Overcoming Death
Michaelann Bradley, MTA CEO, confronts mortality head-on, using a clip from "The Good Place" to illustrate how awareness of death gives actions meaning. She argues that transhumanism offers a middle ground between existential despair and the cavalier Mormon attitude that "suffering is just a blip." If our descendants must become gods who enact the resurrection through scientific principles, our present actions take on profound significance. Bradley shares her personal commitment to "come back" for her ancestor Mary Rosetta Patterson and calls for MTA members—marketers, scientists, organizers—to help build an organization that moves beyond theology into action, shaping the ethics of an inevitable transhumanist future.
Michaelann Gardner is a speaker who has presented at several Mormon Transhumanist Association conferences. Her presentation at the MTAConf 2019 focused on the impact of family history and ancestral trauma on personal well-being and resilience, particularly in the context of emotional vulnerability and mental health. ¶ Gardner’s talk explored the challenges of confronting difficult family narratives and embracing personal messiness and complexity. She drew on personal experiences related to her grandfather, Bert Gardner, and great-grandfather, both of whom struggled with alcoholism and created instability for their families. She connects these family dynamics to broader themes of emotional expression, financial security, and anxiety. ¶ She integrates insights from therapy and psychology, referencing research that suggests building resilience through understanding one’s family history. Her work appears to be a combination of personal reflection with family systems and positive psychology.
Transcript
Speaker 1
I now have the pleasure to introduce Michael Ann Bradley, our next speaker. She’s a nonprofit advocate and community organizer, and is currently our CEO. Which she has been actively in she’s been involved with the MTA since 2013, including speaking at four conferences. In her professional life, she is the director of United Way’s Mental Health Initiatives. In other roles, she’s been a fundraiser, marketing director, board chair, event planner, and social media strategist. She and her husband, Mormon historian Don, live in Provo, Utah. Please welcome Michael Ann.
Michaelann Bradley
Okay. What’s the best way for me to access my slides? We’ll give it one second. Sorry, I’m like distracted by the slides getting pulled up. Okay. Cool.
Michaelann Bradley
You are going to die. It may not happen today, may not happen tomorrow. It could happen swiftly. You could be crossing the street and get sideswiped by a bus and fall into traffic. Or you might Be lying in your bed peacefully after having lived a long and full life, healthy as a horse one day, and the next day, just gone. Or it might happen slowly. You might be setting up the barbecue for a family picnic and light yourself on fire. And because your knees Don’t work right anymore, you can’t stop, drop, and roll, and you linger in the hospital for days before your family finally decides to pull the plug. As a real example, by the way, that has happened in Payson a couple of weeks ago.
Michaelann Bradley
I hate to be the bearer of bad news and to remind you that You may die. But life is short and painful. If you didn’t already know that, here’s your FYI from me. Are you depressed yet?
Michaelann Bradley
Try this. Before you die, you are going to spend a lot of time with a lot of very monotonous activities. You will probably spend around 28,300 hours surfing the Internet. At least a third of those is going to be watching cat videos and clicking on inane clickbait. You will have to brush your teeth every day for the rest of your life, twice a day. You will spend an inordinate amount of time folding laundry, putting away dishes, and trimming your nails. And that, that kind of monotony, is if you’re lucky.
Michaelann Bradley
If you’re not lucky, your mother is a meth dealer, your father is a heroin addict, and your diaper never gets changed as a baby, and you grow up unable to form human connection. Or maybe your father is a drug lord and your mother is the woman that he raped, and you spend your entire life trying to get by with not having enough to eat.
Michaelann Bradley
So yeah, and if you’re not thoroughly depressed yet, I want you now to imagine that there is no life after death. that someday you’re going to be put into a box and that box is going to be stuck underground and everything is silent and everything is dark. But you don’t know that it’s silent and dark because you don’t exist anymore.
Michaelann Bradley
So, to lighten the mood a little bit, let’s see if this video will work. A clip. So, The Good Place is about a woman named Eleanor. who dies and goes to heaven. And when she gets there, she meets a few different people. She meets a man named Cheeti, who is a moral philosopher. And she meets a man named Michael, who is an eternal being who created the world that she lives in. So you’re going to see Cheeti.
Michaelann Bradley
It’s rare, but when one of us do. You’re going to see Cheeti and Eleanor talking to Michael. They’re trying to teach Michael ethics. He’s an eternal being, so he’s never had to learn ethics before. And he’s just not getting it. And they don’t really know quite why he’s not getting it.
