Impossible? No: Eschatological!

I'm sure you know the (in)famous work of art by Damien Hirst, "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living", even if you hadn't realised it goes by that title. It's the one with a very large shark in an even larger glass case of formaldehyde. However, if that title is meant to encapsulate the meaning of the work (and it probably isn't, he's such a big tease) then I'd suggest that a banana duct-taped to the wall would do the job just as well and at considerably less cost; I bet Damien is kicking himself over that one. By the same token "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" would be a better title for that (in)famously banana-based artwork, "Comedian". Ah, those cheeky-boy artists, how they do mock us... And how their bank managers must love their monetisation of concept-driven cock-snooking (snook-cocking?).

But, whatever anyone thinks about either actual "work", I'm interested in that title. You could leave out the word "physical" as redundant, actually, and be left with a snappier, more readily grasped expression of a certain paradoxical state of mind: the impossibility of death in the mind of someone living. Now, obviously, most of us, most of the time, don't think about death: what would be the point? It's also true that, until our mortality impresses itself upon us forcefully, most of us do not experience ourselves as a time-limited proposition: not immortal as such, but just sort of here, now, chugging along, with no end in sight. But that blithe indifference is not what that title invokes; for me, anyway.

I'm very prone to an experience that I'm sure most self-aware people have from time to time, almost as a sort of satori. You don't have to have fasted for 40 days, dropped acid, or drunk ayahuasca to be taken unawares, to be struck, suddenly and with the force of revelation, by how laughably, self-evidently absurd it is, that you – I – can exist, and yet will at some point cease to exist, when the meat-and-bone machine that sustains your – my – individual, particular consciousness stops working, and begins its irreversible breakdown into its constituent elements. At such a revelatory moment, it seems impossible to reconcile both propositions in the same brain. How can "I" be the single focal point of all this, and yet be destined to vanish? It doesn't make any sense! But then normal service is resumed, and you're just sort of here, now, chugging along, with things to do, places to go, bills to pay.

This existential flip-flop must have been troubling susceptible people for a very long time, and it's no surprise that the idea of an "afterlife" seems to have been a constant of human culture. It makes sense: the experience of being alive is so intense, so important, so all-encompassing, that the thought of it abruptly coming to an end is like... Well, it's not like a dead shark in a tank of formaldehyde. You can easily imagine the speculations of some Ice Age proto-philosopher: the dead must have gone somewhere, mustn't they, and I suppose I'll be going there, too, sooner or later: I wonder what it's like? On cue, the imagination kicks in to fill the vacuum with pleasant and not so pleasant picturings, which are then seized upon by the tribal elders, who have in turn been struck, suddenly and with the force of revelation, by the realisation that these lurid imaginings can be systematised into a really effective carrot-and-stick means of policing the behaviour of "their" tribe. In other words, a religion. Do right, or else: see what lies in store for you in the unseen realm that lies beyond this rocky road... [1]

However, despite our propensity for picking up Wordsworthian intimations of immortality, I'm fairly sure that most thinking people in 2025 are at the very least agnostic, and in the main entirely atheist, with no belief in any afterlife at all, no matter what they are obliged to pretend to believe by their particular society's thought police. Surely most sane people anticipate death as a full and final personal extinction, albeit with varying degrees of equanimity, and don't tremble before elaborate Boschian eschatological fantasies in which rival post-mortem destinations await us, supervised by benign angels and malevolent demons respectively.

Doubtless, it has been very convenient for a very long time for our rulers to maintain, embroider, and inculcate such supernatural fictions, primarily to scare the bejesus out of a benighted but potentially unruly peasantry, but also to reinforce the idea of a Great Chain of Being, with kings and nobles occupying their rightful place just below the angels, but most of us just one shit-spattered step up from the farmyard. Still, by uneven fits and starts, those days have been coming to an end and – short of the resumption of visits by winged ambassadors from the Great Beyond – will never return. Although how far civil order is best maintained by the internalised surveillance of imaginary beings or by the brutality of real ones is debatable, of course.

