Envisioning postmortal futures: six archetypes on future societal approaches to seeking immortality

ABSTRACT

Death is a core feature of the human experience and a main driver of civilisational endeavours. Attempts to transcend it have propelled the emergence of a postmortal society in the twenty-first century, where people have looked into the various possibilities to achieve some form of immortality. While research on the postmortal society and the futures of death have examined the social practices for death transcendence in the present and outlined some possibilities for the future, discussion remains rare on the various ways this quest for immortality can reconfigure societal worldviews, institutions and practices. By analysing data obtained from a literature review on the sociology of immortality and the futures of death, an expert roundtable and 18 semi-structured interviews, six archetypal postmortal futures were developed: Digital Recreation, Transhumanism, Memorialisation-based Postmortality, Biological Life-extension, Back to the Earthly Realm, and Unity with the Cosmos. This article argues that paradigmatic societal changes shape the immortality-seeking practices that emerge in a given spatiotemporal context. The future-oriented perspective contributes to the literature on the sociology of immortality by discussing both how some postmortal futures may increase inequalities in the pursuit of immortality and how these futures, as a whole, represent future societal attitudes towards death.

KEYWORDS:

• Postmortal futures
• postmortal society
• future of death
• immortality
• archetypes
• futures studies

Introduction

Death, as a core feature of the human experience, and the aspiration of reaching immortality, are often claimed to be main drivers of civilisational endeavours throughout human history (Jacobsen, 2017a; May, 2009; Seale, 1998). While analysis of ideas about immortality has often been conducted in the domains of literature, art and religion, sociological studies on immortality are relatively recent, emerging in the late twentieth century and continuing into the twenty-first century (Bauman, 1992; Cetron & Davies, 1998; Jacobsen, 2017a; Walter, 1996, 2001). These studies are heterogenous: some present ideal types of immortality and the survival of the dead in the world of the living (Brown, 2017; Walter, 2017), while others outline diverse societal dynamics that fuel specific forms of immortality and postmortality¹(Bastian & van Dooren, 2017; Bonifati, 2017; Kearl, 2010; Sas et al., 2019; Teodorescu, 2017). The sociological study of immortality explores how cultural values towards death shape social structures and practices that seek death transcendence, and demand consideration of the trends and societal changes that give rise to a postmortal society (Jacobsen, 2017b). The contemporary or atemporal scope of these studies, however, restricts the analysis of postmortal practices to the present and to the near future. Adopting an explicit future orientation would allow major societal changes that seek some form of immortality to be identified, particularly those related to cultural values, institutions and possible future practices.

This article presents six archetypal postmortal futures that outline possible societal developments of the postmortal society, where people engage in practices that would allow them to live longer – even indefinitely – and keep the dead present in the world of the living (Jacobsen, 2017b). Between November 2020 and April 2021, the author analysed the data obtained from a literature review of the sociology of immortality and the futures of death, an international expert roundtable and 18 semi-structured interviews. Six archetypal postmortal futures were developed based on the thematic analysis of the data: Digital Recreation, Transhumanism, Memorialisation-based Postmortality, Biological Life-extension, Back to the Earthly Realm, and Unity with the Cosmos. Drawing on the literature from the sociology of immortality and Futures Studies fields, this article argues that deep, paradigmatic changes at the societal level could reconfigure the institutional landscape and propel the emergence of new social practices that seek to transcend death, as portrayed in each of the postmortal futures. The article also discusses how these postmortal futures reveal the potential deepening of inequalities in the pursuit of immortality and more general societal approaches to death and immortality in the future.

This research contributes to both the growing literature on the sociology of immortality and Futures Studies by investigating in a methodical manner the diversity of collective futures that embody the civilisational pursuit of immortality. In doing so, opportunities and risks derived from societal changes can be identified, some of which may have worldwide relevance for the present century. Though speculative, this article brings attention to possible paradigmatic shifts that could favour specific approaches to immortality. While the six archetypal postmortal futures presented here are embedded in present possibilities, this article does not forecast likely futures. Instead, it examines collectively-formed archetypes about the postmortal society’s future. Additionally, while previous studies have addressed elements of specific postmortal futures, this article is the first to look at them together, thereby allowing for the comparison and contrast of their main features in terms of their respective worldviews, institutions and practices.

The article proceeds as follows. First, an overview of current approaches to reaching various forms of immortality is presented, and the relevance of a future orientation to the sociological study of immortality is established. Next, the methodological approach is described, both in terms of data-gathering and data analysis. Then, the six archetypal postmortal futures are outlined, followed by a discussion of how they may foster some forms of inequality and how archetypes can reveal societal approaches to death in the future.