Michaelann Bradley
And what happens exactly? That’s a sound. Good sound, right? Okay, let’s start right. Okay. I just have to make sure I get exactly the right spot because I don’t want spoilers because you’re going to want to watch this afterwards.
Speaker 5
Oh? Look, dude, this isn’t your fault. You trying to say a valedictorian? No? Look, dude, this is. He’s been evil since the beginning of time.
Speaker 4
Oh, maybe the reason Michael can’t latch onto the ideas is because he’s immortal. Look, if you live forever, then ethics don’t matter to you because basically there’s no consequences for your actions. You tell a lie, who cares? Wait a few trillion years, the guilt will fade. Before I can teach Michael to be good, I have to force him to think about what we used to think about: that life. has an end, and therefore our actions have meaning.
Speaker 5
That’s what you used to think about. I used to think about how it’s weird they don’t make pants that are just one big pant leg for both your legs. You mean a skirt? No, you’re not getting it and my thing is different, so shut up.
Speaker 3
Michael, is there any way that you can die? Yeah. Actually, there is. It’s called retirement. It’s rare, but when one of us really screws something up. And uh what happens exactly? Well fairly straightforward. My essence would be scooped out of my body with a flaming ladle, and every molecule in my body would be placed on the surface of a different sun. Sure.
Speaker 4
Is is that what would happen if your boss found out that you defected to our side? Yeah. Okay, so that might actually happen. And if it did, there would be no more Michael. Think about that for a second. Imagine being retired. Everyone else is here, but you? Poof. Gone. Nothingness. Inky. Black void. Duns.
Speaker 3
Okay, I’ll think about that. Huh. So you’re saying I would be. No me
Speaker 4
Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.
Speaker 5
Dude, you broke Michael.
Michaelann Bradley
I want to repeat what Cheeti said in that. If you live forever, ethics don’t matter because there’s basically no consequences to your action. Life has an end, and therefore actions have meaning.
Michaelann Bradley
And in fact, this is actually echoed in the Book of Mormon. So, you know, as Mormons, if you’re sort of a pew-studying Mormon, you do believe that we exist, we don’t just die. But even Alma in the Book of Mormon says, you need to do your work now. You need to not procrastinate the day of your repentance. You need to prepare for eternity, because if you don’t, there’s going to come the night of darkness wherein no labor can be performed. So philosophers and our own prophets have recognized that you have to have this sort of sense of like things are going to end if you want to be able to act ethically, to be motivated to act ethically.
Michaelann Bradley
So I landed in this space, you know, about a year ago or so. And it was that Michael moment, right? Where you’re just like, oh my gosh, someday there’s going to be, there could be no me. And I want you to think about how your actions might be different.
Michaelann Bradley
Sometimes I think as Mormons, we can get a little bit too cavalier. You know, that methadicted mom, it doesn’t matter that she never changed her baby’s diaper and her baby suffered because it’s all for that baby’s profit and learning, right? Or it doesn’t matter that like your Partner of 40 years lit himself on fire and died in the hospital, a painful death, because like he’s going to be resurrected. So, like, it’s fine, right? It’s not fine. It’s not fine.
Michaelann Bradley
And I do think that there’s actually a middle ground between Believing that you’re going to no longer exist someday, and between this sort of cavalier, you know, suffering is just sort of this blip, not a big deal. And I think transhumanism is the bridge between Between the existential despair that I will someday not exist and the cavalier, nothing matters, because it’ll all be Sort of taken care of. Those are both nihilistic, I think. And transhumanism meets in the middle. And here’s why.
Michaelann Bradley
If you believe that Our descendants are going to be the ones who are going to have to become gods and enact the resurrection, enact salvation. Suddenly, the actions that you take matter a lot, but at the same time, there is also room for grace. When I am a transhumanist, when I think in a transhumanist way, I want to do everything I can to not only be compassionate now, but to start doing the things that will enable the resurrection to come to pass.
Michaelann Bradley
Resurrection, salvation, God Himself works by scientific principles. So whether that is going to be some kind of Freezing of our DNA and recreating ourselves. I don’t know exactly how the resurrection works, but I do believe that it works by scientific principles. And I am counting on my descendants to be the ones who are able to evolve into beings who can use that science to save me.
