Temporal Preference Asymmetry
Dealing with death is hard because humans prefer the future over the past
Mortality is hard for me to contend with. As such, I have been reading a fair bit about the subject. On this journey, I've realised that we have a temporal preference asymmetry, which makes dealing with the subject of non-existence harder than it rationally should be. Full disclosure, in this post I assume that death means non-existence or at least the end of the pattern that is me.
EPICURUS AND LUCRETIUS ON DEATH
One of the most sanguine arguments against a fear of death comes from the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE): “while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist.” As far as rational arguments go this one is solid. Unfortunately it doesn't do much to get rid of that gut wrenching feeling I experience, when I try to imagine infinite non-existence. But let's play along. The fact that death doesn't touch us in the strictest of sense is true. The process of dying can still be feared but as dying means we are still existing, it's maybe not death we are fearing but dying? Most likely but there is more to it.
The reason death is problematic is not just dying but all the fun stuff that we miss out on. Moral philosophy compels us to create a world that provides conscious beings with a meaningful experience without suffering. So the fact that death can't touch us and therefore should not be feared is not the real problem. The problem is that being deprived of potentially good experiences is bad.
Lucretius (94- circa 55 BCE) a Roman philosopher comes to Epicurus rescue and argues: "Look back again to see how the past ages of everlasting time, before we were born, have been as naught to us. These then nature holds up to us as a mirror of the time that is to come, when we are dead and gone. Is there aught that looks terrible in this, aught that seems gloomy? Is it not a calmer rest than any sleep?" In other words, his argument is that we don't lament pre-natal non-existence so we should feel similarly ambivalent about post-mortem non-existence.
OK, there are a few reasons why we can object to this line of reasoning. The universe will (based on our current understanding) exist a lot longer than it has already been around. So strictly speaking I'm going to miss out on a lot more fun after death than the fun that I have missed out on before birth. Also, if "the arc of the moral universe" bends toward justice, then our past (as we know) has been considerable less fulfilling than our future. And who says I don't lament missing out on being there with the founding fathers? Obviously, these arguments are somewhat meant in jest and don't get to the heart of the matter.
FUTURE BIAS
Say you wake up in the morning and I creepily stand in front of you and ask you this question (inspired by the Keiran Setiya's book Life is Hard): Would you rather have had 4 hours of the most amazing party last night but sorry you can't remember it now because you had too much "fun" OR would you rather have 2 hours of the most amazing party later this afternoon even if you won't be able to remember it afterwards (yes, drugs)? In both cases, your future experiencing self won't know what it missed out on. However, at the point when you are asked you will chose the future party over the past party despite the fact that the past party was twice as long.
The scenario above exposes our clear preference for future events over past events (even if you feel the example is somewhat abstract). This is a deeply embedded feature of human beings and not a bug. It would make sense from an evolutionary perspective to care more about the future, because we want to maximise our survival chances for propagation. We have survived the past so we don't care that much about it anymore. We fear future death because we want to propagate. Lucretius understood this. His claim is that our preference is irrational. Both periods of non-existence are symmetrical, so we should have similar attitudes toward them.
As humans, striving to overcome the no longer relevant programming of our primate past, is a worthwhile pursuit. Transcending future bias, as hard as may be, is part of this enterprise. Our best attempts at this converge on ego dissolution exercises. These can take various shapes - meditation, psychedelic trips, peak experience, numinous moments, flow states, etc. They yet have to work for me but here's hoping for the future.