Based on your current writing and thinking, what does “accepting our mortality” mean, and how do you think our lives would change if people did that?

About five or six years ago, I had an experience that, for lack of a better word, I would call “mystical.” I felt a deep sense of responsibility to the universe, to the earth, and to this moment in time that we are in. In the days that followed, I started to notice that I had this weight lifted off of me, which I eventually recognized had been this ever-present fear of death, of ending, of mortality. I still was careful crossing the street and things like that, but it wasn’t weighing on me the way it had my whole life, and I hadn’t realized until that moment that it had been. I think letting go of that allowed me to turn outward and focus on trying to be of more benefit to the world. I imagine that this shift can happen for people even without the kind of experience I had. It can happen as they accept that they’re mortal.

We can all do that individually, but then on a collective level, there is a recognition not only that individuals die, but also that civilizations die. That’s something that we don’t talk about in our culture hardly at all. Civilizations die of some combination of climate change, wearing out their soil, population growth, economic inequality, basically all the things that we face right now.

There’s no reason to believe that our civilization today is an exception to that rule. If we could face that fact as a group, that one way or another at some point Western civilization is going to have an end date, then I think we wouldn’t be so resistant to the idea of climate change, to the idea of scaling back our growth, and living more in balance with the physical reality of our world. I imagine that on the collective level we would turn away from this focus on growth, on progress, on technological control over our environment, and more towards quality of life: being more connected, having deeper relationships with others and with our environment, and being happier and healthier all around.

In What If It’s Already Too Late, you say “immortality projects are maladaptive, because they sever us from the flow of life—of which death is a part.” From a Beckerian perspective, how do we balance the human need for some sort larger meaning with the real limits and challenges of doing so within the confines of our planet?

The question is if there can be a healthy immortality project. I think it depends what you mean by “immortality.” The classicist, Jane Ellen Harrison, who studied Ancient Greece, wrote about two kinds of immortality. One was athanasia, or deathlessness, the immortality of perpetual life. This was the life of the Olympian gods, the gods of the heavens, Zeus and the others. But she talks about another kind of immortality, which the Greeks were aware of, called palingenesia, the idea that there is a kind of immortality in the eternal cycle of life and death, that life goes on by embracing death. This was the immortality of the gods of the earth. You can see in the earth that things live and die and that life feeds on death. Without death, you cannot have life, you cannot have growth. Harrison argued that our culture has overly focused on athanasia, but that true immortality comes paradoxically from embracing our death, from dissociating from our own individual perspective and embracing more of an ecological cosmic perspective. If at any point you cling to where you are in the cycle of life and death, then you deny the movement, the life, and your connection to nature. What we are doing to the natural world is a product of that disconnection. Because of that disconnection, we think we can act in the world without consequence, as if there are no limits to what we can do, as if there are no real consequences that we can’t solve technologically. But the world is now teaching us a different lesson in a hard way.

True immortality comes paradoxically from embracing our death, from dissociating from our own individual perspective and embracing more of an ecological cosmic perspective.

Do you think COVID will teach us anything regarding our behavior as a species?

COVID has opened up a window for people to look at our society and consider other possibilities. I mean, people are talking about socialism in a new way. When I was growing up, socialism was a foul word. Now people are talking about alternative economic arrangements like they are real possibilities. But on the whole we see how capitalism takes advantage of these types of crises and re-entrenches the system. Unfortunately, the pandemic has been another big money grab for rich people. I don’t know if it wasn’t deep enough of a crisis or long enough of a crisis, but I don’t think the majority of people will ever embrace the kind of realizations we’re talking about. At a minimum, in order to be serious about climate change, Americans would need to have fewer children, stop flying, and pretty much stop eating meat. And we’re nowhere even close to that. That is why my hope lies more in smaller communities that can create some kind of sane existence, withdrawn from mainstream society, in the hope that they can create a real alternative.

What do you think it would take to get to a place where people could actually view climate change as a common enemy, on a large scale, rather than our neighbors of different cultures and skin colors?
The solution to climate change is to drastically cut back in how much we consume and how we live our lives, individually and collectively. I think that requires a cultural shift from this paradigm that is largely unexamined of growth and progress. It’s bound up in everything from our educational systems to our religions to our governmental policies. As long as that is unexamined, then I think anything we do will end up sabotaging itself. In the long run, it will not fix the problem until we deal with the root cause, which is this idea of progress—that we can just keep going forever, higher and higher, more and more. It’s because of this that we feel disconnected from the natural world and act as if our actions don’t have consequences. It’s the same idea as that Olympian concept of immortality: that you can live forever.

Some younger people have become “anti-natalists” (deciding not to procreate) due to their bleak view of the future. Could this be a literal version of the “die early and often” approach you discuss?

I’m not overly focused individual consumption or lifestyle choices as the solution. With that being said, the number one thing you can do personally to reduce your carbon footprint is have fewer children. But from a more psychological or spiritual angle, I think that a conscious effort not to live through your children could be a way to “die early and often.” Living through your children isn’t good for your children, it’s not good for you, and in a broader sense, the way that we live through our children isn’t healthy for the planet. We often tell young people “Your generation is our hope for the future.” Really? On top of all the problems we have left you, we’re going to tell you that now it’s up to you to fix this for us? No, we’re not dead yet. Trying to work away from this idea of living through our children would be better for everybody and for the environment.

It’s kind of a hospice mentality for the human species. Quality over quantity.

With your belief, shared by many others, that human civilization is leading to its own demise, can you talk about why you are not a nihilist but rather a “post-doomer,” as you describe yourself?

It’s important to embrace the dark side a little bit, for the same reason we talk about embracing death. It’s part of the cycle. When you deny it, then you create a whole bunch of neuroses, both collectively and individually. The depression and despair, the feeling of meaninglessness, it’s actually an important phase to go through, so that you can move through to a wider understanding.

Rather than focusing on trying to save our lives or save civilization or save what we have currently, Post-Doomers ask “How can we live with this awareness of the end of the world, meaningfully and productively, in community with each other and with the planet? How can we alleviate some suffering in the world?” Maybe we can save one species or one ecosystem. “How can we cultivate some beauty in the world in spite of an awareness that everything has an end?” That conversation is very different and has a very different feel to it, and that’s what I want to be a part of. Talking about what kind of resilient, beautiful communities we can create in the time we have left—and not just human communities, but also communities with the more-than-human world. It’s kind of a hospice mentality for the human species. Quality over quantity.

If you think about it, it has to end sometime. I’m not in any rush to see the end of the world. I don’t want to see it. I have my days where I feel very depressed about it, but this kind of post-doom awareness really helps me find a joyful and meaningful way to live in the world. If there isn’t an end to things, in a way you lose the connection to the real world around you and to other people. You lose that sense of meaning and purpose in life. The transience of life and beauty makes it more precious or exquisite. Ironically, death can be our best friend.