Mortals: How the Fear of Death Changed Human Society

by Rachel E. Menzies, Ross G. Menzies

Human society is shaped by many things, but underlying them all is one fundamental force - our fear of death. This is the ground-breaking theory explored in Mortals.

The ground-breaking book that uncovers how our fear of death is the hidden driver of most of humankind's endeavours.

The human mind can grapple with the future, visualising and calculating solutions to complex problems, giving us tremendous advantages over other species throughout our evolution. However, this capability comes with a curse. By five to ten years of age, all humans know where they are heading: to the grave.

In Mortals, Rachel Menzies and Ross Menzies, both acclaimed psychologists whose life's work has focused on death anxiety, examine all the major human responses to death across history. From the development of religious systems denying the finality of death, to 'immortality projects' involving enduring art, architecture and literature, some of the consequences of our fear of death have been glorious while others have been destructive, leading to global conflicts and genocide.

Looking forward, Mortals hypothesises that worse could be to come-our unconscious dread of death has led to rampant consumerism and overpopulation, driving the global warming and pandemic crises that now threaten our very existence. In a terrible irony, Homo sapiens may ultimately be destroyed by our knowledge of our own mortality.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Death, History, Philosophy, Science, Audiobook

448 pages, Paperback

First published September 14, 2021

Reviews

[Sammy Mylan · Rating 2 out of 5]

i still enjoyed this because the subject matter is so interesting but it also pissed me off the whole time. SO many unjustified assumptions based on a Western and anglo-atheist worldview. also edging on eco-fascist beliefs by the conclusion. a classic case of university educated white ppl talking down to the masses lmao

[Sheree | Keeping Up With The Penguins · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a book about death (or, at least, the fear of it), Mortals is surprisingly positive and affirming. It’s not so much about the Grim Reaper as it is about how to counteract the negative consequences of fearing death in order to live a better life. The chapter on suicide (trigger warning, by the way) got a bit off track, I felt, but otherwise this was an interesting and informative read.

My full review of Mortals appeared first on Keeping Up With The Penguins.

[Antonio Bonin · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I went to buy my copy of this book, it was on the condition that it should not contain graphs or tables because I didn’t want to have to wade through and interpret data, even though I’m a scientist myself. A quick flick through its pages immediately put my concerns to rest. Sold!

This book came into existence through the collaborative efforts of a daughter and her father. Rachel and Ross Menzies are both distinguished academics in their own right and acknowledged experts in the field of psychology. For our benefit, they did all the laborious and heavy sifting through mountains of data that must surely exist on the topic of death, and brilliantly condensed it to a page-turning narrative which anyone can appreciate and understand. This is a truely remarkable scientific and scholarly piece of work, and it’s all presented without a single graph or table to boot!

I’m not ashamed to reveal that I include myself amongst those who harbour a fear of death - but only to varying degrees depending on the circumstances, I hasten to add. In this regard, I’m sure I’m in good company. However, after reading this book, I was able to adopt a more accepting attitude towards our inevitable fate. If nothing else, death is at least fair and equitable. In its own good time, it will come and stare at every one of us squarely in the face. No exceptions. Yet, in spite of and because of that, this book, in some strange way, has given me a sense of comfort.

I can highly recommend to all to lay their hands on MORTALS and read it. But I urge you to do it now, for you never know when an unexpected caller decides to come knocking on your door!!

[Ramona · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mostly enjoyed this book but there was definitely a whiff of irritating western superiority about it. For example when the authors talk about cannibalism in New Guinea and make explicit mention of how the audience might find it distasteful while ignoring a 400 year tradition of medicinal cannibalism in the West? C’mon. Not to mention talking about woes of a Malthusian “population explosion” as issue while divorcing it from the context of Western consumption, capitalism and carbon footprints which is real issue re: climate change. Double c’mon. Disappointing moments in an otherwise interesting book.

