About the Authors

Rachel E. Menzies completed her honours degree in psychology at

the University of Sydney, taking out the Dick Thompson Thesis Prize
for her work on the dread of death and its relationship to Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Beginning in her undergraduate years,
her work on fear of death and psychopathology has been published
in Clinical Psycholog y Review, Australian Clinical Psychologist and several
leading international journals. She has been invited to speak at distin-
guished international events and to deliver a workshop tour across seven
cities with the Australian Association for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
(AACBT). She was the lead editor of Curing the Dread of Death: Theory,
Research and Practice, and, having completed her masters and doctoral
degrees in psychology in 2020, she has recently taken up a postgraduate
fellowship at the University of Sydney. She can regularly be heard on
national radio, popular podcasts and at relevant public events such as
The Festival of Death and Dying.

Ross G. Menzies completed his undergraduate, masters and doctoral

degrees in psychology at the University of NSW and is now a professor in
the Graduate School of Health at the University of Technology Sydney
(UTS). Over his career he has been founding Director of the Anxiety
Disorders Clinic at the University of Sydney, National President of the
Australian Association for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (AACBT),
President and Convenor of the 8th World Congress of Behavioural and
Cognitive Therapies (WCBCT), and, most recently, founding Director
of the newly formed World Confederation of Cognitive and Behavioural
Therapies (WCCBT). He has trained psychologists, psychiatrists and
allied health workers in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) around
the globe and is the previous editor of Australia’s national CBT journal,
Behaviour Change. He continues active research and has published nine
books and more than 200 journal papers and book chapters.
m rtals
HOW THE FEAR OF DEATH
SHAPED HUMAN SOCIETY

Rachel E. Menzies
and
Ross G. Menzies
First published in 2021

Copyright © Rachel E. Menzies & Ross G. Menzies, 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

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For James William (Jim) Ovens, who showed us the art of dying
 Contents

1 Awakening to death 1
2 The promises of religion 22
3 Clinging to culture 62
4 Immortality projects and creative works 88
5 All you need is love 124
6 Striving for health and refusing to let go 151
7 The buffer of self-esteem 182
8 Funerary practices and what they tell us 205
9 Continuing bonds to the dead 228
10 Death dread and mental illness 251
11 To be or not to be: the suicide solution 279
12 The death positive movement 304
13 Stoicism and neutral acceptance 324
14 The end days 342

Epilogue 374
Acknowledgements 376
Notes 378
Index 423
Why, do you not know, then, that the origin of all
human evils, and of baseness, and cowardice, is not
death, but rather the fear of death?
Epictetus
 1

Awakening to death

Send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
John Donne (1572–1631)

To have gazed at the stars of the Milky Way, and yet to die.
To have smiled at the face of your newborn child, and still to die.
To have touched another, loved deeply and been loved in return,
and even so to die.
Life can feel so dazzling, so animated, so painfully vibrant that
death seems impossible. From the moment we are born we will live our
days with only one consciousness, never really experiencing the inner
world of another person. It is this inner sensory experience that we
come to know and cherish—​our overpowering sensate nature that
will make us feel remarkable. We will pass people on the streets,
in our homes, schools and places of work, and we will accept their
existence. But it will always be in a somewhat detached manner. As

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 M o r tals

the French existentialists taught us, we will always remain isolated

from these other ‘selves’. An uncrossable bridge will lie between us
and all others. We are destined to grow up overwhelmed by our
own private world—​an inner realm that will convince us that we are
different from all others, and that our lives will obey different rules
from those of the masses.
Death occurs—​of course it does—​but surely it happens to other
people. It happens to strangers in foreign lands, to our neighbours, the
ageing widow down the road, the sick child at Number 26, perhaps
even to our parents and grandparents, but not to us. And yet, at
some level, we all suspect the truth from a very early age. Death is a
universal that applies to all living things on Earth. And so, shockingly,
it must logically apply to us. Despite the adoration we have for our
inner sensory world, in the end death will come for us.
We are, as Shakespeare suggests, the protagonist in our own play,
in our own theatre, who ‘struts and frets his hour upon the stage’.
But the grim reaper watches from the dress circle and may rise to
tread the boards with us at any moment. And when he joins us on
our stage, like billions before us, we must bid the audience farewell.
At that time, Macbeth’s couplet is completed and then we will be
‘heard of no more’.
How do humans cope with the spectre of death overhanging all
that they do? Distraction? Denial? Engaging in immortality projects
to leave their mark on the planet? We do all of the above and much,
much more. But let’s begin by exploring the problem in more detail.
When does our death awareness develop and why do humans appear
uniquely troubled by it? To answer these questions, we must come

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 Awa k ening to death

to understand the advantages and disadvantages of the evolution of

the human brain.

