Are you an immortalist? A life-extensionist? A transhumanist (don’t get your knickers in a knot—that’s just a fancy word for people who believe technology can help them live forever, or at least until technology takes over and annihilates all the humans)?

People are trying to outwit mortality in ways that range from science-adjacent to Dracula with a spreadsheet:

• Young blood + young plasma infusions: no comment (except to say, keep Dracula away from the schoolyard, parents).
• DIY biology—like taking off-label drugs for longevity: no comment (except to say, the biohacking terms “grinding” and “wetware hacking” might be flagged as inappropriate content by your company’s email security system… sorry if you’re on the compliance shit list now!) (Okay and now I have to tell you that grinders are “a subset of biohackers who aim to enhance themselves by assimilating emerging material technologies [including, but not limited to, electronics] with their bodies through experiments and surgeries.”) Like I said, no comment.
• Cryonics: no comment (except to say, most of us women froze our asses off in overly air-conditioned offices while we were alive… do we really want to spend eternity frozen as well?).
• Hormetic stress—like extreme calorie restriction: no comment (except to say I’ve been there and anorexia isn’t all it’s cracked up to be). (Okay and now I have to tell you that hormetic stress is when we impose controlled doses of possibly harmful stressors to our bodies to spur healthy adaptations. Again, I’m not commenting, but if I was, I might note that there doesn’t seem to be an absence of naturally occurring stress around? Do we really need to manufacture it?)
• Stem-cell tourism: no comment (except to say, does one arrive at the clinic in Thailand 53 and leave 33?).
• Hyperbaric oxygen, red-light therapy, cold plunges, sauna stacking, supplement megastacking: no comment (except to say, what’s with all the stacking?).
• There are so many more examples but life is too short to talk about Bryan Johnson’s “Don’t Die” Protocol.

The real reason for this post isn’t to list the stupid ways we’re trying to rig our lives to live forever. We’re here today to talk about how you’re maybe unwittingly trying to pursue immortality.

What drives you to create a work of art, have a child, start a company, write a book, mentor a protege, become an activist for a cause you care about, build a skyscraper, donate money to the animal shelter, become a social media influencer, leave a legacy that would make you feel proud?

It’s not just because you are creative &/or altruistic (&/or possibly narcissistic).

It’s because of what’s known as symbolic immortality.

Since the beginning of time we’ve been interested in doing away with the end of time. Many of us are captivated by the idea of achieving immortality… of transcending the limits of mortality and achieving a state of eternal existence. Oh, how we dislike the idea of not being around in the future.

This pursuit of symbolic immortality and immortality projects is deeply rooted in psychology.  Terror Management Theory is a rousing social psychology theory that explains how we’re wired with a drive to remain alive and add some sort of value as long as we get to be alive, but we simultaneously understand that we won’t, in fact, exist forever: conditions are ripe for discomfort and dread to potentially fill the void. It’s a staggering existential dilemma, isn’t it—our human desire to survive and flourish in spite of suffering and death? This existential terror runs deep, to be clear—it usually manifests as an unconscious angst that unfolds in unexpected and insidious ways, not so much a blow-in-a-paper-bag kind of stress.

No discussion about mortality evasion would be complete without hearing from the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker; in The Denial of Death he addressed the existential matters that contribute to our fear of the end.

Becker noted that a productive way in which we often handle the dilemma of death is by cooking up an “immortality project”—a set of beliefs that make us feel symbolically immortal and maybe even a wee bit heroic. We’re sober enough to realize we won’t be here forever, but we find comfort in the notion that a sliver of our existence might just persist beyond us, don’t we?

An immortality project could look like having your name chiseled into a brick on the new wing of the library at your alma mater, devotedly adhering to a religious doctrine, getting a facelift to stave off the appearance of aging, or having kids who will have kids who will have kids, and so on. (Fun fact! Research around the planet illustrates that reminders of death heighten the desire to have children, because it helps us feel like we somehow transcend death.) Fear—or denial—of death, to Becker, was the “mainspring of human activity” . . . a fundamental motivator behind why we do what we do.

Whether achieved through art, religion, science, procreation, or other means, immortality projects reflect our desire to not only live forever, but to put a dent in the world. These projects provide a sense of purpose, meaning, and a way to leave a lasting impact on the world.

Be mindful of your motives when taking on a project that makes you feel symbolically immortal. In most cases, these endeavors benefit others and society (like donating money for a new animal shelter—those feral cats will thank you), but they might signal a need to deal with death anxiety at a deeper level.

End note: I don’t want to live forever. I want to stuff however many Mondays I have left with astonishing aliveness… to get to the end and feel like I did this modestly-sized life justice. I like that there is a deadline looming (how literal: a dead line) to keep me motivated to live a squander-free existence. If I knew I was going to live forever, or even another 80 years, I’d keep taking it for granted. It’s true that I probably take on immortality projects—unconsciously—because I’m not excited about being dead and gone forever, I suppose. How do you feel about this? Would you like to live forever if you were of decent health? Or are you good to cash out after about 4,000 Mondays, assuming you lived like you meant it? I’m at jodi@fourthousandmondays dot com if you’d like to let me know.

In the meantime, keep creating &/or giving &/or making babies &/or inventing things. What else are we going to do with our time—shoot young blood in our veins?