• Question: Do you think that as humans, we need the concept of death to be happy? For example, immortality would induce nihilism. Perhaps it is the threat of death that makes life so beautiful? The transience that gives it meaning?

    Asked by anon-304198 on 18 Nov 2021.
    • Photo: Alex Baxendale

      Alex Baxendale answered on 18 Nov 2021:

      This is definitely more philosophical and I have no background in this area so I can’t give any evidence for this. But I’m not entirely sure that death provides the juxtaposition with happiness. I would be more inclined to say that sadness provides the scale to gauge (and create) happiness.
      Our feelings of happiness come from neurotransmitters in our brain; special chemicals like Serotonin, and we release (or stop releasing) these when events occur that we associate with good or bad things.
      Happiness can have some decent evolutionary advantages, as it motivates us to seek things that we associate with happiness. Those things we tend to associate with happiness are usually positive for our wellbeing, or survival. Everyone loves a good slice of cake, our brain releases dopamine when we see it, and that pushes us to get excited and want to have it. Once we eat the cake we release serotonin to tell us that it was a good idea. Now our bodies have all of the energy from the cake to keep it sustained for longer. Modern problems introduce issues with eating too much cake as this resource is no longer scarce, but as a whole it has its purpose for existing.
      In the event that immortality was possible I would have no idea what this would mean for the individual’s mind, but I imagine that over a very long period of time that they would associate things with good and bad as much as they would when they were younger – enough cake slices would be eaten that aren’t so great that they associate it less with happiness. They have fallen and hurt their leg enough that it just becomes a normal occurrence and they stop being so sad.

      A lot of this is speculation as we have no idea what things would be like if death was no longer a factor, but the evidence for why we get happy and sad seem to imply (at least to me) that our own mortality doesn’t really play a huge part in things right now.

    • Photo: James Bartlett

      James Bartlett answered on 19 Nov 2021:

      Oh wow, just a straight forward question then! Alex has provided a pretty good answer for some of the psychology behind it. I think it touches more on philosophy but a lot of our behaviour is formed through trial and error based on our experiences and we tend to avoid things that can harm or hurt us. There are conditions though where people do not feel pain and they unintentionally hurt themselves a lot as they do not get the feedback from an unpleasant experience. I would apply this to the concept of death as your life and life choices are formed from your experiences, so if you never die, you would have completely different reference points.

      If this is something that interests you, there is a new book by a psychologist Paul Bloom called the sweet spot. There he explores the impact of suffering and how its linked to people’s happiness. I haven’t read it myself yet, but I’ve downloaded the ebook and waiting to listen.

    • Photo: Xun He

      Xun He answered on 19 Nov 2021:

      This is a very deep question! I would agree that we will have nihilism and not have motivation for life if there is no death. I recomment Todd May’s book “death” (Routledge, 2009). It gives a very fluent and convincing argument.

    • Photo: Natali Bozhilova

      Natali Bozhilova answered on 22 Nov 2021:

      This is a very hard and philosophical question to answer. In short, people are motivated by different driving factors and sources. The prospect of death can be motivating for some people, but might be discouraging for others. Individuals and/or cultural views and beliefs play a key role in one’s way of life.

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