[Stephie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think everyone should read this book. Who knows how much better society might be if they did! Fear of death shapes so much of our lives and this book explains the how and the why. Mortals actually makes death feel less scary and less unknown, so not only is it a fascinating read, the book also helps us face one of our deepest fears and live better as a result.

[Mark O'mara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read at the enthusiastic urgings of a colleague, I found it a lightweight take on death and meaning with a cynical & pessimistic view of humanity.

A collection of undergraduate assumptions about religion, culture, philosophy, resources economics, demographics etc. Too many opinionated assertions without supporting evidence or considered thinking & reflection. When a book about death quotes, with conviction, at a chapter opening, a sixteen year Swedish schoolgirl (guess who, somehow climate gets plenty of space), it isn’t a good sign. A book for the supermarket shelves that some will take as being intellectually worthy.

For the lowdown on death just read Epictetus and the Stoics - nothing more is needed. Those guys nailed it.

[Ryan Lian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess this book suffered from my unrealistic expectations. It could (should) have been so much better. It reads like an amateurish version of Malcolm Gladwell, with some well-explained and interesting experiments, but overall just bad writing (a bit like this review) that takes constant jabs at religion for what they call “denial of death”. The authors end up pushing their weird secular-materialist-Stoic sort of view of death in much of the later chapters. Is it worth a read? Probably not… there are better books on death out there (e.g. Ernest Becker).

[Margot O'brien · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read!
Entertaining and thoroughly researched.
A great exploration of death anxiety.

[Samuel Tsoulos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. One of those books that completely shifts the way you see the world. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while

[Orlene · Rating 2 out of 5]

Filled with assumptions. Was kind of difficult to get through as all of the assumptions made me angry ahaha

[Peta · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book and all the different view points on death it covers. But I feel like sometimes it took it a bit too far.. some of their trials/studies they ran seemed to be quite surprising and always supported their argument. I would love to see their methods and results in more raw detail. I’d also like to think that not every single decision I make in life is influenced by my innate fear of death.. but hey I might be wrong?

[Sophia Richmond · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the subject of this book and the exploration of psychology, philosophy and theology. However, most of the analysis was incredibly surface level and almost insulting- to say that people believe in God, want children, or support a sports team simply because of their extreme denial of their mortality is a really sad and superficial way to look at human behaviour. The end chapter was borderline eco-fascist and incredibly concerning. China’s one-child policy was incredibly damaging to the nation, and the forced abortion and birth control of many Chinese women was heartbreaking, not to mention the many economical implications of the policy. To strongly imply that the policy was helpful or positive is extremely damaging, as well as the author’s strong inference that the rebellion of the Chinese people against this policy was a selfish and misguided quest for immortality.
Being okay with death does not mean you are against birth.

If you’re interested in death, mortality, and how to live your life without the crippling fear of your impermanence, look at the sources of this book. Really great material, but was combined with a tinge of eco-warrior fanaticism and a lack of analysis.

[Kel (BrassBooks) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay it started with potential.
But if you want to read books on the topic death and how society copes with it, read any of Caitlin Doughty. These ‘authors’ take enough of her content and reword it for their book. They might give her credit, but at least her books are entertaining and easy to read. This was a drag.

[Ietrio · Rating 2 out of 5]

By looking at the cover, it seems about just another simpleton trying to put some order into the World, to make it fit in with their own education and pre-conceived ideas.

But I would like to have a nice surprise of an articulate author with a rational argument.

[Matilda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! Wonderful detail on all the ways we respond to death. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to really understand the choices they are making in life.

[Zoë · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very thought provoking, I have death anxiety now

[Amber Hyland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Truly unusual read. Very narrow and deeply nihilistic worldview. It feels very academic and philosophical but not rooted in practical reality. Do I agree with them on certain aspects, like religion existing as an antidote to our fear of death? Yes. But that’s not to say people also do not also derive deep meaning from it. I don’t agree that the minutiae of daily life is underpinned by our collective fear of death. I don’t make purchases or exercise from a fear of death but rather as a means to enrich my life (an enrichment I seek for enjoyment, not as a way of scrabbling to find purpose before my death).

