When I receive my monthly National Geographic magazine, I usually put it on my side table next to my spot on the living room sofa. The great thing about NatGeo is that the articles in it are mostly timeless and can be read whenever the spirit moves you. Besides being timeless, most of those articles are also entirely optional in that there is nothing about them that is mandatory reading. They are often fascinating and highly informative. They broaden my awareness of the world and enable my mind to soar to places it might not otherwise go. But if I read an article today, tomorrow or next week, its all pretty much the same. I like that and find there is a distinct place for that sort of education in my program. Some topics cause me to opt in and others just flow by me with casual awareness and no particular need to delve further. In general, I am drawn to the articles about antiquity and about advanced science and not so much about nature. I’m not sure what that says about me other than where my particular interests lie. It’s not like I think antiquities and ancient cultures are more important than ecology, it’s just that I’m more captivated by those topics and less so by the diverse flora and fauna of the planet.
The last three issues of NatGeo cover “Death & Life in the Shadow of Vesuvius”, “Beyond Earth: How We’re Preparing to Live and Work on the Moon and Mars”, and “The End of Aging?”. I’m always up for a good Pompeii update. Just yesterday I was on a Zoom with my pal Damiano, who is Sicilian and has a summer house on the Aeolian Island of Vulcano. The island itself is a stratovolcano with several cones. The main active one is the Gran Cratere (also called La Fossa), which last erupted in 1888–1890 and is still considered active. It has visible fumaroles (steam/sulfur vents) around the crater rim and near the shoreline, plus the famous mud baths (fanghi). It’s right next to the island of Stromboli, which erupts quite regularly. I recently saw in a movie the notion that anyone who grows up on the side of a volcano is, by definition, a risk taker. I would argue that anyone who buys a summer house on a volcano is something more like a risk seeker. That part of the seismological history and geography of the world fascinates me.
As for living on the Moon and Mars, as much as I am part of the generation that grew up on the dreams of reaching the Moon and Mars, I have little interest in the prospects of living on either. I’m not sure I want Elon Musk as a neighbor and it has never seemed like a pleasant experience to be permanently in an atmosphere that wants to kill you. I have always felt that living on other planets or moons is something for future generations and not really part of my brief. But that thinking takes us directly into the third article, which is about modifying the human genome so that humans can live forever. If its unwise to live on a volcano and its inhospitable to live on another planet, how advisable is it to want to live forever? The thought has never appealed to me in the least. Immortality always seemed too egotistical, suggesting that what I have is so valuable to the universe that it should last forever. I find the thought of evolution and adding to the march of mankind, but not trying to dominate or perpetuate it to be far more to my liking.
Nevertheless, I am fascinated to learn what the current fountain of youth thinking is all about and why many of the world’s billionaires feel that pouring money into research to minimize, eliminate or even reverse aging is a good and achievable thing. That is what leads me to Memento Mori. Memento Mori is Latin for “remember that you must die” (or “remember you will die”). It’s both a phrase and a broader artistic/philosophical tradition centered on keeping mortality consciously in view, not morbidly, but as a spur to live well, prioritize what matters, and not waste time on trivialities. The Stoics (Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, etc.) used it as a discipline, thinking that contemplating death sharpens your sense of what’s actually urgent versus what merely feels urgent. There’s also a (probably apocryphal) tradition that a slave stood behind a Roman general during a triumph, whispering “memento mori” so glory wouldn’t go to his head. In the Christian/medieval tradition, Memento Mori became a major visual motif in art. There were skulls in paintings, “vanitas” still lifes with wilting flowers and hourglasses, and tomb sculptures showing decomposing bodies. The point was to counter vanity and worldly attachment by keeping the afterlife and judgment in view. The concept of Memento Mori probably appeals to me so much because it is often paired with or confused with Carpe Diem (seize the day). They’re companion ideas but with different emphases; one is about mortality awareness, the other about active living. It’s interesting that I stumbled upon this notion right after writing about shedding memories. It’s almost the inverse concept: instead of asking whether keeping memories is good, it’s about deliberately keeping death in memory as a discipline.
One might suggest that anyone who does not want to live forever if given the chance is somehow flawed. I think quite the opposite. I am drawn to that great line from the movie The Highlander where the background music echoes with “who wants to live forever?” When my mother died at 100, she did so by simply stopping eating and drinking water. I always thought it was the ultimate humane gesture, telling the world that she had consumed enough of its resources and that it was time for others to use what was available to advance mankind. I like that line of reasoning and am happy to think in terms of an eventual sunset to my existence. I have no way of knowing this, but I bet Dolly Parton was the kind of person who also believed that leaving the world a better place was more important than working hard to never leave. Memento Mori.