The Futile Pursuit (and Heroic Rejection) of Immortality
There are few things more human than fearing the sudden non-existence of death.
A few weeks ago I had a panic attack about death. I've had spells of these off and on for about 30 years now. It's not the act of dying that scares me but rather a gaping doubt about the existence of an afterlife.
It is simply illogical for an afterlife to exist for humans and I think the idea and belief in it was created to comfort humans across civilizations who, like me, find the unavoidable prospect of suddenly not existing for the rest of time absolutely terrifying.
It's an all too human fear, and so overwhelming is this fear that immortality is a common theme of our stories across time. From Homer, to Tolkien, to today's tech bros, we see humans grappling with ideas about cheating death come up over and over again.
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey hit theaters a few weeks ago and my usual cast of history podcasts have gone all in on Odyssey content. I was reminded of Odysseus' time with the goddess nymph Calypso. For seven years, the titular character is kept as Calypso's sex slave, and every day through it all, Odysseus weeps for his wife. Eventually the goddess Athena cajoles Zeus into sending Hermes, the messenger of the Olympian gods, to Calypso demanding that she let the hero go.
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