life— and especially its moments of opportunity—as hammers and shovels, available to be picked up and set down as we liked. Suppose we treated our authentic possibilities as if they were objects, persisting and lingering in time along with us instead of slipping remorselessly through our fingers into the past if we don’t grab them. Then only the prospect of our ultimate death would be able to incite us to get moving and craft our self. And so we should be thankful that we die. Otherwise we would never feel any urgency about making something, a self, out of our existence. If we came to see things this way, then the existentialist consolation would stand a good chance of taking hold. But any consolations that rely on equating our selves to statues or chains, or the moments of our lives to trophies or tools, ultimately won’t grab us. They implausibly deny our reality, the reality that cries out for consolation: we are selves who move inexorably through time, second by second, toward our deaths while the moments of our lives flow incessantly through our fingers, second by second, back into the past. Statues and chains, trophies and tools: all are lifeless. Striking how, to console us about death, the various strands of the “death is benign” school all have to offer views of our selves, and the moments of our lives, that lend themselves to analogies with inanimate objects. We shall have to search elsewhere for consolation. Perhaps if we look at matters in the right way, we will see that we can gain everything we covet in an immortal life from within the confines of our current mortal one. I turn to the various forms of this consolatory idea in the book’s next part.

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PART 2

Mortality Intimates Immortality

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five

RETIRING YOUR JERSEY

Reggie Lewis was a local hero, a star guard for the Boston Celtics during the early nineties. When Lewis died suddenly of a heart attack in July 1993, the stricken Celtics retired his jersey, meaning that no Celtic ever again would wear Lewis’s number 35. The team took this step, they explained, as “a memorial to him.”1 The Brooklyn Nets used similar language in announcing the retirement of Jason Kidd’s number 5 in 2013: the gesture, Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov said, was meant to “commemorate” Kidd’s career.2 And when the Los Angeles Kings retired Wayne Gretzky’s 99 in 2002— every other NHL team also retired the number— Gretzky, wiping away a tear, declared that “to be remembered as an LA King is something special.”3 But the idea of retiring a jersey as a “memorial” to an athlete, or as a way of “remembering” him, seems odd. How can the disappearance of the number worn by a star player memorialize him, bring him to mind, make us recall him? It’s true that an athlete’s retired jersey might then be hoisted to the rafters of his home arena, or exhibited in a hallway. But as a visual display, that too seems more like a withdrawal from view—placing the jersey out of the way—than a claim for attention. In any event, the commemorative gesture is almost always described as retiring the jersey, not hoisting it to the rafters. The Major League–wide retirement of Jackie Robinson’s number 42 in 2012 was called a “commemoration,” and there are no rafters in open-air baseball parks.4 Strange. If a team really wants to memorialize a star performer, then shouldn’t all its players’ jerseys henceforth be emblazoned with his number, along with each player’s own? In fact this too has been tried. In 1974, every Philadelphia Flyer wore a number 4 “memorial patch” to commemorate the career of Barry Ashbee, cut short by an

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injury. Gretzky himself, when he started out, wanted to wear number 9 as a memorial tribute to his idol, hockey legend Gordie Howe.5 And even as it retired Jackie Robinson’s number, the evidently selfdivided Major League Baseball organization also created a “Jackie Robinson Day” on which every player wears Robinson’s 42.6 But how can these two contrary practices, number-retiring and number-emblazoning, both be appropriate forms of commemoration? If the one is apt, then how can the other be? Keeping a great one’s number in view seems like a natural way of making sure an athlete gets remembered. But withdrawing his number from view? It’s certainly understandable as a kind of honor. But not as a memorial. And yet that’s the language being used. For all of that, though, there is a kind of memorialization going on with jersey-retiring. But to see this, we must first consider another contemporary memory-related practice. It’s the advent of so-called life-logs.7 Microsoft engineer Gordon Bell is the pioneer here. Bell’s battery of cameras, recording devices, and computers is designed to capture real-time video, audio, and textual representations of everything he sees, hears, reads, thinks, does, and even dreams, 24/7, with the idea that it will all then be digitally preserved forever. With life-logs, a person’s complete temporal biography, the entire contents of his memory—and more, since he will inevitably forget much of what he sees and does—gets permanently converted “into a spatial dimension”: into digital storage space, cloud cyberspace.8 “I can off-load my memory,” Bell says, and thus gain “a kind of immortality.” After all, as Bell puts it, “I am data.”9 With my death, or so I would have thought, will come the complete obliteration of my memories. My demise, as J. M. Coetzee’s character Elizabeth Costello says of hers, will bring the “collapse” of “my whole structure of knowledge”: in particular my knowledge of the past, all those recollections that live in my mind alone, including the exquisitely unique combination of emotion and sensation that I

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associate with events that others may recall as well, but only through their own unique lenses and filters.10 It’s almost too much to bear— “surely it won’t all die when I do”11— or even to state explicitly. “She will not be forgotten as long as I live,” E. M. Forster wrote of the warm memories he held tight of his mother, instead of acknowledging what he actually feared: she will be forgotten as soon as I die.12 But now, as Bell says, life-logs promise immortality at least to that part of our self that consists of our memories, even if it cannot promise immortality to our entire self. “My memories,” Proust says, “did not easily resign themselves to the idea of ceasing to be, and desired for me neither extinction nor an eternity in which they would have no part.”13 Or put it another way: what Bell proposes with his digitized lifelog is a kind of faux immortality, not the real version in which we actually live forever. In its way, it’s a natural extension of Epicurus’s first consolation—that as long as the self is present, death cannot be. As long as our memories are preserved, then to the very considerable degree that we are our memories, we haven’t died completely. “Memory is identity,” Julian Barnes says, “I have believed this since—since I can remember. You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are.”14 Certainly, the tenor of Bell’s remarks, in fact of his entire endeavor, resonates with a kind of death denial, although it’s a turbocharged version. Bell not only emphasizes that our future projects can continue on after we have departed, as Ivan Ilych’s did. He promises that all our past memories can live on too. As one digital memoirist puts it, “I feel I have left something which will still be there for others to see long after I’m gone.”15 But it’s one thing to create a digitized running record of your memory. It’s quite another to ensure that others, going forward into the limitless future, will actually look at it. If all that your memories are doing is lying as bits and bytes inside the “spatial dimension” of an online archive, inert and unviewed for eternity, is there any sense in which they would continue to live?

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In Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello the title character, an author, ruminates on a similar question concerning her literary legacy. On the one hand, she well knows that “it is only a matter of time before [her] books . . . will cease to be read and eventually cease to be remembered.”16 Yet on the other hand, even though the day will come when nobody ever again will absorb her prose, Elizabeth still takes comfort in knowing that her novels will continue to exist. They’ll remain accessible in libraries or at least online. Perhaps, even ages and ages hence, a lone copy will still inhabit somebody’s dusty bookshelf: “a home where it could snooze, if fate so decreed . . . and no one would come poking with a stick to see if it was still alive.”17 But can Bell’s digitized memories claim immortality if nobody ever pokes them with a stick? Wouldn’t they then be well and truly dead? Or would they just be snoozing? Let’s try a different analogy. Compare a person’s digitized memories, lying unread in cyberspace, not to unread books but to unconscious memories. As long as they are unconscious, my memories comprise a set of unaccessed images or thoughts recorded in a substrate of neurons within my brain. Call the images and thoughts the “higher level” of my memories. And call the neural substrate the “lower level.” When an unconscious memory becomes conscious—when it crosses my mind—it changes in neither respect. Conscious or unconscious, a memory remains composed of higher-level thoughts and images recorded in a lower-level neural substrate.18 And so no justification exists for saying that my memories are any more dead when unconscious than when conscious. By bringing an unconscious memory into consciousness, it makes more sense to say that I have taken something from the dark and brought it into the light than it does to say that I have converted something dead into something living.19 It’s a process of transfer, not transformation. Unconscious memories, even permanently unconscious memories, are no less alive than conscious ones. So will my unread memories, as long as they continued to exist on the planet in digitized form, really be any less immortal than they would if someone actually accessed them now and then?

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But what if my unread memories, archived in cyberspace, are less like unconscious memories than like unread books? When I take a book off the shelf and read it, I haven’t simply removed something from the dark and brought it into the light. Here, it does seem more apt to say that I have converted something dead into something living. While it lies on the shelf, the book comprises a series of higher-level words and sentences recorded on a lower-level substrate of paper and ink. When I pick the book up and read it, those higher-level words and sentences become images and thoughts dancing in my mind. And the book’s lower-level substrate of inert paper and ink becomes a substrate of electric neural circuits sparking in my brain. There is a real transformation here. What was on the shelf has germinated into something new in the mind, at both the higher and the lower levels. In that way, it does make sense to say that the reader is giving life to what would otherwise have been a dead, inert text. Now, what about my memories, sitting in a digital storage space long after I am gone, never viewed by anyone else till the end of time? Are they like unconscious memories—no less alive than conscious ones? Or are they like unread books— dead as a doornail unless they are otherwise brought to the consciousness of readers? They are like unread books. My digitally banked memories will consist of higher-level video, textual, and audio tracks resting on a lower-level substrate of bits and bytes. If by happenstance a future viewer does look at them they would, in her mind, transform into a flow of higher-level images and feelings, conveyed along a lowerlevel substrate of neural firings. And so it makes sense to say that they would undergo a real chrysalis: that they would morph, that they would spring to life when they make the move from the digital bank to the mind of the viewer. Meaning that—like a book on the shelf—if no one ever does view them, then my digitized memories, on into the future, will remain as dead as I am. And if that’s what lies in store, then Bell’s attempt to give our memories immortal life stands to be defeated.

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“Misty Pastel-Colored Memories” But what if that’s not what lies in store? Let’s be optimistic. Let’s assume that you can download everything that’s downloadable about your memories, and that it’s guaranteed that from time to time someone in the future will look in on them. Let’s assume that they will live on after you. Even so, there might be a problem. It’s not that other minds won’t view your digital record. It’s that your digital record won’t reflect your own mind. While I can digitize any memory that consists of words, sounds, and images, some memories—in fact, my most important memories— cannot be fully or even fractionally captured in text, audio, or video. They consist of indescribable feelings, untransmittable sensations, incommunicable meanings: the kind of memory about which Wittgenstein said: “Nobody but I can see it, feel it, hear it; nobody except myself knows what it is like. Nobody except I can get at it.”20 These kinds of intimate and inimitable glimmerings lie beyond expression through text or evocation by video. The novelist W. G. Sebald shows this better than anyone. His pages are filled with groping words and gauzy images that scarcely manage to imply otherwise unutterable remembrances. Sebald’s character Jacques Austerlitz harbors the following elusive, barely articulable but (to him) deeply meaningful recollection of a moment from his youth on Barmouth Bay, Wales: all forms and colors were dissolved in a pearl-gray haze; there were no contrasts, no shading anymore, only flowing transitions with the light throbbing through them, a single blur from which only the most fleeting of visions emerged, and strangely—I remember this well—it was the very evanescence of those visions that gave me, at the time, something like a sense of eternity.21

Okay. Digitize that. Still, who can say? We might one day gain the capacity to digitally conserve for all time, and hence come to know, even those contents of each other’s memories that cannot be conveyed in words

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and images. Suppose that we cracked that nut. Suppose that others on into the future, viewing your digital record, would feel, sense, and grasp the utter totality of what you felt, sensed, and grasped during your lifetime, even to the last ineffable nuance. Your memories would be fully immortalized, living on forever. Is this what you would want? Think again of the ritual of jersey retiring. We proclaim, as a “memorial” to a great athlete, that the number that once attached to him will never again be sported by anyone else on his team —perhaps in the entire league. We erase it from public view. But as I’ve suggested it’s an odd kind of memorial. It differs profoundly from a statue that thrusts the great one’s dynamic appearance into public sight. Or a web page that displays podcasts of his triumphant moments for all to marvel at. Or a book that explores his sensitive side for everyone to admire. Instead, something about him —number 99—is deliberately withdrawn from the gaze of the public. Something that might otherwise remind us of him, that might spark our memories of his greatness like nothing else—after all, what attaches more readily to Gretzky than number 99?—gets removed from view. What kind of memorial is that? What’s going on here is rooted in a kind of Hippocratic oath that memorials in effect take: first of all, do no harm. A memorial to a person must respect, not stain, the memories that it recalls. As long as the memorial takes the form of a statue or a website or a book, it remains clear that no one else is presuming to claim anything even remotely proximate to (say) Gretzky’s commanding appearance, or his record-breaking accomplishments, or his life story. No one else is horning in on his memory, presuming to bask along with him in its glow. And so we are fine with it. But when the memorial entails another person claiming— even seeming to claim —the status we accord the great one, then we balk. If Gretzky wore number 99, and Joe Blow now wears number 99, Blow doesn’t keep Gretzky’s memory alive so much as he tarnishes it. In memorializing Gretzky this way, Blow is suggesting that he somehow feels capable of filling Gretzky’s shoes— or shirt; that he

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somehow shares the same status. When NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman “retired number 99 league-wide,” the International Ice Hockey Federation’s website observed, “he was only doing what every player to follow would have done anyway . . . the first person who even tried to wear the number would have been ridiculed for trying to follow in the Great One’s footsteps.”22 He would have been scorned for sullying the memory of number 99 by presuming to share in it, not praised for trying to honor Gretzky by memorializing him, for calling him to mind. Something similar may be true if I seek to digitally bank my most cherished or intimate memories, such that others can share in them: view them, understand them, grasp them in the same full-blossomed, full-bodied way I did. True, if no others ever do, then those memories will die with me. But what kind of memorial tribute can it be if, in the process of keeping a memory of mine alive, others necessarily sully it by sharing it? One of the great comic scenes in John Updike’s “Rabbit” series occurs in the latter part of the final book, Rabbit at Rest. Rabbit, aka Harry Angstrom, is attending the funeral of Thelma Harrison, with whom he had been conducting a long affair. Her widower Ronnie, having just heard Thelma’s deathbed confession of her unfaithfulness, confronts Rabbit. Taken by surprise, and grasping for words to console Ronnie about the quality of woman Ronnie had spent his life with, Rabbit whispers a few syllables of succor. Not “She was a great mother.” Not “She was a lovely person.” Rabbit comforts Ronnie with what he knows: “She was a fantastic lay.”23 Maybe Ronnie would indeed have wanted others to know what a fantastic lover his wife was. Maybe Ronnie would have wanted others to know that, among his memories, there were many enviable recollections of extraordinarily blissful intimacy. Presumably this is what the dim-witted King Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther was up to when he called for his queen, Vashti, to appear before the assembled court wearing (nothing but) the crown royal. But though Ron-

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nie, like Ahasuerus, might have wanted others to know that he was blessed with a trove of euphoric erotic memories, he would not have wanted others to know those memories themselves. He would have preferred that they die with him, rather than live on in the memory of others, such as Rabbit, to share: to understand, grasp, and know as fully as he, Ronnie, did. True, Rabbit shares Ronnie’s memories of Thelma only indirectly, and that is because he shared Thelma directly. Suppose instead that Ronnie had digitized his memories of Thelma in all their emotional and sensual glory, preserving them as part of an online archive so that they wouldn’t die with him. Then in viewing them Rabbit— or any future Rabbit—would instead have shared those particular memories directly, and Thelma only indirectly. Possibly Ronnie would have been less jealous, perhaps even in some weird way more fulfilled, with the direct sharing of his memories than with the direct sharing of Thelma. Yes, digitizing them would keep those memories alive in the minds of others. They would do so, however, only at the cost of indelibly tainting their intimacy, of eroding the privilege Ronnie had of being the only one to know them. “ ’ Twere profanation of our joys/To tell the laity our love.” Better to allow such memories to die with us. Better that they remain as mortal as we are. Faux immortality, via the digitized immortality of our memory banks, remains in the most crucial way not an option— certainly not when it comes to the memories that matter most. And I’m not talking just about erotic or romantic memories. I doubt whether E. M. Forster would have wanted anyone else to intrude upon, listen in on, or lay claim to the tender moments he shared with his mother. They belonged only to him, or to her, but certainly to no one else. If such memories were to live on once she’d gone, as indeed Forster hoped they would, then they could so do only in his own mind, the mind of the other subject who experienced them. But live on as “objective data” for other minds to view?24 No. Even though they numbered among his most important, most identity-conferring memories—the kind of memories most capable

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of making the person whom Forster really was live on—it was better that they died with him. And yet one final question remains. Look again at jersey retiring. You know what number 99 did. He was the most sublime hockey player of all time. And the reason you can never wear his number, if you play for the NHL, is that although you can—indeed you should—know what he did, you could never do what he did. And so to properly memorialize Gretzky, his fans make sure that the world knows what he did by recording the memory of his accomplishments in scores of statues and books and websites. Meanwhile they make sure that no one even symbolically claims to do what he did, to usurp or tarnish that memory, by insisting that no future NHL player wear his number. But we can’t both know and not know what someone else knew. No one in the future will be in a position both to know your digitized memories, thus keeping them alive, and to not know them, thus paying tribute—in cases where they are most intimate—to their unique association with you alone. Whenever Nabokov took a deeply personal memory and attributed it to a character in one of his novels—thereby giving it a kind of immortality in the minds of readers on into the future—it lost its intimate warmth for him.25 That is why we have adopted a particular kind of “negative” memorial for certain intimate, unshareable remembrances. It’s silence itself. It’s silence as memorial. We document, as we should always continue to do, the horrors of the Holocaust: what the Nazis did. But when it comes to memorializing what the victims themselves underwent, we don’t pretend that we could ever know or share or understand for ourselves the memories that afflict them. To presume that we could would be unseemly. And so, for many survivors, silence suggests itself as the only way of memorializing their experiences, even at the cost of allowing those memories to die with them. That is why oral-history collections in which Holocaust survivors do try to speak about their memories—themselves still a far cry from the direct memory archives Gordon Bell recommends—

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are controversial. They place a survivor in the position of trying to keep her memories alive in the minds of future generations, but at the cost of putting in question their unshareable singularity. Trying to keep such memories alive flouts the conviction that in the final analysis they can—and should—belong only to those who actually experienced them.26 We can keep certain kinds of memories alive only at the risk of degrading them. But the first rule of memorials requires that, above all, a memorial should do no harm. And so for some memories— memories that would be desecrated or debased were they shared— the most fitting memorial possible necessitates wrapping them in conspicuous silence and letting them die. This rule applies equally to the life-log project, which purports to keep our memories alive by enabling others to share them till the end of time. It won’t work, at least when it comes to many of the memories that matter most. They must die with us. At the moment, we live in a world in which the vast bulk of our memories remain private, known only to ourselves. Memorials, meanwhile, are mostly public things like plaques and statues. But suppose that one day all of our memories could become public. Suppose that they could all be made available online. Would a true memorial, something that above all avoids tainting whatever cherished thing it memorializes, not then require keeping it private, known only by ourselves? In a world where everybody can know your memories, why not a memorial you alone can know? Like the memorial of deliberate silence, of intentionally not sharing that memory? A memorial that, of course, could be known only to you. Or put it another way. Currently, we live in a world where a memorial is an object bounded in space that commemorates moments that happened once upon a time. Gordon Bell, by contrast, promises a world in which the moments of our lives can, themselves, live on as objects in space: bits and bytes in the “spatial dimension” of digitized storage. Fittingly, then, won’t the most important kind of memorial—the type that does true justice to the most precious moments

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being memorialized—simply be to make those moments bounded in time? To allow them to die with us? The most precious moments of our lives cannot persist over time in the form of spatial objects like bits and bytes. Our memories of those moments are too intimate and ineffable to do anything other than begin flowing back in time, out of the reach and realm of others, as soon as we have died. Gordon Bell tries to deny this. He insists that we mortals can forever preserve our personal knowledge of the past in a way that replicates what immortality would allow. But this consolation for our mortality cannot work. Not really. Not for what matters most.

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REGRETS? HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU HAVE?

Driving through the provincial countryside one summer’s day in the 1970s, the premier of Manitoba, Ed Schreyer, and his wife, Lily, stopped for gas. Imagine their surprise when the man who came round to fill their tank was none other than Mrs. Schreyer’s high-school boyfriend. “Where would you be if you had married him instead of me?” Mr. Schreyer needled as they pulled out of the station. “I’d be the wife,” Mrs. Schreyer retorted, “of the premier of Manitoba.” Suppose that Mrs. Schreyer had taken that same attitude not just toward her marriage but toward all of her life’s major endeavors. Then she would have abided in a rare mental sweet spot— one from which all serious regret had been banished. After all, whatever path she chose when confronted with life’s major decisions, it would have ultimately led back to the same broad highway. Whomever she married, she would have made that man into the premier of the province. By the same logic, whatever early career opportunities she might have chosen, thanks to her creative impulse she still would have developed into the visual artist she in fact became. Whatever hobbies or outside interests she pursued, she ultimately would have found her way to fulfillment in helping a disadvantaged group in society, as she did for people with physical disabilities. How can you regret your life choices if, whatever you’d decided upon, you’d have ended up at the same place? “Regrets,” says Martin Chuzzlewit, “are the natural property of grey hairs.” Even more so as the aging turn into the dying. According to a 2006 British report, a person’s last cogent thought is likely to be a regret of some sort: not having married her high-school crush (or having married her high-school crush), not having spent enough

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time with her children, not having continued her education, not having chosen the right career, not having seen enough of the world, not having been true to herself.1 Looming mortality tends to magnify such thoughts. After all, if there were no time limits on our life, we would eventually (or so we think) be able to banish our regrets. We could seek out our highschool sweetheart—now beyond-tired of her current spouse—and take as much time as necessary to woo her. We could return to graduate school and get that doctorate in Sanskrit, the true passion we abandoned for a career in accountancy, or spend thirty years writing the ten-volume history of the Marshall Islands we never got around to producing. Whether we are fifty or five hundred or five thousand years old —as long as our life is active and ongoing with the usual quantum of failures and false starts— death will invariably catch us with regrets. It seems as if we could always use more time to correct the past. At whatever point it arrives, death cuts off our capacity to do so.2 But maybe there are ways in which, even within a mortal life, we can banish regret: write our own corrections into the proof of our life and then seal them on the record. Maybe we don’t need to live on indefinitely to permanently eliminate all our serious misgivings, to put our own stamp of satisfaction on the past. Lily Schreyer seems to have done it. Why not the rest of us?

Harvard Men In the late 1930s and early 1940s, 268 Harvard undergraduates— all men, as Harvard was not coed at the time—were recruited for a long-term psychological study. Interviewing them regularly over the coming decades, scientists aimed to pinpoint those youthful personal attributes that most reliably predict a successful middle and old age. The “Harvard Grant Study,” as it came to be called, developed into one of the few surveys ever conducted that tracks individual lives over nearly their entire duration. But as time went on, the study’s focus underwent a subtle shift. Instead of trying to predict the men’s futures, attention turned to how

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well they were coming to terms with their lengthening pasts. When the surviving men were around ninety, the study’s final interviews were conducted. And what they disclose is an array of strategies for making permanent peace with life’s missed opportunities: for finally banishing life’s regrets before you die. Let’s take just one recurring theme, romantic regret, as an illustration. As we age, how should we think about the one— or ones—who got away when we were younger? The one with whom we went, say, for a moonlit walk when we were eighteen but whom, when the moment was right, we didn’t have the nerve to kiss? Who knows what would have happened if we had? Here’s one way that emerges for interpreting such events from the lives of the Harvard men—and I will assume we are talking about a heterosexual man, as most of the study’s participants seem to have been. Because a girl liked him enough to join him on a moonlit walk years ago, a romance with her was once a live possibility. And so he can feel cheered in knowing that there was a time when he attracted her. But because it remained just that—a possibility that never materialized—he can feel relieved in knowing that he never had the chance to let her down by botching the kiss or, if they actually had had an affair, becoming tedious to her. Neither a delusional fantasy nor a sordid reality, the romantic road not taken can become a kind of sunlit later-life reverie: something more worth savoring than regretting. “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.”3 It’s a stance one can take to other arenas of one’s life. There was once a highly regarded Canadian politician named Robert Stanfield, who lost three consecutive elections to long-time prime minister Pierre Trudeau. Whenever he made a postcareer public appearance, Stanfield typically found himself introduced as “the greatest prime minister Canada never had.” At the end of his life Stanfield truly had, as was said prematurely of Churchill during his midlife wilderness years, a “brilliant future behind him.” But the greatness of Stanfield’s prime ministership is tied to the fact that it never happened. His real prime ministership would assuredly not have been as great as the

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mere possibility. An old man who, looking backward, treasures a great future that now lies behind him does so precisely because it remained only a golden possibility and never became a tarnished reality. If that doesn’t work for you, then other Harvard men have crafted a different kind of interpretation of events to palliate regret. Instead of cherishing a possibility precisely because it never became a reality, they embrace the only reality they believe was ever possible. Suppose that the now-old man, decades earlier on the moonlit walk, had made a play for the girl. Who knows where that would have led? Everything in his life afterward would have been different. In fact, everything in his life beforehand would have had to have been different too. To have made a play, he would have had to have been bolder or more optimistic than he actually was. And that would have meant an entirely different childhood, with less emotionally stifled or reticent parents. But then, had his parents not been so reserved, he wouldn’t have opted for an inward life as the acclaimed writer he became, whose specialty was the deep subtext beneath cramped and hesitant human relationships. You must, Nietzsche says, accept or reject the entire road you actually traveled. Everything is tied together through webs of causation, and you can’t pick and choose.4 To regret even one thing in your life—to regret not having made a play for the girl—is to regret one’s entire life itself. “Joy and woe are woven fine,” as the Harvard Study’s George Vaillant observes, quoting Blake. You can dampen regrets, he advises, by accepting your “one and only life cycle as something that [had] to be and that permits no substitutions.”5 Several Harvard men endured long and less than ideal marriages. The way some tell their stories suggests yet another late-life regretmanagement strategy. Instead of viewing the past as an iron reality dictated by the causal laws of nature, a man might see the past as having been genuinely open to any number of possible paths. He could have married any of a number of women, including the one who got away on the moonlit night. But—thanks to his individual

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neuroses or crochets, the laws of his own nature—their union would ultimately have been no happier than the one he actually did settle into. In the same way, if Lily Schreyer had married the one who got away instead of the one who didn’t, she would have—thanks to her skills and ambition, the laws of her own nature— ended up in an identical “power couple” relationship. One Harvard man, who was now at peace with his emotionally stultified marriage, had come to understand that the deepest aspects of his own character—his own restraint and reserve—were the causes. “As he saw it,” Vaillant writes, there “was nothing to be done about it; it was just the way he was”—and would have been no matter whom he had married.6 One can apply the same thinking in other spheres of life. “What is your biggest regret when you look back at your career?” the New York Times asked the R&B singer Bettye LaVette, who had never quite broken through to stardom. “Leaving Atlantic [Records],” she replied. But LaVette then immediately added, “Not that I would have stayed there and become a star” either.7 No real cause for regret, then, because the road not taken would have led right back to the road that was in fact taken. For some of the Harvard men, finally, the road they took seems to have ultimately led them back to the very road they didn’t. The fulfillment, joy, and pleasure they imagined—in the long intervening years—that they would have enjoyed with (say) the one who got away was present all along, they now realize, in their actual marriages. With the wisdom of years comes a different understanding of those terms: “fulfillment,” “joy,” and “pleasure.” Several Harvard men who had reported bad unions at earlier stages came, with a greater sense of what really mattered to them, to view the marriage they had made as precisely the kind of relationship they might have thought they’d let slip away years before. In 2012, speaking wistfully of her love interest in the 1984 teen-movie Sixteen Candles, the actress Molly Ringwald observed, “my husband resembles him a lot so in a way I kind of got him.”8 Or if it’s not his marriage that a Harvard man might come to see in that way, then it’s something else. One Harvard man now refers

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to his vineyard as his “second girlfriend.” He thought he had lost the opportunity for a later-life romance. But it turns out, assuming he looks at matters the right way, that he got that romance after all. Another, who had regretted not pursuing an artistic career, came to see that he was a kind of artist after all: an artist at mentoring young associates in his law firm.9 By reinterpreting our life, we can conclude that we have realized what once seemed like a lost possibility. Regret ebbs. In retrospect, then, maybe it’s good that kissing the girl remained only a golden possibility, never tarnished by having touched the realm of the real. Or maybe the reality in which the boy didn’t kiss the girl, taken as a whole, was the only one he would have ever wanted or could have ever had—it could never have included that particular possibility. Or maybe even if he had pursued the possibility of kissing her, it would ultimately have led him right back to the downbeat reality he now inhabits. Or maybe the reality he inhabits, he now sees, has come after all to embody the upbeat possibility he had earlier regretted foregoing by failing to kiss her. Thinking along such lines, you can diminish and perhaps banish regrets at the end of life. Mortal life, then, can come to embrace a faux immortality, insofar as one of the goods we seek from immortality is the capacity to stamp our own preferred meanings and definitive interpretations on the past. To tie up all the loose ends. To attain closure. Yet most of us, when we lie in bed and think about the way things might have been, do not—we cannot—wrap things up so nicely. There must be some hocus-pocus going on here. The chanteuse who belted out “Je ne regrette rien” also sang “La vie en rose.” Aren’t those who tell themselves these just-so stories about the way things might have been— on which all regrets conveniently vanish— looking at the world through bottle-thick rose-colored glasses?

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Lying in Bed and Thinking About the Way Things Might Have Been In the latter half of the twentieth century, the Princeton philosophers David K. Lewis and Saul Kripke each pioneered an innovative way of thinking about the question “I wonder what would have happened had I done X instead of Y?” And in different ways, their philosophies each subvert the life stories of the Harvard men. How should a man now think about what might have happened had he—to continue with the same example—kissed the girl on that moonlit night many years ago instead of freezing when the moment was ripe? Begin, David K. Lewis suggests, by imagining countless possible pasts: possible ways things might have unfolded instead of the way they actually did. Think of them, Lewis says, as “possible worlds” occupying various orbits in concentric circles around the real one. Those possible worlds in the closest orbits duplicate the way our own real world unfolded in almost all respects.10 For example, a very near possible world would be identical to our own real world in every way except that on January 20, 2009, Chief Justice Roberts did not muff the words to the presidential oath of office, but otherwise everything that happened before and since is exactly the same. Then, as we move toward the outer orbits, we find possible worlds that resemble our own real world less and less. For example, a very distant possible world would be one in which, instead of inaugurating President Obama, the chief justice signaled to a roving spaceship containing a band of Justice Roberts clones from another galaxy, who then descended, staged a coup, and ran America according to the principles of strict judicial restraint. So what would have happened had the boy kissed the girl? To answer this question we must, Lewis says, imagine what would have happened in the closest possible world in which, unlike in the real one, he did kiss the girl. And how do we determine what that world would have looked like? For Lewis, it’s generally a world that’s identical to the real one right up until the moment just before the boy had the chance to kiss the girl. It then varies from the real one due to a “small miracle”—a tiny momentary violation of the laws of

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nature—such that a neuron fires in his mind that didn’t in the real world, with the result that he leans over and gives her a kiss. Why do we need the laws of nature to be momentarily suspended? Because: since everything that caused him not to kiss the girl in the real world also would have happened in the closest possible world—that’s what makes it the closest—then, unless the laws of cause and effect are momentarily suspended, he wouldn’t kiss the girl in this closest possible world either. So let’s say that in the real world, the boy grew up with cool and undermining parents, and simply lacked sufficient emotional responsiveness and confidence to kiss the girl. In the closest possible world to that real one, in which a random neuron fired and he did kiss her, it’s reasonable to say that— due to his emotional unresponsiveness and lack of confidence—he and the girl would have spent a disappointing night together and then one of them would have furtively crept away before the other awoke, leaving profound memories of shame and embarrassment. No real cause for regret, then, about not having kissed her in the real world. Lewis’s work has provoked considerable criticism from other philosophers. But much (though certainly not all) of it buys into the general idea that the question “What would have happened if the boy had kissed the girl?” requires imagining what would have happened in the closest possible world to the real one in which he did kiss the girl. It’s just that Lewis’s critics dispute that that closest possible world would be one whose past is identical to the real world’s right up to the moment when a minor miracle causes the boy to kiss the girl. After all, any world in which even minor miracles can occur—violations of the laws of nature, such as totally uncaused neuron firings— doesn’t seem particularly close to our own. A better answer, some say, would be to imagine a world whose past differs just enough from our real one to get the boy to kiss the girl without the violation of the laws of nature that a miracle entails. In that version of the closest possible world, his slightly less uptight parents would have encouraged him to be a little more emotionally responsive and confident than they did in the real world, just enough

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so that he would have kissed the girl, but also such that he would have then likely spent an enjoyable night with her and even embarked on a short affair. There’s reason, then, for lingering regret about not having kissed her. Other philosophers have offered further, often spectacularly ingenious, ways of thinking about what the closest possible kiss-the-girl world might look like. The point of them all, however, is to deal with the problem of physical determinism. If physical determinism is true—if the past is what it is and the laws of nature hold—then the real world could not have unfolded even a jot differently from the way that it, in fact, did.11 So if there’s going to be any kind of answer to the question “What would have happened if the boy had kissed the girl?” we have no choice, these philosophers say, but to imagine either a world in which the past up till the moment of truth was the same as it actually was, but the laws of cause and effect then got briefly suspended due to a minor miracle, or a world in which the laws are not suspended, but they instead govern a past which has to have been at least a little different from our own. Depending on what happens in whatever we deem to be the closest possible world in which the boy does kiss the girl, we can then gauge whether regret is in order. But if physical determinism is true (and Lewis along with many of his interlocutors believes it is), then these are all mental games. Lovely games, but games nonetheless. If physical determinism is true, then there is only one real world, with its specific historical past and natural laws. Beyond that, all that remains are any number of other imaginable worlds. Yes, we can array those worlds on nuanced spectrums of greater or lesser metaphysical possibility depending on how much we would have to tweak the real world’s past or laws of nature to get to them.12 But as actual physical possibilities, there’s no greater or lesser; they were all equally impossible. Due to physical determinism, no one of them was ever any more reachable from the real world than any of the others, given the real world’s particular past and laws of nature. And if there is just the one kissless real world, then we can palliate regret only as the Harvard men suggest we do. We would understand

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that we must either accept or reject that real world in its entirety. And we would treat everything else that we might call a “possibility” not as a comment on what might have happened—it couldn’t have— but for what it says about that one real world. Namely, that the man was once a boy who captivated a girl on a moonlit night without disappointing her. Let us return to ourselves lying in bed and thinking about the way things might have been. We have available, thanks to Saul Kripke and others, another way entirely of coming at the question. Kripke turns away from the attempt to rate imaginary worlds as more or less possible based on their degree of divergence from our own, whether in their laws of nature or their factual history. Instead, Kripke asks us simply to consider the bare rules of logic and certain basic terminological definitions. Logical and definitional criteria do rule out a few extreme possibilities. It’s impossible that water could have been anything other than H2O, or that bachelors could be married. But logic and definitions do not in any way rule out the possibility that the boy kissing the girl could have led to a passionate affair. Nor, though, do they rule out the possibility that his kissing her would have led to a slap in the face instead. Or a demurral by the girl coupled by an introduction to her best friend with whom he then would have become infatuated. Or perhaps the slap on the face would have required stitches, leading the boy to fall in love with and marry the emergency-room nurse. Nothing, simply on logical or definitional grounds, bars any one of these possibilities more than any other.13 But just as Lewis’s metaphysical approach to possibility seems too nuanced, Kripke’s logical approach seems insufficiently discriminating—at least if our goal is to figure out how to deal with regret. Logic, coupled with definitions, doesn’t rule out much.14 If a passionate response from the girl is just as logically possible as a slap in the face or a thousand other scenarios, how does the man know whether to regret not having kissed her?