Michaelann Bradley
When I start feeling the existential fear that this is all that I get, what if God isn’t really there? I don’t have to worry about whether or not God is really there. And by the way, I do believe in a God, but I don’t have to worry about that because I can do things now that will make God to exist in the future if He doesn’t right now. If I am not certain that the resurrection is something that’s really going to happen, as a transhumanist, I can do things now that will make the resurrection happen. That is faith. That is what it means to have faith, to not just believe that someone can take care of it for me, but that my actions can matter, that what I do can transform the existential despair.
Michaelann Bradley
And I look at, for example, go forward. This is my ancestor, Mary Rosetta Patterson. Now, I don’t know if you see it, but I look at her, I think those are my eyes. Okay, this is my grandfather’s grandmother. I don’t know how eyes get passed down that many generations, but they did. There’s a little bit of me and her, and a little bit of her and me.
Michaelann Bradley
And I look at her and I say, I am not going to leave you buried in the ground. I will come back for you. You will not be there alone forever. I’m going to do whatever it takes to bring to pass the resurrection because you are me, and I am you. And the more I can learn about her, about who she was, about the things that she cared about, the more that I can help contribute to science that will help be able to take my DNA and recreate her DNA to resurrect her. The closer I am to being able to fulfill that promise.
Michaelann Bradley
I also think too about my descendants, because I am sometimes terrified. What if? What if? What if? But I can put hope in my descendants that by teaching them true principles that they will come back for me and I can come back for Mary Rosetta Patterson.
Michaelann Bradley
There’s a hymn that I love by Rich Mullins, and he’s writing it about the apocalypse, about the last days. He’s writing it to To God, to Jesus. And he’s asking that he can, he’s asking God to resurrect him. He’s asking God to not forget him. And I listen to this song, and I want to address it to my children, and my children’s children. However long it takes, however many generations it takes, until we can gain this power, this scientific priesthood power. To be able to bring to pass the promises that are in the Bible and the Book of Mormon and our other scripture. And this is the song. And I want you to think of you, not in this case as God, but you as in your posterity.
Michaelann Bradley
When you, my posterity, start this world over again from scratch, will you make me anew out of the stuff that lasts? stuff that’s purer than gold is, and clearer than glass could ever be. When you blast this cosmos to kingdom come, When those jagged edged mountains that I love are gone When the sky is crossed with the tears of a thousand falling suns as they crash into the sea, Can I be with you? Can I be with you? I’m hoping that I will get remade out of stuff that’s purer than gold is. And I love that he uses the words gold and glass here. These physical instruments. I could imagine A bionic person made out of gold and glass, out of materials that we have yet to discover, out of materials that will be stronger, lasting, more durable. than my frail human body is.
Michaelann Bradley
So my talk is called The Future of the MTA. As CEO, one of my big dreams is to start creating a long-term plan for the organization. I don’t actually know exactly what that looks like. There’s probably a thousand possibilities of what the MTA could become. And a lot of those will probably be brought to pass, but we have to pick a couple to start with.
Michaelann Bradley
I want to make sure that the MTA is not just a theological organization, not just one that has a lot of cool ideas about cool scientific topics, but that we take action in the world. I don’t know exactly what that action is. I don’t know what is feasible for a group that has fifty voting members and a few hundred basic members, that has an annual budget in the thousands of dollars. But I want to create it.
Michaelann Bradley
Much like the world was created, much like the earth was created, from a community of premortal beings. Creating the MTA’s vision is going to take a lot more than just me and a few board members. I’m hoping that you’ll be willing to become fellow laborers with me.
Michaelann Bradley
We’re going to need marketing professionals, people who can write, who can think strategically about photography and PR. We’re going to need scientists, people who know a lot more than I do about artificial intelligence and about computers. We’re going to need people who can get things done, who know how to motivate others and lead others to get things done. I’m quite positive that whatever your skill set is, that there is a spot where you can help us. Bring to pass the eternal life of man and woman.
Michaelann Bradley
I find a lot of meaning from this work. I find a lot of personal deep meaning and comfort from this work. And I hope that this talk leaves you with that same emotion, a same determination.
Michaelann Bradley
to be the captain of your fate, the master of your soul, and to experience radical compassion for others around you, I think a transhumanist future is inevitable. I think it’s inevitable that we will have bionic people and scary AI, as David puts it. And all these things are going to come to pass. They’re going to happen. It’s inevitable. The only question is. What will the ethics and the foundation of this new society be like? And I want to help create it. I want to make it. And I’m very grateful for all of you who have already started to help with that and started to help to make this a possibility. Thank you.