The quest for immortality and societal futures

The various forms in which individuals, social groups and societies aim to transcend death and reach immortality can be interpreted in light of a plurality of frameworks. For this paper, two complementary frameworks were considered the most analytically helpful. The first is that of symbolic immortality, proposed by (Lifton & Olson, 1974). Symbolic immortality emerges from the attachment people feel towards personal and cultural projects that may endure after their deaths, and allows them to experience a sense of connection to the ongoingness of life without denying the reality of death. Lifton and Olson identify five modes of symbolic immortality: biological, creative, theological, natural and experiential. Both authors highlight that symbolisation processes characteristic of a given historical period should occur for these modes to become meaningful to the subjects who experience them (1974, p. 79). The other framework is that of life strategies, suggested by Bauman (1992). In the premodern world, Bauman argues, religion occupied a more dominant position to reduce death anxiety than it does in the modern world. Conversely, in the late-modern world, the main life strategies are those that deconstruct death, understanding it in the form of risks and threats that can be managed and postponed through everyday practices.

Both frameworks consider the relevance of the temporal and societal contexts in which these attempts at immortality take place. To illustrate, late modernity is characterised by capitalist dynamics, technological solutions and individualism while weakening social ties (Bauman, 2000). In this context, life strategies of self-care emphasise the experience of immortality in the moment (Jacobsen, 2017c). Concurrently in the twenty-first century, digital technologies have displayed the capacity to harness dead individuals’ data and reanimate it in the form of thanabots and digital immortals (Bassett, 2018; Savin-Baden & Burden, 2018). Late modernity has also constructed the workplace as a space where symbolic immortality can be reached: the workplace imaginary cultivates narcissism in its members and encourages them to break their limits while orienting them to identify themselves with and find happiness in work (Teodorescu, 2017). In Eastern cultural and geographic regions, tradition is combined with late-modern technologies to create digital altars for new forms of ancestor veneration (Gould et al., 2019). In the above-mentioned examples, late modernity’s capitalist dynamics, technological solutions and individualism shape human attempts at reaching immortality. These attempts illustrate how cultural values and worldviews influence institutions and immortality-seeking practices in a particular context. Hence, it is important to consider what kind of deep, cultural changes in worldviews might drive the emergence of new institutions and practices that wish to transcend death.

The methodical exploration of societal futures can offer insights that might otherwise be absent from contemporary or atemporal sociological studies of immortality. Futures Studies literature has considered death a critical concept because the wish to transcend it configures cultural endeavours, including scientific developments in health and technology. In turn, developments in these fields could modify established cultural and religious practices (El-Bizri, 2019). A future orientation facilitates the envisioning of radically different societal futures that reside outside dominant contemporary worldviews (Milojević & Inayatullah, 2015), thus potentially revealing hitherto unexplored possibilities that may constitute the postmortal society’s future. In particular, a future-oriented perspective underscores the co-constitution of culture, institutions, science and technology, and how they condition the forms of immortality that are perceived as desirable under specific spatiotemporal contexts. Moreover, such a perspective could help identify possible futures that combine premodern approaches to immortality with modern or late-modern ones, some of which may be currently considered implausible. In doing so, the future orientation can outline how immortality-seeking practices respond to societal changes.

Methodological approach

Data-Gathering: Literature review, expert roundtable and interviews

This paper’s author conducted three major data-gathering components in order to obtain the data for the development of the six archetypal postmortal futures: 1) a critical review and synthesis of the literature, 2) an analysis of an expert roundtable on the futures of death, and 3) eighteen (18) semi-structured interviews on the topic of postmortal futures. The data-gathering activities took place between November 2020 and April 2021. The aforementioned three components were included based on how they complemented each other – e.g. the literature and the roundtable discussed general features of the postmortal futures, whereas the interviews obtained details about the dominant social dynamics in these futures.

The purpose of the literature review was to identify belief systems and societal values related to the pursuit of immortality. It also intended to understand the possible evolution of contemporary institutional assemblages, technologies and immortality-seeking social practices. The literature review was non-systematic, international in scope, and was conducted in three phases. The first phase involved searching for books, book chapters and journal articles that focused on sociological approaches to immortality. Within the death studies literature, three major works stood out: Zygmunt Bauman’s Mortality, Immortality, and Other Life Strategies (1992); Tony Walter’s The Eclipse of Eternity: A Sociology of the Afterlife (1996); and Michael Hviid Jacobsen’s edited volume Postmortal Society: Towards a Sociology of Immortality (Jacobsen, 2017b). These works were then complemented with other sources previously known to this paper’s author that discussed some forms of postmortality and immortality within the following themes: digital immortality (Bassett, 2018; Savin-Baden & Burden, 2018; Savin-Baden & Mason-Robbie, 2020), transhumanism (Huberman, 2018; Kurzweil, 1999; Rothblatt, 2014), world religions and death (Moreman, 2008) and ancestor veneration (Gould et al., 2019; Hu, 2016).

The second phase of the literature review used the online software Connected Papers (https://www.connectedpapers.com/). The purpose of this tool is to help researchers map out the field of the literature connected to the most central works used as references in a research project, as well as facilitating the process of discovering the relevant prior or subsequent academic works on the same theme. Derived from this tool, other sources that discussed some forms of postmortality and immortality were identified (Brown, 2008; Hedtke & Winslade, 2017; Herzfeld, 2017; Lafontaine, 2009; Mercer, 2017; Reuter, 2015; Stambler, 2020).