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Here again the Harvard men speak more directly to us than do the Princeton philosophers. They come at matters not from a logical but from a psychological perspective. And from a psychological perspective, some possibilities are much closer to—in the sense of actually being reachable from —the real world than others. Look at it this way: as a boy a Harvard man might have kissed and then married the girl on the moonlit walk instead of his actual wife, or married another woman to whom the girl introduced him, or married a nurse to whom she sent him, and so on. All of those are logical possibilities. But given his own psycho-logic, his own neurotic sluggishness, each one of those possibilities would have ultimately led to the same point he presently occupies in the real world: he would have been looking back on a life with a troubled marriage. “I do not flatter myself,” Montaigne says; “in like circumstances I would still be thus.”15 In the real world, then, the Harvard man actually realized all those logically possible marriages: they would, from the perspective of where he is now and what matters to him psychologically, have been no different than the blighted reality he lived. Or alternatively maybe, from a psychological perspective, the reality he lived turns out to have been no different from many blissful logical possibilities he thought he had missed. The Harvard man who tends his vineyard manages to psychologically equate its sensual and emotional pleasures with those of the possible girlfriend whose heart he failed to win. The one who pursued a creative legal career believes that, after all, he really did—given his psychological needs and nature—lead the artistic life he thought he’d foregone. The real world as it transpired can be interpreted to psychologically encompass—to have realized—those particular possibilities. His regret is assuaged. It may be that for Kripke, the rules of logic, combined with the meaning of terms, classifies only a certain set of extreme possibilities as, in fact, impossible: that triangles could have had four sides, for instance, or that George Clooney could have been a potato. But the much richer psychological meaning that the Harvard men give to

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certain terms—that a vineyard could be a girlfriend, or a legal career could be an artistic one—allows them to ultimately classify a range of possibilities as having, in fact, actually been realized. The question on the table is how to deal with late-life regret within the confines of a mortal existence. And in the end, the kinds of thoughts emerging from the Harvard men’s off-the-cuff ruminations are more helpful for that goal than the finely wrought theories of the Princeton philosophers. The Harvard men look to the one real physical world we have, in which they could have acted only as they did. And they reflect, too, on the way that that world allowed them to realize a particular array of psychological possibilities. Beyond that they have little interest in searching for the one closest metaphysical world in which they might have acted differently. Nor do they spend much time entertaining an endless array of strictly logical possibilities.

A Dead Life Certainly, not all of us might be able to dismiss our regrets in the way that the Harvard men do. If there’s a problem with their regretpalliation techniques, though, it’s not that they are looking at their lives through rose-colored glasses. It’s that any twilight tale they tell themselves about the lives they have led—accurate or not, happy and regret-free or not— can’t substitute for the techniques that immortality would afford them to place the definitive stamp on their own narratives. “A dead life,” says Sartre, “is a life of which the Other makes himself the guardian.”16 Whatever interpretations the Harvard men try to imprint on their own lives before they die, others who live beyond them will always have the last word. Sartre’s term “a dead life” is an interesting one. We normally think of persons—selves—as dead, not lives. But in a way, the Harvard men do try to have their lives die before they themselves do. Each lends his life an interpretation that wraps it up before he goes, just as

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any good Holderlin strategist would. And if a person’s own subjective view of his life is all that matters in tying it up, then, yes, they do tie theirs up. Or, to use the common phrase, the Harvard men attain closure. Each treats his own life as a room on which he is the one, as the actress Valerie Harper hopes will be the case for her, to “close the door.”17 It’s as if a person’s life events were furniture occupying some kind of space, an enclosure of some sort, from which he can lock out all others, barring them from rearranging his carefully set venue. This is a prevalent metaphor. Joseph Brodsky thought that T. S. Eliot had done this. Eliot’s life, Brodsky observed, had become the occupant of a “vast and hidden room.” And Eliot himself had “latched his door.”18 And yet as death approaches, Harold Brodkey writes, not only are you “no longer the hero of your own story,” you are in fact “no longer even the narrator.”19 Ivan Ilych, who fails to wrap his life up before he dies, ceases to be the hero of his own story, as he watches others take over everything from his ongoing work projects to his seat at the opera. But if you do try to wrap things up and reach closure, as the Harvard men do, then you face a different difficulty. You must then join others as but one of your story’s many narrators, giving it your own spin. And those others—and in the case of the Harvard men, especially their wives—will outlast you, their spins differing markedly from your own. Unless of course you are Henry Kissinger. Burnishing the legacy of his long-since-wrapped-up-career, Kissinger in late life was “asked what, if any, were the advantages of his advanced years.” Kissinger’s response: “I seem to have outlived anyone who ever attacked me.”20 A “dead life [continues] to change,” Sartre says, even though “it is all done.” It may be “over,” in that “nothing more can happen to it inwardly . . . but its meaning does not cease to be modified from the outside”: by others who live on beyond us.21 Imagine yourself eavesdropping on those modifications. You’d be none too happy. A “person . . . finds it distasteful to hear his life recounted with a different interpretation from his own,” Milan Kundera observes in his

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novel Immortality, and he uses an imagined reminiscence by Ernest Hemingway to illustrate:22 “I was lying dead on the deck,” Kundera’s Hemingway reflects, and I saw my four wives squatting around me, writing down everything they knew, and standing behind them was my son and he was scribbling too, and that old dame Gertrude Stein was there writing away and all my friends were there blabbing out all the indiscretions and slanders they had ever heard about me . . .23

Not all of us, by any stretch, care about the ways in which others might interpret our completed lives. But many of us—and Sartre thought that in fact all of us— do care. And the question is whether a mortal life enables us to do everything that an immortal life could in the way of stamping our own imprint on our personal past. If you believe that you can “close” the door to your mortal life as if it were a room, or turn the latch as if it were an enclosure of some sort, then you will say yes. But for most of us, our lives’ events will not persist pristine in time the way objects do in sealed spaces. Instead, our lives’ moments will slip continuously back in time, giving way to succeeding events. And any one of them could reopen the question of the value and meaning of our lives’ work. As a Harvard man lies dying, he might tell himself that the real, physical world in which he didn’t write the great American novel was the only one that was ever possible. But perhaps his wife, believing that the metaphysically closest world in which he stopped drinking was one in which he would have composed a masterpiece, will dismiss his narrative, after he’s gone, as a pitiful rationalization. A Harvard man might claim that he psychologically realized the possibility of a late life romance through his vineyard, with its sensual and emotional splendors. His friends, though, looking at possibility in more strictly logical terms, will shake their heads sadly at his pathetic delusion. A life does not lend itself to being locked within the four walls of an area in space, there to persist unaltered. No, it assumes the form of a series of moments in time, ceaselessly moving back to make way for new moments, and those new ones may well involve other

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people or incidents, casting it in new lights. What will they say about you after your life has begun slipping back into the past? How will ensuing events—the collapse of your business empire, a lukewarm retrospective article on your literary work—reflect on it? If you are mortal—whether your life lasts fifty or five thousand or five hundred thousand years—then you won’t be at the table when those subsequent moments happen. You won’t be there to plead your case or amend the record. Only immortality can give you that. The “past derives its meaning from the [future],” Sartre says; and so “even admitting that I am free to [live] my life, the meaning of my life”—as long as I am mortal—“escapes me.”24 The closure metaphor—the metaphor of a person’s life as a room to which he himself can bar the door—is an illusion. Any consolation for mortality based on it is flawed.

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seven

YOU NEVER KNOW

One day many years ago P, a relative of mine and a wealthy businessman, invited me out for dinner. I suggested that maybe we should ask another relative, L, to join us. P waved me off. With L present, P said, conversation would be dull. The problem was that L “isn’t an intellectual.” But “I,” P declared, “could have the worst stomach cramps in the world and I’d still grab a magazine before running to the bathroom.” For me, P’s remark has come to symbolize a widespread syndrome. It’s the vague, gnawing, anxious sense that there is much about the world— everything, in fact, that lies outside our own domain of specialization—that we don’t know and will never have the time to know, thanks to the shortness of our presence on the planet. Think of the beauty of fractals that only skilled mathematicians truly understand. Or the theory of relativity which (it is said) only a handful of people comprehend in its full profundity. Or the exquisite psychologies laid bare in Henry James, whose complete works I will never have the time to read or (if I could find the time) entirely grasp. Or all those marvelous Sanskrit myths with their cosmic harmonies and comic disharmonies. The thought that we will pass through this world without knowing these things can be so burdensome, so tormenting, that we can be driven to repress it with the consoling thought that really, whatever it is that we don’t know about, or have not fully mastered, could not be all that complicated or daunting or interesting. We’re not missing that much. You’re a businessman and want to know what “intellectuals” know? Grab a magazine before running to the bathroom. In Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities, the military leader General Stumm takes it upon himself to come up with a “redemptive idea,” a new governing doctrine to pep up his beloved but lethargic

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homeland of Kakania. Entering the Imperial Library to do a little research, Stumm figures that if “I read a book a day . . . I would be bound to get to the end sometime and then, even if I had to skip a few, I could claim a certain position in the world of intellect.”1 What the general is clinging to is what Proust described as a kind of self-soothing regimen for “mental hygiene”— one that “enables us to regret nothing, by assuring [ourselves] that we have attained to the best, and that the best was nothing out of the ordinary.” And so we can “resign ourselves to death.”2 Academics like me nurture the same kinds of feelings. I once got a bit of a lift when my undergraduate economics professor mentioned Joan Robinson’s critique of John Maynard Keynes’s macroeconomic theory. The problem, Robinson wrote, is that “Maynard didn’t take the ten minutes necessary to learn microeconomics.” Microeconomics—nice to think that I could master it over coffee one morning, if I cared to. Or consider the widespread phenomenon of what might be called the “lateral transfer.” Having been successful in one field of endeavor, many of us bet that it couldn’t be that hard to directly transfer over to the same level in another. Think of a billionaire who, having become an entertainment-industry mogul, might feel that he has the chops to become a similarly successful songwriter. Think of Edgar Bronfman, Jr. (sample lyrics: “Intimacy, I bless you /I worship at your feet /You’re the gentle breath on an open sore”).3 Given that we die, we have a tendency to tell ourselves that what we don’t know couldn’t be all that momentous or difficult to master—when really there is incalculably more to know and ideally we wouldn’t die. And of course, mortality not only prohibits us from knowing what there is to know now. That’s a drop in the bucket. It prevents us from knowing everything that humankind will ever discover, and everything that will ever happen to us as a species, on into the unending future. In the words of one contemporary “singulatarian”—someone who hopes that he can gain immortality by uploading his mind into a computer—“the only way I’m going to understand the universe is if I live long enough.”4

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I think about this motivation for immortality—the craving to know the future, and especially whatever mankind might discover eons hence about the deepest secrets of God and consciousness and the universe—in weighing yet another claim that mortality can give us whatever immortality could. It reaches its most searching contemporary form in a 2010 book, Surviving Death, by the Princeton philosopher Mark Johnston. What Johnston does is to take the “Buddhist” consolation for mortality one step further.5 Death is benign, but not simply because the self doesn’t exist to begin with and so there is nothing that death in fact ends. Death actually needn’t even stand in the way of our attaining earthly immortality. And with it, attaining as well all the knowledge that humankind might amass on into the future. We “can,” Johnston says, “be conscious”—and thus conscious of whatever people may learn over the ages to come— even if we have “died.”6 “Literally,” Johnston assures us. But how, without any recourse to an afterlife, could this possibly work? Moment by moment, Johnston says, the perceptions, thoughts, feelings, experiences, sensations, plans, and so forth that make up the flow of a person’s life seem to present themselves to her within a kind of perimeter. Think, by way of analogy, of the perimeter surrounding what we see at any given moment in time: the perimeter around our field of vision. The perimeter Johnston is talking about is like that, except that it surrounds not just what we see, but everything we are feeling, thinking, sensing, remembering, perceiving, and otherwise conscious of at any given moment: our entire field not just of vision but of consciousness. Johnston calls this perimeter the “arena of presence.” It is the “quasi-space,” as he says, in which our lives present themselves to us second by second.7 Ever since I can remember, the person at the center of my particular arena of presence has been Andrew Stark. And so the life— the series of thoughts, plans, memories, perceptions, and feelings— flowing through my arena is naturally focused on Andrew Stark and those closest to him. But, Johnston observes, I could easily imagine someone else at the center of my arena of presence—say Napoleon—

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and I would still think of it as my arena, not Napoleon’s. I can easily imagine that Napoleon’s thoughts, experiences, sensations—all the aspects of his life—are flowing through my arena, and that Andrew Stark, for the moment at least, has disappeared. We fantasize like this all the time. But what this means, Johnston says, is that there is in fact no necessary connection between any given “arena” on the one hand, and any given person on the other. Whichever person is at the center of your arena— or mine—is completely a matter of choice. Most of us, more or less by default, focus our arenas on the person we take ourselves to be. Mine focuses on Andrew Stark; Johnston’s on Mark Johnston. But again, that’s a matter of choice, not necessity. So suppose that I choose to focus my arena not on me and my family but on all individuals on into the unending future. For me to do that seriously and continuously, not just as a momentary fantasy à la Napoleon, a new kind of life—a new flow of feelings, thoughts, hopes, and dreams—would have to begin presenting itself in my arena. My most tender feelings would no longer flow so much to my wife as to future generations and their need to live free from any debt imposed by my own. My thoughts would habitually wander not to whether my daughters will flourish, but to whether all future humans will have the resources they need to thrive. My plans would zero in not on the book I am writing but on how to eliminate global warming and save humankind from environmental disaster. I would become an altruistic person. No longer, then, would my arena present a life centered on me. Instead, it would present a life centered on all human beings on into the future. It’s not, of course, that the actual lives of all others on into the future, with all their particular thoughts, feelings, and sensations—as well as whatever they come to learn about the true nature of God or the real purpose of the universe—would suddenly crowd into and become the focus of my arena of presence. But nor at the moment is the life of Andrew Stark on into the future, with all its particular thoughts, feelings, and sensations—as well as whatever he might come to learn about the victor in the 2020 presidential election or the price of oil in 2025— crowding into my arena of presence as it is.

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Instead, it’s simply that if I have chosen (as I guess I have) to place Andrew Stark at the center of my arena, then I will come to know whatever he does whenever he does. And so if instead I choose to place all future human beings at the center of my arena, then I will come to know whatever they know—including the deepest secrets of mind and cosmos—whenever they do. The difference of course is that Andrew Stark will die within the next few decades, so he will not come to know very much. But humanity as a whole won’t die anytime soon and others on into the future will come to know a great many things. And I can make their lives mine every bit as much as I am currently making Andrew Stark’s. After all, there’s nothing more to being any particular person than choosing to place him or her— or them —at the center of one’s arena and living accordingly. Suppose, then, that I do choose to make all others on into the future the focus of my arena. Then “after [ my] death” I will, Johnston says, still remain “conscious . . . in and through the multitude [of others] that come after.”8 Literally, Johnston says: in exactly the same way that those others will be conscious. For all there is to being any particular person is making the choice to place him, or her, or them, at the center of your arena. Johnston’s philosophy is scintillating and thought-provoking— and also a good deal more complex than I have presented it here. He offers one of the most sophisticated contemporary variants of a widely held and quite beautiful view. It’s something that occurs to many of us at one time or another. If we are sufficiently loving and altruistic, sufficiently integrated into the lives of others, then nothing of us ever needs to die. Our life will simply flow on into theirs and we can continue to live endlessly through them. And yet: Johnston’s particular understanding of how we can accomplish this feat ultimately founders on a contradiction. And a revealing one at that. The problem is his “quasi-spatial” image of the “arena of presence.” On the one hand, whatever my arena is, it can’t be anything like a self. After all, my arena will come to an end when I die. And so

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if my arena were indeed something self-like, then I couldn’t survive my death, as Johnston says I can. Something approximating my self would have truly been lost. My arena, then, cannot be equated with my self in any way; indeed, on Johnston’s Buddhist understanding, I don’t have a self to begin with. But on the other hand, it would seem as if—for Johnston’s consolation to work—my arena does have to be at least somewhat selflike. For suppose that there were indeed nothing self-like about my arena. Then by focusing that arena on all other people on into the unending future and living accordingly, I would be doing nothing that in any way identified me with their lives. I would be doing nothing that would help make me live forever—make me survive my death—because my arena would have nothing about it that qualified as “me.” Only if my arena, in some way, figures as my self—as me in particular—will its focusing on the lives of all others on into the future give me an intimation of immortality. So assume that the arena is indeed something self-like. Then yes, I could conceivably live on in others by making them its focus and living accordingly. But that would also mean that when my arena disappears with my death, something self-like would come to an end. And this would seem, in its own way, to undercut any idea that I could ever “survive death.” Since I will have had my own particular self-like arena, and all future others will each have their own particular self-like arenas, how could I ever claim to live on in them? We’d be different selves. Since their self-like arenas would be alive when the universe reveals its secrets—and my self-like arena wouldn’t— how could I ever come to glean knowledge of those secrets in the same way that they will? And then how could I ever, as a mortal, gain knowledge of the future in a way that intimates what immortality could provide? Mark Johnston bases his consolation on the idea that we are each merely an “arena of presence” in “quasi-space.” If we each simply place humanity on into the future at the center of our arena, and generate thoughts, feelings, plans, and hopes focused on all others

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yet to come, then we can live on in their lives. And, as a bonus, we can come to know whatever they learn about God or the universe or the deepest mathematical truths in exactly the way they will. After all, our connection to their lives would be no weaker than their connection to those lives, since all there is to making any given life one’s own is the decision to place it at the center of one’s arena. But for most of us early twenty-first-century bundles of ego and anxiety, I suspect, that idea will simply fail to take hold psychologically. We are not arenas in quasi-space. We are selves in real time. We ourselves move ever forward into the future—until we stop. And so we can never gain the kind of precious knowledge we would if our selves continued moving on endlessly in time. Mortality cannot intimate what immortality would give us. Johnston’s lovely consolation cannot work.

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eight

MAKING YOUR MARK

In the Concise Biographical Dictionary, the biography for Ramses VIII is— even by the Dictionary’s standards—remarkably concise. Ramses VIII, we are told, was “one of a number of ancient pharaohs about whom nothing is known.”1 Yes, we know his name, but we know nothing else: not a scintilla of his biography, nothing about the marks he made on the world while he was alive. Do we, then, “remember” him — do we keep his memory alive—when we read his bare name? Think of all the memorial plaques on church walls or park benches —“Donated in loving memory of so and so”—which, for the vast majority of viewers, convey nothing but a name; they conjure up no further recollection or biographical information. Does so-and-so continue to live on in memory whenever someone reads his name? Certainly it was with the hope that he would that many, perhaps most, such plaques get dedicated. “Call it an answer to the yearning for immortality,” says the New York Times; for “a price, universities will carve the name of a generous benefactor in limestone or on an imposing building.”2 Now think of the reverse situation: where we know the marks a person made. We know something, maybe even something important, about his biography. But we don’t know his name. In his book What Price Fame? Tyler Cowen muses over veterans who buy license plates indicating that they’ve received a Medal of Honor or a Purple Heart. Other drivers, Cowen writes, see the “car and the back of somebody’s head and conclude that this head probably belongs to a war hero.” But really, they “merely see that someone is a war hero”; they “never know whom they are looking at.”3 Although they might later remember the license plate, and reflect on the profound mark that the driver had at one point made on the world, how—without

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knowing his name— could they keep his memory alive whenever they do so? At most, they would be keeping the memory of “someone” alive, not him in particular. In many cases, of course, we know both the name and a mark the person by that name has made. We might, for example, know that Nat Bailey (1902–1978) was the founder of the White Spot hamburgerrestaurant chain because, say, we read that information on a plaque when visiting Nat Bailey Stadium in Vancouver. Both the name “Nat Bailey” and something that the person by that name did, a mark he made on the world—he had been a successful restaurateur—would have jointly entered our consciousness for the first time at that moment. But would we thereby have been remembering him, Nat Bailey the person? Or is he something separate and apart from the name and the mark, so that we can know both of them —that “someone” named Nat Bailey was a successful restaurateur—without really thinking of that man, of him? After all, knowing a mere name like Ramses VIII is not enough to call a person to mind. And knowing a mere mark someone made— that “someone” was a war hero—is also not sufficient for us to remember him. So then why should knowing both a name and a mark the person by that name made be enough, all of a sudden, to somehow keep his memory alive? Nat Bailey is just a name attached to a mark. As far as we’re concerned, that name and mark could have belonged to any of a countless number of people with widely varied biographies: so varied that we couldn’t possibly be thinking of the actual Nat Bailey when we read his name and about the mark he made. Certainly, though, getting visitors to remember him was the point of naming the stadium after Nat Bailey. And yet, although we do use the word “remember” in this context, it’s a funny term to employ in cases where we have never actually met the individual concerned and so have no memory of him. I would guess that many visitors in fact do encounter Nat Bailey’s name and mark for the very first time when they come to the stadium to watch a baseball game. So how could the mark and the name alone remind them of him — call him

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to mind, make them remember him—if he had never been in their mind before? Why do we even speak this way? We are drawn to immortality not only because we seek to know what happens, what human beings will experience, will learn and discover, on into the future. That’s certainly a motivation for endless life, but it’s a passive one. We also harbor a more active impetus. We seek immortality for our self so that we can forever keep on doing things, acting in the world and making our mark, in ways that we enjoy and give us meaning. But, in the absence of true immortality, we settle for a faux version. We do things that we think will last forever, we act on the world in ways we hope will mark it forever, believing that we’ve thereby bestowed immortality on our self. We embark, in Unamuno’s words, on a “tremendous struggle to singularize ourselves: to survive in some way in the memory of others” since we can’t actually do so on the surface of the planet.4 We seek immortality in a subjective sense because we can’t achieve it in an objective sense. Think of this idea as the “existentialist consolation-plus.” Our mortality is a blessing, the existentialist consolation says. It’s the only thing that spurs us to get off the couch. It impels us to make a name for ourselves and our mark on the world before time runs out, thus crafting a vivid and distinctive self. But there’s a bonus: our self can then gain a kind—an intimation— of immortality through the vivid marks we have made and the distinctive name attached to them. Because we die, we get out in the world and make our name and our marks. And then because we made our name and our marks we don’t, in a way, ever die. Mortality cheats itself. So how many marks do you have to attach to your name on a plaque or epitaph or obituary until it is you—your actual self—whom people will be remembering when they read it, thus keeping alive your memory? Suppose you have even more information about the marks Nat Bailey made. Suppose you discover that he was a freemason, that he

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worked tirelessly to raise the profile of baseball in Vancouver, that he co-owned the Vancouver Mounties baseball team, and that his hamburgers were served with a secret sauce rumored to be concocted by pouring the juice from dill pickle containers into empty mayonnaise jars, then decanting the resulting mixture into depleted ketchup vats, then adding the residue from relish bottles and combining the whole lot with a load of Thousand Island dressing. Is there any number of marks such that— once you know them —you will have finally got to the man himself, and would be actually thinking about him, remembering him, keeping Nat Bailey’s memory alive, when you view his name and read about all he did, all the marks he made? Imagine that, on top of reading about Nat Bailey on a wall plaque, you wander over to a television screen mounted in a nearby console. There, you press a button and watch a five-minute video of Bailey reflecting on his restaurant career and on how happy he was to be able to play a role in Vancouver’s baseball scene. You get a view of his facial expressions, how he carried himself; you hear his voice: all the subtle cues that give us a sense of someone. Would you, then, be remembering Nat Bailey as you viewed the video, or whenever it crossed your mind on subsequent occasions? I’m not sure. Freud once said that he wanted never to be filmed and recorded at the same time. His concern was that people would mistakenly think that the resulting audio-video somehow captured his essence. Freud’s caution was understandable. Suppose that you’ve simply viewed a film image of someone. Think of an old silent newsreel depicting an immigrant holding a passport bearing her name as she lines up for admittance on Ellis Island. Surely you won’t be calling her, that person whoever she was, to mind when you view it. She herself, whoever she is, wouldn’t be living on in your memory. She’s just a name and an image. Likewise suppose your phone rings, and when you answer you hear a man say, “My name is Joe Smith, and I’m calling to tell you that you have just won a trip to the Bahamas.” As you recall the incident later, will you be remembering him, thinking of him, who-

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ever he was? You will know only that somebody by that name had that voice. But no one in particular would enter your mind; as far as you’re concerned, that name and that voice could have belonged to any number of people. Now think of yourself viewing and listening to Nat Bailey’s audiovideo. If just a name and an image, or just a name and a voice, do not suffice to call a person to mind, why then should a combination of name, image, and voice mean that the particular person who possessed them is now, all of a sudden, living on in your memory? What could be missing?

Remembering Someone You Never Met In his famous theory of names, the philosopher Saul Kripke dealt with a kissing-cousin issue. Take as an example, Kripke said, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman. Feynman did pioneering work in quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics, superfluidity, and particle physics. Now think of somebody who has never heard of Feynman before, somebody who knows nothing about any of the “marks” Feynman made, anything he did in the world. She will, Kripke says, still be referring to the person Richard Feynman and no other by uttering the name “Richard Feynman” as she reads it for the very first time, even if he has never entered her mind before and she has no idea who he is.5 Why? Because, Kripke said, of the original “baptismal” act by which a particular name is made to attach to a particular person. At one point someone—say Feynman’s mother—referring to the in utero or infant Richard Feynman, said, in effect, “This is Richard Feynman.” She did so long before Feynman made his marks on the world as a physicist, long before there was anything to him. For all she knew, he might have become a stone mason. Such initial acts of naming have to use the indexical term “this,” meaning that there is normally some spatial proximity or orientation between the namer and the person being named.6 As Heidegger said, the “function of naming” entails “a pointing, a referring.” It involves

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our saying “this, namely the one here, i.e., that which we now point out,” will from this moment forward be called (say) “Richard Feynman.”7 Suppose that such an original naming act, a spatial act, has occurred. Then, Kripke says, people ever after will be referring to that person, and that person alone, whenever they speak his name— even if they know nothing of him, including any marks he may have made on the world.8 But reference is not remembrance. It may be true, as Kripke showed, that I would be referring to the particular person Nat Bailey when I speak his name as I encounter it on a plaque for the first time, even if I have never heard of him before and know nothing about the various marks he made on the world. But even if, after reading his name, I then read as well about all the marks he made on the world, I still wouldn’t be remembering him, the particular person Nat Bailey, who after all remains an entity separate and apart from both his name and the marks he made. He still could have been anyone. But why not? What about Churchill? I never met Churchill either. And yet now, whenever I see his name, and/or read about the various marks he made—from the disaster of Gallipoli to the magnificence of Blood, Sweat and Tears, to the triumph of D-Day, to the misery of Yalta, to his joke about drinking poisoned tea if he were married to Lady Astor, to the moment when, observing a forced parade of captured German officers in North Africa, he caught the eye of a Nazi commandant and they both could not suppress bursting into giggles at the absurdity of it all—my doing so does call up a third entity, separate from name and marks, that has insinuated itself into my mind: a distinctive personality, indeed a person. He could not have been just anyone. Why does that work with Churchill but not with Nat Bailey? Because I have spent enough time thinking about the marks Churchill made such that, taken together with his name, they have formed a kind of Adam’s rib in my mind which, over the years, has grown into a distinct persona. Most of us have given Churchill and some others we have never met—Freud, too, for many of us—“a soul,” to use

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Proust’s words, “which they afterwards keep and which they develop in our minds.”9 And it is this persona, this personality, namely an entity separate and apart from both that long list of marks and the name “Churchill,” that I am keeping alive in my memory. It is what I remember when I remember Churchill. And so while reference to someone regardless of the marks he might make is at its origins a spatial act, remembrance of someone through the marks he has made is a temporal one. I can begin to remember a person I have never met only if I spend enough time pondering, dwelling on, and marinating in the marks he has made in the world such that, over a certain period, those marks “develop,” as Proust says, the qualities of a full-blown persona in my mind: and “development” is a temporal process. In a way, the process of remembering someone we have never met resembles the process of forming false memories, which has been so much studied lately. Oliver Sacks once discussed a graphic memory he had long held of a bombing raid during the London Blitz. Late in life, though, Sacks discovered that he was away at boarding school at the time the attack occurred. What happened is that right after the raid his older brother David wrote Sacks “a very vivid, dramatic letter” about the event and Sacks was “enthralled by it.” “Clearly,” Sacks elaborated, “I had not only been enthralled, but must have constructed the scene in my mind, from David’s words, and then appropriated it, and taken it for a memory of my own.”10 That took time. In a similar way, I too have taken Churchill’s words and acts and voice and images, the marks he made in the world, and— enthralled— have spent enough time with them that I have hatched a memory of him. That is why I can say that I remember Churchill—that he lives in my memory— even though I never met him. The only difference is that I know it’s a false memory, while Sacks thought his was true. But when he discovered it was false, it was no less vivid. What’s false about a false memory isn’t that it necessarily misrepresents its object, whether an individual or the event it contains. What’s false is that it isn’t a memory.

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But I simply haven’t spent that much time thinking about the marks Nat Bailey has made, and I never will. True, this is not a black and white thing. It could be a matter of degree. If Churchill the person, separate and apart from his name and his marks, is blazingly alive in my mind, then maybe it’s more accurate to say that Nat Bailey the person, separate and apart from his name and his marks, is not wholly nonexistent, but is rather a barely smoldering ember in my mind. And in fact, based on the marks of Bailey’s that I have encountered, I do have a very weak sense of him as a person separate and apart from those marks: a kind of generic glad-handing Rotary Club extrovert. But that’s nothing that distinguishes him from any number of other people about whom I’ve read or seen in the movies or met in person; there’s nothing unique about the entity I have in my head when I call to mind Nat Bailey the person. I certainly wouldn’t describe it as rising to the level of a distinct, singular personality—a particular individual. Beyond that, no one really comes to mind. He could have been anyone. On October 1, 1963, Groucho Marx penned a letter to T. S. Eliot, signing off “My best to you and your lovely wife, whoever she may be.” On October 16, Eliot responded: “My lovely wife joins me in sending you our best, but she didn’t add ‘whoever he may be’—she knows.”11 Neither Groucho nor Valerie Eliot had at that point met each other. But even so, for Groucho, Valerie could have been anyone, while for Valerie, Groucho could have been only one person: the person in her mind who had emerged during the time she had spent with the name and the marks. On into the future, few of us will inspire in others—not even in our descendants—the kind of time-drenched remembering necessary to keep us alive in memory. They’ll have too many other things to do with their time, such as making their own marks for posterity. Those who come after us will want to be remembered too, and their having to remember us in turn will amount to a drag on that enterprise. “What is the advantage of having one’s own name on the lips of future generations,” Marcus Aurelius asked, “when their overrid-

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ing concern will be the same as ours: to have their name on the lips of their successors. . . . How does that confer any reality on us?” Far from being our collaborators in the project of keeping our memory alive, our children will turn into our competitors. I remember once wandering into a religious center in North Toronto and peering at the plaques on the classroom doors. Many took this form (names have been changed): THIS ROOM HAS BEEN DEDICATED BY EARL AND SONIA JOHNSON in loving memory of their mother Leah Johnson In our era, if not long before, “death denial” has expanded to include “death-of-memory denial.” Most academic sociologists expect to still be remembered, by colleagues in the field, fifty years from now.12 Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias” conjures up the image of an ancient, decapitated, and trunkless statue in the desert. The decaying pedestal reads, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” And yet no works, no marks, nothing but the “lone and level sands” remain, stretching endlessly in all directions. Imagine, though, that the marks Ozymandias made long ago had not crumbled into sand but had somehow remained with us, weathered but majestic in their desert space. Say that they took the form of a great city of marble, alabaster, and pink granite.13 Yes, visiting tourists would be able to answer the question “Who built this city?” It was Ozymandias. And yes, they could answer the question “Who was Ozymandias?” He was the builder of the city. But in knowing the name and the marks—which simply refer back to each other in an endless arid loop—would they have come any closer to remembering the man, the person, than if they had never heard of him or his marks? Suppose we are tourists beholding Ozymandias’s works, clutching our water bottles and snapping pictures with our phones. But now suppose, if I can adapt an old philosophical joke, that our tour

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guide rushes up to us with some late-breaking news. It’s just been discovered that all of these marks—the city’s buildings in all their splendor—weren’t built by Ozymandias after all. Instead, they were built by some other guy who also happened to be named Ozymandias. That would have no meaning for us. Nothing in our sense of Ozymandias would change because there is nothing to our sense of Ozymandias. The same name, the same marks—they could, for all we can bring to mind, have belonged to anybody. By contrast, a similar discovery about Churchill—Winston Churchill did not deliver the “We Shall Never Surrender” speech; it was in fact orated by some other man named Winston Churchill—would carry the shock of a thunderbolt. That’s because while Ozymandias’s name and marks don’t make us recall a particular person, Churchill’s do: even though we never met either one. For someone to place his imprint on the minds of future generations on into time—for someone to remain alive in memory—simply engraving his name and his marks in various spaces, physical and cyber, won’t suffice, even if those marks are great in number. Those gazing at them must have spent time with them. But how much time? Whatever time it takes for them to no longer feel that the marks could have been made by anyone—by any other person who happened to have been named Ozymandias—because those marks have solidified and jelled into one particular person in their mind. This is, of course, a psychological and not a logical process. The person we have in mind when we think of Churchill might turn out to bear only a partial resemblance to the real Churchill. But then we invariably get our recollections of people terribly wrong all the time, profoundly misunderstanding them even if we actually have met them, even if we actually have spent time with them. Couple that with the likelihood that few of those who actually did meet Churchill in person spent nearly as much time in his actual presence as others, like his biographer Martin Gilbert, have spent thinking about, pondering, and steeping themselves in Churchill’s marks, his words or actions, even though they never encountered him. There’s no reason to think that our memory of a person we have met is necessarily

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more accurate than those of others who may have never met him. Especially if they have spent much more time with his marks than we ever spent with him, the person. Saul Kripke devised his theory of reference in opposition to a rival theory (or set of theories) called descriptivism. Descriptivism, to simplify dramatically, says that a name attaches to a particular set of marks, even if in principle the person who made those marks could have been anyone. According to descriptivism, for example, we have come to use the name “Kurt Gödel” to refer to the person who discovered the Incompleteness Theorem. But suppose one day we learn that the person who discovered the Incompleteness Theorem was not in fact the man at Princeton we always thought was the one who accomplished that feat, but a woman at Duke. Then, according to descriptivism, she would be the person to whom we were always referring with the name “Kurt Gödel.” And, Kripke said, that just doesn’t make any sense. So descriptivism —which says that the name straightforwardly attaches to the marks, even though the person who made them could in theory be anyone— doesn’t seem to capture what it is to use a name to refer to someone. Descriptivism, though, does seem to capture a central truth about what it is to remember someone—and, in particular, someone we have never met. All we can ever know is that a name attaches to a given set of marks. Beyond that, as far as we are concerned in the vast majority of cases, that person could have been anyone. Perhaps descriptivism was always a better fit as a theory of remembrance than of reference. Likewise, what Kripke offered is a better theory of reference than remembrance. Kripke said that a name refers to a particular person, even though that person could have made any set of marks. So yes, when people on into the future speak the name “Nat Bailey” as they encounter it on a plaque, they will indeed be referring to the one particular person Nat Bailey—to him and no other— even if they have never heard of him before. But Nat Bailey would have been mistaken if he thought that those people would be remembering him:

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that he would be living on in their memory. While the name “Nat Bailey” certainly refers to the particular person Nat Bailey, it can’t make us remember the person Nat Bailey, call him in particular to mind. He could have been anyone. What Kripke offered was simply a theory of reference. It was not—as so many of us implicitly seem to think when we post our name and marks on buildings or benches—a theory of remembrance.14 In his great book Naming and Necessity, Kripke himself says something quite revealing. While he can imagine Aristotle never actually doing “any of the things”—making any of the marks—“commonly attributed to him today,” such as composing the Ethics and the Politics, he can’t imagine Hitler ever having done anything other than evil. But then recognizing that such a statement sits uneasily with his theory that a name attaches to a person regardless of what marks he might have made, Kripke immediately backtracks. Hitler, Kripke acknowledges, “might have spent all his days [quietly] in Linz.” And had he done so, Kripke says, he still would have been Adolf Hitler, because “Adolf Hitler” is the name his parents gave to that particular person, not to a particular set of horrific marks left upon the world.15 I think what Kripke was saying, with his little slip, was not that the person to whom the name “Hitler” refers couldn’t have spent a quiet life in Linz, leaving none of his evil marks on the world. It’s that the evil marks in question could have been made by no one else but the person in Kripke’s mind, in all of our minds, whom we remember as Hitler. We have spent enough time with the name, and the marks, that the name is no longer just a phrase for whomever it was who made those marks. We know who that person is, even though we never met him. He—not just his name and deeds—will live in infamy. Remembrance of someone we have never met is based on an ongoing temporal process. It’s based on the repeated acts of thinking about, and dwelling on, the marks attached to a name. That makes

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sense. After all, the self, as we bundles of ego and anxiety think of it, is an entity that needs to move ever forward in time if it’s to continue living. And so, once it dies, it can continue to move forward in time—in memory, of course— only if at least some people continue spending enough time with the name and the associated marks that a distinct self emerges and continues to abide in their minds over the years, decades, and centuries. Otherwise, for them, that name and those marks could have belonged to anyone, “whoever she may be.” But for most of us mortals, our selves will not live on through our name and whatever marks we leave for the future, even if others, on into the ages, read them or see them. On into the future, those others will not spend the time necessary for a sense of our self to emerge in their minds and move forward with them. A name and a set of marks recorded on a spatial or cyberspatial object—a plaque or a website— might refer to us. But that won’t suffice to enable others to remember us, to make our self live on in their memory. They won’t be thinking of anyone in particular. The consolation for mortality that I have identified with Nat Bailey, on which our mere name and marks imprinted on the future can keep our mortal selves alive in a way that intimates immortality, won’t work. Not for almost all of us.

