A bewildering death

“Death and the Afterlife: A Chronological Journey from Cremation to Quantum Resurrection” by Clifford A Pickover is a bewildering, confusing and decidedly non-chronological meandering peregrination through humanity´s myriad views of death and dying.

Peculiar burial customs, child sacrifice, ideas about the afterlife, paintings and novels about our mortality, even some science and science fiction (not always easy to tell apart in these murky waters)…you will need a lot of patience to sift through this material, unless you love to be surprised! Other topics covered: abortion, executions, the Ghost Dance and the two most popular “books of the dead” in Western culture (yes, the Egyptian and the Tibetan). The book has a “Halloween” feel, with small pictures of skulls on the covers.

Much of the information was new to me, such as the notion of “sin-eaters”. In Aztec culture, the soul of the departed is said to meet a spirit-being named Tlazolteotl, which would “eat” his or her sins. I say Tlazolteotl had a lot of work to do, considering the innumerable crimes of this particular civilization! “Real” sin-eaters have existed in the UK. Food was placed at the corpse of the departed, and a social outcast was then instructed to eat it, at which the sins of the deceased person were said to be transferred to the sin-eater via the food. It seems English peasants didn´t trust the efficacy of the atoning death of Christ…

Atheists want immortality as much as the religiously faithful or the credulously superstitious. Hence entries on cryonics, transhumanism, Quantum immortality and Quantum resurrection. There is also something called Boltzmann brains. I´m sure Boltzmann himself had a couple of those. The author of this volume missed Ray Kurzweil´s Singularity notions, though. On a more negative note, there is nothing about runaway climate change and the Venus scenario. Another problem is that the book isn´t fully sourced.

Maybe next time? Or in my next life, LOL.