Finally, the third phase of the literature review broadened the scope of the literature search. This phase was done concurrently to the 18 interviews because some of the interviewees’ perspectives integrated elements from ecology and decolonial thought, and these elements suggested that a postmortal future related to ecological thinking was missing from the initial literature review. A few additional sources related to these themes were added in this phase (Boret, 2014; Davies, 2005; Kroik et al., 2020; Rumble et al., 2014).

The roundtable was the second component of the data-gathering process and took place as part of the UNESCO Futures Literacy Summit in December 2020. Envisioning, an international collective that investigates future-oriented topics, hosted the roundtable, which was made publicly-available and disseminated through its YouTube channel. The roundtable was titled The Future of Death, and its participants were internationally-known experts in different fields: Biomedical Gerontology, Medical Anthropology, Communication, Futures Studies and Transhumanism (Envisioning, 2020). The researcher attended the panel as a virtual audience member, and took notes on the main issues discussed in the roundtable. This component identified and synthesised the latest debates on the futures of death. Similarly, the roundtable facilitated the discovery of novel possibilities offered by emerging technologies and practices that could reconfigure societal approaches to dealing with mortality.

The 18 semi-structured interviews, comprising the third data-gathering component, added more detail to the results obtained from the literature review and the expert roundtable. Within the interviews, participants envisioned possible societal changes related to death and to the pursuit of immortality in the future. The interviewees were selected according to a snowball sampling approach (Cresswell & Poth, 2018), where the researcher first identified individuals who could give interesting perspectives on the topic and followed leads from there. These individuals were professionals in different fields (medicine, economics, communications, law, etc.) who were known within their networks to express ideas related to immortality. Participants were selected based on their potential to provide contrasting perspectives (e.g. more technology-oriented ones, others more socially-focused) on foreseen developments of the postmortal society. The interviewees were all of Mexican nationality, with age groups ranging from young adults to seniors.

Each interview lasted approximately 60 minutes, and all were digitally recorded. Specific topics asked about in relation to postmortal futures included 1) societal approaches to dealing with mortality, 2) human relations in these postmortal futures, 3) the role of technology, 4) human relations with nature, and 5) the role of religion. In doing so, the archetypes’ future orientation – the foreseen future characteristics of postmortal societies – was obtained, which contributed to outlining both significant societal transformations that would lead to the emergence of these postmortal futures and the institutions and social practices inherent to them.

Data analysis: the Worldview-Institutions-Practices framework

A three-level framework – the Worldview-Institutions-Practices framework – was designed for this study to organise the obtained data into consistent archetypal postmortal futures. Repeated themes across the five above-mentioned topics were grouped together according to this framework. Archetypes were deemed internally-consistent if they conveyed the main ideas of the interviewees and these ideas were not contradicted by data previously obtained from the literature review and the expert roundtable. In case of contradiction, the ideas from the literature and the experts at the Envisioning roundtable were privileged and integrated into the framework.

The deepest level concerns the Worldview-level, which focuses on societal paradigms, dominant values and worldviews. The study of this level is important for comprehending what societies consider valuable and meaningful, what social practices and experiments are seen as marginal or taboo, and what changes need to occur at this level for societal reconfigurations to occur. Societal paradigms and worldviews have been recognised as crucial to propel transformational changes, and studying their constitutive force in societies is now commonplace in the Futures Studies field (Ahlqvist & Rhisiart, 2015; Inayatullah, 1998).

The middle level is the Institutions-level, which focuses on the main institutions – laws, bureaucratic arrangements, policies, norm-bound civil society organisations, firms, social classes, market types, ruling councils and accepted hierarchies, among others – that comprise a given society. This level condenses both larger social structures and more specific organisational types to facilitate analysis of the data. While in-depth sociological analysis of the institutions that constitute postmortal futures is beyond the scope of this paper, outlining them helps envision important future changes in the structure of societies that respond to shifts in societal paradigms and worldviews (Minkkinen, 2015, 2020). The analytical goal of this level is foreseeing how pre-existing institutions may evolve and how new ones would emerge.

The surface level is the Practice-level, which studies the social practices – understood as routinised social behaviours that establish links between bodily activity, subjective processes, physical objects and their use – as they are performed, interpreted and reframed by subjects (Shove et al., 2012; Sovacool & Hess, 2017). The Practice-level is arguably the most diffuse and dynamic of the three levels of the framework, and is intended to capture what people would routinely do within the six archetypal postmortal futures in order to transcend death.

The Worldview-Institutions-Practices framework used for structuring the six archetypal postmortal futures is inspired by the Critical Futures Research method known as Causal Layered Analysis, or CLA in short (Inayatullah, 1998). For CLA, a future possesses depth when foundational aspects of the future, such as cultural metaphors and worldviews, shape system dynamics and superficial narratives about the world. The Worldview-Institutions-Practices framework adopts this depth-based view of the future although, unlike CLA, it does not deconstruct and reconstruct futures through participatory methods. Instead, it is only meant to help researchers outline future images that focus on societal-level changes in a way that considers both foundational cultural aspects and more visible social phenomena.