*

Can mortality, in any meaningful way, intimate immortality? Can I realize, within the confines of my mortal life, the various good things that immortality seems to promise? Yes, says Gordon Bell. All I have to do is record the moments of my life, the entire contents of my memory, in real-time audio, video, and textual files and then post them online. Those moments will then remain alive indefinitely as long as others, on into the unending eons, view them in my digitized life-log. And so I myself don’t have to live on to keep my cherished memories, my own precious trove of knowledge of the past, alive forever. Anyone else can do that for me. And yes, mortality might be as good as immortality if I can, in my twilight years, attain “closure.” Suppose, as death nears, that I am able to “close the door” or “turn the latch” on the moments of my life, leaving them pristine ever after as if they occupied some kind

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of sealed room or cell. Then I wouldn’t have to live on to fight with others over what my life meant, over the main lines of its narrative, over the significance of its events. My imprint on my own past, the meaning I gave my own life, would be the definitive one. And yes, mortality might be as good as immortality if it makes sense for me to equate my self with what the philosopher Mark Johnston calls a bare “quasi-spatial arena.” Then, even though that arena will disappear with my death, I could still access whatever precious knowledge others might amass—about the secrets of God or consciousness or the universe— on into the future. All I would need to do while alive is place all future humans, instead of Andrew Stark, at the center of my arena, leading a life dedicated to their interests. And then whatever knowledge they accumulated during their lives on into the millennia would belong to me no less than it would belong to those future humans. After all, my claim to their lives would be just as strong as theirs. That’s because all there is to making any given life one’s own is choosing to place it at the focus of one’s arena. And finally, yes, mortality might be as good as immortality if it makes sense for me to view my self as if it were nothing more than the mere referent of my name. Then, as long as people are reading that name on into the future, whether on a wall plaque or in a book dedication, they will be keeping me—the person I was—alive in memory. I myself don’t have to live on for my self to live on. My imprint on the future, the marks I made during my mortal life, will keep me alive. In the minds of others, if not in the world. Unfortunately none of these ingenious ideas speaks to our central psychological reality. Certainly not for us bundles of ego and anxiety who seek consolation for our mortality. Our self, as we see it, is something that must move relentlessly forward into the future if it is to survive. It’s hardly the mere referent of a name. Or a bare arena. For us, too, the moments of our lives must flow back ever further into the past as soon as they happen. They can never be permanently freeze-dried into mere files on a server. Or preserved as pristine items in a locked room. And so they are fated to become forever ir-

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recoverable in the intimate ways in which we ourselves knew them, yet ever vulnerable to the foreign interpretations others on into the future will place on them. The self as the mere referent of a name. Or a bare arena. The moments of our lives as files on a server. Or items in a locked room. Referents, files, arenas, and rooms are dry, static husks. In order to believe that our mortal selves and our mortal lives could even begin to give us the good things that their immortal versions would, we have to pretend that those selves and lives are bare shadows of what they actually are. We have to pretend that they are already halfway dead. And so mortality cannot intimate, cannot give us, the good things that immortality would. We shall have to look elsewhere for consolation. Perhaps if we view matters in the right way, we will see that immortality—real immortality, not the intimated sort—would be terrible for us. I turn to this consolatory idea in the book’s next part.

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PART 3

Immortality Would Be Malignant

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nine

IS THIS ALL THERE IS?

It’s evening in Lake Como. The young music professor Shawmut, in Saul Bellow’s story “Him with His Foot in His Mouth,” reads his conference paper to Kippenberg, an older and far more prominent musicologist, author of the definitive work on Rossini and bearer of “eyebrows like caterpillars from the Tree of Knowledge.” Worried that his prose is failing to impress the great man, Shawmut sheepishly remarks: “I’m afraid I’m putting you to sleep, Professor.” The master replies: “No, no— on the contrary, you’re keeping me awake.”1 As if it were thumbing its nose at its own reputation for monotony and uniformity, boredom has gone out into the world and amassed for itself an impressive variety of classifications and categorizations. Stendhal distinguished between “still” versus “bustling” boredoms.2 For the philosopher Sean Healy, what’s key is the dichotomy between the boredom of “restlessness” and the boredom of “torpor.”3 Heidegger offered discriminations between the limbo boredom of waiting for a train, the empty boredom of attending a cocktail party, and the deeper boredom that comes from personal inauthenticity— from leading a life that isn’t your own. But I like Bellow’s distinction the best. The exchange between Shawmut and Kippenberg captures two immediately recognizable strains of boredom. If you are experiencing the one, then however much you would prefer to be in a state of unconsciousness than continue listening to (say) Professor X’s tedious lecture on associative learning in sea slugs, you can’t nod off because the rattling of his voice and clanking of the air conditioner are keeping you awake. If you are undergoing the other, then however much you might like to listen to Professor Y’s informative lecture on consolations for mortality, you can’t because his droning delivery and the murmur of the heating system are putting you to sleep.

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Now think of the two types of endless boredom that different writers, seeking to console us for our mortality, have predicted would be our sorry fate if we were immortal. Each simply extends one of these dual themes. On the first scenario, the problem with immortality would be that over enough time, we humans would experience everything that a person possibly can experience. But we would no more be able to seek relief in death from the world’s now-wearisome noise than you, sitting in Professor X’s class, can seek relief in sleep from his continued tedious natterings. Call this the boredom of exquisite ennui. In the other scenario, the problem with immortality is that, almost immediately, a deep inertia would descend upon immortals, preventing them from experiencing anything at all. No matter how worthwhile or tempting any experience might be, immortals would feel no more urgency about seeking it out—knowing that they could always get around to it later—than you would feel about staying awake during Professor Y’s informative lecture, if you knew that you could always view it tomorrow online or read his book. Call this the boredom of profound lethargy.4 So: for those who believe that immortality would be cosmically boring, there are two scenarios. After enough time has passed, immortals would eventually feel that they have seen absolutely everything, and so suffer profound ennui. Or else right from the outset, they would do absolutely nothing and so suffer profound lethargy. Yet in fact, these seemingly opposite possibilities are simply two sides of the same coin. Think of a trip to the Eiffel Tower. At the most abstract level, with all the specific details bleached out, one trip is like any other. At the most concrete level, by contrast, with all the details factored in—the precise angle of the sun, the haze in the air, the acidity of the rain the previous night, and the way the Tower accordingly glints and glistens—no one trip is like any other. Now: The more abstractly we view the events of our life absent any of the differentiating details—the more this year’s visit to the Tower, for example, seems just like last year’s—the sooner we will

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conclude that we have seen everything and thus begin to experience the boredom of ennui. But equally, the more abstractly we view the events of our life absent any of the differentiating details—the more we expect that a visit to the Tower next year will be just like one we might take this year, so why rush?—the more likely we also are to do nothing, put things off, and experience the boredom of lethargy. The two boredoms—the twin boredoms that those who would console us for our mortality foresee in immortality— can thus coexist, because they emerge from the same worldview. It’s a view of the world shorn of specificities, understood by immortals in terms of simple abstract universals. And the issue is not simply that one trip to the Eiffel Tower becomes like any other, but that one trip no matter where becomes just like any other trip no matter where. Then one activity becomes like any other. And finally, at an abstract enough level, life itself comes to be a single undifferentiated and unending event, an unwavering gray haze, “the humming of a single sound in the ear,” as the poet Anthony Hecht puts it. Or a “gnawingly hypnotic rotary hum so total it might have been silence itself,” as David Foster Wallace says.5 At this abstract level, “all things” become, in the words of Lucretius, “the same forever.”6 Once they have come to look at the world this way, bored immortals will conclude that they have seen everything and find that they have the motivation to do nothing. Ennui and lethargy converge. In this way our experience of immortality would strangely mirror God’s experience of eternity, at least as imagined by medieval church fathers.7 Since God exists outside of time, all of time is spread out before Him in a single vista. He can see everything that has ever happened and that ever will happen. And yet, theologians have argued, a timeless God would actually do nothing—at least, nothing that resembles human action. After all, actions can take place only in time, and He abides outside of it.8 Doing nothing, while having seen everything there is to see: not much suspense or excitement in God’s experience of eternity. No more, perhaps, than would result from human immortality, in which we too, sooner or later, would do

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nothing while having seen everything there is to see. As long as God can’t do much better with eternity than we could with immortality, maybe—so the boredom consolationists might suggest—mortality isn’t so bad after all. But if immortal life would be boring, then wouldn’t it also offer the mechanisms that we mortals have always had available to snap out of boredom, or even turn it to good use? In our mortal existence as it is, the Sanskrit scholar Wendy Doniger notes, boredom introduces times of “temporary death” into life, allowing a person to withdraw —to take an extended time-out if necessary—and then return to the world refreshed.9 Periods of boredom and world-weariness came to be viewed as wholly bad things only in the twentieth century, Patricia Meyer Spacks argues in her 1995 book Boredom; in much of Western thought boredom was welcomed as a kind of “suspended attention” that allows for “semi-conscious brooding” and “makes a space for creativity.”10 Why, then, should immortal boredom not redeem itself in the same way: by instilling, even into immortal life, periods of rejuvenating “temporary” death? We could then enjoy the advantages of both immortality—living forever—and mortality— dying periodically to restock our creative juices—without the evils of each. But how, exactly, does boredom lead to creativity? How does it snap out of itself ? What are the mechanisms? A preferred kind of imagery has emerged to illustrate the answer to this question: boredom is like a prison cell. A “solitary prisoner for life,” Kierkegaard says, “is extremely resourceful; to him a spider can be a source of great amusement.” You’d think with just a spider to occupy him all day long the inmate would be bored forever, but he will eventually learn to provoke the insect, prod it, play with it, turn it over and over in the changing light, follow its every unpredictable move for hours on end every day, thus sooner or later replacing boredom with creativity and intrigue.11 Camus’ prisoner Merseault, too, “end[s] up not being bored at all.” In jail awaiting execution, Merseault observes

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I keep thinking about my room and, in my imagination, I’d set off from one corner and walk around making a mental note of everything I saw on the way . . . I’d remember every piece of furniture . . . every object and, on every object, every detail, every mark, crack or chip and then even the colour or the grain of the wood. . . . I realized that a man . . . could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He’d have enough memories not to get bored.12

For these inmates, Kierkegaard’s and Camus’, their cells—which seemingly cut them off from all that’s entertaining in the world, thereby threatening interminable boredom —in fact still necessarily contain some “objects,” as Merseault says. And objects, however humble—spiders, cracks in the wall, grains in the wood— can, at one point, begin drawing the mind down unplumbably deep wells of fascination. I am not saying that I necessarily buy any of this. I am saying only that the prisoner in his cell seems to be the default metaphor for those who want to suggest that boredom — emptiness, idleness, a vacuity of experience— can provide space for the mind to wander, noodle around, take its time, and become expansive, creative, and imaginative, so that ultimately boredom expunges itself. Arthur Koestler, too, sees the confined space of the prison cell as the crucible for boredom’s chrysalis into stimulation. In Dialogue with Death Koestler writes: “Memorable events are understood, in the murky bell-jar of the prison, [to be] things like . . . a spider in the window, a bug in the bed. These are breath-taking experiences; they employ and stimulate the free-running mechanism of thought for hours at a time. They are substitutes for visits to the movies, making love, reading the newspapers . . . ”13 The question, though, is whether these images of confined spatial boredom apply in any way to the boundless temporal boredom that immortality threatens. They don’t. Kierkegaard, Camus, and Koestler mean to suggest that even if our life’s confined circumstances reduce us to just one single solitary object, a spider or a table, that object can nevertheless always provoke any number of new mental events—an endless flow

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of “free-running” thoughts. And so mortal boredom can always be transcended. The problem with immortal boredom, though, would be just the opposite: the world would remain full of any number of objects, from Eiffel Towers to espressos. But all of them would eventually occasion the same single solitary event in our mind: a humming sound so all pervasive that, as David Foster Wallace says in describing the most excruciating boredom he can imagine, it’s no different than silence itself. A single sound, a sound that’s at the same time a nonsound; a single event that’s at the same time a nonevent. As the 342-year-old Elina Makropoulos puts it in Karel Cˇ apek’s play The Makropoulos Secret, “Singing is the same as keeping silent. Everything is the same. There’s no difference in anything.”14 And it’s hard to see how, if and when we ever get into such a state, we would then get out of it. Think of it this way: new “events,” as Koestler says, can always happen to the same persisting object, say a spider. We can run it through our fingers, set it in a quest up the wall, imagine it’s an alien creature invading our cot. And so we remain engaged. But new events cannot happen to the same continuing event, say a hum.15 If they do, it’s a different event. And so what if we have, as immortals, reached a point where we see all events as the same, as “intolerably identical?”16 Could we ever break out of it? I am in no position to say whether boredom would be our lot if we lived forever, and in the following chapters I consider some alternatives. The question here is whether, assuming boredom is our immortal fate—assuming that immortality comes to feel like a single event unfolding in limitless time—the mortal-boredom metaphor of a single object placed in limited space would capture it, giving us reason for hope. It wouldn’t. In his memoir Miracles of Life, J. G. Ballard writes of the teenage years he spent with his family in Lunghua, a World War II Japanese prison camp. Something different, though, happened at this prison: the boredom of bounded space somehow shifted into the boredom of boundless time. At one point, Ballard recalls, the prisoners ceased

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to find the various objects around them — chess sets, old magazines, discarded toys— even minimally stimulating. Why? Because all these objects had begun to furnish exactly the same undifferentiated experience or event— or more exactly the same nonevent or nonexperience. The camp had become an “eventless world,” Ballard writes, of irreversible, “crushing boredom.17 And so too would the immortal boredom that death consolationists foresee, should it be our fate, come with no redeeming features, no goad to creativity. No way out. Better, then, that we remain mortal than experience that kind of fate. Any hopeful scenario for immortal boredom, based on the ways in which mortal boredom can be self-correcting, must confront the fact that events do not persist in time the way objects do. Yes, even a single object in a confined space—think of a child in her bedroom with just a cardboard box to play with—may be able to provoke any number of events over time, and so allow for an escape from boredom. But once the same single event in endless time—the same continuing undifferentiated hum —is provoked by any number of objects, interminable boredom sets in. Immortal boredom would be far worse than the mortal kind. Once it took hold, it would be inescapable. And in this way, the “boredom” consolation for mortality does have validity.

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ten

STILL LIFE

A human life, the philosopher Timothy Chappell writes, “is a rope of overlapping threads.” At any given time, some threads— some episodes in our life—are coming to an end. Others are in the middle of their duration. And still others are just beginning. As long as this “overlapping” persists, then even if the threads at one end are entirely different from those at the other, it’s the same life all the way through. Just as it would be the same rope.1 Or consider the ancient imagery comparing a human life to “the ship of Theseus.” Suppose that over time, each and every one of a ship’s planks gets replaced. As long as all of them aren’t replaced at once —as long as the replacement is staggered, with some planks remaining on at any given time while adjacent ones change—it’s the same ship at the end as at the beginning. Likewise with a human life. As long as there’s never a moment when each and every one of a person’s beliefs, hopes, thoughts, commitments, and memories are all replaced at a stroke—a catastrophic event that we would equate with total amnesia or utter personality breakdown—it will still be the same life, led by the same self, at the end as at the beginning. No matter how much complete turnover in beliefs, hopes, thoughts, commitments, and memories there is in the interim. Is this true? It’s a critical question when we think about the allure of immortality. Bernard Williams says that an immortal life would eventually take one of two forms. It would be either interminably boring or else, in the final analysis, no different from a mortal one. Suppose, on the one hand, that as immortals all our memories, desires, habits, values, feelings, projects, attachments, and aspirations stayed with us endlessly over time, never trading themselves in for new ones.

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We would, as millennia passed, ultimately reach a stage at which we’d have seen everything we cared to see and done all we cared to do. Our life would settle into an excruciating, insufferable, unending combination of ennui and lethargy. Catatonic boredom would be our fate. On the other hand, Williams says, we could avoid such immortal boredom if— over time—we regularly lost our tired old memories, attachments, thoughts, aspirations, appetites, beliefs, and desires, replacing them with new ones. New things, things that we would find engaging, would continue to happen to us. We’d elude terminal boredom. But nor then would we really be immortal. After all, if we habitually shed all memory of our past experiences, perceptions, and thoughts—and if we ceased to harbor any interest at all in the aspirations, desires, and attachments that we used to have—then our old life would in effect have ended to make way for a new one. And that, of course, is what defines mortality, not immortality. We would no longer, Williams says, recognize ourselves in the new person we would eventually become. And so “he” might as well actually be a new person. Since we will have disappeared anyway, we might as well actually die. Bone-crushing boredom — or else a kind of perpetual self-alienation, a kind of recurrent dying-to-oneself. That’s the choice that Williams believes immortality offers us. Timothy Chappell nicely sums up the dilemma. If our life remains our own it “goes around in circles.” And “if it doesn’t go round in circles it ceases to be [our own].”2 Yet as the images of threads in a rope or planks in a boat suggest, mortal lives, even within themselves, already involve the continual replacement of the old with the new. Over time, we relinquish the memories of high-school shenanigans, romantic crushes, sporting pursuits, desire for Goth clothing, and ruminations inspired by the metaphysics classes of our youth, and eventually replace them with the attachment to our significant other, pursuit of pinochle, desire

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for argyle cardigans, and reveries inspired by the Maeve Binchy novels of our later years. Earlier versions of ourselves are always fading away, to be replaced by newer ones. In a normal mortal life, these turnovers in our memories, beliefs, attachments, pursuits, aspirations, and desires transpire in a staggered way, not all at once. Because there is no radical break, never a time when novelty in some areas of life isn’t accompanied by persistence in others, we consider our early self and our later self to be the same one— even if the memories, desires, habits, beliefs, attachments, and aspirations we harbor toward the end of our life bear absolutely no resemblance to those we had when we were just starting out. We wouldn’t ever think that we have died several times while still alive. Why, then, shouldn’t we view an immortal life— one that escaped boredom by jettisoning old memories, feelings, plans, values, and desires in a staggered way over time and replacing them with wholly new ones—in the same light? Why shouldn’t an immortal self, no matter how wholly different it becomes over time, still be deemed one and the same continuing self as long as its changes don’t all take place at the same abrupt moment? Even as mortals we do “not have a single, consistent life,” Chateaubriand observes; we have “several . . . there is always a time when we possessed nothing of what we now possess, and a time when we [will] have nothing of what we once had.”3 Perhaps not all of us follow this pattern, but the point is that we would still consider a person who did completely change his memories, feelings, plans, desires, attachments, and thoughts over his life to be the same self, as long as the changes were staggered. Why, then, should Williams think that an immortal version of this process would have to entail the recurrent death of the self ? True, we consider a rope that completely changes its fibers over its length to still remain the same rope, as long as the changes are staggered. Likewise with a ship that completely changes its planks over its life. But think about fibers and planks. There’s a vegetational, a still life, imagery going on here. Does it really capture a human self, a human life?

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To address this question I’m going to explore a version of an idea that Derek Parfit floats. It’s reasonable to think that I remain the same self today as I was yesterday— or the same “person,” for Parfit—if at least half of the memories, desires, intentions, experiences, perceptions, plans, feelings, and beliefs that crossed my conscious mind yesterday also do so today.4 As long as half continue on from one day to the next, half can change. Today, for example, I completed the memo I was working on yesterday, continued an e-mail exchange with my daughter that began yesterday, and recalled a conversation about garbage collection I had with my neighbor yesterday—but I also read a Times article by Paul Krugman, heard a joke about former Toronto mayor Rob Ford on The Daily Show, and had a Greek salad for lunch: none of which occurred yesterday. As long as I keep on mutating in this staggered way day by day, then I can remain the same self I was twenty years ago, even if all my daily memories, desires, beliefs, perceptions, and intentions then were utterly different. And if this works for me as a mortal self, why wouldn’t it if I were immortal? Why couldn’t I also remain the same self as I was 100,000 years previously, even if all my memories, desires, feelings, perceptions, and commitments then were wholly different—as long as, from any one day to the next in the interim, at least half of them continued to remain the same? But why from one day to the next? Why not say that as long as half of our memories, commitments, feelings, aspirations, and desires continue from one five-second period to the next, then even if half change we will still remain the same person? Presumably because, once we get to small enough units of time, there really is only one memory, desire, perception, feeling, or thought present during any given (say, five-second) period. In any given five-second span I can focus only on the memo I am working on, or on the e-mail to my daughter, or on The Daily Show joke, or on Krugman’s Times article, or on the Greek salad, or on the remembered neighborly conversation about garbage pickup. The next five seconds will contain either the same or a completely different mental

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event. When units of time are very brief, there simply aren’t enough distinct memories, desires, feelings, perceptions, or thoughts in each to speak of “half ” continuing on to the next. Let’s go then from very short to very long periods of time. Why not say that as long as half of our memories, desires, perceptions, feelings, aspirations, and thoughts continue from one year to the next, half can change and we will still remain the same self ? I assume it’s for this reason: of all the distinct memories, desires, intentions, perceptions, sensations, and thoughts that enter our mind in any given year, far less than half will ever enter our mind in the next year. Next year—given the pace of life—I won’t be recalling the same exchanges with the neighbor, continuing the same e-mail discussion with my daughter, or (God willing) working on the same memos I was this year, let alone reading the same Times articles or hearing the same topical Daily Show jokes—although I almost certainly will have many of this year’s lunches. So if seconds are too short, and years are too long, then a day suggests itself as the right unit—a unit over which at least half of my memories, desires, intentions, perceptions, and thoughts can reasonably be expected to continue from one to the next, and, if they do, it would be reasonable to consider me the same continuing self. And yet there’s a problem with this day-to-day approach. Suppose, for the sake of simplicity, that only six feelings, experiences, memories, thoughts, and the like cross a person’s mind on any given day. And suppose that on Monday, mine were the following: I had fond thoughts of my wife. I walked the dog. I experienced the feeling of anxiety about nothing in particular that I do more days than not. I felt satisfaction, given my concerns about climate change, that the world’s governments seemed to be inching toward some kind of concord. I worked on my book about mortality. I enjoyed the many levels of irony in a story a colleague told me. On Tuesday, I continued to have loving thoughts about my wife. I again walked the dog. And I persisted in experiencing the usual vague anxiousness that I did on Monday. But for whatever reason,

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I permanently abandoned the concerns about climate change I held on Monday and for decades previously, replacing them with an avid yearning to see Ted Cruz elected president. I irrevocably gave up working on mortality, superseding that activity with a new career writing children’s stories. And I forever lost my sense of irony, supplanting it with a dead earnestness. Wednesday then rolls around. I continue to support Ted Cruz, write children’s stories, and maintain a deadly earnestness as I began to do for the first time on Tuesday. But I now also permanently cease doing everything I carried over to Tuesday from Monday. I quit having loving thoughts about my wife, replacing them with a desire to become a Benedictine monk. I resolve never again to walk the dog and, in lieu, take up daily naps. And I forever lose my free-floating anxiety and become instead reliably cheerful. Over the period from Monday to Wednesday, half of my memories, desires, feelings, perceptions, and thoughts continued on from one day to the next in staggered fashion. But most of us would reject the claim that I am any more the same self, or am leading the same life, on Wednesday as I was on Monday. If everything permanently changes in the space essentially of one day, Tuesday, doesn’t that amount to a total rupture of the sort we associate with blanket amnesia or other kinds of dramatic personality breakdown? All of which suggests that there’s something fundamentally misconceived about the entire enterprise of analogizing a person’s memories, desires, thoughts, hopes, commitments, aspirations, attachments, and perceptions to a rope’s fibers or a ship’s planks. We might think that as long as those memories, thoughts, hopes, and perceptions change in staggered fashion—half, say, remaining the same while half change during any given period of time—then even if all of them eventually completely turned over to forestall boredom we’d remain the same self. But in practical terms there’s no unit of time—seconds, days, years— over which this would work. Either there aren’t enough memories, desires, intentions, perceptions, and so forth to speak of “half ” of them in the first place, as when the unit is small, like

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seconds. Or there are enough but far less than half of them would survive from one unit to the next, as when that unit is large, like years. Or else, as with days, there are enough memories, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings and half of them might reasonably be expected to survive from one to the next—but then total turnover could occur within a space of time, a single day, far too brief to be called “staggered.” So let’s set aside, for the moment, the question of whether any particular adjacent periods in our life—be they seconds, days, or years—share at least half of their memories, desires, beliefs, feelings, experiences, and plans. Let’s consider, instead, a different question: whether any particular memories, desires, beliefs, feelings, experiences, and plans repeatedly occur in at least half of the periods—be they days, months, or years— over most of our life. What keeps me the same person over time might simply be that, in half or more of my days or months or years, from childhood to old age, the same small number of memories, thoughts, feelings, attachments, and desires recurrently cross my consciousness: regardless of whether most of the rest fail to make it even from one day, let alone month or year, to the next. Think of Molly’s early morning reflections as she lies in bed next to Bloom in Ulysses. Far more than half of the thoughts, feelings, memories, plans, and sensations that wash across her mind probably won’t survive even till the following dawn: a semiconscious thought of people getting up in China as her alarm rings; her plans to buy flowers at Lambes. But a select few number among those she undoubtedly does have on most of the days of her life—and certainly countless times every single year: memories of the men who were interested in her in the past, or her frustrated desires for a career as a singer. Google the phrase “there isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think of [X],” and see what you get. It is these that make her—and us—a continuing self. Or what about Claude Sylvanshine, the hapless IRS official from David Foster Wallace’s Pale King? Sitting on a Chicago–Peoria flight,

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Sylvanshine contemplates the seat number on his armrest, a mental event he never had before nor ever will again, even within that day. Most of the thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and intentions that cross his mind during the trip fall into that category. But a certain few are ones he has every year, many, many times, and probably most days, so that they become the stitches that knit his psychological life together. Like the feeling of impending terror that Claude has come to imagine in the form of a predatory bird. These kinds of relatively few but persistent memories, thoughts, hopes, and feelings are what make us the same self over the course of our life. Our self gradually emerges as they do in our early years. And it then gradually disappears with them during the mental ravages of old age. The idea that Parfit floats is a short-term quantitative one. We examine all the separate memories, desires, thoughts, plans, perceptions, and feelings that cross our mind today, and all the ones that did yesterday, and if half are similar then we remain the same self on this day as we were on the previous one. And we will continue to remain the same self for as long as this criterion is met. But what if, in reality, far more than half—Molly’s drowsy image of people getting up in China, Sylvanshine’s momentary glimpse of the number on his armrest— don’t even last beyond the day? More important, what about the far less than half—Molly’s desire to sing, or Sylvanshine’s thoughts of the terrifying bird of prey—that cross our mind during far more than half of our days for decades? And what about those few that cross our mind if not on most days then at least once a month, like Bernstein’s memory, in Citizen Kane, of the girl he had seen on the ferry years before (“I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl”). Shouldn’t the long-term, qualitative importance of those fewer but far more persistent memories, thoughts, feelings, sensations, and intentions not ultimately be determinant as to whether our self persists over time—and when it ends? But if they are, then we run smack into Bernard Williams’s dilemma.

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For it’s precisely such memories, plans, feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and desires—the comparatively small number that enter our mind consistently, and perhaps more days than not, year in and year out—that would eventually have to be abandoned if we are to avoid immortal boredom. After all, if anything becomes boring over endless time, it will be those memories, aspirations, attachments, experiences, and emotions that become most familiar and repetitious. If anything, it will be his thinking about the bird of prey every single day for endless thousands of years that will sooner or later render Sylvanshine exquisitely tired of himself, just as dwelling ad nauseum on her frustrated desire to be a singer will for Molly. But then, if that same recurrent drumbeat of a particular few memories, beliefs, thoughts, plans, and desires are the ones that define the self—and if they are also what must be shaken off in order to avoid immortal boredom —the self they defined will go with them. Would Sylvanshine be Sylvanshine without the bird of prey? Or Molly be Molly without her desire to sing? Parts of their selves would have disappeared. So it looks as if it might be Williams’s immortal choice—boredom or eventual death in life—after all. Fibers overlapping in a rope. Or planks getting replaced in a staggered fashion on a ship. Let’s look more closely at these fiber and plank metaphors—metaphors for the memories, desires, perceptions, sensations, and other mental contents that make up our life. A rope, as it extends in space, can indeed be made up of separate fibers that begin and end in staggered fashion. Over space, it can remain the same rope at the beginning as at the end, even if no fibers remain the same throughout. But what about over time? Do new fibers get added to a rope in staggered fashion as old ones fray and crumble? No. Maybe a few tufts get lost here or there. But the rope’s main fibers last as long as the rope does—in time, if not in space. And once those fibers are gone, so is the rope. It’s the same rope at the beginning as at the end of its existence only if some fibers—in fact most—remain the same throughout.

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Likewise with the planks in a ship. Certainly, they might be staggered in space. Think of the boards on a ship’s deck. They don’t all begin and end at the same line any more than the boards do in your living-room floor. Over its length, it remains the same ship even if none of the planks at the stern are the same as the ones at the bow. But can a ship change all its planks in staggered fashion over time, as the ship of Theseus metaphor requires, while remaining the same vessel? No. Sure, some—maybe most—pieces of wood in the decks or cabins or masts might get replaced, possibly on several occasions, over time. But a ship’s broad structural beams? Its oaken hull strut? Those remain the same for the life of the ship. The one part of a ship that never gets replaced is its structural keel; if it breaks, the ship dies. A new keel means a new ship. It lasts for as long as the ship does, and in fact defines how long the ship lasts.5 Ropes and ships, it turns out, furnish inapt metaphors if what they’re meant to show is that a self can change all of its memories, desires, beliefs, anxieties, plans, and feelings over time and still remain the same as long as those changes are staggered. For in fact at least some components of a rope or a ship—most of its fibers and certain of its planks—must persist in time, even if not in space, for as long as the rope or ship itself does. And once they are gone, so is the rope or ship. If anything, these metaphors reinforce the idea that it is our most persistent, recurrent memories, feelings, thoughts, experiences, and desires that define the self. And once we completely replace them even if in a staggered fashion—as immortals would ultimately have to do to avoid interminable boredom —then the self they constituted would have died. So let’s consider a truly temporal metaphor that purports to capture the idea that a human being can shed all her memories, desires, beliefs, plans, and attachments, replacing them with new ones—and yet remain the same self—as long as the shedding and replacing has been staggered over time. Think about the husbands and wives in the Van Tricasse family, from Jules Verne’s novella Dr. Ox’s Experiment. Beginning in the

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year 1340, each time one spouse dies the surviving partner immediately marries someone much younger. On any given day over the subsequent centuries, at least one of the two spouses is the same as on the day before, even though neither of the partners in 1440, let alone 1840, is the same as he or she was in 1340. There is always continuity, never any total break. The Van Tricasses believed that this arrangement constituted the same marriage extending over hundreds of years, not simply recurrent generations of new people replacing old ones. This is the acid test. If you agree with the Van Tricasses, then you’d agree that a person can remain the same self over time, even if all her memories, desires, feelings, perceptions, and intentions are totally different, as long as the changes have been staggered. But most of us, I think, would not regard this as the same marriage over time. It’s a series of new ones. Wholly new people, even if they’re “staggered,” make it a new one. Likewise, wholly new memories, desires, intentions, plans, and beliefs, even if they’re staggered, make a new person. To truly avoid immortal boredom, it would seem, we must die— one way or another. If the self is like a rope, then it’s like a rope in time, not in space. Some memories, hopes, plans, imaginings, feelings, and desires must remain the same over the self ’s entire temporal life if it’s to persist as the same self—just as some fibers in a rope must remain the same over its entire temporal life, even if not over its entire spatial length, if it’s to persist as the same rope. But that suggests that an immortal life, if it is to elude the sameness of memory, plans, hopes, ambitions, feelings, experiences, and desires that over millennia would lead to excruciating boredom, would eventually have to involve its own form of death: an utter alienation from and desertion of previous selves, and the memories, plans, desires, and attachments—all the mental contents—that defined them. Ultimately immortality would be no better than mortality. Bernard Williams’s consolation has validity.6

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A WISTFUL BACKWARD GLANCE

Nostalgia, as Simone Signoret remarked in her 1976 autobiography, isn’t what it used to be. Each new generation yearns for the high water mark of the previous one. Woody Allen played with this theme in Midnight in Paris. A contemporary American writer longs for the Jazz Age literary scene, to which he then finds himself magically transported, only to fall in love with a flapper nostalgic for the 1890s Belle Epoque, to which they then miraculously travel, only to then encounter Degas, Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec, all nostalgic for a still earlier age, and so on. Nostalgia, in this sense, never is— or ever could be—what it used to be. But there’s another sense in which nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. As we in the early twenty-first century think of it, nostalgia is a temporal notion. It means, colloquially, a longing for a lost time, a time we have left behind. But it used to be—in fact it originated as—a spatial notion, a longing for a lost place, a home we have left behind. When the word “nostalgia” was minted in the eighteenth century, the historian Thomas Dodman reports, it “differed from subsequent forms of ‘nostalgia’ by its spatial as opposed to temporal construction.”1 As late as 1949, the New York Times was flatly asserting that “nostalgia means ‘homesickness’—nothing more, nothing less. The word [comes] from the Greek nostos, ‘a return home,’ plus algia, ‘pain.’ ”2 This point needs a bit of adjustment. Even when it carried spatial connotations—an aching for a lost home—nostalgia necessarily conveyed as well a temporal meaning. After all, to move away from home logically entails transit not just in space but in time. Emigrés pining for the warm embrace of the youth they spent in the old country are missing something that is now distant not just in miles but in years. The author of a 1935 Washington Post article,

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Theodore Hall, captured this mixed spatial-temporal yearning when he spoke of his “homesickness for the old days in America.”3 Hall was referring to his generation of farm boys who had flooded America’s teeming cities in the early years of the twentieth century, only to find themselves tearily nostalgic decades later for what they had left behind—left behind both in space and in time. So spatial nostalgia almost always has a temporal dimension. According to the philosopher Hans Jonas, an immortal life would instill in those living it a lengthening, deepening, and finally intolerable—and of course interminable—nostalgia: but it would be a nostalgia of a purely temporal sort, a longing for an eternally receding past. It’s a scenario for immortality that splits the difference between those discussed in the previous two chapters: boredom, on the one hand, and recurrent self-alienation on the other. The boredom scenario would arise if, in an immortal existence, both our self and our lives ceased to change. Suppose that the memories, commitments, values, desires, thoughts, feelings, and anxieties that make up our original self all stayed with us as we moved forward endlessly in time. And imagine that the events of our lives, continually flowing through our fingers backward in time, all began to repeat themselves as the millennia passed. At one point we would have seen it all, done all we cared to do, and nothing new would ever seem to happen. The self-alienation scenario, equally unpalatable, would emerge from the opposite situation. Suppose that our immortal selves did keep shedding our old memories, desires, commitments, beliefs, habits, and aspirations, replacing them with new ones. And suppose, too, that our endless lives did continue to throw novel and unprecedented events at us. True, we wouldn’t be bored. We’d continue to experience and do new things. But then we’d also undergo a recurrent alienation from our past selves and lives. Our old selves and lives would in effect keep ending to make way for new ones. And that, of course, is what defines mortality, not immortality.