The segment on overpopulation - yawn. Heard it before, not buying it. Very antinatalist and just… odd. My friend coined this bit “eco fascism” and I must agree.

All in all … odd. They make really good points, and the anthropology is very interesting. But their arguments aren’t very robust for the majority of assertions they make. This book wasn’t what I hoped it would be but interesting nonetheless.

[Karleah Olson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this! It was super easy to get into and to stay interested in for non-fiction. I felt like it flowed well from one point to the next, and I learnt a lot. I think it's probably quite surface-level for a lot of the concepts and studies, but definitely a good place to start and to get a sense of what aspects you'd like to look into in more depth. I thoroughly enjoyed all the Voldemort/Harry Potter references, and particularly liked the chapter on art and creativity.

[Mónica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating read on death and mortality. Although I learned a lot about rituals and how our relationship with death is evolving, it makes giant (sometimes unjustified) leaps linking death to other events.

[Tegan Jessop · Rating 4 out of 5]

*4.5

[Frank Lawton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mortals talks about a lot of interesting phenomena, presents challenging ideas, and directly addresses a confronting topic in a confronting way. For these reasons I gained a descent amount from this book. But as mentioned in a lot of others' reviews, the authors have a lot of "1st year uni student" opinions which they treat as baseline fact in this book and promote more than anything else. It's very annoying and pretentious, and badly taints a book with so much potential. There are enough good books addressing death that you're probably better of going elsewhere for the topic, unless you happen to agree with the authors and like a circle-jerk.

[Bee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anthropology & history - WOOOOOOO
Eco-fascism - oh…

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this book, I feel I can understand, more empirically, the effect on me and my loved ones of two years of fear and safety based messaging.
An approachable, insightful, thought, and constructive conversation provoking read, that I highly recommend.

[Amelia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely some food for thought and introduced some interesting points but was let down by it's under current of seemingly-xenophobic sentiment woven in-between the pro-West/Anglo historical and sociological analysis

[Kim Harvie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having studied Comparative Religions a lot of what I've read consolidates my own thoughts on the subject of death and dying. Insightful and beautifully written.

[Tahlia · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF @ 50%
Was excited to read this but it got so bland by just going over psychology experiments etc for 30 or so pages

[funkgoddess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful and profound. I have a million new thoughts swirling around my head. An important book.

[Andreas Möss · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. Not only one of the best books I read this year, but perhaps one of the best I read period. Recommended to everywhere and back.

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

My review:
I think I mostly really enjoyed this book, but there were parts that demonstrated a level of hypocrisy and eugenics-adjacent talking points that were honestly quite unsettling, and cast a wide shadow over the book.

In the technology chapter, the authors uncritically upheld artificial intelligence as something better and more advanced than the human brain. The evidence for this was a chess-trained AI computer that was able to beat any human opponent after a few hours of the program running. To me, it's just sort of gross and ignorant to jump from a computer winning a chess match to then conclude that humans are an increasingly redundant species. The authors never seemed to ask who privileges when entire industries become automated. It also just seemed really weird that the authors scoffed at human consciousness uploaded to a database - a process that can supposedly preserve a person's soul after death, with the goal of later reanimation - and yet went on to hail AI. Not only are both those concepts equally tech-bro stupid, but also, aren't there pretty obvious conclusions about how the push for AI is similar to the desire for something to outlive us, and so is just as much a response to and a denial of death? I think it's kind of bonkers to spend an entire book reaming out other people's belief systems, only to completely show your ass by gushing about your own mortality pet project.