Six archetypal postmortal futures

The following six postmortal futures represent archetypal images about societal attempts to transcend death in the future. They do not constitute forecasts, but symbolic representations of collectively-formed ideas about future possibilities for reaching different forms of immortality. They are characterised as archetypes due to being generic versions of these futures that, were they to become real, would possess tensions, nuances and greater complexity than what can be currently envisioned.² Figure 1 presents the most illustrative interviewee quotes that contributed to the development of these postmortal futures.

Figure 1. Interviewee quotes for each postmortal future.

These archetypal futures are not mutually exclusive; they may all eventually co-exist to different degrees, with some becoming hegemonic and others marginal. Similarly, variations of each of them and hybrid forms could come to exist. As presented here, they may also integrate ideas that could be impossible to materialise, such as consciousness-transfer to technological containers or achieving perpetual youth. Hence, their value does not rest in predicting what is likely to happen, but in envisioning possible emergent paradigmatic and institutional conditions that may bring about novel immortality-seeking practices. Table 1 summarises the six archetypal futures obtained from the literature review, the expert roundtable and the 18 interviews. Each archetype is further described in this section.

Table 1. Comparison table of the six archetypal postmortal futures across the three Worldview-Institutions-Practices levels.

Archetypal Postmortal Future	Societal paradigms and worldviews	Institutions	Social Practices
Digital Recreation	Technological Immortalism Critical Posthumanism	Institutions where digital immortals and VDPs interact with the living Technology companies Postmortal privacy laws	Visits to cyberparks of the dead VDPs integrated into private life Digital dead leaders in companies and politics
Transhumanism	Technological Immortalism The Myth of Progress	Technology companies Laws protecting cyborgs and mindclones Transhumanist religious communities for “digital afterlife”	Life-logging Consciousness-transfer Medical procedures for bionic/cybernetic replacements
Memorialisation-based Postmortality	Ancestor Veneration	Public memorials for ancestors Remembrance museums Committees of Remembrance	Cultural embrace of continuing bonds Interactive altars Biographic artwork
Biological life-extension	Youthism Anthropocentrism	Universities, research centres and health-institutions for researching anti-ageing Pharmaceutical companies	Use of biotechnologies as part of everyday personal health practices
Back to the Earthly Realm	Heterogeneous Supernaturalism (bodily resurrection, immortal afterlife, reincarnation)	Partnerships between research and religious centres Policies and organisations that seek to preserve the integrity of human remains	Scientific-Theological Research Daily afterlife-oriented rituals Biotechnologies for resurrection (including cryonics)
Unity with the Cosmos	Animism Ecological Immortality	‘Planetary boundaries act’ Natural spirit sanctuaries	Seasonal festivities to commemorate the dead Natural experience workshops Technologically-advanced dispersal practices and woodland burials

Digital recreation

The societal assimilation of two worldviews would propel the emergence of this future. The first of these is Technological Immortalism, a worldview that assumes that technology (in this case, advanced electronics and sophisticated algorithms) can help humans to overcome their mortality and extend their presence in the world of the living. Within this postmortal future, the form of immortality granted by technology would be symbolic, since human beings would still die and no mind-continuity would be expected. Their informational bodies constituted of digital data, however, would remain and become reanimated with Artificial Intelligence (Harbinja, 2020; Hurtado Hurtado, 2021). This worldview would merge with the Critical Posthumanism paradigm, which adopts a post-anthropocentric stance and considers subjects as relational beings, constituted by a material web of human and non-human agents, including technological components (Braidotti, 2019). Within this paradigm, digital immortals could be considered subjects and (inter-)active agents in the world of the living (Savin-Baden & Burden, 2018).

This future’s main institutional landscape would have technology companies as the leading organisations focusing on developing highly sophisticated technological media that would allow the digital data of the dead to become interactive with the still living. Digital immortals and Virtual Deceased Persons (VDPs) would navigate this landscape, being active within universities, political parties, government institutions, private companies and international organisations (Hurtado Hurtado, 2021; Savin-Baden & Burden, 2018). More detailed and comprehensive laws on postmortal privacy would be passed in most countries (Harbinja, 2020). Simultaneously, new markets of data would emerge, essentially leading to the commodification of the reanimated dead (Öhman & Floridi, 2017).

One common practice would involve visits to ‘Cyberparks of the dead’, virtual museums where people would have the chance to interact with the digitally reanimated dead and learn from their experiences. Symbolic immortality through artistic endeavour might occur when digital immortals and VDPs remain socially active and continue deploying their intellectual and artistic talents around the living. The integration of digital immortals and VDPs into the private, domestic sphere would increase at a worldwide level. Consequently, it would be considered normal to have them participating in leisure activities and as part of family gatherings. In public life, founders of companies and political leaders may continue to influence activities in organisations, including facilitating group cohesion (Hurtado Hurtado, 2021).