Brain versus brawn

Humans have extraordinarily large brains. Other mammals of around

60 to 70 kilos in weight have an average brain size of little more than
200 cubic centimetres. Even a newborn human, weighing only three
to four kilos, has a larger brain than this, typically around 350 to 400
cubic centimetres. It appears that the entire evolution of humankind
has favoured an ever-increasing brain size. Even 2.5 million years
ago early men and women had developed brains around 600 cubic
centimetres, far outstripping most mammals currently roaming the
planet. By the 21st century, modern men and women could hope for
an astonishing 1300 to 1400 cubic centimetres of neural networks.
The evolution of an ever-expanding brain came at several costs and
Homo sapiens faced many associated hurdles in the fight for survival.
A heavy brain uses considerable energy—​approximately 20 to 25 per
cent of the body’s energy intake is consumed by the human brain.
The daily calories needed to support the brain is much higher in
humans than in the other great apes such as orangutans, gorillas and
chimpanzees. For example, relative to resting metabolic rate, the
human brain uses twice as many calories as the chimpanzee brain.
With their brains sapping much less energy, other apes could dedicate
more resources to supporting huge and powerful musculature.
In essence, the evolution of humans and our closest cousins appears
to have diverged in strategy, with some biological lines of natural
selection favouring brain and some lines favouring brawn. The strength

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 M o r tals

of the great apes is something to behold. No one who has seen the
‘man versus orangutan’ coconut challenge can easily forget it. Three
men try to cut through a hardened coconut with machetes while a
large ape watches and smiles. And just when the men near completion
the orangutan turns gently to his coconut and peels it in half with the
ease of a man breaking a mandarin orange in two. Make no mistake,
it is abundantly clear who would win a fight if a man and orangutan
were to battle in the proverbial dark alley.
Even Homo neanderthalensis (the Neanderthals) was stronger than
we are, with a lower centre of gravity, broad shoulders and powerful
forearms for grappling. And yet, it is our delicately framed selves with
fine limbs who are the only survivor in the genus Homo (humans). Of
course, we were not always alone. We must remember that for two
million years the Earth was home to several species of humans, many
of whom lived at the same time. Homo denisova, Homo rudolfensis, Homo
ergaster, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens roamed the planet in
search of their niche to survive. The abundance of species in our genus
should come as no surprise—​after all, consider how many species
of cat in the Felis genus happily coexist at the present time. Yet, in
the Homo genus, only one species has prevailed. Why? How did we
achieve this dominance? How did we survive as the other species of
humans, one by one, became extinct? Well, put simply, it’s because
our survival has not depended on fistfights in dark alleys. The war
for survival on planet Earth has involved planning, mental agility and
solving problems. Survival has depended on visualising the options
of predators and prey, and the likely outcomes of your plans, traps
and deceits. And this is where we come into our own. No species can
compete with the cognitive and verbal skills of Homo sapiens (literally,

4
 Awa k ening to death

wise humans). If survival is more like a game of chess than a street

fight, Homo sapiens was always going to win.

The cognitive capacities of humans

You cannot speak in chess. You cannot touch the pieces, except to
make your move. You cannot write, except to record your move. You
are left in silence with visualisation and planning skills alone. Chess is
a war game, a game of deception and murder, and one of the ultimate
tests of the cognitive capacities of our species. It involves setting
complex traps and double attacks that may take five or ten moves
to reveal themselves. All of this must be achieved while protecting
your own king, and planning the ultimate downfall of your oppo-
nent’s monarch. It is no surprise that in Guy Ritchie’s classic version
of Sherlock Holmes a game of chess is used to show the superiority of
the mind of our hero over the evil Moriarty. Similarly, J.K. Rowling
chooses a sentient set of Wizard’s Chess pieces as the final protector
of the Philosopher’s Stone, the source of eternal life that Voldemort
so desperately craves.
Humans have reached the Grand Master level of play (the highest
standard in the chess world) by as early as twelve years of age. And
astonishingly we can play it blindfolded, without even seeing our
opponent or their pieces. The sighted opponent calls out their moves
and the blindfolded opponent must visualise the board, remembering
the game across hours, constantly updating the position in their
mind as they calculate ahead. Even more remarkably, blindfolded
chess players can take on many such games at once. The current
world record is held by Grand Master Timur Gareyev who played

