The Broken Connection (Robert Jay Lifton)

OVERVIEW

Freud was probably right when he said we can’t imagine our own non-existence, but we can certainly imagine the future in which we don’t exist – we can imagine our impact outlasting us and being absorbed into the flow of life. This imagined future is the basis for symbolic immortality. And according to Robert Jay Lifton, it lives at the core of human yearning.

Immortality

The quest for immortality has always been central to the human project, but “immortality” is a loaded word. Adding “symbolic” as a qualifier helps some (reminding us we’re not talking about literal immortality), but Lifton prefers continuity, and he thinks it’s neither rational nor irrational that we strive for it. You can think of continuity as connectedness, a very natural prosocial species’ longing to belong. Combined with our symbolic nature – the extension of our “selves” into the cultural context (a world of symbols) – and our ability to place ourselves in space/time, this longing naturally extends to the world beyond ourselves, to the past and to the future. At its core, continuity is about connection, and therefore the yearning for it is as natural to our species as love or hunger. Consider: would you describe the warm feeling you get when you imagine yourself part of the long, unbroken chain of life as irrational? No, we generally accept the desire for historical connectedness as a normal human expression. Why then is the desire for connectedness to the future considered irrational? If man is a symbolic creature capable of extending himself backward and forward in time, why would our longing for continuity be asymmetrical? (It’s a curious thing, to argue that our pre-birth and post-mortem states are equal, but not to extend the acceptableness of hope for continuity to both). 

What Lifton is saying is that the yearning to transcend death is not just death denial (though that’s arguably a component). He’s saying it’s exactly what we’d expect from a prosocial lifeform that lives within a world of symbols and has temporal intelligence, a lifeform for which separation is an existential threat. The yearning for symbolic immortality is not pure denial, not simple irrationality (and not necessarily something that needs to be overcome). It’s nostalgia for the future – a manifestation of our hardwired, hominid longing to be connected.

Modes of continuity

So how do we go about transcending ourselves? Similar to Stephen Cave’s “immortality narratives,” Lifton outlines 5 “modes of continuity” – 5 ways we express our sense of immortality:

1.       Biological/Biosocial – living on in your progeny (an “endless chain of biological attachment”), but also living on within a symbolic cultural unit – your family, tribe, organization, nation, or species.

2.       Theological – belief in literal life after death; an immortal continuation on a non-physical plane of existence, or power over death and rebirth.

3.       Creative – living on through what you create: great works of art, literature, or science, but also the humbler influences of good deeds, kindness, and love.

4.       Natural – living on through the great enterprise of life as a whole; the ultimate and naturalistic aspect of our existence that outlives us.

5.       Experiential transcendence – the previous four modes are content for the fifth: the experience of transcendence – a sense of oneness or expansiveness, a temporary loss of the boundaries of “self.” The heightened experience of vital participation, ecstasy, or what Kenneth Rexroth called the “ecology of infinity.” While commonly associated with religious experience, transcendence can be achieved through song, dance, art, meditation, battle, sex, childbirth, etc. The first four modes, then, are about the belief that our influence will endure, while the fifth mode is the profound and felt experience of being connected.

Of course, there is no vehicle for symbolic continuation without culture. Culture provides the enduring structure, the necessary language, imagery, and roles. If larger and lasting connections are what we’re after, culture provides the only available framework for transcendence.

The end times

To sum: the biosocial need for connection inspires our will to continuity, and we are therefore naturally inclined to imagine our biological, creative, or natural legacies; we seek transcendence of finitude to combat two fundamental anxieties: the anxiety of death and the anxiety of separation.

The story could stop there. But, I’m afraid, the whole venture has become rather precarious, because now we live with the ever-present threats of nuclear war, environmental destruction, and other global cataclysms that are increasingly real possibilities. We understand these are extinction-level threats, but what’s even worse is that any threat to the future of the human enterprise (including to the natural world) is an existential crisis not just of survival, but of separation. By threatening to erase the future, you threaten symbolic immortality and therefore some very important psychological scaffolding.

“We sense ourselves to be poisoning the source of our most profound imagery of vitality and rebirth, the mode of immortality which, so to speak, “houses” all the others. . . We still have much to learn about the consequences of our convoluted assaults upon “the source of life,” and our capacities to draw upon that source – make use of natural imagery – to combat our own lethality. . .

Insofar as we imagine the destruction of nature, we snuff out life-imagery of the most fundamental kind and leave ourselves inundated by equally absolute imagery of death.”

How do humans function within this new ephemeralism, when every goal, achievement, or purpose becomes dubious? This threat of total extermination is a special kind of existential distress. If the hope for legacy allays our fears of death and separation, what happens when it’s endangered because the future is endangered? The threat of planetary or species-level destruction shakes the bedrock of our psychological stability today… even if the threats never come to pass.

Conclusion

I did not find Lifton’s final chapter terribly uplifting (maybe because, by this point, he was as depressed as me). Without the promise of continuity, we can expect anxiety and depression to take root. The consequences of this breakdown may precipitate a loss of confidence in our cultural institutions, the breakdown of social units, and the loss of community mindedness – eventually (and historically), totalitarianism and violence. In response, Lifton has this to say: you must acknowledge your existential anxiety and how it is at work in your life. You must understand that the imagery of annihilation works its destruction today, that the catastrophe is already here.

If we want to transcend death and achieve some semblance of continuity, life must continue. Full stop. We should not underestimate the importance of our imagination, of the future imagery that allows us to thrive today. If we don’t secure this future stability, if we continue threatening our natural world, we create a multitude of existential crises in the present – we create a new terminal reality in which we are already ghosts.

WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)

Let’s back up from the existential precipice and consider smaller wins.

Find deeper meaning and connection

Spend your life creating meaning through the activities and projects you undertake, and forge connections with people, projects, and causes that will outlive you. If you don’t, then when you come to the end of your life and the time when you most need to see continuity, you won’t find it, and old age will find you foraging for your means of consolidation (as Lifton says). When we come to our final reckoning, we reminisce. To find peace in this final chapter, we must feel a sense of self-completion and connection… dying “as part of some immortalizing current in the vast human flow.” If our deaths lack meaning, it’s because our lives lacked meaning. If our deaths threaten separation, it’s because our lives lacked connection.

Help others become immortal

Connection is a two-way street. We want to know that we’ll leave ripples in the world and so does everyone else. Remind people of how their lives have affected you, how they’ve changed the world through you. If the “creative” mode of immortality (continuity) is good deeds, it seems that the flip side of this would be reminding people, your co-workers, loved ones, etc. that they have made your life better through their good deeds. You can amplify and acknowledge anyone’s ripples… listen to that weird fringe podcast and leave a comment, tweet your favourite author, listen intently to your grandmother’s stories. Be a good connection hub – extend outward, but also receive and validate the symbolic immortality of others.

Use guilt as a tool

This one is kind of esoteric, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t share Lifton’s nugget about guilt – how guilt has a way of demonstrating that irreversibility has consequences. Guilt is the anxiety of responsibility. Death/dying will make us aware of our obligations, our responsibilities, and possibly the ways in which we have failed to uphold them. Use guilt as a tool to examine the gravity of finitude, the irreversibility of your choices, and therefore the importance of them.

IN SUM:

Is this book entirely secular? Yes.

If I had to describe the book in one sentence? Why symbolic immortality (continuity) is a natural desire, and why threats to the future affect our psychological stability today.

Who should read this book? Fans of Ernest Becker and Terror Management Theory.