But: just for fun, let's just imagine that it is true, that after death some portion of your essential self finds itself freed from its meat-and-bone prison and embarks on a fresh, wholly unexpected adventure. To echo that Ice Age sage: I wonder where we would find ourselves, and what it would be like?

Well, for a start, unless the hereafter is constituted as a vast theme park, divided into discrete culturally-appropriate comfort zones, heavenly havens, and happy hunting grounds, the billions who died before us and have already arrived there must surely have been surprised and not a little baffled by what they found. After all, the place has to accommodate everybody who has lived or will ever live. It must, by definition, be non-denominational, culturally neutral, very capacious indeed (unless "personal essences" are very small), and absolutely the last word in future-proofing, design-wise, although I suppose periodic makeovers are not out of the question.

One immediately thinks of some ultra-anodyne version of an airport departure lounge. But that's a meat-and-bones vision: no matter how long you'll be hanging around there (eternity? until your next incarnation is called?) you probably won't be needing a snack, somewhere to sit down, or even a toilet, thankfully (I mean, just imagine the queues). Besides, is this accommodation exclusively for sentient beings from planet Earth – welcome, crows! – or must it accommodate those from every other consciousness hotspot in the universe? Maybe it's a dizzyingly complex multi-dimensional arrangement of virtual spaces? There also needs to be an inter-being, pan-galactic lingua franca, perhaps some sort of telepathic common understanding.

I'm bored... I liked being a crow.
Me, too... I was a trilobite. Been here a long time.
Not what we was led to expect, is it?
Nah... Oh, hang on, they've finally called my incarnation destination, see you later!
Not if I see you first! Heh... Have a good one!

So, picking what we might call a passing-cluster at random let's take, say, the Battle of Maldon, a Saxons vs. Vikings fixture that took place in August 991. A lot of personal essences will have been set free that day, with on the one side a pagan vision of What Happens Next, and on the other a crudely Christian take.

Now, Ragnar the Berserker has overdone the fly agaric, and charges straight onto the spear of Aethelgar, but not without first cleaving Aethelgar's skull in two with his axe: a man-on-man score draw. Ragnar has led a Good Life, by berserker standards, cleaving, biting, stabbing, and generally unleashing painful death on whatever opponents his masters pointed him at. Kill, Ragnar, kill! So, dying in battle with his weapon in hand, he knows exactly what to expect. Break out the Carlsberg! Bring on the Ikea meatballs, and then the blonde one from Abba!

Aethelgar, by contrast, is conflicted, and not at all sure what outcome to expect: it might even go to penalties, or VAR. He has a vague recollection of something called Purgatory. Aethelgar has been an obedient foot-soldier, carrying his top-of-the-range spear along to many battles. But whenever he asks himself the question, Who would Jesus stab in the guts?, he has doubts. Christianity is big on those doubts: will I, won't I make it to Heaven, or will I, won't I suffer eternal damnation in the burning mosh pit of Hell? I mean, when it says, "Thou shalt not stab people in the guts", does that mean ever, or just when you've not been explicitly ordered to do so? One for the theologians, that, and way above Aethelgar's pay-grade as spearman, first class.

Both warriors, of course, are in for the surprise of their life, so to speak. Which will be a huge disappointment for Ragnar, and an enormous relief for Aethelgar. Where the hell are we? Good question...

Ding dong! Welcome to What Happens Next! Please collect your Next Life voucher from the registration desk. You are 10¹⁰⁰⁰ᵗʰ in the queue... 

Assuming, that is, that the hereafter is not just an enormous recycling scheme for consciousness, and briefly experienced by each individual as unpleasantly like being drunk. What's so unpleasant about being drunk, you ask? Well, as Douglas Adams put it, just ask a glass of water. 

1. As an interlude, you may enjoy this post from 2010, Caedmon's Dream Part II, concerning the Anglo-Saxon conversion to Christianity. No, really, it's fun, and not entirely irrelevant, if you've ever wondered where that thing about life being like a sparrow flying through a brightly-lit feasting-hall came from.