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The third immortality scenario, the one that transfixes Hans Jonas, combines aspects of these other two. It would descend on immortals whose memories, values, commitments, passions, desires, and habits did remain the same over the ages (so no self-alienation), but whose lives nevertheless still regularly presented them with new events and unprecedented challenges (so no boredom). Unfortunately, such an existence would induce a crushing nostalgia as time passed. Why? Even for us mortals, Jonas says, the past “grows in us all the time, with its load of knowledge and opinion and emotions and choices and acquired aptitudes and habits and, of course, things upon things remembered.” Given the growing weight of the past within us— our memories, feelings, aptitudes and habits—suppose, then, that we were immortal, but faced a future of unending upheaval and change. And why wouldn’t we, Jonas asks, since generations of “new comers [would] keep arriving” over the ages with their never-beforeseen ideas, talents, desires, and tastes. Sooner or later wouldn’t we find ourselves “stranded,” as Jonas says, “in a world we no longer [understood] even as spectators, walking anachronisms who have outlived themselves?”4 Wouldn’t we pine for the ever-more-distant past, which long ago captured our memories, formed our desires, shaped our habits, and forged our emotional attachments, fruitlessly yearning for it to return? Jonas seals his case by calling himself as a witness. While he “can still be moved” when he remembers the culture of his youth in Weimar Rhineland, a culture that awakened his passions and tastes, Jonas—now in his eighties— declares that the art of our own time is alien to me, I don’t understand its language, and in that respect I feel already a stranger in the world. The prospect of unendingly becoming one ever more and in every respect would be frightening, and the certainty that prevents it is reassuring.5

Such would be the fate of any immortal, if her memory, feelings, habits, passions and beliefs retained ever-more white-knuckled attachments to an ever-receding past, while she confronted an unendingly churning and novel future.

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Or would it? After all, profound nostalgia— of the mixed spatialtemporal sort—has marked innumerable worthwhile and intensely rich mortal lives. Think of the exiled Nabokov’s lifelong yearnings for Vyra, his family’s estate outside Saint Petersburg. Or Samad Iqbal’s mournful backward glances at Bangladesh in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. Or the memoirist Suketu Mehta, finding himself “in one city” while “dreaming of the other . . . an exile; [a] citizen of the country of longing.”6 All leave their familial and familiar childhood homes for strange new places—thus lending their yearning its fundamentally spatial character—where they then spend the coming years, compounding that spatial longing with a temporal dimension. Such nostalgiadrenched mortal lives, though, can be profoundly livable and fulfilling. They can be endurable and enriching precisely because of that nostalgia, that evocative longing and exquisite yearning, which can mature into great humanity, passion, and art. Why, then, should Jonas think that nostalgia would render immortal life intolerable, and hence worse than the alternative? But what if the nostalgia that would grind away at us in immortal life differs from the bittersweet, resonant type that infuses the humanly warm mortal lives of a Nabokov or a Mehta? What if it’s the spatial dimension of their longings, a yearning for a former place— not for a former time—that lends mortal nostalgia whatever deeply redeeming humanity it possesses? If so, then can the purely temporal nostalgia, the nostalgia for an ever-receding past that Jonas envisions for immortals, ever nurture the same redemptive richness? Think of the spatial element of nostalgia. Think of the émigré’s pining for home. And think of his feeling like a stranger, even an intruder, in his new land: like a “newcomer, an outsider, the one who did not belong,” as the uprooted Malinalli reflects in Laura Esquivel’s Malinche.7 While the émigré with spatial nostalgia feels like a newcomer, courting resentment from those long-timers who believe that he has invaded their world, the immortal with purely temporal nostalgia undergoes a very different experience. He feels

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himself to be the long-timer, and it is his world that is being invaded by (as Jonas says) “newcomers who keep arriving”: youngsters with their new music, their new art, their new technology; their new social codes and cues; their new ruthlessness and recklessness. So yes, a person with purely temporal nostalgia has traveled far from the olden days for which he yearns, just like the person with spatial nostalgia has traveled far from the old country for which he pines. But instead of feeling like an arriviste in the new era, the temporal nostalgic is the one who feels besieged by new arrivals. He feels himself not so much an intruder as intruded upon. What this means is that while those who are spatially nostalgic might feel unsettled, those who are temporally nostalgic risk becoming unhinged. Certainly it can be disorienting to move to a new land, as the spatial nostalgic has done. But at least he is the one who has done the moving; the spatial world itself remains stationary. Not only that but the old country and the new remain at a fixed, bridgeable distance from each other. This isn’t the case, though, for those who are temporally nostalgic. It’s not they who have moved to a new temporal world. Instead, a “new world is [always] coming quickly” toward them, “a harsh, cruel world” of new ideas and mores and expectations, as Madame observes in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.8 Temporal nostalgics are the ones who are stuck while the world—the world of time, not space—is in dizzying, hurtling, unending motion, driving the old and the new ever further and further away from each other as (assuming immortality) the centuries endlessly mount. Not just disorienting, but dismembering: pulling the self apart. But there’s something more. In Kiran Desai’s Inheritance of Loss, Biju, a young man marooned in fast-food jobs around New York City, longs for his west Bengali village. Yet while the spatially nostalgic Biju wishes that he himself as an individual could cross the ocean back to the Bengal, he doesn’t want the entire city of New York to move back with him, rolling across the sea to India. Now, though, think of the temporally nostalgic Hans Jonas. His situation is the reverse. What he doesn’t want is to go back in time to

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the 1920s himself, as an individual. He doesn’t aspire to be younger, to be the child he once was. What he would want is for the current time, itself, to go backward: that the whole present age, its culture and politics, its religion and science, all roll back to the era he loved most, the time of his youth. The only thing that would satisfy his yearning, were it possible, is that styles of music, cinema, dance, clothing, architecture, visual art, literature, and everything else unwind in time from the 1980s and ’90s, in which he spent his later years, to those of the Weimar era. What Jonas would want is a return to a public past time, a past that everyone shared, a past with a different style, feel, sensibility, intelligence, and understanding than the present. A spatially imbued nostalgia, by contrast, precludes the need for any such impossibly gargantuan wish. True, a desire to return to the place of our youth may well dovetail with a desire to return to a personal past time, the time one enjoyed—the sounds, the fragrances, the warm embraces—that one experienced there as a child: what Hilton Als, mixing the spatial and the temporal, calls “the old country of childhood.”9 And yes, when spatial nostalgia drives temporal nostalgia along this personal path—when the “longing for home,” as Svetlana Boym puts it, gets “shrunk to the longing for one’s own childhood”10—then that kind of temporal nostalgia can be rich and resonant, redolent with warm glows and wistful glistenings. But without spatial longing lending it a personal coloring, temporal nostalgia becomes cold and bereft. When the author Simon Reynolds observes that to “exist in Time is to suffer through an endless exile, a successive severing from those precious few moments of feeling at home in the world,” he is describing something totally immiserating, because it’s a yearning that can never be requited.11 You can’t go back in time as you can in space. And, unlike the distance back in space, the distance back in time grows greater moment by moment. Churchill’s funeral took place at St. Paul’s Cathedral on January 30, 1965. The journalist Bernard Levin, in his history of Britain in the 1960s, describes one of the more memorable photographs taken that

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day. It featured the eighty-two-year-old former Labour prime minister Clement Attlee—who had defeated Churchill in 1945 only to be defeated in turn by Churchill in 1951—waiting to be picked up following the ceremony. Attlee, Levin writes, “was accommodated on the steps of the cathedral with a simple wooden chair, and sat there, bowed over his stick, remembering.”12 If immortal life takes the path that Jonas predicts, that image captures those who will have to live it. While the spatially nostalgic émigré is the one who moves to a new world, and in principle can always move back to the old one, the temporally nostalgic immortal keeps getting besieged by new worlds moving at him and pines, in vain, to bring back the old one. And so immortal nostalgia would be far worse than the mortal kind. Hans Jonas’s “nostalgia” consolation for mortality has validity.

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MAKING THE SUN RUN

The philosopher Martha Nussbaum finds immortality appealing. “As I imagine successive careers for myself (as a cantor, an actress, a psychoanalyst, a novelist)” over endless time, Nussbaum writes, there’d be sufficient change to stave off boredom. But not so much change that she’d entirely cease to be Martha Nussbaum: that she herself would disappear. “I have no difficulty imagining that I would be recognizably myself in all” these new adventures, Nussbaum writes, since “all these pursuits [would be] done in a Martha-ish way.”1 I have to wonder, though. If her Martha-ishness means anything, from my sense of Prof. Nussbaum, it’s that she has a distinctive personality rooted in (among other things) a love of the ancient world, of opera, and of the magnificent ruin that is the aging human body, as well as deep allegiances to feminism and social justice. In other words, her Martha-ishness is planted in a very particular set of times, both present and past. Meanwhile the successive careers that the world offered her would sooner or later mutate beyond recognition. Cantor, psychoanalyst, actress, and novelist are, as human endeavors, already under siege, at least in their traditional forms, thanks to innovations in religious observance, breakthroughs in pharmaceuticals, developments in computer animation, and upheavals in internet self-publishing. Those pursuits seem unlikely to persist over decades, let alone centuries or millennia, in any form that Nussbaum or the rest of us can presently foresee or would even recognize. So I wonder. Wouldn’t the kind of groundedness in the past, the kind of Martha-ishness necessary to keep Nussbaum the same person over time on the one hand, and the kind of changes the world would throw at her so that she could evade boredom on the other hand, not conspire to make her feel increasingly, interminably nos-

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talgic as centuries and millennia passed? Like Hans Jonas’s stranger in an ever stranger land? Or look at it this way: sure, from any one decade to the next, continuity in memory, feelings, beliefs, habits, characteristics, aspirations and desires—my Andrew-ishness, if I can borrow from Nussbaum — might make for a persisting self, thus warding off self-alienation. But as those decades ceaselessly pile up, and one decade of the same memories, feelings, beliefs, habits, characteristics, aspirations, and desires gets added on top of the previous ones ad infinitum, that continuity would become a recipe for paralytic boredom. And sure, from any one decade to the next, a change in career might ward off boredom. But as those decades endlessly pile up, and one change compounds the previous one, which compounded the previous one, and so forth, such changes would, in toto, become a road map to the death of previous selves, to profound self-alienation. Boredom, self-alienation, and nostalgia each have their mortal equivalents. And some of those mortal versions can be livable, perhaps tolerable, possibly even valuable, or at least preferable to death. We should be under no illusions, though—as I have tried to suggest—that their immortal variants would be so benign. But something in me, perhaps in you too, rebels at these dire prognoses. Is there no “play in the joints” here, no immortal path that can somehow slip betwixt and between these grim scenarios? In pursuing this question, we will necessarily encounter some of the more fantastic and speculative projections for immortality that mortal minds have generated.

They Can’t Take That Away from You—But on the Other Hand, You Can’t Take It with You Think of a stereotypical view—and for simplicity’s sake, I take as an example a stereotypical adolescent male heterosexual view although it can easily be adapted for any set of preferences— of what

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a blissful immortality might look like. You’re in love with Barbara Ann. But you’re also intrigued by Betty Lou, Peggy Sue, Mary Lou, and countless others. If you were immortal, you could regularly delight in Barbara Ann’s company over the course of thousands of millennia, while enjoying short affairs with Betty, Peggy, Mary, and the unending others who catch your eye. You wouldn’t get nostalgic about Barbara Ann because you’d always be able to spend time with her—she’s not going anywhere. But you wouldn’t get bored either, because there are so many alternatives. Nor would you become self-alienated, an aimless drifter: your innumerable encounters with Barbara Ann would maintain a heft, a continuity, a mooring of deep intimacy in your romantic life throughout all the exciting changes it undergoes—forever. You can substitute men, careers, hobbies, food, drink, mystical experiences, voyages to different galaxies, or anything else you like for Barbara Ann and company. Immortality seems just fine. But there’s another way of looking at it. Unless you are Mick Jagger, you will know how many lovers you have had. But unless you are Miles Monroe, Woody Allen’s character from the movie Sleeper—“Sex and death: two things that come once in a lifetime”—you will not know how many times you’ve made love. You will know how many lovers you’ve had because in counting them, you—as we all do when we tote up different kinds of notches on our belt—treat your partners as objects to be accumulated. You won’t know how many times you’ve made love, though, because you treat those moments not as objects but as the experiences they are, enjoying them as they happen and then letting them slip through your fingers back into the past. That’s not set in stone. Fiction and real life furnish instances of people who add up and record in their diaries as if they were objects to be stockpiled, with commentary on each episode, their individual sexual experiences.2 The good things in life, many of them, lend themselves to being treated either as objects or as experiences; within bounds the choice is yours.

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But here’s the rub: it would seem as if immortality looks more appealing to the extent that we think of its contents as objects, not experiences. If you are bored with an object (Mary Lou, Peggy Sue, Betty Lou), you can always give it up or slip away from it. If you are feeling nostalgic for an object (Barbara Ann) you can always go and visit it, or simply keep it perpetually with you. And no need to worry about self-alienation. You can always seek out new objects (Mary, Peggy, Betty) while keeping the old—Barbara Ann, that continuing touchstone in your life— close at hand. If we imagine an immortal paradise, this is likely be our implicit model, and whatever we view as an object will qualify. But experiences? Here are three lessons, drawn from the master, Proust, about experiences. First, you can’t take them with you the way you can an object. As soon as they happen they begin falling back in time as you forge ahead. Maybe you can always go and revisit Barbara Ann the person. But you can’t revive Barbara Ann the experience. You can’t keep that with you to revel in at will. Over time, she will have changed, as will you. Nostalgia seems foreordained.3 Second, while you can’t take an experience with you, in another sense no one can take an experience away from you. Those moments you had with Mary Lou or Peggy Sue or Betty Lou? Once having happened they can’t unhappen. You can’t cleanse your own personal past of an experience that no longer pleases you, in the way that you can clear your own personal space of an object that no longer delights you. Nor can you speed through time away from an experience as soon as it becomes tiresome, in the way that you can speed through space away from an object as soon as it becomes irksome. Your encounter with any new Mary, or Peggy, or Betty will inevitably unfold under a shadow: a shadow cast by the doldrums in which all the previous ones—no matter how exciting they were to begin with—ultimately ended. Boredom, sooner or later, seems foreordained.4 And finally, not being tangible in the way that objects are, experiences blur into each other. Even though you’ve had innumerable passionate embraces with Barbara Ann, that central thread in your

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life who keeps you the same person, only a handful will ever remain in your mind as significant. Perhaps they will meld into just one composite, blurred, and fragmentary memory. For that reason, accumulating experiences will always seem more pointless than accumulating objects. All the moments you spent with Barbara Ann will begin collapsing into themselves. Over a long enough time, they will scarcely have the heft to provide the backbone for an ongoing sense of self. Over a long enough time, self-alienation always threatens.5 Certainly, if immortality meant moving through endless space instead of through endless time, then our capacities to retain, scrap, or accumulate objects at will might legitimately be the dominant template in our psychology. But immortality doesn’t mean moving in endless space with respect to objects. It means moving in endless time with respect to experiences. Treating irretrievable experiences as if we could retain them like objects, or irreversible experiences as if we could scrap them like objects, or blurry experiences as if we could accumulate them like objects, will be less and less possible as time passes. And unfortunately their irretrievability guarantees nostalgia. Their irreversibility augurs boredom. Their blurriness portends self-alienation. In the end the “Barbara Ann” scenario fails to bar nostalgia, boredom, and self-alienation from awaiting us as different versions of our immortal fate. Robert Ettinger, the mind behind the cryonics movement, seems to me to have bought into the Barbara Ann scenario. Cryonics technology enables us to have our head or entire body frozen just before or after death, on the assumption that in the centuries ahead, when medical science is able to cure the disease to which we succumbed, someone will thaw us out and we will resume living. Perhaps we will even live forever, if the thawing takes place at a time when humankind has discovered the secret to immortality. Paradise awaits. I say, though, that Ettinger bought into the Barbara Ann scenario because, in addition to having had himself frozen when he died in 2011, he had previously frozen both of the two wives he outlived. He

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intended them all to be defrosted when the time came. For Ettinger, it would seem, his two wives weren’t experiences that, as he looked forward to an immortal future, he was willing to let drift back into the past. They were objects to be accumulated. I foresee trouble in paradise.

Slow It Down Here’s another scenario for a possibly blissful immortality. Most of us, over the course of our mortal lives, gradually forget most of our memories and replace many of our desires: we exchange the memories and desires of our childhood for those of adolescence, then adulthood, then old age. Shedding our memories and shifting our desires help keep the world fresh and so allow us to dodge overwhelming boredom. Acquiring new memories and developing new desires also enable us to stay engaged in the present and so evade crushing nostalgia for earlier times. But we never overhaul our memories or our desires so completely that we lose the thread of our self and become someone else entirely. We somehow manage to elude recurrent self-alienation. What’s more, most of us face a future whose events contain enough novelty to allow us to cheat boredom. But those events are rarely so wholly unprecedented that we risk becoming anachronisms in our own lifetime, hence suffering debilitating nostalgia. Nor are they so wholly unprecedented that we risk becoming strangers to our former selves, hence undergoing rupturing self-alienation. Most of us, then, over the course of our mortal life become neither cripplingly bored nor desperately nostalgic nor deeply self-alienated. Why couldn’t immortal life be like that? Perhaps it could. But for a life that lasted eons to stand a chance of unfolding in such a fashion, everything would have to scale up accordingly. Think of the lover in Andrew Marvell’s famous poem of seduction. If his mistress and he were immortal, the lover says, then the

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two of them would have all the time in the world to luxuriate in teasing and titillating each other. An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest

Caressing his mistress’s breasts every night for eternity, the lover seems to realize, would risk becoming tedious. He’d have to spread things out a bit, say a caressing once every fifty thousand years, to avoid boredom. But if after fifty thousand years the caressing then lasted for the current mortal norm of only (say) fifteen minutes, it wouldn’t have sufficient weight in the lover’s experience to combat nostalgia for caresses past. Nor would it have enough substance to form an ongoing and significant thread in his life, warding off selfalienation. That’s why, as the lover says, a proper caress should take two hundred years. A mere quarter of an hour, and it would be such a small pinpoint in an immortal life that it would fail to satisfy any nostalgia for previous moments of intimacy or assume the role of a meaningful, self-constituting event. So for us to avoid boredom, nostalgia, and self-alienation, everything in our immortal life would have to lengthen in time accordingly, the caressing of breasts and all else in the intervals in between. We would live the same lives as we do now, only in slow motion: just as Marvell’s lover proposes. But then if everything really did “slow down” proportionately, what would we have gained? As the philosopher Frank Arntzenius observes, “It does not make much sense to suppose that if everything in the world were to speed up uniformly it would change my mental state.”6 Likewise, presumably, if everything were to slow down uniformly. An immortal’s experience of immortality, on this “slow it down” scenario, might elude paralytic boredom, rupturing selfalienation and intolerable nostalgia. But that’s because it wouldn’t differ from our experience of mortal life as it is.

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Ramp It Up In any case, this kind of immortal life—an unlimited life span that somehow contains the same number of events as a mortal life, with each event elongated accordingly, and which would feel effectively like a mortal life—is not on the table. So Marvell’s lover proposes an intriguing alternative: yet another fantasy of immortality. Take our limited life span as it is. And then radically ramp up the number of events it contains. Don’t waste even a second. And in that way, by cramming into a mortal life all of the experiences you would get in an immortal life, you would feel as if you have lived one. This is what the lover means with his concluding proposal to his mistress: “Though we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run.” The sun—its rising and its setting—is what we use to mark the passage of the daily cycle. By “making the sun run,” the lover and his mistress would simply speed that daily cycle up. They would, in other words, break the normal equation between the day as marked by the sun’s rising and setting and the day as marked in another common way: by the passing of twenty-four hours. Lover and mistress would seek to pack more and more sunrise-to-sunset days into a twentyfour-hour day. That’s what it means to make the sun run. Of course, it’s impossible to literally make the sun rise and set more quickly. The sun’s run from morning to night is simply a metaphor for our everyday circuit of events. So instead of sunrise, think morning coffee. Instead of sunset, think evening nightcap. And then think of all the events in between, whether dallying with one’s amour, carousing with one’s friends, playing with one’s children, jesting with one’s colleagues, closing a corporate acquisition, or hiking a mountain trail. What the lover is saying is: ramp it up. Jam, say, seven of these coffee-dalliance-carousing-playing-jesting-closing-hiking-nightcap cycles— each representing a day’s events—into a twenty-four-hour period. It will now take seven such coffee-to-nightcap days, instead of just one, for us to complete a twenty-four-hour day.

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Then (so Marvell’s lover asks) would we not in effect have slowed time down? Won’t each single day now stretch out and feel like a week? Won’t we have made our lives seem 700 percent longer? Consider an analogy. Suppose that, instead of taking one day to travel two hundred and forty miles across the state, you decide to take seven days to do so. You will have slowed things down. The trip will last longer. Likewise, suppose that instead of taking one coffeeto-nightcap day to pass a twenty-four-hour day, lover and mistress now take seven coffee-to-nightcap days to do so. Haven’t they slowed time down, at least as they experience it? Won’t each twenty-fourhour day—and thus their mortal life—seem that much longer? And what if they ramp things up still further, packing seventy or seven hundred or seven thousand coffee-nightcap days into a twenty-fourhour day? Then will they not slow their mortal life down to the point where it will resemble an immortal one? It’s a lovely thought, and one that many of us entertain: we can come closer to immortality the more we pack into our mortal lives.7 But of course that’s not what will happen, as anyone knows who has tried to pack more and more events into a limited period of time. What happens is that things don’t slow down. They speed up. Think of certain kinds of vacations, such as a ski trip, or a holiday at Disney World with the kids. During such periods, the psychologist Douwe Draaisma observes, we often experience “quick days”: twenty-four-hour days that do not slow down but fly by at the time. And they do so precisely because we are packing them with several normal days’ worth of events.8 What Marvell’s lover proposes, namely making the sun run, thus won’t—as he thinks—slow life down till it seems endless. It will speed life up till it seems like the blink of an eye. True, such a life will defeat boredom, nostalgia, and self-alienation, simply because it will go by in a flash. But it won’t feel immortal. Just the opposite. What’s interesting, though, is the nature of the mistaken assumption that underlies the lover’s proposition.

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The lover relies on a false analogy. As hours are to miles, he reasons, so events are to days. The more hours it takes you to pass through a mile, the slower the journey goes. Likewise, the more events it takes you to pass through the day, the slower the day goes. In fact, though, it is not hours —but objects — that are to miles what events are to days. The more objects you cram into a mile, the less space there is for any one of them. And the space itself seems ever tighter. In the same way, the more events you cram into a day, the less time it takes to go through any one of them. And the day itself seems ever briefer. Events are not time’s units, such that the more we put into each day the longer that day will seem. No, events are time’s contents, such that the more we pack into each day the quicker the pace of life becomes — and the shorter the day will seem.9 I think here of the courageous Chinese dissident Yang Zili, whom I once met, and a prison story he told me. Jailed for eight years because he launched a reading group with a few friends, Yang was incarcerated in a single room that housed a large number of prisoners, all of whom slept next to each other on a sizable wooden board. The chief prisoner and his assistant—appointed by the guards to govern the cell—apportioned half the board for just themselves and, erecting a divider, left the remaining half for all the rest, who, because of their number, had to sleep on their sides, crammed up against each other like sardines. One day a new prisoner arrived. But there seemed to be no room for him unless the chief and his assistant relinquished some of their space. This they were not prepared to do. Instead, at bedtime the chief directed the new inmate to the other prisoners’ side of the divider. He then instructed the newcomer to lie on top of two of the prisoners, parallel to them in the groove where their bodies met. And the chief then pounded him like a wedge till the new arrival squeezed between them. The temporal equivalent of that spatial experience is what awaits us, if we make the sun run ever faster.10

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Flow One final optimistic scenario for immortality, which I will credit to the philosopher Nick Bostrom: assume that you are not only immortal, but also vastly more intelligent than you are now. If you are a superintelligent immortal, Bostrom says, each day is a joy . . . you play a certain new kind of game which combines [virtual-reality] artistic expression, dance, humor, interpersonal dynamics, and various novel faculties and the emergent phenomena they make possible. . . . When you are playing this game with your friends, you feel how every fibre of your body and mind is stretched to its limit in the most creative and imaginative way.11

A fine balance: You are stretched to the limit, rendered neither so slack that you lose interest nor so taut that you snap. What Bostrom describes resembles what the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls a state of “flow” or “optimal experience.” In flow situations, Csikszentmihalyi says, we encounter challenges that are not so same-old/same-old as to numb us with boredom. But nor do those challenges lie so far beyond the pale of our experience as to make us nostalgic for something more familiar. And in this state of fine balance, Csikszentmihalyi tells us, the “sense of time disappears. You forget yourself . . . feeling so focused on the present that you lose track of time passing.”12 After all, you have no inclination to let your mind wander either to the past (you’re not nostalgic) or to the future (you’re not bored) or to yourself (and so any self-alienation is a nonissue). “Time seems to fall away” in flow, the psychologist Kendra Cherry says, and we experience “a loss of self-consciousness.”13 Csikszentmihalyi quotes a rock climber on this point. In flow, “you are so involved in what you are doing [that] you aren’t thinking of yourself as separate from the immediate activity. . . . You don’t see yourself as separate from what you are doing.”14 To abide in such a permanent sweet spot, so focused on the moment that all thoughts of self and time disappear, may well be a happy circumstance. But it’s not one compatible with what I am here taking

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to be a keynote of the human condition: the sense we very much have of both self and time and, in particular, of being selves moving ever forward in time. After all, it’s precisely our selves who, moving second by second in time toward our deaths, cry out for a reprieve from mortality. Now suppose that that reprieve is granted. Suppose that we became immortal. But suppose too that we also became superintelligent. Immersed (as Bostrom says) in the “joy” of flow, we would no longer have any sense of self or of time passing. Certainly then we would not feel immortal. To do that we would need a sense of our selves persisting on in time. And continuous flow precludes that sense. As Michael Frayn says in his novel A Landing on the Sun, the “pleasure” that comes from “complete absorption in some conceptual problem . . . was precisely . . . the loss of all sense of self.”15 But isn’t the loss of self a kind of death? Of course, superintelligent immortals could always periodically emerge from flow. But then immortality would not be the heaven that Bostrom conjures up. Combining change and continuity in just the right mixture, flow ensures that you are neither bored by too much continuity nor rendered nostalgic by too much change. If, though, we fail to combine the challenging and the familiar in just the right way, then instead of heaven we will get hell. David Foster Wallace understood this. Require “a fellow . . . to perform rote tasks just tricky enough to make him think, but still rote,” Wallace warns, and then “just leave the man there to his mind’s devices.”16 In other words, assign him tasks challenging enough to keep him awake but familiar enough to make him desperately want to go to sleep. And then see what misery—the furthest thing from the heaven promised by flow—results. And Wallace was not even talking about an immortal hell, only a mortal one. For however long it could be sustained, endless superintelligent flow might well be idyllic. Superintelligent immortals would constantly be “in the moment.” But that’s because all concern with self and time, and in that sense the difference between immortality and mortality, would have become irrelevant to them.17

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*

No one, of course, can say what immortality, or even the for-allintents-and-purposes immortality of much greater longevity, would be like. What Joan Didion calls “magical thinking” applies as much when we imagine that mortal creatures like us are immortal as when we pretend that dead people are alive. But given what little we know, one thing merits pondering. It does seem that each of the major benign scenarios for immortality ultimately relies on a fantastic assumption, whether about our selves or about the moments of our lives. One benign immortality scenario assumes that we would no longer be selves who moved relentlessly forward in time. Instead, our self would turn into a kind of liquid, dissolving into time’s flow, becoming simply whatever it is doing at the present moment. Absorbed totally in the present instant, we’d experience neither boredom — which comes from the accumulating weight of the past—nor nostalgia, which emerges from the unending strangeness of the future. Both would fall away in this scenario for a blissful immortality. In another benign immortality scenario, the self would also cease moving forward in time. But in this case it would simply expand like an accordion to encompass any measure of time. Merely by slowing things down as much as necessary to match its ever-lengthening life span—taking a hundred years to gaze upon a forehead or two hundred to adore a breast—an immortal self could remain just as coherent as a mortal one. Another benign immortality scenario needs to assume that the experiences of our lives would no longer slip, moment by moment, relentlessly backward in time. Instead, they’d subsist in time the way objects do in space. We could perpetually keep them as close as we’d like to ward off nostalgia. But we could also rush away from them as fast as we liked the instant they came to bore us. On a final benign scenario the experiences of our lives would, by ramping up to a pace that approaches infinite speed, in effect cease moving backward in time. But in this case, they themselves would become the very units we would use to measure time. The more

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of them we compressed into our own mortal life, the longer—the closer to immortality—it would seem. Unfortunately, each of these benign scenarios for immortality is outlandish. Each offers us endlessness reflected through a fun-house mirror. The self as a flowing liquid, dissolving in time. Experiences as solid objects, subsisting in time. The self expanding to encompass any measure of time. Experiences compressing and then becoming measures of time. If we have to rely on such convolutions to make immortality attractive, what does that say? And so I find them impossible finally to accept. They ask far too much of us: we who are recognizably human, who unavoidably see our selves as moving forward relentlessly in time—neither dissolving nor expanding in it—while the experiences of our lives flow remorselessly backward in time: neither subsisting nor compressing in it.18 For us, the only immortality scenarios on offer seem, sooner or later, utterly malignant. Each possible combination between our selves moving continually onward in time, and the events of our life moving ceaselessly backward in time, seems to carry storm clouds. Boredom if that onward-moving self and those backward-moving events at one point cease to change. Recurrent self-alienation if both self and events do endlessly change. Nostalgia if our self doesn’t change, immured in old memories, attachments, and desires, while the events of our life ceaselessly do. And—although I won’t explore this here—a kind of dementia if our self does continue to change, regularly jettisoning its previous memories and attachments and desires, while the events of our life no longer do. After all, when we try to think of people whose memories regularly empty out, who relinquish their previous emotional attachments, and whose desires wander erratically—but whose life events repeat themselves over and over—it’s those afflicted with a kind of late-life dementia who come the closest. But all of this is actually good news. It means we can be consoled by the thought that mortality has its blessings because immortality,

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for all we know now, would be a terrible curse. In Part Four, though, I consider one final matter: whether the losses we sustain due to death might actually be no worse than those we regularly suffer due to life itself anyway. “To lose . . . power, love, a friend—all are deaths,” Michael Oakeshott writes, and “they are felt & suffered as deaths . . . these lesser deaths, the mortal material of our life—are the worst.”19 Perhaps life itself, with all its unpredictable ravages, sooner or later imposes each of the kinds of losses that death itself metes out. Life’s losses intimate death’s. If that’s true, then that consoles us about death. The thought doesn’t comfort us, perhaps, but it consoles us. Or so it’s said. But first, a brief interlude.

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MORTALITY VERSUS IMMORTALITY: WHY NOT THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE?

Some writers—the philosopher Jay Rosenberg, for example—have argued that the sharp dichotomy between mortality and immortality, as I have posed it throughout this book, is a false one. Preferable to either option would be a world in which we could, but did not have to, live forever. We would each enjoy life for as long as possible and then, if and when existence began to permanently pall, we would simply end it through some painless form of suicide.1 We’d have a long life, maybe a hundreds-or-thousands-of-millennia-long life, depending on our preferences. And then whenever things started going sour, we’d bail out. The best of both worlds, life and death. Or, more exactly, a happy life, eons long, capped by a short end-period of unhappiness that would prompt us to terminate it before things got much worse. Clearly that would be preferable to either unavoidable mortality or compulsory immortality. Call this scenario “option immortality.” I wonder, however, whether option immortality, though perhaps preferable, is psychologically open to us. For us to be willing to terminate a happy life of great longevity, wouldn’t it have to get so much worse at the end that it would outweigh all the good that came before? So that it would then no longer seem, in retrospect and on balance, to have been a happy life? Look at it this way: It’s true that as it is—mortals that we are— many of us reach a point where we wish to die due to the unhappy pain or debilities of advanced age. But we can still remain happy about the life we led because of the wonderful memories we have: because, as we recall it, it was a good life. Epicurus, for one, was in this circumstance. So why couldn’t option-immortals do the same? Why couldn’t they die remembering an extremely long happy life, which they then terminated as soon as it became painful or unpleasant?

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INTERLUDE

The problem is that option-immortals, pondering whether to terminate their lives, would be in just the opposite situation. It wouldn’t be one with happy memories that, as soon as unhappiness in the form of pain and debility irrevocably descended, they’d end. Instead, the immortal life I have been imagining throughout is one that, given scientific advances, is free of pain and debility. Unhappiness descends, if and when it does, precisely because the immortal’s memories, happy though they once may have been, have begun to putrefy. Either the immortal’s memories of the good times have disappeared altogether (self-alienation), or they have become crushingly stale (boredom), or they have become the very things that have prevented the immortal from adapting to unending novelty (nostalgia). For the option-immortal to be willing to die, wouldn’t his entire previous life—as it exists in his memory—have to lose its value? Or look at it this way: 0ption-immortals, presumably, wouldn’t terminate their life simply if things got a little worse. After all, the longer a life is or can be, the more serious and weighty a proposition it is to consider ending it. That’s why the centenarians in Shaw’s Back to Methuselah are so much more accident-averse than we decadarians are.2 Instead, things would have to get a whole lot worse. Optionimmortals would bring themselves to terminate a life of vastly heightened longevity only when things got so much worse that, looking back, they would no longer, on balance, see the value of their life at all— only when, on balance, they would rather not have lived at all. Or at least I wonder if that’s not the risk. The best of both worlds, life and death, won’t necessarily be possible if immortality is an option. For option-immortals to be willing to choose death, they would have to have lost contact with their life in some profound way. And so in examining consolations for mortality, I have taken mortality’s alternative to be not optional but irreversible immortality. I am skeptical of the idea of a comforting middle ground, namely longevity for as long as life is happy, and then, as soon as it becomes unhappy, painless suicide. Though logically possible, I’m not sure how psychologically realistic that trick would be. It would require

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us to feel enough unhappiness to want to die while still remaining happy about the life we led. Many have criticized Epicurus for assuming that human beings could ever become sufficiently unattached to life that we would be indifferent to and accepting of death, yet still sufficiently attached to life that we wouldn’t actually kill ourselves. The same kind of fine, perhaps impossible, balance would be required for a long-lived human to—at one and the same time— continue to view the life he led as a happy one, while having become sufficiently unhappy that he would be willing to end it. If he views his life as happy, he will not want to end it. And if he wants to end it, because the depredations of immortality have sufficiently set in, will he any longer be able to view it as having been a happy one? I don’t know, of course, but there is reason to think not. Option-immortality, like an option in the stock market, is far from a sure bet.