Transhumanism

Although the transhumanist movement possesses various currents, the Transhumanism postmortal future focuses on the fusion between non-biological technologies and human beings for death transcendence. This future would arise from greater understanding of human consciousness and brain processes and designing mechanisms for storing them in technological containers. This future would also be dominated by Technological Immortalism, although here the emphasis would reside in achieving actual mind-continuity immortality and not in symbolic immortality, as was the case in the postmortal future discussed above. The ‘Myth of Progress’ (Burdett, 2015) would be the dominant societal paradigm here: the transhumanist route to immortality aims at transcending death by controlling the organic world and fusing it with the technological one, rather than considering mortality as part of the cosmos’ natural rhythms (Herzfeld, 2017; Huberman, 2018).

Technology companies and research centres would become the main institutional actors in this future. They would be responsible for creating the hardware and software necessary to decode the brain and transfer a human being’s consciousness to the most appropriate container. They would also design methods for cybernetically enhancing living organisms. Simultaneously, Ethics Committees would establish guidelines that regulated the behaviour of individuals, corporations and social groups that sought to fuse themselves with digital technologies. Once these Ethics Committees gained prominence, their guidelines might become laws. These laws would establish rights for cybernetically-enhanced organisms and cyberconscious mindclones that reside in digital spaces (Rothblatt, 2014). Additionally, political parties that advocate for transhumanist ideals would gain ground in the political spectrum (Benedikter & Siepmann, 2016), while religious communities following Transhumanist ideals would become more consolidated groups.

A common practice in this future would be life-logging, the continuous recording and coding of a person’s life-data (Huberman, 2018). Consciousness-transfer, if possible, would also become common among those wealthy enough to afford it, thereby allowing for mind-continuity after bodily death (Kurzweil, 1999). Medical procedures where people would be able to substitute their organs or some other biological component with bionic or cybernetic replacements would surface, allowing them to postpone death indefinitely. Resulting from these practices, a form of immortality would manifest through the indefinite presence of digitalised conscious minds that would be able to interact with the living in digital spaces.

Memorialisation-based postmortality

A feature of this postmortal future is that it represents a progression of current immortality-seeking practices and trends in at least some societal contexts (Walter, 2020). The rationale behind this future is that immortality and postmortality elements already present in our contemporary era could become more deeply assimilated in institutional frameworks and social practices.

A strong, widespread understanding of intergenerational continuity and the weight of history for the present could give rise to this postmortal future. This future’s main worldview would be Ancestor Veneration, comprised of two dimensions: the recognition of how past generations have shaped current societal conditions and cultural values, and the influence ancestors have in the world of the living, including offering assistance to solve problems (Reuter, 2015). While Ancestor Veneration is a common and contemporary practice in some regions and has been combined with modern technologies and dynamics in the Asia-Pacific (Gould et al., 2019; Hu, 2016), in this future, Ancestor Veneration would expand to other parts of the world and become integrated with other belief systems.

Public memorials would be dedicated not only for historical leaders and groups of victims, but for entire social groups who have been deemed to influence the course of history and which would be considered ancestors. Remembrance museums that outline the genealogy and influence of diverse ancestor groups would become a landmark of public life. Within these museums, virtual reality chambers that allowed visitors to experience the digitally-recreated life contexts of ancestor groups could become important attractions. Committees of Remembrance would be formed within both government institutions and private organisations. Their purpose would be to maintain in society and in specific organisations the ideals and lessons of previous generations without discouraging innovation. Laws that protect collective memory would also constitute the public landscape in this future. They would aim at ensuring that historic events are remembered as the foundation for present and future endeavours.

The widespread establishment of continuing bonds with the dead (Klass et al., 1996), including engaging in one-sided conversations with them, would become a common practice across countries. Individuals would maintain their continuing bonds with the dead beyond their private lives, with organisational spaces openly recognising the importance of these bonds as a source of motivation and well-being for individuals. This phenomenon would represent, at least in the West, a deepening cultural embrace of assigning emotional significance to the dead and viewing them as ancestors (Hedtke & Winslade, 2017; Walter, 2017). More technologically-advanced possibilities would include interactive virtual altars and holograms that narrate the historical significance of the dead, which would evolve from present practices of digitalisation of the dead (Gould et al., 2019). Within families, forming strong bonds between parents and children would facilitate the permanence of the dead across generations. Older generations might continue to identify with their children and think of themselves as remaining in the world of the living through them, while younger generations might remember the previous ones through technological means or storytelling. In the creative industries, biographical and autobiographical works would rise in popularity, thereby facilitating the creation of a collective memory. These practices would comprise a combination of the biosocial and creative forms of symbolic immortality (Lifton & Olson, 1974) through which the living acknowledge in their private lives and in public the need to remember the dead and their deeds.