5
 M o r tals

48 chess games blindfolded simultaneously. One by one each player

called out their move and Gareyev, relying only on his memory of
each board, responded. Astonishingly, across 20 hours of continuous
play, he scored 35 wins, seven draws and only lost to six of his sighted
opponents.
While blindfold chess against multiple opponents may seem
beyond you, don’t be fooled. A range of activities that everyday citizens
engage in shows the tremendous memory and attentional capacities
of Homo sapiens. Taxi drivers in London must learn hundreds of routes
through 25,000 streets off by heart in order to get their licence. They
also memorise more than 30,000 landmarks and places of public
interest such as parks, hospitals, police stations, embassies, hotels,
museums, theatres and churches. All of this is tested in a series of
written and oral tasks known as ‘the knowledge’, an examination
that was initiated in 1865 and has changed little since. Like chess
players, taxi drivers must be flexible in applying their plans. The
behaviour of opponents (in this case other cars on the road) may
lead drivers to new directions. They must take account of the time
of day in predicting where traffic will pool along the way. Where will
the roadblocks come? How does one navigate the dangers ahead?
Humans have an extraordinary capacity to look forward and
plan for harmful potentialities. This is the power of our reflective
consciousness. But it comes with a curse. If we are capable of seeing
the paths ahead of us, perhaps better than any species that has ever
lived on our planet, at some point we must realise where all paths are
leading—​to the grave. Existential crises emerge in humans because of
the power of our reflective consciousness. We are simply too clever

6
 Awa k ening to death

for our own good. Once young children become aware of death they
are fated to an inevitable rise in fear.

The emergence of death awareness

At what age do we become aware of our own impermanence, and does

this awareness immediately give rise to fear? Researchers and clini-
cians have been interested in these questions for more than 100
years, beginning with Sigmund Freud. He was the first to develop
a comprehensive model of child development and he made strong
claims about children and death. In 1900 Freud confidently declared
that children know nothing ‘of freezing in the ice-cold grave, of the
terrors of eternal nothingness’ and that ‘the fear of death has no
meaning to a child.’ To test these claims psychodynamic researchers
began to interview young children about their fears. By the 1950s
these scholars had shown us that Freud, as in so many other areas,
had been fundamentally wrong about the dread of death.
Interview studies have consistently shown that an immature under-
standing of death is usually present by the age of five. Interestingly,
a child’s understanding of death is acquired in four stages:

irreversibility—​the recognition that the dead cannot come back to life

applicability—​the understanding that death only happens to living things
inevitability—​the acknowledgement that all living things must die
eventually
non-functionality—​the understanding that death is characterised by
bodily processes, such as speech, hearing, dreaming, ceasing to
function.

7
 M o r tals

The idea of irreversibility comes first, typically between four and five
years of age. Next, in the early years of school, the subcomponents
of applicability, inevitability and non-functionality are acquired in turn,
usually in the period from seven to ten years. When all four subcom-
ponents are mastered the child can be said to have acquired a mature
understanding of death.
Fear of death has been documented in children before the age of
five. This shows us that a mature understanding of death is not required
for fear to emerge. At least two explanations of this are logically
possible. First, the inherently risk-averse nature of our species might
make us wary of death even before we fully understand it. In fact,
the child’s lack of understanding might be a biological signal to be
cautious. This is why children spit out foods that they are unfamiliar
with. If I don’t know what it is, it’s probably dangerous. Second, it’s possible
that only the concept of irreversibility is required for fear. Even if the
child has not yet understood that all living things, and only living
things, must die, the understanding that there is no return from death
may make it a terrifying possibility.
Fear of death appears to gradually increase and dominate the
worries of children from five to ten years of age, notably matching
the developmental period in which the death concept is becoming
complete. This has been shown through research using childhood
fear questionnaires like the revised Fear Survey Schedule for Children
(FSSC-R). This scale lists 80 different situations, activities and
happenings (for example, ‘snakes’, ‘looking foolish’, ‘talking on the
telephone’, ‘getting punished by mother’). Children are asked to rate
the extent to which each item causes fear and distress. In children

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 Awa k ening to death

around five years of age, the most common fears appear to involve
animals, monsters, the dark and separation from parents. As others
have noted, these appear to be early derivatives of death anxiety. It is
obvious that separation from a guardian, or the presence of a monster,
will increase the possibility of death. The more explicit death items
on the FSSC-R (such as ‘death or dead people’ and ‘cemeteries’)
become the most commonly feared situations on the questionnaire
by seven to ten years of age.
Freud was very wrong indeed. During the early life of a child
the spectre of death slowly seeps into the psychological marrow. By the
end of the first decade of life, death has become ‘the worm at the core’
of the human psyche, nibbling away at our sense of security. Like our
shadow, it is an ever-present companion that darkens the scenery.