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PART 4

Life Intimates Death

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thirteen

THE BIG SLEEP

Death has rarely appeared as beguiling as it does in Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard, toward the book’s end. It is impossible to completely convey the allure of Lampedusa’s imagery because its full punch comes from a sly bit of foreshadowing. But, toward the end, death takes the form of a young woman, lovely, modest, desirous. Gently nudging the dying old prince’s gathered and sobbing relatives out of the way, she finally arrives at his bedside. Until that moment, the delirium in the prince’s mind had seemed to him like a thunderous ocean. And then, when the woman at last is beside him, the “crashing of the sea subside[s] altogether.”1 In the gallery of sensory images for death, silence has one great competitor: darkness. For Lampedusa, death might be the subsiding of the roaring of the sea. But for Harold Brodkey, it is “this wild darkness.” For Andrew Marvell, the grave is a “fine and quiet place.” For Dylan Thomas, death is famously a “dying of the light” to be raged against. None of this surprises, since silence and darkness constitute the conditions most conducive to sleep. And so when we imagine the “big sleep,” we imagine eternal silence, eternal darkness. Death portends a horrific loss, the loss of consciousness itself. But we lose consciousness in life all the time. Does the silence and darkness of dreamless sleep intimate death? And if so, is that a consolatory thought? Yet as they pile up, a difference between aural and visual images of death, between silence and darkness, slowly emerges. As silence, death can seem attractive— calm, tranquil, peaceful, restful. As darkness, it comes across as menacing— cold, desolate, bereft, bleak. Darkness itself is so unappealing that even when it’s accompanied by the opposite of silence—by sounds—the result can seem hellish: think of a pitch-dark ghoulishly acousticed horror ride in an amusement park.

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Silence, by contrast, can be so beckoning that as soon as it’s joined to the opposite of darkness—joined to light—the result can rise to the rapturous: think of the silence of a sunlit meadow.2 Why does darkness threaten more than silence? Perhaps an investigation of ordinary language can help here. The aural word “sound” has not one but two visual equivalents: “sight”—as in “sights and sounds”—and “light,” as in “sound and light show.” That’s because any given object of sight—a ball, a book—and the light source that allows us to see it—the sun, a lamp—are usually distinct entities. By contrast, the source of a sound and the object we hear as a result—think of a racing car or an overflying plane—are one and the same. All you have to do is shut off the light, and even with innumerable sight-making objects present you won’t see them. But to shut off sound, you must get rid of or tamper with each soundmaking object. In Heart of Darkness Conrad contrasts the darkness with the whiteness that Marlow encounters in Africa. Darkness is horror. Whiteness, especially the whiteness of the river fog, is confusion. In other words, what Conrad does not do is contrast Africa’s darkness with its more natural opposite—lightness—because that would imply that European civilization is somehow more enlightened. Nor does he contrast whiteness with its natural opposite, blackness, which would have given his work a far more racialist tone than it already has. Instead, it’s darkness versus whiteness. Conrad is able to do this because the visual world offered him two scales to play with, black / white for the objects of sight; darkness/light for the source of illumination that reveals them. And therein lies the key to why darkness, absence of light, will always be more bereft and desolate than silence, absence of sound. In darkness, the source of light to all objects is cut off. Sight is impossible; it is hopeless. In silence, by contrast, all that we know is that no particular object surrounding us is at the moment a source of sound. But at any other moment it or others still could be—there is no blanket source that has been extinguished, and so silence comes with hope. If we say that it’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop, we hold

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out the possibility that you could still— despite the silence—hear a pin drop. But we could never say that it’s so dark you could see a pin drop. There’d be no hope of that. We have reason, then, to feel peaceful and secure when we think of death in Hamlet’s terms—the deep rest that is silence—while when we think of it in William Styron’s phrase—lie down in darkness— we feel cold and afraid. True, both metaphors fall squarely into the class of magical thinking. When we are dead we will experience neither silence nor darkness. But silence and darkness are as close as we can get, this side of death, to intimations of what lies on the other side. They are the metaphors of choice for great writers who find themselves consoled by silence and desolated by darkness. But in the final analysis the only reason why silence is less threatening is that it’s more fragile than darkness. Any sound can end it, and make the world alive again, while no sight alone can end darkness. It’s not that death seems more attractive when we think of it as silence. It’s actually that silence is more attractive because it is less like death. So despite the great literature they have inspired, our different reactions to darkness and silence ultimately say nothing about death itself— only about us and the way we sense, and cling to, the living world. If true intimations of death in life are what we seek, we shall have to look elsewhere. And apart from the darkness and silence we associate with sleep, life offers us one other kind of intimation of the utter sensory void that comes after our death: it’s the inkling we have of the utter sensory void that came before our birth.3

The Rocking Cradle “The cradle rocks above an abyss,” Nabokov says, “and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” Perhaps that is common sense. But then Nabokov says something more controversial. He describes those two dark eternities as “identical twins.” And in so doing, he gestures toward a famous query Lucretius posed thousands of years before. We remain undisturbed

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by the eternity of darkness that elapsed prior to our birth. Why, then—since the two are carbon copies—be petrified about the eternity of darkness to follow our deaths? Yes, in a sense the two are carbon copies. We don’t exist during either of them. But what’s of interest here is not Nabokov’s take on those two boundless spans of dark time. It’s the imagery he uses for the compressed mortal life that separates them. He calls it a tiny “crack” of light. That’s a spatial image. In the picture Nabokov paints, it’s not a brief temporal interlude but a minuscule crack of space that separates the two dark eternities in time. But how can a span of space separate two periods in time? Space is static. It doesn’t flow in the way time does. As an image for our abbreviated interval of existence, a crack of space utterly fails to represent life’s remorseless temporal current: the current that sweeps every one of us, second by second, beginning with the instant of our birth and ending at the moment of our death, further and further away from the dark eternity lying behind and closer and closer to the dark eternity lying ahead. Yes, those two dark eternities, the prenatal and the posthumous, might well be identical as far as we would be concerned during their endless eons. But it’s as if Nabokov knew that anything that’s consolatory about that observation would immediately fall away were we to consider the relentless one-directional flow of the brief time that separates them: the flow that makes the prenatal dark eternity seem anodyne and the posthumous one spell annihilation. Only when we obscure that temporal flow with static spatial imagery, and describe our life as (say) a tiny crack, will the two dark eternities on either side stand a chance of seeming “identical.” In space, unlike in time, nothing would necessarily be carrying us ceaselessly away from the one and toward the other. We could be neutral between them. Perhaps Nabokov’s imagery is no coincidence. Two millennia earlier Lucretius, in advancing his famous consolation—we’re indifferent to the eternal darkness lying behind us, so why shouldn’t

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we be just as unperturbed by the one lying ahead?— did something similar. In the verses commonly called Folly of the Fear of Death, Lucretius speaks of the periods before birth and after death as “times [of ] slumber . . . sleep and rest.” And in between the two, where the “light of life shines,” we human beings get put, Lucretius says, in “place.” Interesting. In Lucretius’s rendering, it seems to be a place of light—as for Nabokov it’s a crack of light—that separates the dark times before and after. Elsewhere Lucretius equates life to a room, or to a banquet hall. He also says that none of us own our lives outright. Instead we merely lease them, as if life were a tract of land instead of a river of time. Perhaps Lucretius knew that only by suggestively wrapping our temporally flowing life in inanimate spatial symbols—like place and land and room and hall— could he even come close to portraying the two slumber times on either side as equivalent. What about we who inhabit the illuminated space that Lucretius equates with life? What are human selves like? Lucretius uses analogies—and curiously static ones at that—to describe us. Anguished and unrequited lovers, he says, mimic “Tityus prostrate”: prostrate while vultures munch on his liver. Those of us who fear the torments of Hell remind Lucretius of “Tantalus benumbed”: benumbed by the giant rock hanging over his head. And weary, defeated politicians channel Sisyphus, eternally pushing his rock up the mountain only to have it tumble down such that he must start over: Sisyphus, who, far from marching forward linearly, just keeps cycling in position. But these mythical figures—never moving in space—scarcely represent us mortal creatures, ever moving in time, ferried unrelentingly further and further away from the eternal slumber in back and nearer and nearer to the one in front. Nabokov’s rocking cradle doesn’t move forward either, just back and forth like Sisyphus.4 A more apt image comes from Schopenhauer. “A man,” Schopenhauer says, “finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after thousands and thousands of years of non-existence: he

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lives for a little while; and then, again, comes an equally long period when he must exist no more.” During that “little while” of life—and a “while,” of course, is a stretch of time, not a stretch of space— do we remain inert and inanimate? Not for Schopenhauer. No, we resemble “a man running downhill, who cannot keep on his legs unless he runs on, and will inevitably fall if he stops.”5 That’s more like it. Not statically suspended between two identical dark eternities, but running as fast as he can—because he is compelled to do so—away from the one shrinking harmlessly in view behind him, and toward the one growing ever more menacingly larger ahead. That’s how we twenty-first century bundles of ego and anxiety see our selves too. And so the eternal darkness before we were born, as we think of it from within the confines of our abbreviated mortal life, can never intimate the one to come. By depicting life as a kind of stationary place, and our selves who inhabit it as immobile, Lucretius subtly drapes our mortal existence in a timeless spatial imagery that casts the two dark eternities on either side as interchangeable twins. But such a gambit simply gives away how psychologically unpersuasive his argument really is. He could never have made the same case while picturing our selves and our lives as they actually are: our selves moving ceaselessly forward in time, our lives relentlessly propelling us—second by second—away from the one dark eternity and toward the other. In the end, Lucretius’s consolation, on which eternal posthumous darkness should leave us as serene as eternal prenatal darkness, will gain purchase with hardly any of us.

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fourteen

STARDUST AND MOONSHINE

When we die, Philip Roth proclaims, we “enter . . . into nowhere without even knowing it.”1 Or as that other Philip, Larkin, puts it— and it is his words that now claim a kind of patent on this bleak point— consolations for death amount to specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anasthetic from which none come round.2

Specious stuff: it’s all very well to claim that death is benign. Or that if we reflect on it, we will see that anything we might seek from an immortal life we can actually attain within the confines of our mortal existence. Or that real immortality would actually be terrible. But none of this philosophizing addresses the raw loss that death imposes: the loss of that precious flicker, the light of consciousness. Console me about that, Larkin challenges. His poetry lends poignant beauty to the primal bark of raw emotion. After all the reasoning and all the rationales, I’d still desperately prefer to be a conscious, healthy human being than a corpse. Who wouldn’t? But suppose that’s not the choice we face. Consider two contemporary opponents in the debate over whether mortality is a good thing, Leon Kass and Ray Kurzweil. Kass, a physician and philosopher, prefers death to immortality. But he goes one step further. He sees death as a grace-bestowed relief from life itself when that life, the life of the human organism, begins to degrade into indignity and debility. As the process of organic deterioration that commences well before we die—first sans teeth, then sans eyes,

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then sans taste—painfully progresses, the prospect of death becomes more and more welcome. And what is death but the continuation of that organismic breakdown—first sans flesh and then sans bones— as we crumble into dust “a-blowing down the night,” returning to the soil, the air, and the sea. Kurzweil, the scientist and visionary, prefers immortality to death. But he too goes one step further. He favors immortality over human life itself, looking forward as he does to the day when the life of the human species becomes outmoded and we all merge into a collective, higher-order, eternal cosmic consciousness. We will be driven to do so by the so-called singularity—the inevitable moment when computers become more intelligent than humans, encouraging us for the sake of survival to “upload” our own individual minds into a mass silicon-based superintelligence. No longer chained to the dying animal that comprises our carbon-based bodies, we will share both omniscience and immortality. I note that Kurzweil, along with Hans Moravec, Marvin Minsky, and other like-minded visionaries, finds it exceedingly difficult to describe exactly what this metamorphosis would be like. Moravec, for example, speaks of us humans embarking on a “subtle cyberspace conversion, the whole becoming finally a bubble of Mind expanding at near lightspeed.”3 As the author Vernor Vinge observes in Churchillian tones, “an opaque wall [has descended] across the future.”4 But despite the fog that lies ahead, all of them —Vinge and the others—seem certain that humanity is heading in that posthuman direction. It was Kurzweil who, in 1990, foresaw that a computer would beat a world champion at chess. And in 1997 it happened when IBM’s supercomputer, known as “Deep Blue,” defeated Garry Kasparov. Perhaps, then, Kurzweil is thinking of our all merging into some gigantic version of Deep Blue.5 Let’s take that as the closest proxy for what he and the others have in mind. Both of these human futures— our blending into a universal mind and our crumbling into the physical universe—share a common feature. Together, they reframe the ultimate choice we think we have,

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inviting us to view it in a different way. Not, as we typically do, as a choice between our remaining forever conscious and our becoming permanently unconscious. Instead, it’s a choice between our becoming part of a larger immortal consciousness—a single all-embracing superintelligence, an omniscient Deep Blue— or becoming part of a larger permanent unconsciousness: the cosmos of rocks, dust, molecules, atoms. When the singularity arrives it will force each of us to make a decision. We could either upload our consciousnesses into the universal mind, or we could remain “original substrate” humans, biological humans who—as they always have done—will die, dissolve into particles, and “drop back,” in Willa Cather’s words, “into the immense design of things”: the physical universe. Let’s entertain the possibility that this is how we should look at the choice toward which destiny is taking us: merge into the universal mind or dissolve into the physical universe. Something like these two options, many smart people are telling us, will be our fate sooner or later. What, then, would be the better alternative? Those smart people have no doubt: become part of the cosmic consciousness. Are they right? Or would it be better to become part of the cosmos itself ? There once was an amiable and capable Canadian cabinet minister named Harvie Andre. One evening Andre dropped in on a party at the opulent home of an Ottawa lobbyist, a man who had been conducting a lucrative business representing clients to Andre and his office. Surveying the expanse of elegance and exquisiteness that lay all around him, Andre famously quipped, “Why is it so much better to know Harvie Andre than to be Harvie Andre?” Would it be better to become part of the cosmic consciousness that comes to know the beauty and secrets of the cosmos—secrets that remain totally beyond our current ken— or to become part of that mysterious, fascinating cosmos itself ? I understand what it means to become part of the cosmos. It means that my body will return to organic nature, dissolving over time into

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molecules— compressed into a rock, osmotically engorged by a tree, food for snails, a home for fleas, a nest for birds, atoms in a galactic storm, or back to where it all began, the sea, each particle lasting forever. What does it mean, though, to become part of cosmic consciousness, the posthuman collective consciousness that spends eternity knowing the cosmos? It’s hard to get a grip on that. And for good reason. Consciousness, unlike the cosmos, is unitary. There is no such thing as being a “part” of a larger cosmic consciousness in the way one can become part of—particles in—the larger cosmos. To say that consciousness is unitary doesn’t imply that consciousness is just one thing, as opposed to a grab bag of different functions—visual, aural, cognitive, and the like. It simply means, as John Searle says, that we always have a “unified conscious field. At any moment you do not just experience the sound of the music and the taste of the beer, but you have both as part of a single, unified conscious field, a subjective awareness of the total conscious experience.”6 Certainly, the kind of hyperaware cosmic consciousness of which Kurzweil speaks, one that has no secrets from itself— one with nothing even hidden in the basement of an unconscious7—would be unitary in this way. And so “we” would have been obliterated. To use the words that Kurzweil himself favors, we would “meld” and “merge” into the unitary whole of cosmic consciousness, not remain discrete entities within it.8 True, not all versions of cosmic consciousness envision our merging and melding. N. Katherine Hayles, a perceptive critic of the Kurzweil-type vision, speaks of what she calls a “distributed” universal consciousness. We would each play our own separate part in a glorified version of—to use the psychologist Daniel Wegner’s analogy—the “group mind” of a typical household. As Wegner, in a New York Times article, recounted his domestic scene, “I remembered where the car and yard things were, she [Wegner’s wife] remembered where the house things were, and we could each depend on the other to be an expert in domains we didn’t need to master.”9 Because he and his spouse remained distinct individuals within their

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household cybermind, Wegner foresaw that the same could be true in the universal cybermind. That’s why his article is called “Don’t Fear the Cybermind,” and why he spoke of our one day each becoming “part of the biggest, smartest mind ever.” In Wegner’s vision, then, individual consciousness would remain; the parts wouldn’t dissolve into the whole. But that’s because there would be no real universal mind. No entity in “distributed” cosmic consciousness would, actually, possess cosmic consciousness, knowing where both the yard and the household things are. By contrast, in true “cosmic consciousness,” as William James long ago realized, it’s impossible to imagine what “individuation” would look like.10 While true cosmic consciousness might obliterate individuality, and while distributed consciousness might preserve individuality at the cost of not being truly cosmic, visionaries like Ray Kurzweil himself seem to toggle, unresolved, between the two possibilities. Kurzweil certainly heralds the moment when we will all meld and merge into a true cosmic mind. But according to Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, the philosopher who helped run the Templeton Foundation’s Immortality Project, Kurzweil also “doesn’t like the single global consciousness idea, because he thinks that it would preclude him being there. He assumes that his individual self would not persist.”11 Kurzweil seems conflicted. Indeed, at one point in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil gestures toward this dilemma but without ever grasping its horns. He inquires of an imagined superhuman collective intelligence: “So, you separate your personalities . . .” and the entity responds, “At times. But we still share our knowledge stores at all times.”12 Kurzweil, then, evidently sees some kind of trade-off between shared knowledge and the separation of personalities, between true cosmic consciousness and individual survival. But he offers no indication of how they might be reconciled. Perhaps that’s because they can’t be. So let’s suppose, as many a visionary predicts—whether he or she welcomes or fears it—that the choice that one day will confront us is

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to either dissolve into true cosmic consciousness or else become particles in the cosmos itself. Either future “humans” would at one point after birth get uploaded, losing their individuality in the universal mind— or else they would remain individual biological organisms, living and dying in the time-honored way, before crumbling into the physical universe. What’s the better option? True, this is a deliberately polarizing choice. There may in fact lie innumerable shades of gray in between. Human beings could easily retain their individuality without remaining entirely biological organisms. They might one day integrate complex computational hardware into their individual organic brains, and in so doing they might each attain ever greater individual intelligence short of cosmic consciousness. But my purpose here is not to speculate about possible futures, or about the vast range of scenarios scientists have floated for our acquiring ever more powerful individual minds situated on vastly extended silicon-based substrates. Instead, it’s to look at whether there’s anything consolatory to be gleaned from thinking about the stark choice between our merging into a vastly extended cosmic mind and our clinging, instead, to our individual, doomedto-crumble, carbon-based physical substrates. In the end, I think it’s better to be Harvie Andre than to know Harvie Andre. It’s better to crumble into the physical cosmos than merge into a cosmic consciousness that spends eons contemplating that cosmos. Why? Because it’s better to be an object of admiration than the one doing the admiring. True, it’s better to be a conscious admirer, like an art connoisseur, than an unconscious object of admiration, like a work of art. But if both are on the same level—if both admirer and admired are conscious (think of Jimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story), then it’s better to be the “object” being admired. And so if instead “you” will be unconscious either way, why not be part of the object being admired rather than dissolve into the subject doing the admiring?

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Emotionally, I find myself gravitating toward the imagery writers use to describe our becoming particles in the cosmos itself—the molecules of my body becoming flowers and trees, sustenance for worms, motes in the sunlight that warms the earth, stardust, a comet’s tail, diffused into the mother of life, the sea. It’s a process that begins well before we die, as the Canadian actress Linda Griffiths so acidly noted in her play Maggie and Pierre, in which the twentytwo-year-old Margaret Trudeau describes brushing her lips against those of the fifty-two-year-old Pierre as akin to kissing a drying rose petal.13 In contrast to these organic metaphors, the lifeless pictures conjured up to give us some sense of what cosmic consciousness would be like—melding into a matrix or a hologram, merging into a code or an algorithm —leave me metallically cold. As part of the cosmos, I might disintegrate into billions of particles, into what Edna St. Vincent Millay calls “dull . . . indiscriminate dust.” But that dust will go “to feed the roses,” the poet says, and “fragrant is the blossom.” My “bone ash” will rise “in the saplings . . . passing into the shells of snails, the bones of fish and birds.”14 It will go back to a kind of life, a part of Gaia, the organic respiration of the planet. But meld into cosmic consciousness? That’s not life but death. The singularity prognosticator Ben Goertzel unwittingly makes the point: “If it came down to it, I wouldn’t hesitate to annihilate myself in favor of some amazing superbeing.”15 What’s key here is the equation of merger into a superconsciousness with annihilation. But of course this is all a kind of magical thinking. It’s impossible for an individual to experience either dissolving into cosmic consciousness or becoming particulate matter in the cosmos itself. And yet like much magical thinking, this instance too clues us into a deeper psychological reality. At some level we rightly fear that although we will not be physically obliterated in the cosmos itself— our particles will last forever—we would be mentally obliterated in cosmic consciousness. No parts of us would remain.

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Perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that in the future as imagined by Kurzweil and company, either “option”— cosmic consciousness or the cosmos itself—would spell death and the dreaded annihilation it entails for individual consciousness. It’s just that it would be the death of the individual in the case of our melding into cosmic consciousness. And it would be the death of consciousness in the case of our particles blending into the cosmos itself. We would thus lose individual consciousness whether we lived or died. And so life, if we opted for Kurzweil’s cosmic consciousness, truly would intimate death— even when it comes to the most fearful loss that death can deal, the loss of individual consciousness. If that’s our future, then perhaps we do abide in the best of times, a beautiful bubble in history, right now, before we have to face the choice between individual consciousness and individual consciousness. And maybe that’s some consolation. It’s funny. The question on the table is whether the losses that life deals us are, when it comes right down to it, any different from those that death imposes. If no difference emerges, then we should feel at least weakly consoled about our mortality. But my “priors,” before examining the question, would have led me to believe that while the mere vicissitudes of life can take from us many of the same things that our death ultimately does—a spouse (if her affections wander), children (if their anger estranges them), businesses, jobs, homes, homelands—the one loss that life can never deal us is the loss of individual consciousness. The ebbs and flows of life can take from us many, perhaps all, of the beloved objects that populate our consciousness, I would have thought—and especially our lovers, friends, sons, and daughters—with every bit as much finality as our own death does. But life can never, I would have thought, destroy our own bare individual subject itself the way that death can. It’s actually more the reverse. The one death-dealt loss that life too can inflict, at least potentially, turns out to be the loss of subjective individual consciousness. Human life, if the cosmic-consciousness visionaries are right in their prognoses, will finally terminate individ-

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ual consciousness, even if (perversely) so many of them seem to welcome that prospect. Meanwhile, all those other losses—the losses of all the objects of our consciousness, and in particular the people we moon over and obsess over and spin over and over in our minds? It turns out, as I will argue in the next chapter, that the tragedies—the conflicts and failures, however devastating— of human relationships, of life itself, can never deprive us of those we love in the way that our death does. And that, too, is a good thing. While it doesn’t console me about death, it consoles me about life. And I need that too. Of course, my own individual consciousness is what I want most of all. I’d rather be a cognizant, sentient human being than a corpse. But if the day ever comes, I’d turn down the chance to dissolve into computational consciousness, into the universal mind. Instead I’d choose to become a lasting part of living, organic nature, part of the physical universe. Meld into Deep Blue? No thanks. I’d rather merge into the deep blue sea.

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fifteen

EVERY TIME I SAY GOODBYE, I DIE A LITTLE

“For forty years I saw myself through John’s eyes,” Joan Didion writes in The Year of Magical Thinking; “I did not age.”1 It’s an affecting thought. A husband looks at his sixty-nine-yearold wife and habitually, reflexively, sees the twenty-nine-year-old he first knew. His doing so is contagious. She too comes to view herself in the same way. Only when the husband then dies does the wife—for “the first year since I was twenty-nine,” as Didion says— suddenly see “that my image of myself was of someone significantly younger.” An affecting thought, but also a paradoxical one. For consider the main theme of Didion’s book: her lingering sense, over the course of the subsequent year, that John was not dead but on an out-oftown trip. At any moment he would “return and need his shoes” or jackets or chair or office. Certainly that’s what the evidence suggested. The planet continued to bear his physical imprint as clearly as ever. He might have been gone but the world retained—in exactly the way it always had whenever he was simply somewhere else—the spaces, whether small ones like sneakers or large ones like dens, that he would come home to occupy. Put the two together: on the one hand, when John was alive, he kept Joan frozen in time, ageless as a young woman. On the other hand, once John died, Joan kept him moving forward in time, persisting as a breathing, organic creature. The living Joan never moved beyond twenty-nine; John, dead at seventy-one, continued to live on. Each thought bookends the other. Whatever you might think of the other consolatory streams—that death for one reason or another is actually benign, that mortality gives us all we could ever gain from immortality, or that immortality

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for one reason or another would actually be gruesome—you might still not be able to get past death’s most massive affront: the devastating and overwhelming losses it inflicts, the final farewells it forces us to bid to everyone and everything we love. I am here interested in the loss not of consciousness itself, as I was in the last chapter, but of all the things in the world that attract and delight our consciousness: the loss not of the subject of consciousness but of all its objects. And yet what if all of the losses that we would sustain in death, all its poignant permanent goodbyes, can and would come with life anyway? Shouldn’t that, at least in a backhanded way, console us about our mortality? Many have thought so. Since our “world is a world of continuous loss,” the psychiatrist Adam Phillips argues, “all the quotidian experiences of loss, all the disappearances of everyday life, are like rehearsals” for “the hidden drama of one’s own death.”2 Yes, death might bring tremendous “loss,” the poet Kate Clanchy acknowledges, “but, in a way, I had lost plenty of friends just through life’s ordinary processes—they had moved away or married someone I didn’t like.”3 Or consider John Updike, in a story whose main character encounters a former lover: “I felt in her presence the fear of death a man feels with a woman who once opened herself to him and is available no more.”4 So the idea on the table for consideration—the putatively consoling idea—is that all the losses that death brings would come with life anyway: and I am, as I have been throughout, setting aside losses due to physical decline and decrepitude. Let’s focus, then, on the sharpest kind of losses that your death will bring: the heart-clutching thought that the hour will arrive when you must part for eternity from everyone you love—soul mate, lover, children, friends. Never more, as Lucretius says, “will your happy home give you welcome”; never more “will your [spouse] and sweet children race to win the first kisses, and thrill your heart to its depths with sweetness.” Now: in what way does life itself impose similar losses, force equivalent goodbyes?

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Think of the countless opportunities we all lose in life as precious moments vanish forever into the past. Weren’t we, for example, unavoidably stuck in Philadelphia on business the night our daughter played the role of Anita in the grade-six production of West Side Story at her Toronto middle school? Well then, in what sense would it matter, would it be any more a loss, if we missed our great-greatgrandson’s performance as Officer Krupke because we were dead? What difference is there between a loss due to your being out of town and a loss due to your no longer being on the surface of the earth? You lose the same thing in either case. No difference might be apparent even to the one with whom you lost the opportunity to spend time. It seemed to Didion not that Dunne had died, but that he had simply gone somewhere else—annoyingly out of town, in Los Angeles, say, when she, remaining in their New York apartment surrounded by his chair and desk and shoes, needed to ask his advice on a literary or household matter. In Jim Crace’s novel Being Dead, a daughter imagines her departed father reassuring her with a similar thought: “Death is nothing at all. I have slipped away into another room. All is well.”5 But if we can so easily analogize death to an unavoidable business trip when our daughter performed on stage, or an unfortunate slipping away to the bathroom just when our infant son took his first step, then is there really any difference between what we lose when we die and what we necessarily lose countless times while alive? Simply add up all the past moments when we couldn’t be with our children because they had to be in school—when the joke they made broke the class up, say, or they made a priceless remark to the teacher or showed the first blossoming of moral courage in taking an unpopular stance—and we had to be at the office. In life itself, we miss precious moment after precious moment, surrendering them forever because we cannot be in all places at the same time. And so why rip our hearts out over all the future moments we lose because, thanks to death, we can’t be in the same place with our children for all time? As the philosopher Charles Hartshorne once put it: “To be finite or limited in time is no more an injury than to be finite in space.”6

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So lost moments are continually slipping into the past, second by second, gone forever. Meanwhile, we ourselves and those we love continually forge ahead, year by year, into the future. But then isn’t it inevitable that, sooner or later, life itself will part us and we will irrecoverably lose one another? Are we not, after all, kidding ourselves if we think that our sweet children, once they blossom and mature, will always want to stay with us— or even have anything to do with us? People grow apart. Someone who exists for thousands of years cannot expect his grandchildren to still be calling him every week, as Mel Brooks’s two-thousand-year-old man ruefully observed, or even every millennium. Live long enough (and long enough might not be all that long) and we will all become Lears abandoned by Regans. Or Helmers by Noras. Even in our current mortal life spans, as Didion says, “Husbands walk out, wives walk out.” When Rosemary Clooney began singing “We’ll Be Together Again,” she “was imagining the end of a love affair; she later sang it thinking of the friends who’ve died too young”7—just as if the two kinds of losses, the one due to the ebbing of love during life and the other to the finality of death, were cut from the same cloth. But let Shelley’s celebrated words make the point: All things that we love and cherish, Like ourselves must fade and perish; Such is our rude mortal lot— Love itself would, did they not.

If we didn’t lose others due to death, we’d lose them due to life. What’s the difference? So we have on the table the consoling (if hardly cheering) thought that the most devastating losses we sustain in death, its excruciating ultimate goodbyes, would come with life anyway. Even while we are alive, we lose countless moments with loved ones, moments that disappear irretrievably into the past. And we will or would eventually lose those loved ones themselves when, as our respective selves move ever forward into the future, we grow ever increasingly distant. The

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consoling thought, then, is that the losses that life brings, at least for those of us who value human relationships above everything else— for we people who need people—are ultimately no different than those that death inflicts. Does this consolation for mortality ring true? Suppose that you missed your son’s performance in Toronto, although you were able to close the biggest merger deal of your life, because you were in Philadelphia that same evening. Is this any different from missing his musical performance in 2020, although you were able to close the biggest merger deal of your life in 2018, because you died in 2019? Life itself necessitates your being finite in space. Death simply returns the compliment by necessitating that you’re finite in time. What’s the difference? It’s simply this: Life itself might make it impossible for you to be in two different places at the same time. But it doesn’t prevent you from being in the same place with your son at a different time. You might have missed his performance in Toronto because you had to be in Philadelphia that evening. But you can still be with him when he graduates later that year. As the old Harry Chapin song has it, “We’ll get together then, son.” But suppose you missed his performance in 2020 because you died in 2019. Then you can never make up for it. If we didn’t die, then we’d eliminate a kind of loss that goes over and above anything that life itself imposes. In this sense, life’s losses do not and cannot intimate death’s. What about the observation that even if we somehow never lost opportunities to be with our loved ones, we would sooner or later grow ever more distant from them, and so lose them that way? Wouldn’t life’s losses then ultimately match death’s? But again, “distant” is a spatial concept. While two people can move apart in space, whether due to estrangement or for some other reason, they cannot move apart in time. Your fed-up spouse can leave you behind in Toledo by moving to Pittsburgh. But she cannot leave you behind in 2016 by moving to 2017 or 2117. While the two of you

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might no longer occupy the same spatial location for the rest of your lives, you will still always occupy precisely the same moment in time, millisecond by millisecond—until one of you dies. In Mrs. Dalloway, the critic Victor Brombert notes, “Big Ben can be heard throughout, solemn and majestic, marking the irrevocable hour, accompanying Clarissa and Peter Walsh on their separate walks through the city, providing a sense of simultaneity and a link between one isolated consciousness and another.”8 As long as we live—we and our lovers, spouses, or children who have deserted us for different far-flung places in space—we will always remain enveloped in the same moment in time, the same temporal environment, the same events of the world, events of the culture, events of the family, all of which provide innumerable possible points of psychological closeness. Crooning “Are you lonesome tonight?” Elvis wonders whether his absent lover misses his presence in her home, her living room, her porch. Life’s losses, Elvis tells us, are spatial. We grew apart, and what remains is an empty chair and a bare doorstep. Life’s losses, though, are not temporal. The question “Are you lonesome tonight?” assumes that Elvis and his lover still share the exact same “tonight,” the exact same moment and always will—until one of them dies. For as long as they live they can never escape one another in time. So yes, life itself makes it all too possible for you and your lover to be in two disparate places at the same time; life itself can and does separate us in space. But nothing about life makes it possible for you and she to be at two different moments in time, she stopping in 2019 while you move on to 2020. Only death can force that kind of parting. In that sense, too, life’s losses can never intimate death’s.

