Imagine There’s No Heaven

Anthropologists admit, with sheepish bewilderment, that every human society discovered thus far has some belief in an afterlife. Religious specialists—especially those who go by the tonguecramping name “phenomenologists”—take comfort in that fact. They sigh with relief, confident that such stubborn persistence of belief is a “rumor of transcendence,” a vestige of our immortal natures.

Reading about the widespread belief in an afterlife got me thinking in another direction entirely. I started wondering what a society might look like if it did not believe in an afterlife. How would the denial of immortality affect everyday life? I let my imagination run, and came up with the following conclusions. For the sake of a convenient label (and with apologies to Samuel Butler, author of Erehwon), I’ll call my mythical society Acirema.

1. Aciremans value youth above all else. Since for them nothing exists beyond life on Earth, only youth can represent hope. They have no other future to look forward to. As a result, anything preserving the illusion of youthfulness flourishes. Sports is a national obsession. Magazine covers present wrinkle-free faces and gorgeous bodies. The bestselling videotapes feature alluring women in their forties who demonstrate exercises that, if followed faithfully, will make you look a decade younger.
2. Naturally, Aciremans do not value old age, for elderly people offer a distasteful reminder of the end of life. Unlike young people, they can never represent hope. The Acireman health industry promotes skin creams, cosmetic surgery, and many other elaborate means to mask the effects of aging, the prelude to death. In especially callous parts of Acirema, citizens even confine the elderly to their own housing, shut away from the general populace.
3. Acirema emphasizes “image” rather than “substance.” The practices of dieting, exercise, and body-building, for example, attain the status of pagan worship rites. A well-formed body visibly demonstrates achievement in this world, whereas nebulous inner qualities—compassion, self-sacrifice, and humility—merit little praise. As a side effect, a disabled or disfigured person, regardless of that individual’s personal character, has great difficulty competing in Acirema.
4. Acireman religion focuses exclusively on how one fares in the here and now, for there is no reward system after death. Those Aciremans who still believe in a deity look for God’s approval in terms of good health and prosperity on Earth.

1. Recently, crime has taken a turn toward the grotesquely violent and bizarre. In other primitive societies, citizens grow up with a vague fear of eternal judgment hanging over them, but Aciremans have no such deterrents to deviant behavior.
2. Aciremans spend billions of dollars to maintain elderly bodies on life-support systems while at the same time they strongly encourage the abortion of fetuses. This is not as paradoxical as it seems, for Aciremans believe that human life begins at birth and ends at death.
3. Until recently, Acireman psychologists had to treat their patients’ atavistic reactions of fear and anger in the face of death. New techniques, however, have shown promise in overcoming such primal instincts. Aciremans are now taught to view “acceptance” as the most mature response to the perfectly natural state of death. Scholars devalue ancient attitudes about dying a “noble” or confrontational death. For Aciremans, the ideal death is a peaceful departure during sleep.
4. Acireman scientists are still working to eliminate the problem of death. In the meantime, most deaths take place in the presence of trained professionals, in a sealed-off area. To lessen the shock, euphemisms such as “passing” and “going on” are substituted for the inelegant word “death.” And all ceremonies accompanying death play down its discontinuity from life. Corpses are preserved chemically and stored in airtight, leak-proof containers.

Just thinking about such a society gives me the creeps. I sure am glad I live in the good ol’ U.S.A., where, as George Gallup assures us, a full 90 percent of the population believe in an afterlife.

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