The authors' views on population were even more troubling, repeatedly stumbling into eugenist and great replacement theory talking points, seemingly without knowing that that was the space that they occupied. The authors talked about a dire “population explosion” in both the opening and closing chapters of their book, as if to highlight this as a key feature of their worldview and one of the most pressing issues of the many they discussed. I always hesitate to discuss problems like overpopulation directly, because to solve overpopulation, the first response is often to 'rationally' prescribe a population decrease. I think it's much more productive to address issues like poverty, lack of housing, and climate change by looking at their root causes. Namely, wealthy, multinational corporations and complicit governments. It's totally pointless and actively harmful to blame poor people, who are the victims of colonial greed and exploitation, for being born in the first place. The authors in no way shared my hesitation, at one point actually saying that famine was the Earth's natural solution to the problem of too many people. That is so eugenicist I can't even begin, and has such biblical undertones for a book that supposedly decries religion.

The way of thinking that the authors put on a pedestal as correct was stoicism. Personally, I just can't separate stoicism from those guys on Twitter who use white Roman statues as their profile pictures and call their discord servers shit like Socrates Amphitheatre. The authors said something about how today stoicism is a niche subculture and that they hoped it would one day grow more followers. I was just sitting there thinking, yeah, that subculture has a name, it's called the Incel community, and it's getting plenty of traction right now. I probably wouldn't have made that connection if not for the gesturing towards other worrying beliefs. Between the veneration of AI and the fear-mongering around population growth, something about this book just reeked of Western superiority and Big-Tech rationalism. The belief that technology is great, humans are now redundant, and there are too many people in the world. That line of thinking doesn't sit right with me.

The part that tipped the scale of the book being broadly troubling to personally offensive was when the authors ended the book talking about kids, because that's a lifestyle that actually affects me. As someone who was already fairly uninterested in death defences like religion, art, and cemeteries, when the authors criticised those areas, it really didn't affect me or poke fun at my worldview. I'm agnostic, untalented, and want to be worm food in the woods when I'm dead, so I was overall unfazed by their argument that the belief in gods, an afterlife, and such is detrimental to society. Their anti-children arguments, though, struck a nerve.

The authors had a reductive view of parenthood as being something people do primarily as a way of coping with their fear of death. All other reasons are secondary to that fear. The authors argued that children are primarily for continuing the genetic line and are "offspring", a framing based in the male-centric view that women and children only exist to serve men's need to procreate. The authors spoke about the importance of close personal relationships with friends and family, but then argued that having children takes away from chances for self-improvement.

In the final chapter, the authors argued that we should all simply stop having children, writing: "Let's go back to creating art or reading the stoics for our existential pains. Overpopulating the Earth will simply destroy us all." Skipping over the fact that this once again dips into eugenics territory. I've had the conversation quite a few times with people who have argued that young people should stop having children, because having children is unethical. Which I think in a huge way is true. Being alive sucks. Humans as a species are a scourge on nature. As a personal decision, if someone chooses to be child-free in the same way that people choose to be vegan, good for them. Personally, I hate the guilt trip that I am obligated to put my wants in life aside because the shittiest people alive are destroying our planet. I've heard these arguments literally all my life, even when I was a child myself, and I'm frankly sick of it. I always enjoy frank discussions of mortality and death positivity, but death positivity means an individual's right to choose not only how they want to die and be buried, but also how they want to spend their life. The whole joyful death thing doesn't work if you're too busy worrying about overpopulation of all things.

Audiobook Rating
Michael Wahr ★★★★☆

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as an audiobook and wow- what a huge commitment it is to read in any form but so interesting and thought provoking.
If you were living under the illusion that you think freely and independently of outside influence and control then this book will be a huge wake up call.
I have long felt, spoken about and known that our society does not “do” death well at all and this book certainly confirms that. Just the subject matter of the title will I know put many folk off even attempting it.
Fascinating and well worth the read. Challenging in so many many places but well worth the challenge.
I am not saying I agreed with all the statements and at times I was downright frustrated at some of the assumptions but well worth the read.