Death Anxiety in the Digital Age
Most of us, at some point in our lives, have some anxiety over the end of our time on this planet. But I’m not looking at our personal anxieties around our mortality here. I’m looking at it from a broader, sociocultural perspective. In just about every society in the world, humans have death anxiety. This is expressed in cultural practices and norms. The rituals and meanings of death feature in every religion and religion is a key aspect of culture. Death is a universal feature of human existence.
The digital age we are entering may have deep impact on death anxiety and how we think about death, in many cultures around the world. Some more so than others. From uploading our brains before we die to creating avatars of our ancestors that some cultures may preserve on devices such as smartphones and tablets or a website. And even human rights.
“Death and its denial — immortality — have always formed, as they form today, the most poignant of man’s forebodings” — Bronislaw Malinowski, Anthropologist
And some advances in genetic engineering through cellular treatment, may also redefine how we consider death. Recently, scientists, using a special cocktail, returned a small degree of cellular activity to test pigs in a lab. You can read about it here.
When we are considered dead differs across cultures. For most, death is considered final when we are cremated or buried and ceremonies are held. This is most common in Abrahamic religions (Islam, Judaism, Christianity) but in other religions, one might not be considered dead for some time, years in fact. In many North American indigenous cultures, ancestors may take a prominent place in the landscape, while in some Asian cultures, the dead may “live” in peoples homes for years. In some societies, having children is considered a “symbolic immortality.”
So what about technoimmortality? When we upload our brains to some form of digital storage? This would be the result of us achieving cyberconsciousness. American transhumanist Martine Rothblatt writes about this in her book “Virtually Human: The Promise and Peril of Digital Immortality.”
If we do reach the ability to upload our brains to some new storage technology and retain our consciousness in the way we do as when we’re physically alive, it opens a pandoras box of issues. What would our rights be, if, for example, Amazon or Apple hosted our minds and shut down or suffered a knock-out blow from a mega storm? Or are we truly “dead” if our consciousness lives on? Perhaps we could have multiple copies of ourselves and they each go on to do different things in a digital space (ugh, metaverse) and do those copies have rights? What about voting? So many issues.
And what about memorial websites where we can post images and other content about our loved ones, to share or for us to occasionally visit? What if these businesses go under? What happens as storage mediums change? Who will keep paying the bill? Should governments provide some sort of guarantees? Again, lots of issues. And no easy answers.
How humans consider their ancestors would change as well, if our minds can live on in a meaningful way (however we define that.) Ancestor worship and the role they play in our cultures has been deeply embedded. Different religions will see these issues in different ways. Perhaps for atheists, it is the answer they’d like? All views need consideration. It’s complex and is unlikely to have one definitive answer. It will come down to cultural norms, customs and behaviours.
For much of our time on this planet, we have believed in an afterlife and the resulting production of ancestors. We have evolved elaborate rituals to prepare for, deal with and consider death and ancestor respect and worship.