Statues and Trophies At first glance, it would seem as if we can make short work of the idea that life’s losses resemble death’s. Yes, husbands walk out, wives walk out, and there have been countless moments when we were separated from our sweet children. But those losses will never

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rival the ones that death imposes. As long as we live, we will always be at the same moment in time as our wayward spouse even if at a different place. And as long as we live, we can always be at the same place with our sweet children at other moments. But let’s press this a little further. Who really thinks that even if we always occupy the same moment with our wayward spouse as we move forward in time together, that that has any meaning at all if we can’t also be in the same place? And sure, we can always be at the same place with our child at a later moment. But who really thinks that our doing so would compensate for the irreplaceable loss of missing his first step or his recital or any number of other precious moments, watching them slide irrecoverably into the past? “How many fathers haven’t been around for their children’s birthdays, or their first step, because they were working,” Spike Lee ruminates, or “OK . . . at a Knicks game. And when you miss it, it’s gone. That’s a lot of guilt.”9 What precisely, then, is so wonderful about our mortal condition—in which we all move forward together second by second in time while the moments of our lives slip ceaselessly through our fingers back into the past? It seems quite compatible with heaping helpings of loss, even if they don’t exactly resemble death’s. But actually, there is something wonderful about our condition. Let’s think, for a moment, about what the world would be like if we weren’t all compelled to move forward together, second by second, in time. On first glance, it might seem to have its attractive features. Wouldn’t it be nice if instead of marching into the future moment by moment in lockstep, temporally manacled to all our fellow existing human beings—Elvis to his lover, Clarissa to Peter— we could somehow move freely in time just as we can in space? Wouldn’t it be terrific if you could continue forging ahead in time if you wanted to, while I could hang back for a bit— or indefinitely— at my favorite age or year, if that suited me? We enjoy such freedom of movement in space. Why not in time? Think of how we imagine people who cease moving ahead in time while others continue on. We can’t seem to do it without envisag-

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ing those who choose to stop moving—who opt to get off of time’s conveyor belt—as statues. Recall those TV commercials showing a busy executive moving briskly toward her rental car while everyone around her, having foolishly chosen to rent from a competitor, is paralyzed. Or the nonaging hero in Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer, who’s described as a “statue,” his hand “as cold as that of death.”10 Or what about Dorian Gray, who ceases to age while his picture, along with everyone else, continues to grow older? Dorian “never carved a statue,” his frenemy Harry says, “or painted a picture . . .” Instead, Dorian himself is a statue, or a picture, having stopped moving forward in time. A statue is not—nor is it meant to be—an attractive image for the self. No, it is a cautionary conceit designed to ward us off of thinking that anything other than our common, inescapable movement forward in time is desirable. Note that Dorian never literally stops moving forward in time while others continue on. That would require some fancy metaphysics. Rather, he stops in some ways but not in others. He stops physically aging, even as he continues to accumulate more experiences and memories as the years pass. That physical stasis, however—and this is the point—is enough to open up a complete rupture between him and his fellow human beings. It’s enough to wrench him out of the common experience of humankind. It creates an ever-widening gulf between him and all others, who do continue to move ahead in time and grow old. Dorian loses them, and he in turn becomes lost to them. He becomes dead to them. Like a statue. And that makes sense. After all, in our human experience thus far, there’s only one way in which two people can part in time, one continuing to move ahead and the other ceasing to do so. It’s if the second one dies. Had we the freedom to move— or not—in time the way we do in space, we would simply take a form of loss that only death can inflict and make it a part of life. In fact, we have seen this idea before—the idea of a self ceasing to move forward in time if it so chooses—in Chapter 1. No one, as

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the philosopher J. David Velleman points out, thinks of a statue as traveling inch by inch through space from its feet toward the top of its head. In like fashion, we needn’t view our selves as traveling moment by moment through time from our births toward our deaths. Instead, just as no part of a statue—and of course a part is all that exists at any given point in space— can be said to be moving toward the ceiling, no part of our self—and, after all, a part is all that ever exists at any given moment in time— can be said to be moving toward our death. Suppose we adopt this mindset. Just as a statue’s nose grows no taller than its knee, the 10 –11 AM, August 8, 2020, part of our self— as we see it—will grow no older than the 10 –11 AM, August 8, 2000, part did. If only we can bring ourselves to look at things this way then we will cease to age, at least psychologically, just as Dorian does physically. And thus far from looming ever larger on the horizon with each tick of the clock, death will become utterly irrelevant as long as we live: just as Epicurus’s first consolation claims it is. But now consider one added feature of Velleman’s view of the self. It’s a feature that Velleman finds attractive. But in fact it carries a hidden danger. Say that the 4 –5 PM, June 23, 2014, part of your self experiences pain. Even so, Velleman says, it needn’t suffer. Suffering comes only from a sense that there is a self that moves ever onward in time, so that the pain it sustains this hour will be compounded by the pain it sustains the next, and the next, and so on. Suppose, however, that you believe that this particular hour’s pain is experienced only by that part of your self that occupies this particular hour, and that the next hour’s pain is none of its business but is, rather, a burden for the next hour’s part of your self to deal with. Suppose you truly live only in the moment— or hour. Then all that you will ever feel at any given moment will be that moment’s pain, not any broader suffering.11 This sounds good, I guess. But there’s a problem. Suppose I adopt Velleman’s recommended psychology. Suppose I do begin to treat

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each hour of my life as occupied by its own distinct part of my self. I leave the previous hour’s pain behind and have no concern with the next hour’s. Not only do I not age, I don’t suffer either. But as Velleman himself acknowledges, most of humankind do not—and probably cannot—look at themselves this way. Most other people, including those closest to me, will continue to see themselves as moving ahead in time, accumulating the previous hour’s pain and dreading the next: suffering. Even if I somehow manage to follow Velleman’s advice and see myself in the psychologically nonsuffering way he recommends, they won’t. And so if I really, truly do come to view my self in the way Velleman proposes, will I not simply write myself out of the common experience of humanity, which in major part is to suffer? Will others not become strangers to me, and me to them? Dead to them, in a way, because numbed to suffering? Even Dorian “suffers” greatly, we are told, because at least he continues to move ahead in time psychologically, if not physically.12 By stopping in time while others forge ahead, both Dorian’s self (who ceases to age physically if not psychologically) and Velleman’s self (who ceases to age psychologically if not physically) lose contact with their fellow human beings. They become statues, or paintings. They lose us and we lose them —in ways that begin to mimic the kind of loss of one another that only death itself, which currently is the sole phenomenon that can part us in time, inflicts. And so it’s an unheralded blessing that we must all move through time together, always occupying the same moment, until we die. If we didn’t, aspects of death would come to enter life itself. Yet although I am glad that we have no alternative but to move ahead in time moment by moment with everyone else, wouldn’t it be nice if the precious events in our lives didn’t have to vanish back in time moment by moment as they happened? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if treasured events, whether we missed them or not, stuck around—as if they were objects like trophies or jewels—for us to cherish and savor and relive?

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No, because there’d be a high price to pay. As it is, when a precious event disappears forever into the past—say it’s an event I missed, like my daughter’s recital—I certainly do feel a sting of regret, perhaps permanently. But I don’t feel grief. I know that an event has a life span of whatever moments it takes to happen. But when a precious object like a trophy or a jewel disappears into the past—when, after years or decades, it’s destroyed or lost and becomes an artifact of yesterday— then I feel grief, not just regret. Grief is the emotion I experience when something valued that persists in time, not an event that immediately vanishes back with time, perishes: dies. And so if events were like objects, with the capacity to remain with me over time at the cost of sooner or later dying to me, disintegrating or losing their sheen just as objects almost always do—then life’s losses would, for me, come to resemble death’s. There’d be far more grief in my life. I might feel wistful that the summer in Europe I spent with H in 1983, the moment or experience, is long gone. But it’s nothing compared to how I would feel if the churches and museums we visited— objects that have lasted centuries—to say nothing of H, who has lasted decades, were suddenly also extinguished. Tom Townsend, the main character in Whit Stillman’s movie Metropolitan, suffers pangs about all the precious moments his parents missed to be with him when he was a child. But what really gets him is when he sees that they have thrown out his toys—when he sees that precious objects that have somehow managed to survive ever since his youth have finally met their end. If events persisted in time the way objects do, then their eventual demise would be just as killing. As it is, objects and events relate to each other in a complex emotional ecology. We need them both. Cherished events are with us alas but momentarily, but then while we may feel wistful about their passing, we understand that they are transient and don’t usually mourn them.13 Cherished objects— including other selves—are, thankfully, with us much longer. But when they perish, we feel grief. It’s good that we have the mixture.14 Joan Didion gives us a sense of what it would be like to treat a precious event as if it were a precious object. She imagines—a bit of

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magical thinking—that instead of vanishing, like all events do into the past, her own twenty-ninth year actually lived on for decades as a cherished object in her husband’s eyes. That was lovely. Until, four decades later, it suddenly died with him. And so, instead of wistfulness over a youthful time long gone in the past, Didion finds herself, as she says, “grieving” and “mourn[ing]” what seems to her to be the death of her forty-year-old twenty-ninth year. After all, it had become a companion in her life—a companion every bit as longlasting as her husband.15 Leon Kass, a humane contemporary writer on questions of mortality, makes a virtue of the idea of transience. Perhaps, Kass says, “the beauty of flowers depend[s] on the fact that they will soon wither [like] the fading, late afternoon winter light or the spreading sunset. . . . Does not love swell before the beautiful precisely on recognizing that it (and we) will not always be?”16 Kass’s poignant observation makes sense when we are talking about events, moments in time. The rose’s eclipsed hour of blossoming, the abbreviated instant of the sunset: their briefness before vanishing into the past adds luster to those moments. Such events (if I can be far less poetic than Kass) resemble certain consumer purchases, purchases of experiences, that are more valuable the more fleeting they are. Think of a ticket to a once-in-a-lifetime reunion of the Band. But objects that persist through time: these we do not want to be transient. Durable purchases like fridges and cars gain value precisely with their endurance and longevity. And when they finally expire they lose their value. If events habitually persisted with us like objects do, whether in actuality or simply in our mind, then their eventual passing, too, would be more destructive than lustrous. True, one key consolation for mortality, the “Holderlin strategy” discussed in Chapter 2, relies precisely on our learning to treat our life’s events—particularly its peak moments of accomplishment, say the high-school basketball championship game twenty years ago—as persisting objects. Let’s get our life’s pinnacle instances of achievement done as early as possible, the Holderlin strategy advises. That

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way death, when it comes, will arrive too late to interrupt them. And then let’s learn to spend the rest of our time on the planet savoring those moments as we would a trophy or a jewel that stays with us, instead of feeling like a has-been as they slip ever further into the past. That way, we won’t experience the itch to embark on new projects that will then be hostage to death. We will thus gain the fullest possible psychological access to Epicurus’s second consolation. Once death comes, not only we—but our life—will no longer be here to be harmed by it. After all, it will long since have been happily and sustainingly wrapped up. Yet this consolation, even if we can manage to find our way to it, comes at a price. It means that we will see life’s losses as far more devastating if, for whatever reason, those events that we have treated like objects eventually lose their meaning: if that championship season, with us for so many decades, finally relinquishes its ability to sustain us. For Coach in Jason Miller’s play, the big game twenty years before didn’t start receding into the past as soon it ended. It remained with him like the trophy itself, enshrined in his living-room cabinet. But then in the course of one catastrophic evening with his now tarnished boys, that “object,” that championship season, abruptly shatters. It dies. Coach realizes it’s all “history.” It was, he says, now speaking in the past tense, “a rare and beautiful thing.”17 And he bewails as anyone would the death of a rare and beautiful thing. Precisely because for most of us, events— our sweet children’s recitals, our championship seasons—vanish immediately into the past, life’s losses do not resemble death’s. They remain cause more for wistfulness than for grief. And that’s a good thing. I am glad, then, that I am moving ever forward in time, moment by moment, along with all other selves, even toward death. I am glad, in other words, that we are not free to move or stay put as we choose in time the way we can in space. For if we could stop in time as we liked while others moved on, then we would lose each other in life in a way we now can only when we die.

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And I am glad that the events of my life, even the most radiant ones, vanish moment by moment into the past, gone as soon as they’re done. Yes, knowing that they are ephemeral I often feel wistful as I see them slip back ever further in time. But it would be worse if they somehow stuck around for me to revisit and relive, if they persisted in time the way objects do. Then I would feel real grief when they finally died to me, the way I now do only with objects— and people—when they die. These two features of mortal existence—that our selves move together relentlessly into the future while the events of our life ceaselessly disappear into the past—are finally what bar life’s losses from ever resembling death’s. And while that fact doesn’t console me about death, it does console me about life.

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conclusion

MY LAST ESPRESSO

Four consolatory streams flow at us from the wisdom of the ages. Four strategies offer themselves for our consideration as we seek to reconcile ourselves with our mortal condition. If we look at things in the right way, we will see that: Death is benign. Mortality gives us all the goods that immortality would. Immortality would be malignant. Life gives us all the bads that death does.

I have tried to follow each stream on its own winding course and along its various tributaries, commenting on the exotic sights seen along the way. It’s when they are taken together, though, that something more deeply revealing emerges. Something that remains invisible from the perspective of each, taken individually, materializes when they are viewed as a whole.

*

We are all moving, moment by moment in time, toward our deaths. And, moment by moment, the events of our lives vanish further and further back into the past. That’s how most of us see things. That’s our reality. It’s what cries out for consolation. But let’s consider the alternatives. And let’s not restrict ourselves to realistic options. After all, the question is whether reality itself should leave us disconsolate. Bundles of ego and anxiety that we are, we won’t be satisfied if our condition is merely the best that’s realistically possible. It has to be the best that’s (even barely) conceivable. So suppose, first off, that we were immortal. But beyond that, nothing else changed. In particular, suppose that we continued, as immortal selves, to move ever forward into the future, while the moments of our lives continued to slip remorselessly behind us into the past.

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CONCLUSION

Would immortality not then ultimately pose its very own choice of deaths? Consider the possibilities. Suppose, for instance, that our selves, forging ever onward in time, and the events of our lives, flowing ever backward in time, one day ceased to change, to bring us novelty. Suppose that our memories, desires, beliefs, emotional attachments, and commitments—the constituents of our self—no longer evolved. And suppose that the events of our lives, too, all came to resemble the same dull hum. Sooner or later, we’d feel as if we had seen and done all we cared to. Immortality would then take us to a liminal, deathlike realm of stupefying boredom. On the other hand, suppose that all the memories, feelings, attachments, beliefs, and plans that make up our self, along with all the life events that happened to us, did continuously and thoroughly change and churn and morph and turn over, presenting us with endless novelty. We wouldn’t be bored. But then immortality would simply entail a different kind of death: a repeated and utter cutting off of our previous selves and lives, indeed their termination and consignment to oblivion, in favor of new ones. What if we split the difference? Suppose that we managed to maintain the same trove of memories, values, tastes, feelings, and desires over endless time—so that instead of recurrently dying we remained the same essential self—but that the events of our lives did somehow manage to throw incessant novelty at us, such that we cheated boredom. There’d still be a problem. Immortality would then make us feel ever-increasingly antiquated. We ourselves would have ceased to change while the world and its events continued to, growing ever stranger. There would arise within us an ever-increasingly mournful nostalgia for the past. By contrast, what if it was our selves that continued to change, regularly jettisoning all previous memories, plans, emotional attachments, beliefs, and desires, while the events of our lives no longer varied but simply came to resemble the same moment repeated over and over? Then immortality would seem to threaten a kind of perpetual dementia.

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Immortality, as long as our selves moved ever forward into the future while the events of our lives flowed back ever further into the past, would seem to be a box with no escape—a box whose four walls would comprise grossly distended facsimiles of what we mortals already experience in death and dying. The stuporous sleep of boredom. The complete annihilation of repeated self-disappearance. The ever-deepening antiquated feeling that leads to cascading nostalgia, which one writer likens to a “kind of living death.”1 The futile dementia that spells endless twilight. Immortality, on the twin assumptions that our selves continued moving forward into the future and the events of our lives continued fading back into the past, does look malignant. That’s why, when you scrutinize it, you will see that any benign scenario for immortality that fantasists have offered relies on denying one or the other of these two presumptions. So let’s now suppose not only that we were immortal. Let’s suppose as well that we no longer had to perpetually move forward in time, while the events of our lives no longer had to recede ever further into the past. What would that look like? Begin by imagining that we no longer had to move relentlessly forward into the future, moment by moment in lockstep with every other living creature. Imagine instead that we each could disperse as freely over time as we can over space. Suppose, for example, that as an immortal you could stay put for as long as you pleased at your favorite age or year. Meanwhile I, with my own unique needs or preferences, could continue on to a different age or year and then plant myself there for an indefinite spell. And now imagine too that the precious events of our lives—the time we scaled Everest, the budding stages of a blissful affair—no longer had to slip remorselessly back into the past. Suppose instead that they could somehow remain with us like cherished objects: jewels or talismans that we could fully experience as often as we liked. And then wouldn’t immortality be lovely? Wouldn’t it be far better than our current mortal lot?

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These are hard scenarios to get our mind around. And yet we have some clues. Dorian Gray, in a sense, shows us what it would mean for a self to stop moving forward in time. Dorian opts to cease aging physically if not psychologically. The result, though, is that he utterly cuts himself out of the common experience of humankind. He becomes lost to all others, who do continue moving forward in time. No longer part of the human race, Dorian becomes dead to them. And that makes perfect sense. After all, in our current reality, if a self stops moving forward in time while others continue on, it could only be because he has died. If we no longer all had to move together moment by moment through time while we were alive, then we would simply begin to lose each other during life in the way we now can only with death. T. Coraghessan Boyle’s short story “The Relive Box” imagines a society in which a new contraption has enabled people to stay as long as they want in a beloved day, week, or month in their life. The result is that family members and friends disengage from each other, die to each other, becoming lost in their own preferred years.2 Better, then, that we are all compelled to move together, in tandem moment by moment, ever forward in time. As for preventing a precious event in our life from slipping back in time once it’s happened, think again of Coach from That Championship Season. He manages to keep his old moment of glory, a longago victorious high-school championship game, alive with him as he moves through the decades. He treats it as a cherished object—a psychological if not a physical one like the trophy itself—that he spends time with daily. But then, over the course of one disastrous dinner party with his now debauched middle-aged boys, that precious moment crumbles. It dies to him. And what Coach then experiences is not the mere wistfulness we normally feel as precious moments, which we all know and accept as ephemeral, immediately begin to vanish back in time as soon as they happen. What he experiences is real grief—the kind of grief we feel when we lose a precious object, or person, that has accompanied us for a long time. He goes into mourning.

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It is, then, precisely our relentlessly moving together minute by minute into the future, while the events of our lives remorselessly vanish back minute by minute into the past, that saves human life from becoming riddled with intimations of death. If that wasn’t the reality, then deathlike losses would begin to permeate life, even if we didn’t actually die. But of course death is our reality. And so various bodies of thought try to console us through a different strategy. They claim that, even within our limited mortal existence, our selves do not necessarily have to move relentlessly forward in time toward our death. Nor do the moments of our lives inevitably have to slip ceaselessly through our fingers into the past. It all depends on how we look at things. Derek Parfit, for example, advances a Buddhist view. He dismisses, as an illusion, the idea that we are selves moving ever forward, moment by moment, toward death. There is no such self. And hence even though we die, there’s nothing that death necessarily destroys. Death, in fact, is benign. It should be far less disturbing to us than it is. Gordon Bell, the techno-guru, refuses to accept that the events of our lives must necessarily flow ever further back into the past, moment by moment, inexorably out of reach. Instead we can record and digitize every single one of those events— everything we have thought, felt, and experienced minute by minute. We, and especially others on into the unending future, can then repeatedly revisit them. Even though we must die, all the contents of our mind can live on indefinitely, allowing us to gain an intimation of immortality, mortal though we may be. But consolatory ideas like Parfit’s, Bell’s, and others I have examined come at too high a psychological price for most of us. I wonder, in fact, whether there’s even something deathly about them: whether they give up the game and the ghost at the same time. For us to see death as benign, in the way that Parfit does, for example, we must view our self as already dead. For us to accept that mortality could ever intimate immortality in the way that Bell thinks it can, we must

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suck what’s most ineffable, intimate, and precious—most alive— out of the flowing moments of our life, freeze-drying them into digitized bits and bytes so that they become comprehensible to strangers eons hence. That’s it. Those are the options: Either we die or we are immortal. And either our selves move relentlessly forward in time while the moments of our lives slip continually backward out of reach, or else we gain the capacities to stop moving forward in time and to keep the precious moments of our lives from flowing ever backward in time beyond our grasp. Of all possible combinations, none is better than the one we have. We die, and our selves move inexorably forward in time while the moments of our lives ineluctably vanish into the past. In fact, it may be the option that contains the least amount of death. At that most fundamental level, the bundle of ego and anxiety that dwells within me feels consoled about our mortal condition. Not cheered. But consoled. I—you, we, humankind—got the best deal imaginable.

*

Philip Larkin complained of specious stuff—attempts to console us for mortality that make logical sense but don’t ring true psychologically. Is this what I have offered? In one sense, yes. But in another, no. Yes, because what I have suggested isn’t likely to warm us emotionally. We can accept that we got the best deal imaginable and still ache at the thought that one day we will drink an espresso for the last time, or see a sunset for the last time, or make love for the last time. “Last” is an interesting word. It is at once an adjective, as in “my last espresso,” and a verb, as in “I’d like to make this espresso last.” The two senses of “last” are diametric opposites. The adjective implies termination and the verb continuation. The very syllable seems to rebel against itself. It’s as if “last” knows, given the kind of creatures that we are, that we could not accept its adjectival meaning alone without the hope implied by the verb. Uncut by the verb, the

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adjective by itself would simply be too painful for us to fully contemplate. It’s poetic license, I know, but I like to think that there’s something evocative here. Something that hints, in the marrow of our linguistic structure, at the basic emotional trauma that death brings, and that no consolation for mortality could ever reach. But no, in another sense the consolation I have offered is not specious. It might not grab us emotionally any more than other consolations do. But it is more psychologically real. Brilliant as other consolations can be as a matter of logical argumentation, many don’t ring psychologically true because they contradict our fundamental mindset. They try to obscure—to coax us out of— our sense of ourselves as moving ever forward in time toward our deaths while the moments of our life continually ebb ever further into the past. They insist that we can and should throw off this mindset in order to be consoled. I can’t. Nor do I think most of us can. And so I have tried instead to work within that psychology, to remain true to it. To find consolation within it. That very psychology, of course—that our selves move ever forward in time toward our death, while the events of our lives slip, moment by moment, through our fingers into the past—is precisely what cries out for consolation. But it is also, finally, the consoling answer to its own cry. It’s good that things are that way. It’s the best we could ever dream of, if we want to live at all.

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NOTES

Introduction 1. Lewis Lapham, Money and Class in America (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988), 156. 2. Joseph Brean, “A Lifetime of Stored Bits,” National Post, December 21, 2009. 3. Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (New York: Knopf, 2005), 193. 4. Adam Leith Gollner, The Book of Immortality (New York: Scribner, 2013), 343. Chapter 1. Attending Your Own Funeral 1. Ivan Turgenev, Diary of a Superfluous Man (New York: Norton, 1984), 75, 74. 2. Ibid., 20. 3. Sigmund Freud, Reflections on War and Death (New York: Moffatt, Yard, 1918), 61–62. 4. Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych (Whitefish: Kessinger, 2004), 33. 5. Elizabeth Grice, “In Each of Us, There’s an Element of Snobbery,” Daily Telegraph, February 24, 2005. 6. Tolstoy, Death of Ivan Ilych, 27. 7. Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: Free Press, 1973), 23. 8. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (New York: Vintage, 1996), 666. 9. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (Oxford: Heinemann, 1994), 97. 10. In his stimulating book Death and the Afterlife (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), Samuel Scheffler notes that most of us manage to live happy and normal lives even in the face of our own personal mortality. But, Scheffler then goes on to observe, if we ever thought that the human species itself would go extinct soon after our personal demise we would become deeply depressed and possibly unhinged. When it comes to death, Scheffler concludes, we are less selfish—less concerned with our own survival—and far more altruistic, far more concerned about our species’ continued survival, than we might realize. But much of

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what Scheffler says in support of that intriguing idea seems, to me, to actually argue for a different point. “The fact that there are other people who value their relations with you who will continue to live after you have died,” Scheffler writes, “makes it possible to feel that you have a place in the social world of the future”—a “personal relationship to the future”—“even if, due to the inconvenient fact of your death, you will not actually be able to take advantage of it. The world of the future becomes, as it were, more like a party one had to leave early and less like a gathering of strangers” (30). It is not the future of humanity (“strangers”) as a whole, then, that you care about so much as your ongoing personal place within that future— the party of your life, the projects and values and hopes that you furthered and fostered and nurtured—and that it continue even after you have gone. Scheffler says that we are accepting of the disappearance of our self as long as humanity as a whole continues on; but in my terms, what he is really saying is that we are accepting of the disappearance of our self as long as our life continues on. Once Scheffler’s point is reframed in this way, though, I’m not sure that he’s entirely right. It seems to me that I could easily be more upset about my self dying if the party of my life—if my personalized future— does continue on without me. It’s my party, and I’ll be missing out on it. In Simone de Beauvoir’s novel All Men Are Mortal (London: Virago, 1995), 331, the hero, Fosca, tries to reassure his lover, who has just discovered that Fosca, unlike herself, is immortal: “You’ll live longer in my heart,” Fosca says, “than you’d have lived in the heart of any mortal man.” “No,” she replies bitterly, “If you were mortal, I’d go on living in you until the end of the world, because for me your death would be the end of the world. Instead, I’m going to die in a world that will never end.” 11. This is a version of the so-called deprivationist critique of Epicurus; for good discussions see Fred Feldman, Confrontations with the Reaper (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 128–51, and Steven Luper, The Philosophy of Death (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Since my interest here lies in examining consolations for mortality, I won’t explore this deprivationist school of thought in detail, since it’s dedicated to showing that death is bad for us and so leaves us unconsoled. Instead, as an early twenty-first century bundle of ego and anxieties who anguishes as I move moment by moment toward death, I take the legitimacy of the deprivationist argument as given, and ask

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12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

whether Epicurus’s consolatory approach is capable of overcoming its psychological force. Ben Bradley, Well-Being and Death (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 156; Shelly Kagan, Death (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 312–17. Tim Martin, “Goodbye, Philip Roth?,” Daily Telegraph, October 3, 2010. Robert McCrum, “Clive James: A Life in Writing,” Guardian, July 5, 2013. Mark Hodgkinson, “The Day I Made the Ice Man’s Blood Boil on Court,” Daily Telegraph, October 25, 2007. Roger Catlin, “Legendary Writer Opens Up,” Hartford Courant, March 17, 2013. J. David Velleman, “So It Goes,” The Amherst Lecture in Philosophy (2006), http://www.amherstlecture.org/velleman2006/velleman2006_ ALP.pdf. Velleman, “So It Goes,” 14. D. H. Mellor, Real Time (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 86. Michel de Montaigne, “That to Philosophize Is to Learn to Die,” in The Complete Essays, ed. and trans. M. A. Screech (London: Penguin, 2003), 107. Velleman, “So It Goes,” 18. For related discussion, see Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness (New York: Vintage, 2007), 105. Tim Teeman, “Edmund White: Sex, Success and Survival,” Daily Beast, February 11, 2014. Velleman’s argument is a “four-dimensionalist” one, meaning that he treats time as a dimension that works in the same way as the three spatial ones do. And he does so in order to make Epicurus’s first consolation psychologically real to us: not only, as Epicurus says, can death and our selves never coexist—not only must death remain absent as long as we are here—but we selves no more move toward our deaths in time than a stationary object (a statue, say) moves toward the ceiling in space. Interestingly, though, twenty-five years before Velleman made his argument the philosopher Harry Silverstein (“The Evil of Death,” Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 401–24) used a “four-dimensionalist” perspective to attack Epicurus’s idea that our selves and our deaths can

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never coexist. Arguing that time operates in precisely the way the three spatial dimensions do, Silverstein concludes that “just as spatially distant events exist though they do not exist here, so temporally distant, including posthumous, events exist though they do not exist now.” In other words, it’s no less true that a person and her death coexist, even though they occupy two entirely separate stretches of time, than it is that a person and a faraway tragedy—say one of her parents dies in another city— coexist, even though they occupy two entirely separate stretches of space. And so, if a spatially separate parental death is a real harm to us, as most of us would think it is, then so is our own temporally separate death. The upshot: on the one hand, for Velleman, four-dimensionalism means that we selves are not moving toward our deaths in time any more than a statue moves toward the ceiling in space. On the other hand, for Silverstein, four-dimensionalism means that we selves coexist with our temporally separated death and so can be harmed by it every bit as much as a person coexists with a spatially separated tragedy and so can be harmed by it. Velleman, then, tries to ease an anxiety that he says Epicurus fails to dispel, i.e., that we feel ourselves growing ever closer to death over the course of our lives. But he does so at the cost of invoking a metaphysical view, four-dimensionalism, that, for Silverstein, undermines the reassurance that Velleman thinks Epicurus does offer: that we and our deaths can never coexist in a way that harms us. Chapter 2. How to Rest on Your Laurels Jason Miller, That Championship Season (New York: Atheneum, 1972), 113. Ibid., 91. Tad Friend, “All Grown Up,” New Yorker, February 3, 2014, 24. Leo Tolstoy, “Croesus and Fate,” The Works of Leo Tolstoy (New York: Walter J. Black, 1928), 107. 5. Charles Legge, “Scatman’s Key of Life,” Daily Mail, December 18, 2009. 6. Paul Hodgins, “Battle Tested: Author Recalls the Genesis of ‘War Horse,’ a 30-Year-Old Overnight Sensation,” Orange County Register, July 1, 2012. 7. The psychologists Ed Diener, Derrick Wirtz, and Shigehiro Oishi (“End Effects of Rated Quality of Life: The James Dean Effect,” Psychological Science 12 [2001]: 124 –28) asked experimental subjects to compare two lives. In the first, a long period (sixty years) of deep un1. 2. 3. 4.

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happiness is followed by a shorter period (five years) of mild unhappiness and then death. In the second, the same sixty years of deep unhappiness is followed immediately by death. Subjects deemed the first life to be a better one. Diener et al. conclude that a greater amount of cumulative unhappiness (sixty years of “deep” plus five years of “mild”) can be better than a smaller amount (just sixty years of “deep”), as long as that greater unhappy cumulation has a relatively less unhappy culmination, an observation that seems to split the cumulative from the culminative. Notably, the two lives end at different points—after sixty-five years in the first case and after just sixty years in the second. As a comparative matter, that creates a question that would concern a “deprivationist” philosopher but that Diener et al.’s experiment doesn’t address: how to deal with the fact that the second life was deprived of five years that the first possessed? For deprivationists, the second life’s comparative loss of five years— especially since we have no idea what those five years would have been like—represents a comparative deprivation, a harm, a net negative. After all, if the first life was able to get somewhat better after sixty years of deep unhappiness, there’s no reason why the second wouldn’t have either. So we must add to the end of the second life—to its sixty years of deep unhappiness—a further negative value representing a deprivation: the deprivation of either five years of mild unhappiness as the first life experienced (and which apparently made that life a better one) or possibly, for all we know, five years of actual positive happiness. Viewed in this fashion, the second life was culminatively and cumulatively worse than the first. If subjects were reasoning in this fairly common way in preferring the first life, then for them culminative and cumulative wouldn’t have split. Alternatively we might assume, for whatever reason, that the second life would have continued to be deeply unhappy in those extra five years. In that case, though, early death was a good thing—it prevented further deep unhappiness. If we reason in this way, then sixty years of deep unhappiness plus being spared five years of any further unhappiness—perhaps even mild unhappiness, let alone deep unhappiness—is cumulatively and culminatively better than sixty years of deep unhappiness followed by five years of mild unhappiness. Again, cumulative and culminative do not split.

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8. Anonymous, “A Great Servant of the Crown,” Saturday Review, March 4, 1905, 276. 9. Thomas Nagel, “Death,” in The Metaphysics of Death, ed. John Martin Fischer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 70. 10. Ben Wener, “Third Eye Blind Is No One-Hit Wonder,” Knight-Ridder News Service, February 12, 1998. 11. Dan O’Neill, “This Week Don’t Bet Against Woods,” St. Louis PostDispatch, April 1, 2002. 12. Emily Yoffe, “You Are Not the Speaker,” Slate, March 20, 2012. 13. Amy Chozick, “Bill Clinton Defends His Economic Legacy,” New York Times, April 30, 2014. 14. John Aizlewood, “Arts: Do I Look Like a One-Hit Wonder?,” Guardian, April 12, 2001. 15. See Rachel Hergett, “What’s Up with That?” Bozeman Daily Chronicle, December 20, 2010. 16. William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 68. 17. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Early Success,” in The Crack-Up (New York: New Directions, 1993), 90. 18. Cooling our desire by imagining how quickly its object will cease to fulfill us once we get it may seem like a sour-grapes strategy, on which we tell ourselves that the unattainable object of our desire really isn’t all that desirable. But sour grapes is different. It relies on mischaracterizing the object when we haven’t got it, not on accurately characterizing what will happen to our desire when we do have it. Specifically, sour grapes relies on (falsely) attributing features to the object (the grapes are sour) rather than truly recognizing that however sweet the grapes, our desire for them will inevitably abate once we have them. 19. Francis Bacon, “Novum Organum,” The Works of Francis Bacon: Philosophical Writings (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1877), 116. 20. Miller, That Championship Season, 23, 69. 21. Montaigne said of antiquity: “It is an object of a peculiar sort, distance magnifies it.” 22. Miller, That Championship Season, 96. 23. See, e.g., Travis Carter and Thomas Gilovich, “The Relative Relativity of Material and Experiential Purchases,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98 (2010): 146 –59. 24. See Emily Rosenzweig and Thomas Gilovich, “Buyer’s Remorse or Missed Opportunity? Differential Regrets for Material and Experien-

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tial Purchases,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102 (2012): 215–33. 25. In Dying for Time: Proust, Woolf, Nabokov (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), Martin Hägglund critiques, among other things, two long-standing theories of human desire and their relationship with death anxiety. The first is the notion, drawn from Henri Bergson, among other sources, that what we mortals fundamentally desire is to transcend time altogether. We seek a state of being in which life’s precious moments no longer continually slip through our fingers into the past, but rather coexist eternally in front of our gaze as if we were gods viewing all of time at one glance or—mortals that we are—as if those lovely moments resembled an array of objects that might extend before us all at once in a stretch of space. The second, drawn from Freud, is the death wish: the idea that at a deep level what we mortals want is for the self to persist over time in the same way an inert object can: inorganic, immutable, and so free of the anxiety wrought by constant change. I simply want to note that the “death is benign” consolations discussed thus far actually rest on the two converse thoughts. The first is J. David Velleman’s idea that we can defeat our death anxiety if what it is that stretches out in time—in the way that objects stretch out in space—is not so much life’s moments as it is our very self, so that we no longer feel that we are constantly moving toward death. The second is that what it is that we want to persist over time—in the same way that objects do—is not (contra Freud) the self but, as with Coach, life’s precious moments, so that we feel them continuing to remain present alongside us. Chapter 3. Look Who’s Calling Himself Nothing 1. See, e.g., David Loy, “Introduction,” in Lack and Transcendence: The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2000). 2. Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks (New York: Modern Library, 1924), 507. 3. Sharon Baker, “The Three Minds and Faith, Hope and Love in Pure Land Buddhism,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 25 (2005): 59. 4. T. Kenny, “A Highlight of the Correspondences and the Differences Between the Illusory Self in Buddhism and the Unspiritual Self in the Writing of St. Paul” (PhD diss., University of Limerick, 2001) (abstract); Paul Powell, “On the Conceivability of Artificially Created Enlightenment,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 25 (2005): 128; Edward Feser,

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5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

“Personal Identity and Self-Ownership,” Social Philosophy & Policy 22 (2005): 100. Nickola Pazderic, “Recovering True Selves in the Electro-Spiritual Field of Universal Love,” Cultural Anthropology 19 (2004): 216; Rafael Capurro, “Privacy: An Intercultural Perspective,” Ethics and Information Technology 7 (2005): 37. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), 21; see also Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 250 –51. For an alternative view on which Death views everything but himself as nothing, see José Saramago, Death with Interruptions (Orlando: Harcourt, 2008), 155: “No one in this world or beyond has ever had more power than I have, I’m death, all else is nothing.” Jin Y. Park, Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism (Lanham: Lexington, 2009), 169. John Krummel, “Praxis of the Middle: Self and No-Self in Early Buddhism,” International Philosophical Quarterly 45 (2005): 522; Steven Collins, Selfless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Theravada Buddhism (New York: Cambridge University Press), 98, 102, 113–14, 122. David B. Claus, Toward the Soul: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Psiuchieta Before Plato (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 12–13. Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite (New York: New Directions, 1968), 79. Soon Hwang, Metaphor and Literalism in Buddhism: The Doctrinal History of Nirvana (London: Routledge, 2006), 60; Yoel Hoffmann, The Idea of Self, East and West: A Comparison Between Buddhist Philosophy and the Philosophy of David Hume (Calcutta: Firma KLM Private, 1980), 54 –55, 68–71. Jungnok Park, How Buddhism Acquired a Soul on the Way to China (Oakville, Conn.: Equinox, 2012), 94. See also Park, Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism, 184, 189, 196. “Interview with the Dalai Lama,” Piers Morgan Tonight, April 25, 2012. See, e.g., Park, Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism, 192–93. In addition to the sources cited above, I have relied as well on the following works for images and metaphors of the Buddhist no-self: Charles K. Fink, “The ‘Scent’ of a Self: Buddhism and the First-Person Perspective,” Asian Philosophy 22:3 (August 2012): 289–306; Donald W. Mitchell, “The No-Self Doctrine in Theravada Buddhism,” Interna-

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17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

tional Philosophical Quarterly 9 (1969): 248–60; David B. Wong, “The Meaning of Detachment in Buddhism, Taoism and Stoicism,” Dao, A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 5 (2005–6): 207–19; Steven Collins, “A Buddhist Debate About the Self; and Remarks on Buddhism in the Work of Derek Parfit and Galen Strawson,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 25 (1997): 467–93; Matthew MacKenzie, “Self-Awareness Without a Self: Buddhism and the Reflexivity of Awareness,” Asian Philosophy 18 (2008): 245–66; and Julia Ching, “Paradigms of the Self in Buddhism and Christianity,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 4 (1984): 31–50. Jasper Rees, “We Are a Modest Country Singer,” Independent, November 24, 1995. Gail Shister, “No ‘Dancing’ for the Credibility-Conscious Norville,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 11, 2006. Val Hennessy, “Victims of the Fame Virus,” Daily Mail, November 15, 2002. R. Todd, “The Real McCoy,” Sunday News, November 10, 1996. Dan Shaughnessy, “Wading Through the Boggs,” Boston Globe, April 9, 1989. Jim Shelley, “Catch a Falling Star,” Guardian, June 8, 1996. Sulak Sivarksa, Seeds of Peace (Berkeley: Parallax, 1992), 62–72. Jack L. Rubins, “Narcissism and the Narcissistic Personality,” American Journal of Psychoanalysis 43 (1983): 3. For businesspeople, bankruptcy is also a means of expunging losses from the ledger. It enables those with more losses than winnings to wipe the scoreboard clean every so often and—so it’s said—begin the game anew at the starting line. In similar fashion, many deem the institution of retirement to have furnished the wealth-accumulation game with a recognizable “finish line,” as an AFL-CIO pamphlet once described it, so that you can choose to quit the game while you’re ahead. The bottom line: just as you can begin the game anew through bankruptcy, such that your past losses no longer count, you can end it with retirement, such that any future drawdowns don’t count. But the bankrupt does not in fact begin the game anew. After all, none of his competitors in life go back to their beginnings when the bankrupt does. Instead it’s more apt to say that bankruptcy merely furnishes a pit stop during which the bankrupt retools himself while others keep on going. Nor does retirement provide a reliable end to the game of wealth accumulation, since so many expire before they reach that finish line. The availability of pit stops for renewal and the possibility

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26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31.

