As I stood at the Customer Services counter, in the supermarket, the strains of that beautiful hymn, Abide With Me, played by the Salvation Army came wafting through the open door,

“Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;

When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me. Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;

Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;

Change and decay in all around I see—

O Thou who changest not, abide with me”.

One does not need to be religious (I am an agnostic) to appreciate the power of this wonderful music. As I listened the fragility of life was brought home to me. How, in the blink of an eye that life which is so precious to most of us can be snuffed out.

The message of Abide With Me is that death is inevitable and that Christians call on God in times of trouble “in life, in death” to abide with them. Yet there has, since the birth of story telling been tales of people wishing to avoid death. In Chaucer’s The Pardoners Tale, for example a group of revellers in Flanders incensed at the death of their friend swear vengeance against death. In their quest to destroy him the drunken revellers come across an old man and question him regarding where death can be found. The elderly man tells the men they will find death under a tree. On reaching the spot they discover a pile of treasure and forget all about death. The youngest of the group goes off to procure wine while his 2 friends remain behind to guard the treasure. While the youngest of the group is absent his friends determine to murder him on his return so as to secure the treasure for themselves. On his return they murder him and fall to drinking the wine he has procured. However their friend, wishing to retain the whole treasure has poisoned the wine and the 2 men die in agony.

In The Pardoners Tale all 3 men find death in the form of treasure which leads to their destruction. The revellers perhaps also meet death personified in the shape of the elderly man who directs them to the treasure. However as the elderly man is, himself seeking death some have argued that he is not, in fact death but simply an elderly man who is (as he himself says) in search of death.

The Pardoners Tale derides the notion that one can escape death. Any attempt to avoid “that fel sergeant death” is futile and may actually hasten his approach.

A school of thought known as Transhumanism has grown up which postulates that all human suffering and even death itself can be vanquished by the onward march of technological progress. If we can slow down and (eventually) switch off the gene which causes ageing it will be possible to extend life indefinitely they argue. Other Transhumanists place their faith in artificial intelligence. At some point in the future they contend it will be possible to download (or upload) one’s consciousness into artificial brains which, in time can be placed into new artificial bodies thereby enabling the individual to live on long after there biological brain has ceased to function. Some Transhumanists, for example the inventor Ray Kurzweil believe that people will be able to choose whether to continue their existence (after uploading) in either the real world or virtual reality (I.E. on the internet). Consequently the future invisioned by Transhumanists is one in which death ceases to exist or becomes an option which may be embraced (optionally) by a few Transhumanists in the new utopia.

Will The Pardoner or the Transhumanists have the last laugh I wonder?