Dancing with Death: Mortality and Meaning in the Cosmos
We may soon reach longevity escape velocity, but what meaning will we find in life if we eradicate death?
To the Dogon people of Mali, death is not just a shadow to be avoided or an uncertain fear plaguing life but rather a rhythm to be embraced.
To honor the deaths of their loved ones the community gathers—not in silence, not in mourning, but in movement. They dance.
They dance to honor the life that was lived and to usher the spirit of the deceased into the next realm. Their funerary ritual, known as the Dama, is not only a farewell but a celebration, a choreography of cosmology and culture. I remember watching a documentary about the Dogon during an archeoastronomy course many years ago at CU Boulder. I was captivated. The concept that all of life is a dance, and that even death deserves a dance, struck a chord so deep it has echoed in me ever since.
In contrast, much of modern Western society has exiled death to the margins. It’s hidden in sanitized hospital rooms, whispered about behind closed doors, avoided in conversation until it’s unavoidable. The dominant Judeo-Christian traditions long cast suicide as a sin, and for many death has been viewed as potentially being the beginning of a divine punishment. Jack Kevorkian—a man who believed in easing suffering through voluntary euthanasia—was prosecuted and imprisoned for aiding the dying. In our technological age, we seem ever more determined to deny death’s presence. We fear it, fight it, and above all, refuse to accept it.
I remember well the passing of my grandfather. I had rushed to get back to Pennsylvania to see him before he was gone. But when I arrived, he had long since lost consciousness and the marvel of modern medicine was forcing what remained of his body to struggle on, gasping for air as the internal systems were all slowly shutting down. It felt painful and wrong to watch his body lay there and struggle. It was a suffering—for what remained of him as well as for all of his family in attendance. We have the capabilities to easily and humanely allow someone to pass, quickly and effortlessly, but we force them to continue on out of our own narcissistic fears of loss and due to practical fears from hospitals of malpractice lawsuits and angry families.
We’re afraid of death. So afraid that we often hardly know how to face it.
But to fear death is to misunderstand life. If we see life as a linear climb with death as the cliff’s edge, we miss a possible greater reality: life is a cycle, and death is the pivot that makes the cycle whole for the individual while leaving their mark on the greater system.
Even if we fear death in many ways, we are aware of our mortality. We’ve addressed it in our stories and mythologies and traditions.
We’ve developed practices such as the Dogon death dance and other funerary processes (I love the scene in P.S. I Love You where mourners share in taking shots of whiskey and then placing their glasses on the urn of their deceased friend).
And we may even now be on the verge of escaping natural biological death altogether—some have argued that the first “immortal” human might even be alive now (or may soon be born into this world).
Will there be an end to death?
There’s been a growing movement on the interwebs of late with more and more adherents joining in with views of transhumanism, The Singularity, and becoming immortal. Some are predicting that we are about to reach “longevity escape velocity”, whereby our tools in medicine and engineering allow us to ensure that natural biological death is overcome (at least by those with enough money and privilege to pay for it).
Right now there are researchers in the realm of biological longevity who are exploring ways to slow or end aging, to improve cellular repair mechanisms, to treat the many disorders that impact us as we age, to find cures for cancers and dementia and other issues, and to make it possible for the human body to continue on in healthy living for hundreds of years, if not indefinitely.
On top of these biological possibilities, we also are staring down the barrel of a future where we may alter ourselves or replace ourselves entirely in the postbiological. Research is advancing in the realms of AI and brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), and many people are wondering if it might be possible and soon plausible for human consciousness to be “uploaded” into a computer or robotic system. Those of us who love thinking about space exploration have also long been considering whether cryogenic hibernation might soon be developed—while that wouldn’t necessarily mean longevity per se, the concept of hibernating for extremely long periods of time and then “waking” back up to a much different future would also be a form of escaping the progression of time as our ancestors have known it.
There’s certainly an allure to these ideas—the dream of more time, more opportunity, more life.
As I’ve personally argued, perhaps one of our greatest flaws that we’ve inherited from our evolutionary history is that our lives are so short and our perspectives of the passage of time so limited that we tend to have a hard time envisioning great change. I think one reason some people struggle to develop empathy, to consider topics like climate change and cultural movements, and to think outside of their current trends and the “24 hour news cycle”. Would humans who live for hundreds or even thousands of years be more likely to instantiate long term thinking, greater empathy, and collective visions for a better world? It could be that civilizations in the cosmos who develop longevity for individuals also develop longevity for their civilization and biosphere.
Yet, for some people, there is also something hollow in the promise of endless existence. Some have even argued that extending the human lifespan in these ways is ethically objectionable.