32.

of dying before the race is over are characteristic of only one particular game, namely car racing. Perhaps that’s why, emulating as it does the chase for wealth, it has become such an emblematic American sport. Thomas Bonk, “It Was Tiger’s Year After All,” Los Angeles Times, December 9, 2003. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), 200, 267. I am focusing on mental continuity and leaving aside the question of whether instead physical continuity (specifically of the brain) counts as a criterion for the self ’s survival, since physical continuity doesn’t figure into the Buddhist consolation. Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 280. Ibid., 199. See, e.g., Sydney Shoemaker, “Personhood and Consciousness,” in Consciousness and the Self: New Essays, ed. JeeLoo Liu and John Perry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 204. Parfit pairs another case, “Operation,” with “Teletransportation”: You know that you will soon undergo a painful operation. But before that happens all of your memories, beliefs, plans, thoughts, feelings, attachments, aspirations, and desires will be wiped out and replaced with new ones. Should you dread the operation? If so, why? After all, won’t it happen to an entirely different person? One way of looking at Operation is that it, too, illustrates the profound difference between a future-looking and a past-looking perspective. Ahead of me in Operation lies the complete extinguishment of all my memories, plans, attachments, and so forth—and their replacement with an entirely different set. Even so, I myself would still conclude that it’s “me” who would undergo the operation, and so will dread it. That’s because when I look ahead, what matters to my sense of survival is not whether my memories, thoughts, plans, commitments, and perceptions will continue to display certain kinds of relationships and similarities, but simply whether my bare subject will continue moving forward in time, which it does in the Operation case. For me, looking forward, the person undergoing the operation will still be me. Of course, once my memories, thoughts, plans, commitments, attachments, and beliefs are emptied out and replaced with new ones, that new person, looking backward, would not think he is me. He himself would not think that I have survived because, in looking backward, he conceives not a continuing bare self but a series of memories, plans, attachments, and so

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forth. And when he consults them, he will find that none of them refer to or have anything to do with mine. 33. In physical terms, I am agnostic as to how this continuity of self on into the future is accomplished. If someone told me that computer nanochips would one day begin gradually replacing my brain cells cyborgstyle, I would still think of my self as surviving as long as I felt there was no temporal gap in this process. See, e.g., David Chalmers, “Uploading: A Philosophical Analysis,” in Intelligence Unbound: The Future of Uploaded and Machine Minds, ed. Russell Blackford and Damien Broderick (Malden: Wiley, 2014), ch. 6. Chapter 4. Bucket Lists 1. Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2011), 169. 2. Heidegger, Being and Time (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 401. 3. Ibid., 257–59. 4. Søren Kierkegaard, “At a Graveside,” in Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 81. 5. Julian Barnes, Nothing to Be Frightened Of (New York: Knopf, 2008), 109. 6. See, e.g., Maureen Dowd, “Is Barry Whiffing?” New York Times, April 29, 2014. 7. William Ian Miller, Losing It: In Which an Aging Professor Laments His Shrinking Brain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 209–10. 8. Heidegger, Being and Time, 234 –37. 9. Liza Field, “Nature Displays Value of Death,” Roanoke Times and World News, October 19, 2006. 10. See Muriel Spark, Memento mori (London: Virago, 2010), 193, on “that sense of calm and freedom that is supposed to accompany old age.” 11. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans. Thomas Common (Ware: Wordsworth, 1997), 68. 12. Sigmund Freud, Reflections on War and Death (New York: Moffatt, Yard, 1918), 43– 44. 13. Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 166. 14. We might think that the opposite is occasionally true. I might say, for example, that I’m sure interest rates will rise though I don’t know exactly when. But even here I am actually more certain about that future

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15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

30. 31.

32.

event’s “when” than its “will.” What I am saying is that although I don’t know the exact date, I think interest rates will rise sometime in the near term. Meanwhile, given the possibility of everything from oil shocks to war I actually have no idea whether they in fact will. By contrast, mass death or extinction due to natural events resembles individual death— we know that some disasters (earthquakes, meteor collisions with the planet) are certain to happen, but are far less certain as to when. See also Heidegger, Being and Time, 288; Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), 536. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 538. Logan Hill, “Dern Has a Story for You,” New York Times, November 7, 2013. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 536. David Dalton, Piece of My Heart (New York: Da Capo, 2009), 19. Ibid., 191. Ibid., 57. Ibid., 184. Jerry Hopkins, The Lizard King: The Essential Jim Morrison (London: Plexus, 2009), 235. Ibid., 241– 42. Christopher Bowen, “Love and Defection,” Scotsman, November 21, 1998. Rick Kogan, “He Led Styx to the Top, but Now Singer Has to Sail Away on His Own,” Knight Ridder Tribune News Service, December 18, 2002. Frank R. Pieper, “First and Last Kiss Has No Fire,” News Gazette, October 2, 2000. A. O. Scott, “Hizzoner on Screen: Regrets? That’s Not His Style,” New York Times, February 1, 2013. “Far too many live, and far too long hang they on their branches. Would that a storm came and shook all this rottenness and worm-eatenness from the tree!” See Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, 69. Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses (New York: Vintage, 1991), 132. Peter Simons, “Events,” in The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics, ed. Michael J. Loux and Dean W. Zimmerman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 370, 372. Some philosophers value death because, they fear, in its absence the human virtue of courage would wither if not disappear. After all, the idea of

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33. 34. 35.

36. 37.

38. 39.

40.

sacrificing one’s life for the sake of something one cares about even more deeply— one’s country, one’s ideals—is central to our sense of human grandeur and glory. But this idea runs into a paradox. For it necessarily assumes that we humans are capable of valuing many things more highly than life itself. And so whatever loss death inflicts, there remain other things whose loss would, depending on the circumstances, require even greater courage to sustain: loss of country, loss of one’s ideals. Even in the absence of death, for example, opportunities to show courage by sacrificing one’s allegiance to one’s country for the sake of protecting one’s friends would still exist, as in E. M. Forster’s famous declaration: “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” Likewise, even without death, the opportunity to show courage by renouncing one’s cherished political ideals when they require one to engage in duplicity or brutality would still exist. In this way, too, life furnishes opportunities— opportunities to test our courage— every bit as substantial as death does. See Simon Critchley, Preamble, Very Little . . . Almost Nothing (London: Routledge, 1997). Heidegger, Being and Time, 289. Mark B. Okrent, “The Truth of Being and the History of Philosophy,” in Heidegger: A Critical Reader, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Harrison Hall (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 147; and Dorothea Freed, “The Question of Being: Heidegger’s Project,” in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles B. Guignon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 63. Martin Heidegger, What Is a Thing? (South Bend: Gateway, 1967), 21–22; 33. Heidegger, Being and Time, 406, 437; Calvin O. Schrag, “Heidegger on Repetition and Historical Understanding,” Philosophy East and West 20 (1970): 289; Edgar C. Boedeker, Jr, “Phenomenology,” in A Companion to Heidegger, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 167. Carol J. White, Time and Death: Heidegger’s Analysis of Finitude (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 132–33. William D. Blattner, “Existential Temporality in Being and Time,” in Heidegger: A Critical Reader, ed. Hubert Dreyfus and Harrison Hall (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 105. Lilian Alweiss, “Heidegger and ‘The Concept of Time,’” History of the Human Sciences 15 (2002): 123.

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41. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 546. 42. Heidegger does discuss what he calls “clock time,” i.e., our ordinary understanding on which it is time that delivers and then snatches away possibilities moment by moment, instead of it being our possibilities that shape and deliver phases of time to us in succession. For him, clock time is inauthentic and cannot be motivating because as long as we see time as a series of undifferentiated moments, we will assume that they will go on forever. In other words, clock time can’t provoke us to act because, even though it keeps life’s possibilities momentary, it gets rid of the sense that we will die, and so we will assume that we have all the time in the world. For the authentic self, then, death is necessary to provoke us to act because time can’t—it doesn’t bring possibilities to us and then snatch them away; rather our authentic possibilities create their own time. And for the inauthentic self, the self that does view time as a conveyor belt endlessly presenting and then withdrawing possibilities, the problem is that such a view dispels the sense that we will die, and so provides no goad to action. But either way for Heidegger, it’s death alone, not life or the evanescent possibilities it provides, that causes us to forge a self. See Heidegger, Being and Time, 424. Chapter 5. Retiring Your Jersey 1. Jeff Twiss, National Basketball Association, “Remembering Reggie,” http://www.nba.com /celtics /news /070203_RememberingReggie.htm (accessed January 1, 2016). 2. National Basketball Association, “Brooklyn Nets to Honor Jason Kidd with Jersey Retirement,” September 9, 2013, http://www.nba.com / nets/news/brooklyn-nets-honor-jason-kidd-jersey-retirement. 3. Beth Harris, “Kings Retire Gretzky’s No. 99 Jersey,” USA Today, October 10, 2002. 4. Major League Baseball, “MLB to Honor Jackie Robinson with League-Wide Tribute and Programming Surrounding Jackie Robinson Day,” April 1, 2013, http://mlb.mlb.com /news/article.jsp?ymd= 20130411&content_id=44509934&vkey=pr_mlb&c_id=mlb). 5. Ice Hockey Wiki, “Wayne Gretzky,” http://icehockey.wikia.com /wiki / Wayne_Gretzky (accessed January 1, 2016). 6. See blog commenter “Jackmanii,” The Straight Dope, “Baseball retired uniform numbers,” September 1, 2001, http://boards.straightdope .com /sdmb/showthread.php?t=33597.

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7. Martin Dodge, “Do We Need an Ethics of Forgetting in a World of Digital ‘Memories for Life’?,” University of Manchester, http:// personalpages.manchester.ac.uk /staff /m.dodge /forgetting_position _paper1.pdf (accessed January 1, 2016). 8. N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 38–39. 9. Clive Thompson, “A Head for Detail,” Fast Company Magazine, November 2006; Joseph Brean, “A Lifetime of Stored Bits,” National Post, December 21, 2009. 10. J. M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello (New York: Penguin, 2004), 77. 11. Vladimir Nabokov, Mary (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), 34. 12. E. M. Forster, The Journals and Diaries of E. M. Forster (London: Pickering and Chatto), 3:50. 13. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past (Ware: Wordsworth, 2006), 721. 14. Julian Barnes, Nothing to Be Frightened Of (New York: Vintage, 2009), 140. 15. Jenny Kidd, “Digital Storytelling,” in Save as—Digital Memories, ed. Joanne Garde-Hansen, Andrew Hoskins, and Anna Reading (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 177. 16. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello, 77. 17. Ibid., 17. 18. Douwe Draaisma, Metaphors of Memory: A History of Ideas About the Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 124. 19. To retrieve unconscious memories, Proust says, is to bring what was “hidden from our eyes” into the “broad daylight” of our consciousness (Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, 692). Likewise Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory (Mineola: Dover, 2004), 198: “recollections emerge into the light of consciousness.” 20. Philosophical Occasions, 1912–1951 (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), 447. 21. W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz (New York: Random House, 2001), 95. 22. Andrew Podnieks, International Ice Hockey Federation, “99 at 50: All-Time Top 10,” January 18, 2011, http://www.iihf.com /home-of -hockey/ news / news -single view/ ?tx _ttnews [tt _news] =5269&cHash =266eaf82fc74b63c5f7f626768eae29d. 23. John Updike, Rabbit at Rest (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1996), 436. 24. Stephen Cave, Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization (New York: Crown, 2012), 134 –36; 175–77.

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25. Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory (New York: Vintage, 1989), 95. 26. Geoffrey H. Hartman, The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 66 –67. Chapter 6. Regrets? 1. Kevin Maher, “Regrets, Here’s a Few,” The Times, November 26, 2012. 2. For a good exploration of this point, see Todd May, Death (Art of Living) (Stocksfield: Acumen, 2009), 59. 3. Or see Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, 924: “I could now sate my desire for [the girls] . . . hold it in reserve, among all those other desires the realization of which, as soon as I knew it to be possible, I would cheerfully postpone.” 4. See the discussion in Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche, Life as Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), 149–50, 164. 5. George E. Vaillant, Spiritual Evolution: A Scientific Defense of Faith (New York: Broadway, 2008), 119; George E. Vaillant, Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life from the Landmark Harvard Study of Adult Development (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002), 159. Suppose you believe that to regret even one thing in your life is to regret your entire life. Does that mean that you cannot regret the fact that you will die, because that would entail also having to regret the fact that you were born in the first place? After all, if everything is bound together in tight links of cause and effect, then the event of your particular death is irrevocably connected to the event of your particular birth. It’s a package deal. Regret neither— or regret both. I wonder, though, whether the “to regret one thing is to regret everything” idea breaks down in the case of death. Look at it this way. As the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman puts it, “Death comes. That’s it. Soon, it’s as if we never existed” (Tad Friend, “Puppet Show,” New Yorker, January 4, 2016, 21). Certainly, as far as you are concerned, once you die it’s as if you never were born. To regret the fact that you must die, then, simply means to regret a state equivalent to your never having been born. That’s why you, like most of us, regret your inevitable extinction. But that poses a problem for the “to regret one thing is to regret everything” idea. After all, it implies just the opposite: that to truly regret the fact that you must die means to regret your ever having been born.

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6. Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, 955: “A certain similarity exists . . . between all the women we successively love, a similarity that is due to the fixity of our own temperament . . .” 7. James McKinley, Jr., “Hard Times, with Regret but Without Apology,” New York Times, September 28, 2012. 8. CNN, “Erin Burnett Outfront,” August 23, 2012, http://transcripts. cnn.com /TRANSCRIPTS/1208/23/ebo.01.html. 9. Vaillant, Aging Well, 170; George E. Vaillant, Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012), 212. 10. Lewis uses the word “real” in a way that differs from my usage, but that doesn’t matter for purposes here. By the “real world,” I simply mean the actual world, the one we live in. 11. See, e.g., Stephen Barker, “Can Counterfactuals Really Be About Possible Worlds?,” Nous 45:3 (2011): 559–61. 12. David K. Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Malden: Blackwell, 2001), 234. 13. Saul A. Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 44, 52–53; Saul A. Kripke, Philosophical Troubles: Collected Papers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 1:315. 14. Kripke, Philosophical Troubles, 1:316: “I wish to emphasize the legitimacy of setting up possible worlds by any description we understand.” 15. Michel de Montaigne, “Of Repentance,” in The Complete Essays, ed. and trans. M. A. Screech (London: Penguin, 1993). 16. Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), 541; see also Bernard N. Schumacher, Death and Mortality in Contemporary Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 108. 17. Joel Rubinoff, “Rhoda Morgenstern’s Cathartic Long Goodbye,” Guelph Mercury, March 23, 2013. 18. Nina Martyris, “Mourning Tongues: How Auden Was Modified in the Guts of the Living,” Los Angeles Review of Books, January 28, 2014. 19. Harold Brodkey, This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), 68. 20. Larry King, Remember Me When I’m Gone: The Rich and the Famous Write Their Own Epitaphs and Obituaries (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 195. 21. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 543. 22. Milan Kundera, Immortality (New York: Harper Perennial, 1999), 68. 23. Ibid., 91–92. 24. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 537–39.

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Chapter 7. You Never Know 1. Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities (New York: Knopf, 1995), 1:500. 2. Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, 1011. 3. Richard Verrier, “Bronfman’s Lyricist Career Gets Help from Friends,” Los Angeles Times, November 28, 2003. 4. Abou Ali Farman Farmaian, “Secular Immortal” (PhD diss., City University of New York, 2012), 478. 5. Mark Johnston, Surviving Death (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 306. 6. Ibid., 372. 7. Ibid., 137, 141. 8. Ibid., 350. Chapter 8. Making Your Mark 1. See the mention in David Kaplan, “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice,” in Approaches to Natural Language, ed. Jaakko Hintikka (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1973), 516. 2. Kathleen Teltsch, “Wanted: Contributors in Search of Immortality,” New York Times, June 11, 1993. 3. Tyler Cowen, What Price Fame? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 176. 4. The Tragic Sense of Life (Mineola: Dover, 1954), 52. 5. Kripke, Naming and Necessity, 87; Kripke uses the term “marks” on 106. 6. For some exceptions, see Christopher Hughes, Kripke: Names, Necessity and Identity (Oxford: Clarendon), 44. 7. Heidegger, What Is a Thing?, 24. 8. Saul A. Kripke, Reference and Existence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 13. 9. Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, 581. 10. Oliver Sacks, “Speak, Memory,” New York Review of Books, February 21, 2013, 19–21. 11. The Groucho Letters: Letters to and from Groucho Marx (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), 159–60. 12. F. R. Westie, “Academic Expectations of Professional Immortality,” American Sociologist 8 (1973): 19–32. 13. Shelley’s fictional Ozymandias was most probably based on the real pharaoh Ramses II. But I will ignore that equation here and assume that all we know of Ozymandias comes from the poem.

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14. I have occasionally pondered the practice of referring to people with definite or indefinite articles, as in “A John Jackson knocked on my door” or “He then married one Alice Smith.” I assume that the use of “a” and “one” in these contexts signals an awareness by the speaker that the name alone isn’t enough to call a particular person to a listener’s mind; otherwise “John Jackson knocked on my door” or “He then married Alice Smith” would suffice. In this context, “a” and “one” are placeholders for the specific person, who otherwise could have been anyone. 15. Kripke, Naming and Necessity, 75. Chapter 9. Is This All There Is? 1. Saul Bellow, Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), 18. 2. Stendhal, Love (London: Penguin, 1975), 208. 3. Sean Healy, Boredom, Self, and Culture (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1984), 49. 4. For a good discussion of immortal boredom, see John Martin Fischer and Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, “Immortality and Boredom,” Journal of Ethics 18 (2014): esp. 363. 5. Anthony Hecht, in Jonathan F. S. Post, ed., The Selected Letters of Anthony Hecht (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 124; David Foster Wallace, The Pale King (New York: Little, Brown, 2011), 16. 6. Lucretius, De rerum Natura/Of the Nature of Things (London: J. M. Dent, 1921), Book III, ll. 1069–94. 7. See, e.g., Carlos Eire, A Very Brief History of Eternity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). 8. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,” Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981): 446 – 47. 9. Wendy Doniger, Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 202–3. 10. Patricia Meyer Spacks, Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 261. 11. Søren Kierkegaard, “Either/Or,” in The Essential Kierkegaard (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 56. 12. Camus, The Outsider (London: Penguin, 2000), 77. 13. Arthur Koestler, Dialogue with Death (New York: Macmillan, 1942), 117. 14. Karel Cˇapek, The Makropoulos Secret (Boston: Luce, 1925), 92.

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15. See, e.g., Katherine Hawley, How Things Persist (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001), 96. 16. Lars Svendsen, A Philosophy of Boredom (London: Reaktion, 2005), 45. 17. J. G. Ballard, Miracles of Life: An Autobiography (London: Fourth Estate, 2008), 73. No wonder that Alberto Moravia called true boredom a “withering of objects.” See his Boredom (New York: New York Review of Books Classic, 1999), 7. Chapter 10. Still Life 1. Timothy Chappell, “Infinity Goes Up on Trial: Must Immortality Be Meaningless?,” European Journal of Philosophy 17 (2009): 4. 2. Ibid., 8. 3. François-René de Chateaubriand, The Memoirs of Chateaubriand, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Hamish Hamilton, 1961), 73; see also John Martin Fischer, “Why Immortality Is Not So Bad,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 2 (1994): 257–70. 4. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), 206 –7. 5. See, e.g., James Gilliam, “History of Sailing Yacht Masts, Rigging and Sails: 1900 –Present Day,” BoatDesign, http://boatdesign.net /articles/ mast-materials/ (accessed January 1, 2016). 6. In Chapter 3, I argued that our sense of future continuity is based on the idea of our bare subject moving ever onward, minute by minute in time, even if—as in the Operation case—all our memories, plans, attachments, hopes, and beliefs get eradicated and replaced. And so: isn’t there at least some basic level at which our selves do continue on forever under a self-alienation scenario even if all our memories, plans, attachments, hopes, and beliefs must eventually get eradicated and then replaced if we are to evade boredom? I don’t think so. As I also argued in Chapter 3, I get my sense of my past continuity, if not my future continuity, precisely from the memories, experiences, beliefs, attachments, commitments, and the like that I have previously had. And so in a perpetual self-alienation scenario, even if my future looks endless my past will not seem to be growing at all. After all, my sense of a continuing self will go back only as far as the beginning of my current cycle of memories, perceptions, hopes, attachments, feelings, and desires. In fact, as a recurrently self-alienating immortal, I might grow to resent the ever-increasing loss of my past in the way that I now, as a mortal, resent the ever-shrinking magnitude of

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my future. Certainly, under a self-alienation scenario, I wouldn’t have a sense of the endlessly lengthening life span that defines immortality. True, if as an immortal I somehow did care about my self retrospectively—not just prospectively—as a bare subject, then yes, I would feel as if I had been living for an increasingly long period of time regardless of whatever complete turnover in my memories, thoughts, feelings, and desires had occurred in the past. But then if I did care about my self retrospectively as a bare ongoing subject, that would also mean, mortal that I currently am, that I would feel badly that I wasn’t born earlier and that my bare subject was thus cheated out of much prenatal time, even though, had I been born in 1756 instead of 1956, and so tacked an extra two centuries onto the front of my existence, I would have had an entirely different life in terms of my memories, desires, experiences, and attachments. But of course, most of us don’t resent the fact that we weren’t born earlier than we were; after all, what matters to our sense of continuity when we look backward is precisely the particular memories, thoughts, feelings, and experiences we have had. Retrospectively, I certainly wouldn’t want to trade the particular memories, attachments, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and aspirations that I have had for whatever set I might have possessed had I been born an extra two hundred years earlier. That truly would be self-alienation. For some good related discussion, see Christopher Belshaw, Annihilation: The Sense and Significance of Death (Stocksfield: Acumen, 2009), 162; Frederick Kaufman, “Pre-Vital and Post-Mortem Non-Existence,” in Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions, ed. David Benatar (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010), 243. Chapter 11. A Wistful Backward Glance 1. Thomas Dodman, “Homesick Epoch: Dying of Nostalgia in PostRevolutionary France” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2011), 18. 2. Frank Colby, “Again,” New York Times, March 25, 1949. 3. Theodore Hall, “No End of Books,” Washington Post, November 18, 1935. 4. Hans Jonas, Mortality and Morality: A Search for Good After Auschwitz (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 97–98. 5. Ibid., 98. 6. Suketu Mehta, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (New York: Vintage, 2004), 31, 33.

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7. 8. 9. 10.

Laura Esquivel, Malinche (New York: Washington Square, 2007), 18. Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (New York: Vintage, 2006), 248– 49. Hilton Als, “Close to You,” New Yorker, December 16, 2013, 90. Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 53. 11. Simon Reynolds, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past (London: Faber and Faber, 2011), xxviii. 12. Bernard Levin, The Pendulum Years: Britain in the Sixties (Cambridge: Icon, 2003), 409. Chapter 12. Making the Sun Run 1. Martha Nussbaum, “The Damage of Death: Incomplete Arguments and False Consolations,” in The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death, ed. James S. Taylor (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 40. 2. Charla Muller, 365 Nights: A Memoir of Intimacy (London: John Blake, 2010). 3. Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, 318: “He would gaze at her searchingly, trying to recapture the charm which he had once seen in her and no longer finding it.” 4. Ibid., 341. 5. Ibid., 578: In memory “two equal superimposed figures [can] appear to be one, whereas, to give our happiness its full meaning, we would rather preserve . . . all those separate points of our desire, at the very moment in which we succeed in touching them.” 6. Frank Arntzenius, Space, Time, & Stuff (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 20. 7. Zygmunt Bauman, Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 199. 8. Douwe Draaisma, Why Life Speeds Up as You Get Older: How Memory Shapes Our Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 214. 9. In Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception (New York: Harper Collins, 2013), 459, Claudia Hammond notes that during certain terrifying incidents—Hammond is thinking of someone hit by a car, flying through the air—time seems to slow down. As Hammond says, “The mind focuses on the elements of a situation necessary for survival and filters out anything inessential such as the scenery, the songs changing on the radio or the number of cars that pass. These are the cues which would normally help to assess the time passing.” As I interpret this observation it means that, normally, certain events in our

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lives—those that assume a regular periodicity—become background units or measures of time, substitutes for actually consulting the clock. But in unusual situations, like a car accident or (as the neuroscientist David Eagleman has shown) a jump from a tower, this kind of regular event falls away because of our intense focus on the extraordinary events that are unfolding. Those extraordinary events, then, necessarily become the units by which we implicitly gauge the amount of passing time. But due to the intensity of our focus there seem to be more of them, or we remember more of their detail. We see each blade of grass we pass over, each brick of the tower as we fall or fly through the air. And so we think more time is passing than we normally would. This may be why, in such extraordinary situations, as Hammond puts it, “the combination of the plethora of memories and the absence of [normal] clues to time passing is enough to make time decelerate.” So people in such highly stressed situations use events (passing by each individual blade or brick during their flight or fall) as units of time. And for them, counting time by those “units”—and since their senses are heightened, they perceive many more such units than usual during their flight or fall through the air—it takes more time for that fall or flight to elapse for them than it would for someone on the ground timing it with a stopwatch, and counting with units of seconds. And yes, when one person takes more units of time than another to complete an event, the event, for him, will have passed more slowly. But that doesn’t mean that when one person packs more events into a unit of time, as does Marvell’s lover, it will go more slowly. It won’t. Likewise, a jam-packed vacation that seems to go by quickly at the time can seem to have been a long one in retrospect. That’s precisely because, once it’s over, we use the unusually large number of events it contained as units of time to measure its duration. See Draaisma, Why Life Speeds Up, 214. 10. And yet maybe, the philosopher Roy Sorensen claims, it would indeed be possible for a person to pack an infinite number of events into a limited amount of time and experience it as an immortal life. Let’s suppose, Sorensen says, that our life is just two minutes long. But thanks to some sort of magic, during the first minute we live what seems to us to be a full day, in that it contains all the events we would experience in a normal day. During the next half-minute, we cram in a second day’s events. During the next quarter minute, we go through a third day’s events. During the next eighth of a minute, a fourth day’s. And so on.

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According to what Sorensen calls “external” time, our life is limited to two minutes. But according to our own “personal” time, how it feels to us, our life is endless. “That’s far better than death,” Sorensen says, “and indeed it is about as good as immortality.” See “The Cheated God: Death and Personal Time,” Analysis 65:2 (2005): 119–25. It’s true that from a personal perspective—from the perspective of someone living such a life—it would seem endless, assuming he or she remained wholly unaware of external time. But if that’s the right perspective, then the entire discussion of external time is irrelevant. It’s interesting that Sorensen locates this “external time” at a spatial distance from the person in question, in some other “region of the universe.” After all, it’s difficult to understand what it could mean for two dimensions of time to exist simultaneously for the same people in the same place. But if external time is truly elsewhere, then the two minutes it clocks are utterly irrelevant to the person himself. What we really have is simply a case of immortality pure and simple, not immortality within the confines of a mortal life. Even now, it may very well be that a civilization in some far warped corner of the universe actually is living at a tempo at which time has passed at a rate of one minute for one earth day, then half a minute for one earth day, then a quarter of a minute for one earth day, etc. But so what? It would have no relevance for our life experience, mortal or immortal. But set that aside. There’s another problem. If one personal day truly takes one external minute to transpire, and the next personal day takes half an external minute, and the next personal day takes a quarter of an external minute, then the personal days can’t be understood as units of time. We don’t, after all, say that one meter equals 1.09 yards, and the next meter equals 0.545 yards, and the next meter equals 0.2725 yards, and so on. Instead, we can understand such personal days only as events in time, not units of it. That way it makes at least conceptual sense to say that a certain number of events (a normal day’s worth) take one minute to transpire, and then we ramp things up and they take a half-minute, and then we ramp things up even more and they take a quarter-minute, and so on. But in that case, time speeds up — maybe, asymptotically, to infinity. It doesn’t slow down, making us feel immortal. 11. See Nick Bostrom, “Why I Want to Be a Posthuman When I Grow Up,” in The Transhumanist Reader, ed. Max More (Chichester: WileyBlackwell, 2013), 41.

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12. See “Flow, the Secret to Happiness,” at TED Talks, October 23, 2008, http://www.ted.com /speakers/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi. 13. See Kendra Cherry, “What Is Flow? Understanding the Psychology of Flow,” About Health, December 16, 2014, http://psychology.about .com /od/PositivePsychology/a/flow.htm. 14. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), 53. 15. Michael Frayn, A Landing on the Sun (New York: Picador, 2003), 150. 16. David Foster Wallace, The Pale King (New York: Little, Brown, 2011), 379–80. 17. Science fiction presents few appealing images of immortality. One writer who is said to at least make an attempt at such a vision is Roger Zelazny, whom a critic describes thusly: “Certainly Zelazny does not believe that humanity is too limited to use immortality . . . humans need not fear becoming stale with the passage of time if they remember to keep in touch with the changing yet eternal universe around them. There will always be surprises waiting. People need not fear being cut off from familiar surroundings, since they ultimately are the centers of their own worlds, free to shape surroundings to fit themselves.” Zelazny, on this reading, seems to think that there is a happy path between continuity and change that immortals can negotiate. (See Joseph Sander, “Immortality in Roger Zelazny,” in Death and the Serpent: Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy, ed. Carl B. Yoke and Donald M. Hassler [Westport: Greenwood, 1985], 142.) Personally, I find this take on Zelazny’s work a little too optimistic; it seems to me that he is more dryly ironic about the possibilities for finding an optimal mix of change— enough to escape boredom —and continuity— enough to elude nostalgia and self-alienation—in immortal life. One of his immortal characters, Srin Shtigo, is asked, “Does your taste in art run to the monolithic?” “Occasionally,” comes the reply (Roger Zelazny, This Immortal [New York: Ibooks, 2004], 57). 18. Another way of conceiving an ideal immortality is that it would endlessly alternate between exciting episodes—the excitement of quest and adventure—and peaceful periods: periods in which, our most recent quest or adventure successfully completed, we would relax and enjoy the pleasures of tranquility. But why do we like the idea of switching from one to the other? Why not just an endless stream of exciting quests? Or why not endlessly enjoy the pleasures of tranquility? Presumably because, as many a thinker has observed, we know that the excitement

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of the quest has an unpleasant flip side: the heart-racing anxiety of not knowing how it will turn out, which makes us yearn for tranquility. But periods of tranquility have their own unpleasant flip side too: the boredom of nothing happening, which makes us desperate for excitement. All of this poses a problem for any ideal immortality scenario on which excitement and tranquility obligingly alternate. The problem is that their darker siblings of anxiety and boredom would sooner or later gain the upper hand. Why? Consider that excitement and tranquility have to do with speed of movement over space. Excitement’s synonyms include hurry, flurry, motion, and commotion. Tranquility’s include inactivity, motionlessness, being at a standstill. And so excitement and tranquility are opposites: you can’t be both in motion and motionless at the same time. Anxiety and boredom, by contrast, each carry the connotation less of spatial movement than of temporal duration. Boredom is related to interminability. It increases as the time passes since our last bout of excitement. Anxiety is related to anticipation. It increases with the time that must pass before we can finally rest in tranquil contentment, our quest completed. And so while one cannot be both tranquil and excited at the same time, one can certainly be both bored and anxious at the same time. Lengthening boredom makes us mountingly anxious for it to end. Unremitting anxiety can make us crazy with the fatigue and ennui that define boredom. There is, then, reason to think that as time passes, the psychological arc of immortality would bend away from the lovely vision of alternating excitement and tranquility, and toward their ill-boding mates, anxiety and boredom. 19. Michael Oakeshott, Notebooks, 1922– 86 (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2010), 332. Interlude. Mortality Versus Immortality 1. Jay Rosenberg, Thinking Clearly About Death (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998). 2. Bernard Shaw, Back To Methuselah (London: Constable, 1931), 130; see also Nicholas Agar, Humanity’s End (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010), ch. 6. Chapter 13. The Big Sleep 1. Giuseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard (New York: Pantheon, 1960), 292.

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2. When, in This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), 19, Harold Brodkey imagines death as “silence,” he finds it appealing. Notably, Elizabeth, the figure representing Death in Edward Albee’s play Lady from Dubuque (New York: Atheneum, 1980), 157–58, describes a “dream about dying” as involving “light and silence”— because she wants to make death attractive. “Light and silence” also characterizes the evidently welcoming “near-death” experience that has been so much studied of late. 3. There are, certainly, some literary images that render darkness appealing. The two most famous may well be Shakespeare’s “When he shall die/take him and cut him out into stars/and he shall make the face of heaven so fine/that all the world will be in love with night / and pay no worship to the garish sun,” from Romeo and Juliet, and Robert Frost’s “The woods are lovely, dark and deep/but I have promises to keep/ and miles to go before I sleep/and miles to go before I sleep.” Interestingly, Robert F. Kennedy used both of these quotations in his tribute to his late brother at the Democratic National Convention in 1964. In Shakespeare’s lines, though, as Kennedy’s usage makes clear, it is the night’s lights—the stars—and not its darkness that make it appealing. As for Frost’s dark woods, they are lovely in a sublime kind of way— lovely, that is, only because the traveler knows he will avoid them, not that they await him. In any event, Frost himself said that the woods are not a metaphor for death. See Louis Mertins, Robert Frost: Life and Talks-Walking (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), 371. Some morbid literary images, conversely, make silence seem unappealing. On close inspection, though, the silence concerned isn’t equated with death per se. In The Gay Science (New York: Anchor, 1956), bk. 4 sec. 278, Nietzsche talks about the “deathly silence” that descends on those who have died, but he is speaking of our experience of the dead, not of the deceased’s experience of death. It makes sense to say that the dead are silent to us, not dark to us. For T. S. Eliot, in “East Coker,” we all eventually enter into darkness, while silence, though sad, is equated not with death but with the funeral. 4. All quotations are from Lucretius: On the Nature of Things, trans. William Ellery Leonard (London: Dent, 1921); see also Lucretius: On the Nature of Things, trans. Martin Ferguson Smith (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1969), 90; and Lucretius, The Nature of Things, trans. A. E. Stallings (London: Penguin, 2007), 104 –5. Lucretius’s static imagery in these

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verses is particularly telling, since for him the universe is comprised of atoms in perpetual motion. And interestingly, the only figure whom Lucretius’s verses do explicitly cast as moving forward in time—as running the course of his life—is Epicurus. 5. See “The Vanity of Existence,” in Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism: A Series of Essays (New York: Macmillan, 1908), 35–39. Chapter 14. Stardust and Moonshine 1. Philip Roth, Everyman (New York: Vintage, 2007), 182. 2. Philip Larkin, “Aubade,” in Collected Poems, ed. Anthony Thwaite (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004). 3. Hans Moravec, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 165. 4. Vernor Vinge, “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era,” March 1993, https://www-rohan.sdsu .edu /faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html. 5. See Ray Kurzweil, “Superintelligence and Singularity,” in Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, ed. Susan Schneider (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 202–5. 6. John R. Searle, “Can Information Theory Explain Consciousness?” New York Review of Books, January 10, 2013, 54 –55, 58. 7. Margaret Wertheim, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet (New York: Norton, 2010), 247. 8. Raymond Kurzweil, “Live Forever,” Psychology Today 33 ( January– February 2000): 66 –71; see also Kurzweil, “Superintelligence,” 216. As with Borges’s aleph, in cosmic consciousness, we are told, the entire contents of the universe would be perceivable from every conceivable angle in a single “all-encompassing gaze” (Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Post-Modern Science Fiction [Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993], 303). In other words, we will all occupy the same synoptic position in space, just as we currently occupy the same synchronic moment in time. And so, in effect, there would be no more “we,” only one single universal perspective. 9. Daniel M. Wegner, “Don’t Fear the Cybermind,” New York Times, August 4, 2012. 10. William James, Memories and Studies (Rockville, Md.: Arc Manor, 2008), 84. 11. February 13, 2013, http://sptimmortality.blogspot.ca/2013/02/notes -on-our-sixth-meeting.html.