Death anxiety across the lifespan

The death items on the FSSC-R remain the most feared situations
throughout adolescence, interfering with the lives of the majority of
teenagers. In one large Australian study 60 per cent of adolescents
indicated that the common items of the death and danger subscale
of the FSSC-R caused them considerable distress and reduced their
enjoyment of daily activities. This is not surprising, as the development
of formal logical thought (by around eleven to twelve years of age)
increases the ability to contemplate our own death. As deductive
reasoning and planning begin to strengthen after twelve, the indi-
vidual can better explore abstract concepts by manipulating ideas in
their head. In this way, rumination about death and its consequences
becomes increasingly possible.

9
 M o r tals

Other aspects of adolescence may also contribute to the mainte-

nance and growth of death anxiety. Compared to younger children,
adolescents are more likely to have experienced death and loss in
their lives. Canadian research suggested that 60 per cent of eleven-
to eighteen-year-olds will experience a familial death (of a sibling,
parent or grandparent). The same study showed that there is a strong
relationship between the amount of grief that an adolescent experi-
ences and their subsequent level of death anxiety: that is, a painful
experience of grief appears to increase fear of future death.
Notably, female adolescents report significantly greater fears of
death than male adolescents. This is consistent with a large body
of research in adulthood showing the same effect. It is an almost
universal finding that adult women report more anxiety about death
than do men. Of course, this may simply be part of a greater picture
of woman reporting more fears, phobias and general anxiety than men.
Why is this the case? Are men really less afraid of death and related
dangers than women? More research is needed, but the effect may
simply be due to men under-reporting their fears and insecurities.
Male bravado is a terrible thing.
What happens to death fears as we age? Do our fears increase in
the second half of life? After all, with every passing day we move closer
to death. Interestingly, early theorists did not believe that death fears
would significantly change across the adult years. As David Lester
put it: ‘Age will obviously affect attitudes until mental development is
complete. Thereafter, it would seem that personality factors and life
experiences are the important determinants.’ Early studies, limited
by extremely restricted age ranges among participants, failed to find
any age-related effects. But in studies that have used well-established,

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 Awa k ening to death

reliable measures of death anxiety, and samples drawn across all

periods of adulthood, age effects have generally been found. One
large study, drawing on huge samples of diverse Americans, reported
that 40 per cent of the young, 25 per cent of middle-aged and 10 per
cent of the elderly expressed a fear of death. In a similar follow-up
study, a different group of researchers found that individuals aged
60 to 83 years had lower death anxiety scores than individuals in
any younger age band.
Some researchers have criticised these studies. First, the different
age groups in these studies may have experienced death in completely
different ways (such as exposure to different wars, outbreaks of different
diseases, catastrophic world events). Second, by old age certain types
of individuals may have been eliminated (such as risk-takers), poten-
tially biasing the results of the studies by creating artificial differences
between the groups. But even in longitudinal studies, in which you
follow a single group of people over time, the same findings seem
to emerge. Watch a person long enough and you will typically see
their death dread diminish (at least slightly) over the second half
of their life. Ironically, as we move closer to death most of us find a
way to take the edge off our fears.