Certainly, if and when we develop the means to promote human longevity to such extents as I’m writing about here, it also seems exceptionally likely that it will only be available to the ultra-wealthy. There might even become a new form of extreme inequality within our civilization where the immortals become the extravagantly rich who live on the labor and toiling of everyone else who can’t afford longevity. This has been explored in such stories as Altered Carbon, In Time, Repo Men, and Zardoz. And the film, Elysium, showed a possible future where the ultra wealthy live on giant space stations in lives of luxury and freedom while all others remain on the surface of a world overcome in over-population, war, famine, and poverty.
But what if biological longevity becomes available to everyone? What would happen to our world if anyone who wanted to could live for hundreds of years or longer? Does the Earth have enough resources and do we have the ability to develop the right socioeconomic and political systems that would allow for our species to develop in such a way? I personally don’t know, but it does seem like what we have now wouldn’t be well suited to such a world and that new systems of governance and resource distribution would be necessary. And maybe that’s coming as we further develop AI/AGI.
Exploring these ideas is rather fun, but it should also arouse one important question for all of us: does death also have an important meaning in our lives?
The Value of Death in the Stories We Tell
What if death is not a design flaw but a feature?
Here on Earth, we already know of lifeforms that defy aging—biologically immortal creatures like the freshwater hydra or the endlessly regenerating jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii. Some fungi stretch across acres and live for millennia. It’s possible that alien life—should we ever encounter it—may have no concept of biological death like ours. But would such beings value time in a way similar to how we do? Would they love differently (or have any concept of love)? Would they ever feel urgency? Perhaps, without death, meaning dissolves.
Storytelling has long been the place where humans explore these deep questions. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the episode "Half a Life" introduces us to the Kaelon people, who practice ritual euthanasia at age 60. It’s a custom meant to prevent societal burden, but it raises profound ethical questions. The character Lwaxana Troi, initially appalled, comes to understand—if not accept—that for some, death on one’s own terms can be an act of dignity.
Another story regarding value in death in Star Trek comes from the Voyager episode Death Wish. In this episode, they explore a story where an immortal being, a member of the Q, wishes to die. The story considers the potential for an existence where not only biological immortality has been reached but where societally someone is not able to end their existence.
This is similarly explored in the final season of The Good Place: upon meeting Hypatia and others who are experiencing an afterlife in what is arguably heaven, the main cast discover that everyone who has tried everything and done everything they want for eons of existence have lost all will to live—and the show’s writers propose the solution to this problem by granting those who’ve lived as much as they wish to finally be able to choose non-existence.
Philosopher Todd May, who consulted on The Good Place, argues that death is what gives shape to life. In his book, Death, May suggests that the fact that we die might just be the most important thing about finding meaning in our lives. If we lived forever, we might lose our capacity to care. Every choice would be deferrable. Every moment could be repeated. Mortality, by contrast, makes each moment precious. The limits on our time are what make meaning possible.
Something we can’t really know yet, is what kind of meaning and value we’ll have to find in a biologically or technologically immortal future. Personally, I would welcome having the opportunity to observe geological change, to meditate on that nature of a tree for a century, to set out to explore the cosmos for a few millennia, or even to spend time dilly dallying in my own mind while making an eons-long crossing between galaxies on an advanced spaceship. But I also have my worries of what might happen to our species in a future where true longevity becomes possible.
Dance for Me
We’re at a critical time in the history of our species, and for many reasons. We’re facing existential threats from warfare and weaponry that our ancestors could only dream about. We’re becoming more aware of our place in the cosmos and are now more able to truly search for other possible life out there. Our technologies are changing quickly and they’re changing us quickly as well. And we may soon develop the capabilities to allow some people to extend their lives to hundreds or even thousands of years. We may soon see an end to natural biological death of the human individual, and, whether that comes with greater inequality, it will most certainly alter the future of our civilization and our biosphere. But will we still find meaning in death?
From Mexico’s Día de los Muertos and Tibetan sky burials to the Dama dance of the Dogon people, humanity has long found that to celebrate life, we must also celebrate death. These rituals are about continuity, reverence, and presence. They allow us to feel grief not as an interruption but as part of the flow of life.
If we alter ourselves to eradicate death, what will become of life as we know it?
None of us can really know the answer to this just yet, but the potential for longevity escape velocity is real and it seems almost certain that we are some years or decades out (it’s not so far flung as some people might think).
I hope that we can be better when addressing death. We should all be more actively talking about the fact that we die and should more actively engage with the process of death for ourselves and our loved ones to make our deaths meaningful and valuable. When my time comes to die, I hope that those who’ve cared for me will know me and honor me in such a way as to celebrate my passing. I’d love it if those who live on after me would drink and party to celebrate my death. I’d ask anyone who celebrates my passing to think about what my life meant for me.
And, if they would be so inclined, I’d love it if they would dance a little bit for me, too.