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12. The Age of Spiritual Machines (New York: Viking, 1999), 237. 13. Linda Griffiths, Maggie and Pierre & The Duchess (Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2013), 51. 14. Benjamin Busch, Dust to Dust: A Memoir (New York: Ecco, 2012), 295. 15. See Abou Ali Farman Farmaian, “Secular immortal” (PhD diss., City University of New York, 2012), 488–89. Chapter 15. Every Time I Say Goodbye, I Die a Little 1. Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (New York: Vintage, 2006), 197. 2. Adam Phillips, Darwin’s Worms (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 117–18. 3. “The Listener,” The Independent, December 5, 1999, 50. 4. John Updike, “New York Girl,” in Licks of love (New York: Ballantine, 2000), 43. 5. Jim Crace, Being Dead (New York: Picador, 2001), 179. 6. Charles Hartshorne, “A Philosophy of Death,” in Philosophical Aspects of Thanatology, ed. F. H. Hetzler, J. Gutman, and A. H. Kutscher (New York: MSS Information Corporation, 1978), 2:81. 7. Joanne Kaufman, “Comfortable Ms. Clooney at 65, Rosemary Is Finally at Peace,” Cincinnati Post, February 28, 1994. 8. Victor Brombert, Musings on Mortality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 73. 9. Logan Hill, “Spike Lee: Still Gliding to Success,” New York Times, November 20, 2013. 10. Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer (New York: Penguin, 2000), 520. 11. J. David Velleman, “So It Goes,” The Amherst Lecture in Philosophy (2006), http://www.amherstlecture.org/velleman2006/velleman2006 _ALP.pdf, 18–19. 12. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 155; see also The Letters of Oscar Wilde (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1962), 457: “Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.” 13. See, e.g., Denis Bates Enos, “The Long Goodbye,” Orlando Sentinel, March 2, 2008. 14. Just as it’s psychologically possible to treat events as objects— or as people—and mourn them when they perish, it’s possible to treat objects— or people—as events, and feel wistful about them as they, or

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more exactly the various stages of their lives, disappear into the past. In Paul Harding’s Tinkers (New York: Bellevue, 2009), 133, George says of his father, “I had lately noticed him looking at me with a sort of wistfulness, as if he were not looking at me, but at a drawing or photograph of me, as if he were remembering me.” 15. The character Ludwik Szatera, in Stefan Grabinski’s story “Szatera’s Engrams” (In Sarah’s House: Stories [London: CB Editions, 2007]), treats events as if they were objects, and so replaces wistfulness with grief: “He could never come to terms with the eternal passage of men, objects and events. Each moment inexorably turning into the past was to him precious, invaluable, and he witnessed its passing with a sense of inexpressible regret.” 16. Leon Kass, Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity (San Francisco: Encounter, 2002), 267. 17. Arthur Miller, That Championship Season, 126. Conclusion 1. Peter N. Miller, “How Objects Speak,” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 15, 2014, B9. 2. T. Coraghessan Boyle, “The Relive Box,” New Yorker, March 17, 2014, 65.

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INDEX

accomplishments: early in life, 23–25, 32–34, 37– 42, 45– 46, 54, 83–86, 94, 223–24; memorials and, 105, 108; self-effacement and, 58–60 Ackerman, Diane, 88–89 admirer vs. admired, 208 afterlife, 1, 3, 128 aging, 7–8, 111–12, 219–21, 227–29 Ahasuerus, King (biblical), 106, 107 Aiken, Kimberly, 38–39 Albee, Edward, Lady from Dubuque, 259n2 alienation. See self-alienation Allen, Woody: Midnight in Paris, 169; Sleeper, 178 Als, Hilton, 174 ancient world, 1, 42, 47– 48, 56, 158, 176 Andre, Harvie, 205, 208 Angstrom, Harry (“Rabbit”) (fictional), 106, 107 anxiety, 2, 28, 31, 37, 42, 60, 87, 132, 145, 162, 163, 202, 226, 231, 236n24, 239n25, 258n18 arc of life, 83–88, 89 arena of presence, 128–32 Ariès, Philippe, 14 –15 Aristotle, 47, 144 Arntzenius, Frank, 182 Ashbee, Barry, 99–100

Athill, Diane, Somewhere Towards the End, 89 athlete’s number. See jersey retiring Attlee, Clement, 175 Austerlitz, Jacques (fictional), 108 authentic self, 54, 71, 72, 78, 79, 80, 88, 91, 92, 95, 151, 246n42 “Babe” (song), 86 Bacon, Francis, 47 Bailey, George (fictional), 76, 77, 78 Bailey, Nat, 134 –36, 137, 138, 140, 143– 44, 145 Ballard, J. G., Miracles of Life, 156 –57 bankruptcy, 241n25 Barnes, Julian, 73–74, 101 baseball, 99, 100, 134 –35, 136 basketball, 32, 37–38, 39, 99 Beatles, 2–3 Beauvoir, Simone de, All Men Are Mortal, 233–34n10 Becker, Ernest, The Denial of Death, 14, 15 Bell, Gordon, 4, 100, 101, 102, 103, 108–9, 110, 145, 230 Bellow, Saul, “Him with His Foot in His Mouth,” 151 benign, death as, 11, 20, 21, 28, 94, 95, 212, 226, 230, 239n25 Benigni, Roberto, Life is Beautiful, 76 –77, 78

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INDEX

Bergson, Henri, 239n25 Bernstein, Mr. (fictional), 75, 165 Bettman, Gary, 106 “big sleep,” 7, 197–99 Biju (fictional), 173 Binchy, Maeve, 160 birth, darkness prior to, 199, 200, 201, 202 Biz’menkov (fictional), 13–14 Blake, William, 114 Blattner, William, 93 Bloom, Molly (fictional), 164, 165, 166 Boggs, Wade, 59 boredom, 91, 151–57, 158–60, 180, 181, 182, 192, 227, 228, 258n18; classifications/characterizations of, 151; flow vs., 186; imagery for, 154 –56; spatial vs. temporal, 154 –57; two strains of, 151–52. See also under immortality Borg, Björn, 23 Boston Celtics, 99 Bostrom, Nick, 186, 187 Bowen, Christopher, 86 Boyle, T. Coraghessan, “The Relive Box,” 229 Boym, Svetlana, 174 Bozeman (Montana), 41 Bradley, Ben, 23 Brodkey, Harold, 123, 197; The Wild Darkness, 259n2 Brodsky, Joseph, 123 Brombert, Victor, 217 Bronfman, Edgar, Jr., 127 Brooklyn Nets, 99 Brooks, Garth, 58 Brooks, Mel, 215

bucket lists, 70 –74, 81, 84; definition of, 70; relationship to existentialist consolation, 74 Buddenbrook, Thomas (fictional), 53 Buddha, 64 Buddhist consolation, 2, 3, 52–69, 95, 128, 131, 230, 240 – 41n16; critics of, 55–56 Bush, George H. W., 59 Cactus Records, 41 Camus, Albert, The Outsider, 154 –55 ˇ apek, Karel, The Makropoulos C Secret, 156 Capra, Frank, It’s a Wonderful Life, 76, 77, 78 career: lateral transfer and, 127; peak of, 83–86, 87; regrets and, 115, 116; retirement and, 99, 241n25 car racing, 242n25 Cather, Willa, 205 chain, life as a, 3, 65–69, 94 –95 championship, 38, 41, 49, 49–50, 224, 229 Chapin, Harry, 216 Chappell, Timothy, 158–59 Chateaubriand, François-René de, 160 Cherry, Kendra, 186 Chulkaturin (fictional), 13–14 Churchill, Winston, 113, 138–39, 140, 141, 174 –75; My Early Life, 26 –27 Chuzzlewit, Martin (fictional), 111 Citizen Kane (film), 75, 165

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INDEX

Clanchy, Kate, 213 Claudian, 79 Clinton, Bill, 41 Clooney, Rosemary, 215 closure, 116, 123, 125, 145– 46 Coach (fictional), 224, 229 Cobain, Kurt, 85 Coetzee, J. M., Elizabeth Costello, 100 –101, 102 “Cold Gin” (song), 87 Collins, Francis, 8 comparative deprivation, 237n7 computers, 127, 204 –5, 211. See also digitized life-log Concise Biographical Dictionary, 133 Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, 198 consciousness, 7, 128, 203–7, 213; loss of, 197, 210 –11. See also cosmic consciousness consolations, 1–8, 95, 146, 189– 90, 211–12; conflicts between, 32; four streams of, 1–7, 55; Johnston and, 53, 128–29, 130 –32, 146; Larkin and, 203. See also Buddhist consolation; Epicurus; existentialist consolation; Holderlin strategy continuity, 176 –77, 189, 252–53n6 cosmic consciousness, 7, 126, 204 –11, 260n8; individual death vs. merger into, 208, 210, 211. See also physical cosmos Costello, Elizabeth (fictional), 100 –101, 102 courage, 244 – 45n32 Cowen, Tyler, What Price Fame?, 133

Crace, Jim, Being Dead, 214 creativity, 154 –55 Croesus, king of Lydia, 34 cryonics, 180 –81 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 186 –87 cybermind, 207 cyberspace. See digitized life-log Dalai Lama, 57 Dalloway, Clarissa (fictional), 217, 218 darkness, 197–200, 202, 259nn2, 3 Davis, Clive, 84 –85 Day-Lewis, Daniel, 39 “dead life” (Sartre term), 122 death: altruistic view of, 130, 233– 34n10; analogies for, 214; anxiety and, 2, 28, 231, 236n24, 239n25, 258n18; awareness of impending, 78–80; as benign (see benign); as “big sleep,” 7, 197–99; consolations for (see consolations); continuing physical imprint and, 212; cosmic consciousness merger vs., 15–18, 204 –8; debate over goodness of, 203– 4; democracy of, 79; denial of (see denial of death); deprivations of, 6 –7; early achievements and, 224; ever-present possibility of, 30, 44, 72, 81, 91–93; fortune-cookie wisdoms about, 72; fulfilled people and, 88, 94; happiness and, 42– 45; imagery for, 88–89, 197–202, 259nn2–3; inevitability of, 79, 82–83, 226; irrelevancy of, 2–3, 7–8, 25–26, 38, 94, 95, 128, 203; late-life regrets and,

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INDEX

death (continued ) 111, 122; life plan and, 81, 83, 95; losses during life and (see loss); of memories, 107; moving forward to, 16 –18, 30, 118–19, 202, 219–21, 224 –25, 226 –28, 229–30, 231, 232, 252n6; optional immortals and, 191–93; at peak of life’s arc, 83–88; reality of, 230; reconciliation with, 9; regrets and (see regrets); reminders of, 80 –84; self and, 2–3, 46; surviving own, 131; temporality and (see time); universality of, 79. See also consolations; immortality; memorialization death wish, 239n25 Deep Blue (supercomputer), 204, 205, 211 dementia, 6, 189, 227 denial of death, 14 –18, 19, 29, 30, 81–82, 101, 141, 212 deprivationist argument, 234 – 35n11, 237n7 Dern, Bruce, 83 Desai, Kiran, Inheritance of Loss, 173 descriptivism, 143 desires, 5, 57, 67, 69, 70, 87, 159– 60; death anxiety and, 239n25; as defining self, 167; object of, 42– 44; sour grapes and, 238n18; time and, 161–63, 166, 168, 171, 181; turnovers in, 160 DeYoung, Dennis, 86 –87 Dickens, Charles, Martin Chuzzlewit, 111 Didion, Joan, 6, 18, 19, 27, 188, 214, 222–23; Year of Magical Thinking, 18, 212, 215

Diener, Ed, 236 –37n7 digitized life-log, 4, 100 –109, 145, 230 Dodman, Thomas, 169 Doniger, Wendy, 154 Doors (rock band), 86 Draaisma, Douwe, 184 Dreyfuss, Richard, 58 Dufferin and Ava, Marquis of, 36 –37 Dunne, John Gregory, 18, 212, 213, 214, 223 Eagleman, David, 255n9 Eliot, T. S., 123, 140; “East Coker,” 259n3 Eliot, Valerie, 140 Elizabeth (Albee Death figure), 259n2 emigrés, spatial nostalgia of, 169, 172 ennui, 152, 153, 159, 258n18 ephemerality, 44, 93, 223, 224, 225 Epicurus: consolations of, 2, 15, 20 –25, 26, 28, 31, 32–34, 42, 44, 94, 260n4; deprivationist critique of, 234 –35n11; good life of, 191, 193. See also first consolation; second consolation erotic memories, 106 –7 Esquivel, Laura, Malinche, 172 Esther, Book of, 106 eternity, 101, 153–54, 182, 200, 202, 206, 213 Ettinger, Robert, 180 –81 events: digitized, 230; happiness from, 50 –51; interpretation of, 112–13; as objects, 48, 224, 229, 261–62n14, 262n15; “old”

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nomenclature and, 48; peak moment of, 123–24; transience of, 223, 224, 225; treasured, 221–22 Evil, Donnie, 41– 42 existentialist consolation, 2, 3, 71–72, 79, 80, 82, 88, 91, 95; logic of, 83–84; nothingness and, 54, 55; statement of, 71, 77, 89, 93, 135 external time, 256n10 false memories, 139 Faustian bargain, 62–63 feelings, 161–63, 166, 167, 168, 170, 171, 227 Feynman, Richard, 137, 138 first consolation (Epicurus), 33, 34, 44, 55; Buddhist consolation vs., 53; digitized life-log as extension of, 101; statement of, 2, 20 –22, 24, 25, 28, 31, 32, 33, 42, 44, 46, 54, 94, 101, 220 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 43 flow, 186 –90 Forever twenty-seven club, 85, 87 Forster, E. M., 4, 101, 107–8, 245n32 Fosca (fictional), 233–34n10 “four-dimensionalist” argument, 235–36n24 Frayn, Michael, A Landing on the Sun, 187 Freud, Sigmund, 14, 81–82, 136, 138, 239n25 Friend, Tad, 33 Frost, Robert, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” 259n3

future, 4, 29, 82, 128, 204 –5; personal continuity and, 66 –68, 146, 252–53n6 futurists, 7 Gaia, 209 Garcia, Jerry, 85 generic experiences, 70 –73, 79 Gilbert, Martin, 142 Gödel, Kurt, 143 Goertzel, Ben, 209 golf honors, 62 goodbyes, 6 –7, 213, 215 Grabinski, Stefan, “Szatera’s Engrams,” 262n15 Gray, Dorian (fictional), 88, 219, 220, 221, 229 Greene, Maurice, 48 Gretzky, Wayne, 99–100, 105–6, 108 Griffiths, Linda, Maggie and Pierre, 209 group mind, 206 –8 Hägglund, Martin, Dying for Time: Woolf, Proust, Nabokov, 239n25 Hall, Theodore, 170 Hamlet (fictional), 199 Hammond, Claudia, Time Warped, 254 –55n9 Hanks, Tom, 38–39 happiness, 42– 45, 50 –51; culmination vs. cumulation of, 34, 35–37, 38, 45. See also unhappiness Harding, Paul, Tinkers, 262n14 Harper, Valerie, 123 Harrison, Thelma and Ronnie (fictional), 106, 107 Hartshorne, Charles, 214

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Harvard men study (Harvard Grant Study), 112–23, 124 has-beens, 37– 42 Hayles, N. Katherine, 206 Healy, Sean, 151 Hecht, Anthony, 153 Heidegger, Martin, 2, 72, 78, 91– 93, 95; on “clock time,” 246n42; on function of naming, 137–38; on types of boredom, 151 Hemingway, Ernest, 124 Hendrix, Jimi, 85 Hepburn, Katharine, 208 Hill, Jonah, 33 Hitler, Adolf, 144 hockey, 99, 100, 105–6, 108 Holderlin, Friedrich, “To the Fates,” 23, 32 Holderlin strategy, 43, 45, 51, 73–75, 81, 91, 123; advantage vs. disadvantage of, 37–38, 45, 75; challenges posed by, 33– 42; statement of, 23, 32, 33, 46, 49, 75, 223–24 Holocaust, 108–9 homesickness, 169, 170, 172, 174 Howe, Gordie, 100 human relationships, 211, 212–25 Hume, David, 65–66 IBM supercomputer, 204, 205 Ibsen, Henrik, A Doll’s House, 215 immortality, 3–9, 95, 105, 117, 125, 128, 147, 158, 161–62, 170 –71, 204, 209, 212, 226 –32, 228, 230, 257–58n17, 18; appealing images of, 257–58nn17, 18; benign scenarios of, 177–89; biographical details and, 133–34; boredom

of, 5, 6, 18, 151–59, 166, 167, 168, 170, 176, 177, 179, 180, 182, 227, 228; change and, 160, 176; death vs., 191–93, 213, 231; fantastic speculations about, 177–87, 188; faux, 101, 102, 107, 110, 116; human unconscious belief in own, 81–82; inertia and, 152; life vs., 203– 4; as malignant, 7, 226 –27; memorial plaques and, 133; nostalgia and, 172–73, 175, 177, 179, 180, 182, 188, 189, 192, 227, 228; as optional, 191–93; personal mark and, 133–36, 141, 145– 46; science fiction depictions of, 257n17; self-alienation and, 177, 180; superintelligence and, 186, 187 inauthenticity, 151, 246n42 Incompleteness Theorem, 143 International Hockey Federation, 106 Iqbal, Samad (fictional), 172 Ishiguro, Kazuo, Never Let Me Go, 173 It’s a Wonderful Life (film), 76, 77, 78 Ivan Ilych (fictional), 14, 15–18, 21, 22, 29, 30, 74 –75, 79, 81, 101, 123 Jagger, Mick, 178 James, Clive, 23–24 James, William, 207 Jenkins, Stephen, 38 jersey retiring (sports), 99–100, 105–6, 108 Johnston, Mark, 53, 128–29, 130 – 32, 146; Surviving Death, 128

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Jonas, Hans, 170 –71, 172, 173–74, 175, 177 Joplin, Janis, 85–86 Joyce, James, Ulysses, 164, 165 Kane, Charles Foster (fictional), 75 Kass, Leon, 203– 4, 223 Kaufman, Charlie, 248n5 Kennedy, Robert F., 259n3 Keynes, John Maynard, 127 Kidd, Jason, 99 Kierkegaard, Søren, 72, 81, 154, 155 Kippenberg, Professor (fictional), 151 Kiss (rock band), 87 Kissinger, Henry, 24, 123 Koch, Ed, 87 Koestler, Arthur, 155–56 Kripke, Saul, 117, 120, 121; Naming and Necessity, 144; theory of reference, 137, 138, 143, 144 Kundera, Milan, Immortality, 123–24 Kurzweil, Ray, 7, 203, 204 –5, 206, 207, 210; The Age of Spiritual Machines, 207 Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi di, The Leopard, 197 Larkin, Philip, 203, 231 “last,” two senses of, 231–32 “late,” two senses of, 27 late-life regrets. See regrets lateral transfer, 127 LaVette, Bettye, 115 Lawrence, D. H., 88 Lee, Spike, 218 Lennon, John, 2–3

lethargy, 152, 153, 159 Levin, Bernard, 174 –75 Lewis, David K., 117–19, 122 life. See peak of life Life is Beautiful (film), 76 –77, 78 life-log. See digitized life-log light, 201, 203 literary legacy, 102 living forever. See immortality living posthumously, 24 –25, 33, 91 Loman, Willy (fictional), 19–20, 89 longevity, 9, 191–93 longings, 44, 56. See also nostalgia; yearning Los Angeles Kings, 99 loss, 6, 190, 210 –25, 245n32; Buddhist eradication of, 61, 62–63; death and, 197, 203, 213, 215, 225, 230; death vs. life and, 190, 210 –17, 224; of opportunities, 214; spatial vs. temporal, 216 –17 lost past. See temporal nostalgia lovers, 177–85. See also sexual experiences Loy, David, 59 Lucretius, 153, 199–201, 202, 213; Folly of the Fear of Death, 201; On the Nature of Things, 259–60n4 macroeconomic theory, 127 Madame (Ishiguro character), 173 magical thinking, 18, 19, 20, 188, 199, 209, 223 Makropoulos, Elina (fictional), 156 male life-course study, 112–23, 124 Malinalli (fictional), 172 Mann, Thomas: Buddenbrooks, 53; Magic Mountain, 18–19 Marcus Aurelius, 140 – 41

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mark, making a. See memorialization marriage, 121, 211, 212, 214, 215, 217, 223; regrets and, 114 –15 Mars, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68 Martin, Steve, 39 Marvell, Andrew, “To His Coy Mistress,” 181–82, 183, 184, 185, 197 Marx, Groucho, 140 Maturin, Charles, Melmoth the Wanderer, 219 McCartney, Paul, 2–3 McCoy, Neal, 59 Mehta, Suketu, 172 Mellor, D. H., 26 –27 memento mori, 80 –83 memorialization, 32–33, 99–110, 133– 47; audio-video, 136 –37, 145; deliberate silence as, 105, 108–10; memory vs., 109, 144; names and, 136 – 47; personal details and, 135–36; plaques and statues as, 105, 133–37, 138, 141, 143– 44, 219, 220, 221; sports jersey retiring as, 99–100, 105–6, 108 memories, 29–30, 64, 66 –69, 171; accuracy of, 141– 43; digitized preservation of, 4, 100 –109, 145, 230; disappearance of, 6, 160, 189, 227; endless life and, 5–6, 192; erotic, 106 –7; false, 139; of good life, 191; higher and lower levels of, 102; as identity, 101; immortal boredom and, 166; indescribable, 104; as mortal, 107, 109–10; persistence of, 167; of person, 133, 140 – 44; retrieval

of, 247n19; shedding of, 159–60, 168, 181; teletransportation and, 63–65, 68–69, 242– 43n32; time and, 161–63; turnovers in, 160; unconscious, 102, 103, 247n19; unshareable, 107–8, 109. See also remembrance mental contents: metaphors for, 158, 159, 160, 161, 166, 167; temporal polarization between self and, 68–69 Mersault (fictional), 154 –55 metaphysics, 66, 119, 120, 122, 124 Metropolitan (film), 222 Microsoft, 4, 100 Midnight in Paris (film), 169 Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 209 Miller, Arthur, Death of a Salesman, 19–20, 89 Miller, Jason, That Championship Season, 32–33, 37, 39, 48, 49–50, 73, 94, 224, 229 Miller, William Ian, 79 mind, universal. See cosmic consciousness Minnelli, Liza, 60 Minsky, Marvin, 7, 204 Miss America title, 38, 39 Mitchell-Yellin, Benjamin, 207 Monroe, Miles (fictional), 178 Montaigne, Michel de, 8, 28, 121 Moravec, Hans, 7, 204 Morpurgo, Michael, 35–36; War Horse, 35–36 Morrison, Jim, 85, 86 mortality. See death motivation, self and, 55–56 Musil, Robert, Man Without Qualities, 126 –27

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Nabokov, Vladimir, 108, 172, 199–200, 201 Nagel, Thomas, 36 naming, 136 – 47; function of, 137–38; original act of, 138 narcissism, 60 Narcissus (mythical), 60 Nat Bailey Stadium (Vancouver), 134 –35 National Hockey League, 99, 106, 108 Nazis, 108–9, 138 New Yorker, 33 New York Times, 115, 133, 169 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 80 –81, 84 – 88, 114; The Gay Science, 259n3; Thus Spake Zarathustra, 81, 83 Norville, Deborah, 58 no-self: Buddhist doctrine of, 3, 52–64, 65, 68, 69, 95, 131, 230, 240 – 41n16; language of, 58–60, 62–63, 240 – 41n16; Parfit and, 65, 66 nostalgia, 6, 169–75, 177, 178, 184, 188, 189, 192, 228; evasion of, 181, 182; flow vs., 186; immortality and (see under immortality); for object, 179; spatial vs. temporal, 169, 172–73, 174, 175 nothingness, 54, 55 number, athlete’s. See jersey retiring Nureyev, Rudolf, 86 Nussbaum, Martha, 176 –77 Oakeshott, Michael, 190 Obama, Barack, 89–90, 92, 117 obituary, 135 object, 48, 179; of desire, 43– 44; event as, 224, 229, 261–62n14,

262n15; experience vs., 50 –51; persistence through time of, 223 Oishi, Shigehiro, 236 –37n7 old, 47– 49; two meanings of, 48– 49 opportunity, 89–91, 95, 214, 216 optimal experience. See flow option-immortals, 191–93 oral-history collections, 108–9 Orefice, Guido (fictional), 76 –77, 78 Oscar winners, 38–39 Ozymandias, 141– 42, 250n13 Parfit, Derek, 53, 63–65, 66, 68–69, 94 –95, 161, 165, 230 particulate matter, 205–6, 208, 209 past, 29–30, 67–68, 113–25, 226, 230, 232; closure and, 116, 123, 125, 145– 46; moments of life flowing back into, 37– 42, 51, 91–95, 110, 124 –25, 146 – 47, 221–25. See also regrets; time peak of life, 87–88 perdurantist views, 25–28 personal continuity. See self personal singularity. See singularity Philadelphia Flyers, 99 Philadelphia Story, The (film), 208 Philbin, Regis, 58 Phillips, Adam, 213 physical cosmos, becoming particles in, 205–6, 208–11 Pieper, Frank R., 87 possibilities, 92–93, 117–20, 122 Praskovya Fedorovna (fictional), 16 –17 presence, 128–32 president, U.S., 40 – 41, 49, 78

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Presley, Elvis, “Are you lonesome tonight?,” 217 Princeton philosophers, 53, 117, 121, 122, 128 prison cell, boredom likened to, 154 –55 procrastination, 89–90 Prokhorov, Mikhail, 99 ProQuest, 90 Proust, Marcel, 101, 127, 139, 247n19, 248n3 quasi-space, 128, 130 –32, 146 Ramses VIII (Egyptian pharaoh), 133, 134 reality, 93, 118–20, 121, 226 –27 reference, 137, 138, 143– 44. See also naming regrets, 4, 11–12, 50, 111–22, 248n5 remembrance, 80 –83, 133– 47; of person never met, 138–39, 144 – 45; reference vs., 138 restlessness, 151 retirement, 99, 241n25 Reynolds, Simon, 174 Ringwald, Molly, 115 road not taken. See regrets Roberts, John, 117 Robinson, Jackie, 99; number commemoration, 100 Robinson, Joan, 127 rock music superstars, 84 –87 romance: memories and, 106, 107; possibilities and, 118–19, 121, 124; regrets and, 113, 114 –15, 116, 124

rope fibers metaphor, 158, 159, 160, 161, 166, 167, 168 Rosenberg, Jay, 191 Roth, Philip, 23, 24 –25, 203 Runyon, Damon, 48 Sacks, David, 139 Sacks, Oliver, 139 Saramago, José, Death with Interruptions, 240n7 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 54, 83, 93, 122, 123, 125 Saturday Review, 36 Scatman John, 35; “Ski-Ba-Bop-BaDop-Bop,” 34 Scheffler, Samuel, Death and the Afterlife, 233–34n10 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 42, 44, 201–2 Schreyer, Ed and Lily, 111, 112, 115 science fiction, 257n17 Searle, John, 206 Sebald, W. G., Austerlitz, 104 second consolation (Epicurus), 3– 4, 33, 55; early successes and, 37, 45, 46, 94; Holderlin strategy and, 32, 33; statement of, 22, 24, 32, 51, 54, 224 Sedaris, David, 90 self: abandonment of, 55–63; alienation from (see self-alienation); authentic (see authentic self ); biographical information about, 133–34; changes over time of (see under time); components of, 227; continuity of, 66 –68, 176 –77, 189, 252–53n6; creation of, 94;

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death’s relationship with, 2–3, 46; detached view of, 59; different parts of, 26; distinctive personality and, 176; earlier versions of, 159–60; existentialist view of, 71, 77; factors in, 161–64; as illusion, 3, 61, 230; invisibility of, 78; life vs., 45, 57–58; as mental construct, 52, 66; metaphors for, 158–61, 166, 167, 168; movement through time of (see under time); nonexistence of (see no-self ); Parfit concept of, 66, 94 –95; possibilities for, 92–93; presence of, 101; singularity of, 75–76, 77, 176 self-aggrandizing, 59, 60 self-alienation, 159, 170, 177, 178, 180, 181, 189, 192, 252–53n6; avoidance of, 182; flow vs., 186; perpetual, 159 self-consciousness, 186 –87 self-effacement, 58–69 selflessness, 57–58, 64 self-love, 60 self-reference, 58–60 Seneca, 32–33, 50 sexual experiences, 177–80, 183, 213; erotic memories of, 106 –7. See also romance Shakespeare, William: Hamlet, 199; King Lear, 215; Romeo and Juliet, 259n3 Shaw, George Bernard, Back to Methuselah, 192 Shawmut, Herschel (fictional), 151 Shelley, Percy Bysshe: “Death,” 215; “Ozymandias,” 141– 42, 250n13

ship planks metaphor, 158, 159, 160, 161, 166, 167 Shtigo, Srin (fictional), 257n17 Signoret, Simone, 169 silence, 108, 109, 197, 198–99, 259n3 Silverstein, Harry, “The Evil of Death,” 235–36n24 Simpsons, The (TV program), 46 – 47 Singh, Vijay, 62 singularity, 70 –78, 127, 135, 205 Sisyphus (mythical), 201 Sixteen Candles (film), 115 sleep, 197–200, 201 Sloane, Everett, 75 Smith, Zadie, White Teeth, 172 Socrates, 47 Solon, 34, 37 Sorensen, Roy, 255–56n10 soul, 138–39 sound. See silence sour-grape strategy, 238n18 Spacks, Patricia Meyer, Boredom, 154 spatial nostalgia, 169, 172–73, 174; temporal nostalgia vs., 173 sports titles, 32, 37–38, 39, 40, 224; jersey retiring and, 99–100, 105–6, 108 Stanfield, Robert, 113–14 Stanley, Paul, 87 statues, 94, 95, 105, 108, 109, 141, 219, 220, 221 Stendhal, 151 Stewart, Jimmy, 76, 77, 208 Stewart, Martha, 58 Stillman, Whit, Metropolitan, 222 Stoics, 43– 45

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Streep, Meryl, 39 Stumm, General (fictional), 126 –27 Styron, William, 199 Styx (rock band), 86 subjective consciousness. See consciousness successes. See accomplishments suffering, 220, 221 suicide, 191, 192, 193 supercomputer, 204, 205, 211 superconsciousness. See cosmic consciousness superintelligence, 186, 187, 204, 204 –5, 207 Sylvanshine, Claude (fictional), 164 –65, 166 Szatera, Ludwik (fictional), 262n15 Tabler, John, 86 Tantalus (mythical), 201 teletransportation, 63–66, 68–69, 242– 43n32 Templeton Foundation Immortality Project, 207 temporality. See time temporal nostalgia, 168–69, 172–74, 175 “temporary” death, 154 terrifying incidents, 254, 255n9 That Championship Season ( J. Miller), 32–33, 37, 39, 48, 49–50, 73, 94 Theseus, ship of, 158, 167 Third Eye Blind (rock band), 38 Thomas, Dylan, 197–98 thoughts: as defining self, 167; higher-level of, 102; immortal boredom and, 166, 170; time and, 161–63, 168, 171

Tillich, Paul, 71, 74 time: day-to-day approach to, 161–63; as dimension, 235–36n24; events in, 90, 254 –56nn9–10; flow and, 186, 188; given moment in, 47– 48; loss and, 214 –15, 217; movement through, 16 –18, 30, 118–19, 132, 180, 202, 219–21, 224 –30, 231, 232, 252n6; nostalgia and, 168–69, 172–74, 175; ordinary understanding of, 246n42; packing events into, 255–56n10; “quick days” and, 184; self ’s relationship with, 28–31, 46, 91–93, 94 –95, 159–63, 168, 189; slowing down of, 182, 254 –55n9; speeding up of, 183–85, 188–89; stopping in, 219, 220, 221, 228, 229; transience and, 223–24. See also immortality timelessness. See eternity titles, 38, 39, 40 – 41 Tolstoy, Leo: Croesus and Fate, 34; The Death of Ivan Ilych (see Ivan Ilych) torpor, 151 Townsend, Tom (fictional), 222 transience, 223–24 trophies, 32, 224 Trudeau, Margaret, 209 Trudeau, Pierre, 113–14, 209 Turgenev, Ivan, Diary of a Superfluous Man, 13–14 Unamuno, 135 unconscious memories, 102, 103, 247n19 unconsciousness, 205, 208

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unhappiness, 34, 35, 37, 191, 236 –37n7 universal mind. See cosmic consciousness unknowns, 126 –32 Updike, John, 213; Rabbit at Rest, 106, 107 U.S. Open, 40 Vaillant, George, 114, 115 Vancouver Mounties (baseball team), 136 Van Tricasse family (fictional), 167–68 Vashti, Queen (biblical), 106, 107 Velleman, J. David, 45– 46, 94, 220 –21, 239n25; “So It Goes,” 25–28, 29, 30 Verne, Jules, Dr. Ox’s Experiment, 167–68 veterans’ license plates, 133–34 Vinge, Vernor, 204 vivid experiences, 74 –75, 77–78, 139 Wallace, David Foster, 151, 156, 187; Pale King, 164 –65, 166 Walsh, Peter (fictional), 217, 218 Washington Post, 169–70 Wegner, Daniel, 206 –7; “Don’t Fear the Cybermind,” 207

Weidenfeld, George, 15 “We’ll Be Together Again” (song), 215 West, Kanye, 41– 42 White, Carol J., 92 White, Edmund, 31 White Spot (hamburger chain), 134, 136 Wilde, Oscar, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 88, 219, 220, 221, 229 Williams, Bernard, 158–59, 160, 165–66, 168 Winehouse, Amy, 85 Wirtz, Derrick, 236 –37n7 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 104 Woods, Tiger, 62 Woolf, Virginia, Mrs. Dalloway, 217, 218 world-weariness, 154 wrapping things up, 15–17, 22 Yang Zili, 185 yearning, 42, 43, 44, 45, 66; for immortality, 133; spatial-temporal, 170, 171, 172 Zarathustra (fictional), 81, 83 Zelazny, Roger, The Immortal, 257n17

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