Biological life-extension

This future would arise from a possible societal-level ‘compression of morbidity’, where lifespans have increased significantly due to medical delaying of age-related diseases, concentrating them approximately at a maximum-lifespan designated age (Brown, 2008). Youthism as a worldview would dominate this future, where culture values, and to some extent worships, youth and beauty (Macnicol, 2006). Complementary to Youthism, Anthropocentrism would remain a main driver in the quest for immortality, since its focus resides in limitlessly expanding human life while non-human entities would still be exploited to meet the desires of youth-seeking human beings. Particularly, the anthropocentric worldview would manifest in its attempt to conquer Nature and possess power over death (Bonifati, 2017).

This future’s main institutions would be universities, research centres and health-sector organisations that seek to better understand the ageing process and design rejuvenation treatments. Pharmaceutical companies would also be central in producing the necessary goods to meet the demand for these treatments. Hospitals would experience noticeable shifts from focusing on curing ailments to becoming preventive of illness and ageing. Public policies, however, would deepen the individualised good health regimes to the detriment of public-health systems, with average citizens being assigned responsibility for age-related illnesses.

People inhabiting this future – at least, those who can afford it – would consume medications for two purposes: slowing-down ageing and either cure or significantly improve the symptoms of chronic diseases. The medications would take the form of pills or syrups, which people would be able to take whenever it would be convenient for them according to their lifestyles. A more advanced technological possibility of this future is the presence of rejuvenating baths, where people submerge themselves in a regenerative liquid where their cells would be de-aged and diseases could be stopped from worsening or cured altogether. Gene-editing and nano-medicine for delaying ageing would also emerge as possible services (Lafontaine, 2009; Stambler, 2020).

These social practices could be considered individualised health-based life strategies (Bauman, 1992), giving people the opportunity to experience immortality on a daily basis by allowing them remain young. Immortality in this context would not constitute an end-goal, but a continuous process performed as an everyday cultural ritual for those privileged enough to be able to afford it (Jacobsen, 2017c).

Back to the earthly realm

This postmortal future would emerge as a result of widespread and fervent beliefs in some form of afterlife that, simultaneously, strongly guided human behaviour in an attempt to reach the preferred afterlife state. Such a shift would be driven by a worldview referred to in this paper as Heterogeneous Supernaturalism, or the diverse beliefs in different afterlives, such as Christianity’s resurrection of the body, the permanence of the soul, or reincarnation, among others (Moreman, 2008; Nielsen, 1989). Within this worldview, immortality would be reached either in the afterlife after behaving in life according to the tenets of the belief systems individuals and social groups adhere to, or by being physically resurrected at some indefinite point in the future.

Within this future, research centres and religious organisations would establish partnerships. The former would attempt to provide evidence that supports or rejects specific afterlife beliefs, while the latter would try to explain how that evidence fits within the established belief systems. Secular states and institutions would still constitute the mainstream political landscape, although new political parties may come together to support specific afterlife-oriented policies. In particular, they would advocate for policies that sought to preserve the integrity of human remains due to the belief that such remains can be used to bring back a dead person to life.

As mentioned, research endeavours that merged modern science with theological explorations would become popular. Other common practices in this future would be daily afterlife-oriented rituals, which would vary by belief system. Some would engage in ‘spiritual cleansing’, which could take the form of prayers or meditation sessions, although in this case focused on reflecting on how daily actions align with the desired afterlife goal. Of particular importance would be the renewed attention towards cryonics and biotechnologies such as robotics and tissue regeneration, which would seek to physically resurrect the dead (Mercer, 2017). Were physical resurrection to become an actual possibility, it could lead to the emergence of resurrection services. However, given their complexity, it is likely that they could be accessible only to the rich or to the politically influential.

Unity with the Cosmos

Important societal shifts that aligned the dynamics of human societies with the biophysical requirements of the natural world would give rise to this future. The paradigm of Ecological Immortality would become widely accepted cross-culturally. This paradigm views the ‘intrinsic relationship between the human body and the world as a natural system within which the ongoingness of life is grounded in the successive life and death of individual animals and plants’ (Davies, 2005, p. 86–87). Complementary to Ecological Immortality is the worldview of Animism, which is a relational epistemology that considers other-than-human beings as having spirit and sharing kinship with humans (Astor-Aguilera & Harvey, 2018). By ascribing agency and spiritual qualities to other-than-human natural elements, the reintegration of human remains to the natural world could be perceived as becoming part of the cosmos’ mind or life-force, with the dead retaining some form of agency.

In terms of institutions, a ‘Planetary boundaries act’ would have been passed in most countries, forcing organisations in the deathcare industry to completely move away from contemporary mortuary and burial practices and redesign their business models to become strongly sustainable. This process would coincide with the creation of natural spirit sanctuaries across the globe, demarcated sections of land and sea that would have become sites for dispersal of human remains. These sanctuaries would be protected by law and anyone would be able to visit them not only to remember their deceased loved ones, but to meditate and connect with the cosmos and with members of previous generations who have become part of its life-force.