Gods with anuses

But how do we assuage our dread of death as we age? How do we learn

to deal with death? In many ways these are the central questions being
explored in Mortals. We’re looking at the myriad of human strategies
that have been used across millennia to combat the foreknowledge of
our parting. Unfortunately, as theorists and researchers have shown

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 M o r tals

in various psychological models of death, most human coping mech-

anisms have involved little more than denial.
The first comprehensive model of the human response to death
appeared in 1973 with the publication of Ernest Becker’s master-
piece, The Denial of Death. Becker, a cultural anthropologist, won the
Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction for this classic. His central premise was
that humans, unable to cope with the stark reality of death, create
grand and elaborate cultural belief systems to rise above all other
animals. As Solomon, Greenberg and Pyszczynski were to later put
it, humans ‘could not function with equanimity if they believed that
they were not more significant and enduring than apes, lizards, or
lima beans’. Culture gives us things to aspire to: things to accomplish
that will buy us a legacy or ‘virtual immortality’ in the eyes of those
around us. We’re thus able to transcend mortality through heroism
and achievement. In this way we become tiny immortal gods, albeit
‘Gods with anuses’ as Becker sarcastically put it. Humankind, in our
own eyes, is grand indeed.
Our narcissistic sense of our own importance can be seen in the
endless celebrations that we demand within our culture. Others
must come together to mark our birthdays, engagements, weddings,
graduations, the birth of our children, our promotions and achieve-
ments. These will be proudly posted on social media platforms and
others will ‘like’ our self-promotion as they are typically using the
same means to achieve purpose, gain approval and assuage fears of
mortality and meaninglessness. We will dress in all manner of finery,
remove the hair from our bodies, and use make-up to enhance our
features. We will refuse to be the animals that we are. Barristers
will wear their wigs and gowns, and magistrates and judges shall be

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 Awa k ening to death

called ‘Your honour’ or ‘Your worship’. Others will also demand titles.
In recent years dentists, chiropractors, oesteopaths, psychologists
and other health professionals have joined medical practitioners in
expecting to be called ‘doctor’. As for those with an actual ‘doctorate’,
they may aspire to join the religion of academia, perhaps the most
narcissistic profession of all. Attend any university graduation cere-
mony and you will witness the embarrassing sense of self-importance
that the academic community bestows upon itself. We parade into
grand halls behind ceremonial mace bearers, mortarboard in place
with tassel to the left, as the congregation (in this case the parents
and friends of the graduands) rise to their feet for the bishops and
cardinals of knowledge. Why do family members stand? Because
academics have trained them to! We have declared ourselves the
immortal holders of knowledge and quietly pressured all to play
along. We teach the graduands how to behave as they approach the
chancellor, doffing the cap in respect, taking the testamur in the
left hand while shaking hands gently with the right, before moving
their tassel to the left side of their mortarboard. It is a scene with
all the hallmarks of the Catholic receiving the Body of Christ from
a priest. Peace be with you.
In one way or another, we seek lasting importance and recognition
in our attempt to rise above death. Ideally, we want to become the
stuff of legend through our achievements, to remain relevant and
talked about when we are gone. Charles Bukowski, a colourful literary
figure who was certainly larger than life, makes it clear that this was
his motivation. ‘Great writers are indecent people. They live unfairly,
saving the best part for paper. Good people save the world so that
bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal. If you read

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 M o r tals

this after I’m dead it means I made it.’ People will readily give up their
life in the search for immortality. In 1875 Captain Matthew Webb
became the first person to successfully swim the English Channel,
between Dover in England and Calais in France. Not satisfied with the
feat, he went on to numerous other challenges to bring ever-greater
fame. Ironically, the search for glory would finally kill him. He died
trying to swim the Whirlpool Rapids below Niagara Falls, a task
correctly declared impossible at the time. Two roads (Captain Webb
Drive and Webb Crescent) are named after him in his hometown of
Dawley in Shropshire: the pathetic rewards of a foolish act.
The Channel swim has become an immortality project for many.
But how can they gain fame when another has already beaten them
to the challenge? Well, why not change the rules? Become the first to
swim it backstroke, breaststroke and even butterfly. All three have
now been done. Become the oldest to swim it, or the youngest. Why
not swim it twice without stopping? Or even three times? In fact, not
satisfied with three crossings, in September 2019 the American
ultra-marathon swimmer Sarah Thomas crossed it four times without
a break. And surely, as we write these sentences, someone is training
for a fifth crossing.
But what can you do if you have no apparent talent? How can
you be immortalised without any apparent skills? No problem—​set a
record for something that requires no ability. The 2020 edition of the
Guinness World Records includes such gems as most types of cheese put
on a pizza (154 for those asking), longest nail extensions worn (1.21
metres) and most tattoos of the same name on a single body (267).
The editor notes that they receive more than 35,000 applications
for entry into their famous volume each year.

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 Awa k ening to death

Of course, all of this is a chimera, a fool’s paradise. Few individuals

are remembered for their achievements in any lasting sense. Even
those who have made a mark during their time of the blue planet are
typically quickly forgotten. Consider Isabelle Allende, a world-re-
nowned, prize-winning writer. Inducted into the American Academy
of Arts and Letters in 2010, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of
Freedom by Barack Obama in 2014. Allende was recently interviewed
by Helena de Bertodano for The Sunday Times in London. ‘When I
asked her about how she would like to be remembered, she replies
briskly. “I will not be remembered. Very few people are remembered
in this world.” But your work will be remembered? “No, it won’t. It’s
a total male fantasy, this thing about legacy.”’
Could Allende be right? Is there a gender difference in the need
for legacy? Perhaps. After all, men score higher than women on tests for
narcissism. Men are more likely to overestimate their abilities, claim
superiority over their fellow citizens, need attention from others and
manipulate others to get it. Research also shows that men daydream
more about fame. There is also considerable evidence for a strong
gender difference in those seeking prizes and awards throughout the
arts and many other fields. Take, for example, the Archibald Prize for
portraiture in Australia. It is the nation’s most prestigious art prize
and offers a large financial award and lifelong national acclaim. Yet,
despite 74 per cent of art school graduates in Australia being women,
more men enter the Archibald in expectation of glory and therefore,
unsurprisingly, more men make the finals and win. In fact, in its
100-year history, gender parity was not reached among finalists in
the Archibald until 2016. Similar patterns have been observed in the
arts in the UK and the United States.

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 M o r tals

This strong gender difference in desire to be the best extends to

the ridiculous achievements of many of the Guinness World Record
holders. When you exclude records held by groups (most people
dressed as Albert Einstein at the same time), and those for which
only one gender is eligible (male athletic records), about 71 per cent
of the remaining records are held by men. Be assured, it is men that
have trained and sought honour and glory for crushing the most
watermelons on their head in 30 seconds, taking the most selfies
in three minutes, wearing the most T-shirts at once or blowing the
most soap bubbles from a single wand.
Of course, not all accomplishments are so trivial and, despite
Allende’s protestations, some individuals do achieve Becker’s ‘virtual
immortality’ through the actions of their lives. Are these individuals
driven by the dread of death? Were they motivated by the need for
legacy that lies behind many human actions? There are certainly
anecdotal reasons to believe that death weighed heavily on the
minds of the greatest achievers of the past. William Shakespeare,
for example, was clearly haunted by death throughout his life. Some
researchers have even suggested that his plays were a form of narrative
therapy—​an attempt by Shakespeare to deal with loss, grief and fear
of his own death.
Hamlet, arguably the greatest of Shakespeare’s death plays, was
written only three years after the death of Shakespeare’s elev-
en-year-old son with the strikingly similar name, Hamnet. Notably,
over half of Shakespeare’s plays have explicit text about the horrors
of death, and most Shakespearean scholars see death as one of the
most significant themes running throughout his works. Many have

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 Awa k ening to death

pointed out that the majority of his great soliloquies have a death
theme. Consider Hamlet’s suicidal ruminations about whether it is
better ‘to be or not to be’. Or his painful laments upon discovering
the skull of Yorick:

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of

most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand
times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge
rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how
oft. —​Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your
flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not
one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfallen? Now get
you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick,
to this favor she must come. Make her laugh at that.

In this wonderful piece of prose, Shakespeare reflects on the conceit

of humankind. Hamlet holds the skull while reminding us of Yorick’s
‘infinite jest’, ‘flashes of merriment’, ‘gambols’ and ‘excellent fancy’. He
observes that even an inch of make-up on the face must inevitably
disappear with death. Shakespeare’s words are carefully chosen—​a
reference to the Vanitas art movement that combined human skulls
with symbols of the vanity of humans, the brevity of life, and the
futility and pointlessness of everyday pleasures.
Throughout his life Shakespeare was grappling with death and
impermanence and, like Bukowski, he worked hard to create his
own immortality. And we should be glad that he did. His efforts have
given us the greatest collection of plays and sonnets ever written in
the English language. Shakespeare achieved his godlike status and the

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 M o r tals

rest of us receive the endless pleasure of his works. But how many
others have truly achieved this type of immortality? Of the estimated
107 billion people who have walked the Earth, how many are remem-
bered across long periods of time? The Mozarts and Michelangelos
of human history are few in number but truly glorious. The rest of us
are desperately deluded in seeking immortality in the first place. Far
better to accept the truth of our existence. As the ancient Greek Stoics
first taught us, we should all invite the inevitability of our passing
with neutral acceptance, without wanting it to be any different. For
as we now know, thanks to the advances of science, we are no more
than a clumsy ape hurtling through space at 100,000 kilometres an
hour under a thin atmosphere on an old rock that will inevitably face
its own death when our life-affirming star finally explodes.