Festivities to commemorate the dead would shift from being celebrated in specific calendar days to taking place each season, thus emphasising the synchronicity of life and death cycles with the natural world and celebrating the presence of the dead in the world of the living as a cosmic life-force (Astor-Aguilera & Harvey, 2018; Kroik et al., 2020). Natural experience workshops, an already-occurring phenomenon in Japan where people establish relationships with one another and get to know more about ecology in the context of Tree-Burial cemeteries (Boret, 2014), would become a common practice. More technologically-advanced forms of dispersal practices for human remains would surface (Rumble et al., 2014), although woodland burials would remain the most popular.³ Additionally, the reintegration of human remains into the natural environment would serve the purpose of regenerating the environment.

Discussion

Deepening inequalities in the pursuit of immortality

Previous studies in the sociology of immortality have argued that the rich, the powerful and the well-educated have a higher chance of achieving some form of immortality (Bauman, 1992; Jacobsen, 2017c). Three of this paper’s postmortal futures explicitly address the possibility that their envisioned forms of immortality can only be accessed by those with enough economic resources or political influence. The Transhumanism postmortal future would require complex and expensive technologies to transfer an individual’s consciousness into technological containers and to replace organic parts with cybernetic or bionic components. The practices outlined in the Biological Life-extension postmortal future would be costly, requiring frequent allocation of financial resources to buy the medicines or undergo the available rejuvenation treatments. Similarly, the possibility to resurrect the dead via cryonics in the Back to the Earthly Realm postmortal future would likely be offered only to those who are considered highly influential in organisations or in public life, with the average person being unable to access those services. In these postmortal futures, then, only elite social groups would be likely to have access to immortality, with other social groups being left to confront mortality in more symbolic forms.

Another problematic development would concern the emergence of new discrimination practices. In the Biological Life-extension postmortal future, people who look their age could be excluded from decision-making spheres. Within the Transhumanism postmortal future, it is possible to foresee discrimination from those who have been cybernetically enhanced towards those who do not have any form of enhancement. Were these issues to be left unattended, new social groups enhanced by biotechnologies could come to dominate the social landscape and dictate its rules, with the rest of a society’s population being subjected to increasing hardships resulting from their limited access to these technologies.

Archetypal postmortal futures and societal approaches to dealing with mortality

Within Futures Studies, archetypes are helpful for simplifying complex images of the future, abstracting their main features, revealing hidden patterns and bringing worldviews to the forefront (Dator, 2009; Milojević & Inayatullah, 2015). They are considered to be fundamental for making sense of information when individuals, social groups and even entire societies think about and imagine futures. For these reasons, it is important to consider what these archetypal postmortal futures reveal about societal approaches to death and immortality.

The Transhumanism and Biological Life-extension postmortal futures are driven by the modern myths of progress and human control over nature. This is present in their respective worldviews: Technological Immortalism and the Myth of Progress in the former, and Youthism and Anthropocentrism in the latter. Consequently, what they depict is the perpetual expansion of life and human control over death, thereby concealing other perspectives that emphasise the need of death for life to thrive and stay meaningful (May, 2009). Digital Recreation and Memorialisation-based Postmortality both manifest the possible paths of evolution for contemporary death-focused practices, recognising the importance of death at a societal level while offering solutions for reaching a symbolic form of immortality (Lifton & Olson, 1974). Although they display restraint regarding the pursuit of immortality, their constitutive worldviews of Critical Posthumanism and Ancestor Veneration also exhibit the unconscious civilisational drive of remaining present in the world of the living (Brown, 2017). The postmortal future Unity with the Cosmos can be considered transformative: human activity has become aligned with the needs of the biosphere, and Ecological Immortality has reframed death from an ending to life to a continuation of it as part of the cosmos’ life-force. It is propelled by linking the spiritual with the natural, embodied in myths such as Gaia, a goddess of nature.

Interestingly, the Back to the Earthly Realm future combines seemingly contradictory elements. On one hand, it is driven by the Heterogenous Supernaturalism worldview, which allows for beliefs in the afterlife to be strongly assimilated by the people inhabiting this future. On the other hand, elements typically found in the discourse of modernity, such as science and technology, are also foregrounded. The coexistence of these elements in this postmortal future suggests a societal capacity to integrate pre-modern approaches to immortality with those of modernity. Whether this future eventually materialises, however, remains to be seen.

This analysis of the archetypal postmortal futures’ worldviews reveals three probable societal approaches to dealing with death in the future. The first is the drive to overcome death and the ambition to achieve actual immortality, as represented in the modern myths of progress, perpetual life expansion and control over nature that drive the Transhumanism, Biological Life-extension and (to some extent) Back to the Earthly Realm futures. The second is acceptance of death. Death is acknowledged as necessary and as part of the human experience, but it is not welcome nor something that elicits positive affects in human beings. For this reason, symbolic forms of immortality prevail in the Digital Recreation and Memorialisation-based Postmortality futures, because they allow the dead to remain metaphorically present in the world of the living while recognising the importance of death for human societies. The third and final one is the embrace of death, which does not see death as a threat, but as a stage that allows living beings to transform into spiritual beings, yet remain part of an ongoing natural cycle of life and death. This final approach is present in the Unity with the Cosmos postmortal future.