The future

In the main, humans have ignored the missives of the great philoso-
phers and continued to desperately crave immortality in any form we
can get it. Where will all this foolish denial born of death dread lead
us? In the final chapter we will look at the grim future that awaits our
species. We will explore the population explosion of the twentieth
century in terms of death anxiety. We have added four billion people
to our bulging mass in the last 60 years and an astonishing one billion
in the last decade. This is a shocking rate of growth on a planet that
simply can’t support our expanding food and water needs. Growth has
continued despite contraception, one- or two-child policies in several
countries and research evidence showing that the personal happiness

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 Awa k ening to death

of men and women actually declines as they have more children. So why
has it occurred? Obviously there is a range of contributing factors but
existential issues are a major player in this phenomenon. The human
desire to reproduce is heavily driven by the overwhelming need to live
on beyond the self. To see oneself in a child’s face provides a ready
solution to death anxiety. In my offspring I survive.
Not only have we grown our population to unsustainable levels,
but people on the planet are also consuming in an ever-increasing
manner. Many regions of the globe now contain throwaway societies. In
economically developed countries, families no longer survive with one
television set for ten or more years. Instead, screens in multiple rooms
are regularly replaced as slicker, thinner, larger models come on to the
market. Durables, in many areas of life, have become consumables.
In fascinating laboratory studies, this feverish purchasing has been
linked to our unconscious fear of death. Subtle and hidden reminders
of death have been shown to dramatically increase our urge to buy
things. This should be no surprise. Making money and spending
money are signs of success in most contemporary cultures. After
all, gods with anuses must live a grand existence! Consumerism is
encouraged by our desire to rise above our neighbour, to have lived
our days as kings or queens. Buying means winning.
All this rabid consuming requires production, and production
requires energy, and energy (at least in the past) required coal. And
so we dug and burned, dug and burned, dug and burned . . . and slowly
our planet warmed. Many saw the dangers coming. On 14 August
1912, a New Zealand newspaper published the following warning in
its section headed Science News and Notes:

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 M o r tals

COAL CONSUMPTION AFFECTING CLIMATE

The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000

tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds
about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere
yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the
earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable
in a few centuries.

Why is this still controversial when the science has been clear for more
than 100 years? Again, the answer lies in our unconscious fear of death
and the strategy of denial. As Ernest Becker put it, death denial drives
us to ‘assure the complete triumph of man over nature’. Our collective
belief in our infallibility and omnipotence led to a complacency as we
raped the planet of more and more resources. We have acted with a
deluded sense of superiority and control over the Earth and all of its
lifeforms. In a similar show of narcissistic ignorance, just as the viral
pandemics began to visit us, we shut down the scientific units that
had been built to predict such catastrophes. In a tremendous irony,
our denial of death will be the central cause of the extinction of our
species. With rising sea levels, increasing land and sea temperatures,
catastrophic weather events, water shortages and global pandemics,
we are currently facing the end of our short reign on the blue planet.
The strategies discussed above—​producing child after child to
continue one’s genetic line, academic achievement, setting records,
producing lasting works of art or literature, engaging in unrivalled
spending and consumerism—​are attempts to gain a symbolic or virtual
immortality. But what about the possibility of literal immortality—​of

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 Awa k ening to death

never dying? Rather than attempting to live on through our chil-

dren, good name, fame or fortune, why not continue to genuinely live
on! Welcome religion. This is the solution to death that most have
favoured across the history of our species. And, despite advances in
science that bring ever-starker doubts about the myriad of religious
claims, it remains the most common solution for the masses. It is
estimated that more than 4 billion people on the planet currently
believe they will live on after death. This makes the 35,000 who
write to the Guinness World Records look very small indeed. But
unlike wearing the longest nail extensions, believing in a god and a
single religious story is not harmless fun. As religious systems collide,
each implicitly questions the fate of those of other faiths. And this,
more than any other feature in humans, has led to conflict and war.
Religious systems that were developed to give us everlasting life have
caused more deaths than any other belief systems in our history.

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