Conclusions

This article has presented six archetypal postmortal futures that outline potential developments for the postmortal society. These futures are: Digital Recreation, Transhumanism, Memorialisation-based Postmortality, Biological Life-extension, Back to the Earthly Realm, and Unity with the Cosmos. Moreover, this article has argued that adopting a future orientation can help both envision futures of the postmortal society that reside outside contemporary worldviews, and facilitate the establishment of links between deeper societal changes and more visible immortality-seeking practices. This was done by organising the postmortal futures within the Worldview-Institutions-Practices framework, which seeks to establish links between the deeper societal phenomena in the form of paradigms and worldviews, structural phenomena such as institutions, and surface-level phenomena that manifest as social practices. The six postmortal futures at the core of this paper also discuss how the achievement of immortality in some of them may be available only to the wealthy and influential, thus deepening inequalities between social groups and potentially creating new forms of discrimination. Additionally, as a whole, the six archetypal postmortal futures are linked to three probable societal approaches to dealing with death that might manifest in the future: the ambition to achieve actual immortality by overcoming death, an acceptance of death which drives the emergence of symbolic forms of immortality, and an embrace of death as part of the ongoingness of natural cycles of the cosmos.

The future orientation of this study comes with its own limitations. Despite integrating different insights from the scholarly literature, the expert roundtable and the interviews into the form of the six postmortal futures, research that deals with the future relies heavily on theoretical reasoning in the absence of tangible data. Another limitation resides in the lack of nuance and detail presented in each of the futures, given that no observable data exists yet to complement the broad strokes offered by archetypal futures.

Nonetheless, the generic outlines offered by organising the futures according to the Worldview-Institutions-Practices framework simplifies the comparison and contrast of the major societal changes that could give rise to these futures. For example, this framework has allowed the identification of some postmortal futures (e.g. Transhumanism, Biological Life-extension and Back to the Earthly Realm) that accentuate an anthropocentric approach to reaching immortality, which contrast with others that adopt a post-anthropocentric, relational and intergenerational approach (e.g. Digital Recreation, Memorialisation-based Postmortality and Unity with the Cosmos). Moreover, the broad outline offered by these futures makes it possible to distinguish between those that aim at overcoming death with a gradual loss of humanity and those that accept it and may even embrace it, in the process respecting the constitutive nature of mortality for human life.

The future orientation of this article also highlights that approaches to dealing with mortality and to reaching some forms of immortality are societal endeavours, and are not limited to the actions of individuals and specific social groups. This means that macro-level shifts in terms of worldviews also modify more micro-level phenomena constitutive of social practices. The future orientation also invites consideration of the temporality and contextual specificity of the quests for immortality. These are not universal, but evolve throughout time according to the dominant paradigms. Recalling Lifton and Olson’s (1974) insight that modes of immortality reflect the societal contexts within which they occur, the plurality of postmortal futures seems to suggest that some modes of immortality may favour the social reproduction of technologically-driven, capitalist societies. Others, in contrast, might align with changes towards more communitarian societies, or towards attunement with nature. Finally, this process of envisioning archetypal postmortal futures may facilitate the identification of risks and problems not visible in the present, such as new forms of social conflict that could emerge from the unequal access to immortality-enabling technologies. Future research on this topic could provide more detail on these potential conflicts.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers who gave me some very helpful advice for improving upon previous versions of this manuscript. Similarly, I would like to thank the editors of Mortality for their very helpful comments that enhanced the quality of the manuscript. My deepest thanks also go to Jason Glynos, who commented on previous versions of this manuscript. Last but not least, I wish to thank all those participants who kindly gave me their time to participate in this research and who were willing to imagine future possibilities of the postmortal society.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joshua Hurtado Hurtado

Joshua Hurtado Hurtado is a Mexican researcher, currently enrolled in the Interdisciplinary Environmental Sciences PhD. programme of the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry. He obtained a Master’s Degree in International Relations with a focus on Ideology and Discourse Analysis from the University of Essex, Department of Government, and a second Master’s Degree in Futures Studies from the University of Turku, Turku School of Economics. His areas of expertise are the interdisciplinary study of death and mourning, Futures Studies, studies of violence in Mexico, and political ecological economics (specifically, the theme of degrowth).

Notes

1. In this article, I use the terms immortality and postmortality interchangeably, as I follow the frameworks of (Lifton & Olson, 1974) and (Bauman, 1992) to make analytical distinctions.

2. These archetypes are specific to postmortal futures. They are not based on the futures archetypes proposed by (Dator, 2009).

3. Specifically, interviewees envisioned an updated version of the Capusla Mundi, a burial-tree pod. See: https://www.capsulamundi.it/en/.