Mors Janua Vitae
Oct. 20th, 2004 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloThere was a time- round about four years ago- when I got quite excited by the idea of immortality. It was the millennium buzz I guess. I remember scientists talking about this shiny chrome future we were going to create. And one of things that grabbed me most was the project they had for turning off the ageing genes.
Then the Millennium happened and the mood changed and what we got instead of the shiny chrome future was a new Middle Ages complete with a new Crusades. No-one remembers the Millennium buzz. It's been blotted out by the images and emotions of 9/11.
The years 1999-2000 were a time of feverish hope. Seems kinda pathetic now.
But to get back to immortality. OK, so we can keep the body alive indefinitely, but what about the mind? Most human beings start seizing up mentally as soon as they enter adulthood. They stop wanting to hear new music, read new books, entertain new ideas. Imagine a future in which every body was eternally nineteen, but every mind eternally ninety (or older). A world full of nice-looking, cranky, uncreative old farts. Kids hooked on nostalgia. Kids lamenting the good old days. And (because we'd have to call a halt on reproduction to ease the pressure on space) no new blood.
Same old, same old, same old.....
Everything would grind to a halt. There'd be no social mobility. People would attain positions of power and influence and never let go. Tony Blair would be prime minister forever.
Suddenly death seems like a thoroughly good idea.
We'd have to bring it back. Or at least introduce an equivalent. OK, you keep your old body, but every so often you undergo a mind-wipe to clear out all the old garbage. And after the wind-wipe an input of new data. You go into the booth as one person and you come out as another- same old hardware, entirely new software.
Hmmm. And what exactly has been achieved?
Well, the undertakers have been put out of business.
And the makers of floral tributes.
Ach, but there must be some way of escaping the human condition...
Then the Millennium happened and the mood changed and what we got instead of the shiny chrome future was a new Middle Ages complete with a new Crusades. No-one remembers the Millennium buzz. It's been blotted out by the images and emotions of 9/11.
The years 1999-2000 were a time of feverish hope. Seems kinda pathetic now.
But to get back to immortality. OK, so we can keep the body alive indefinitely, but what about the mind? Most human beings start seizing up mentally as soon as they enter adulthood. They stop wanting to hear new music, read new books, entertain new ideas. Imagine a future in which every body was eternally nineteen, but every mind eternally ninety (or older). A world full of nice-looking, cranky, uncreative old farts. Kids hooked on nostalgia. Kids lamenting the good old days. And (because we'd have to call a halt on reproduction to ease the pressure on space) no new blood.
Same old, same old, same old.....
Everything would grind to a halt. There'd be no social mobility. People would attain positions of power and influence and never let go. Tony Blair would be prime minister forever.
Suddenly death seems like a thoroughly good idea.
We'd have to bring it back. Or at least introduce an equivalent. OK, you keep your old body, but every so often you undergo a mind-wipe to clear out all the old garbage. And after the wind-wipe an input of new data. You go into the booth as one person and you come out as another- same old hardware, entirely new software.
Hmmm. And what exactly has been achieved?
Well, the undertakers have been put out of business.
And the makers of floral tributes.
Ach, but there must be some way of escaping the human condition...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 01:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 01:36 pm (UTC)http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=2
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 01:24 pm (UTC)Interesting post.
Have you ever heard about the concept of a Walk-in? I think there were books written about it in the mid-80s. Supposedly, souls with noble agendas (say, world peace) hover around the Earthly Plain, hoping to sense and home in on some weakling soul that's not up to the task of its life's mission.
As with vampires, Walk-ins can't possess the body unless the soul says, "I think I'd like to go back to heaven. I don't want to live in this body anymore, experiencing life as a Chinese peasant. So come on in, and good luck!"
Then, if all goes well, the person wakes up the next morning, and instead of a morose and difficult Chinese peasant who doesn't enjoy planting rice or cooking with dung--whatever--the family is startled to find a remade man! A man who not only wants to plant rice for his family, but wants to figure out how to build a rice-planting machine to help his neighbors! Who is also kind and understanding and just wonderful.
I suspect Scrooge in A Christmas Carol was a Walk-in.
If all this is true, and certain psychic writers seemed to have been convinced of it (unsurprisingly, most of them were also convinced they were enlightened souls who walked in), then there's a great way to have your cake and eat it too.
You get to escape the human condition when the going gets tough, and let some finer spirit take your post and impress the hell out of your friends and relatives, giving you all the credit, while you're presumably floating around and watching the antics below.
That's my plan. I'm just not sure about the mechanics involved. Suppose something gets jammed?
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 01:39 pm (UTC)But it's like with the Theosophist's Great White Brotherhood; who elected these guys? Or to put it another way, who decided they were so enlightened they could shove other souls out of the way and build rice-processing plants etc.
Anything that smacks of spiritual hierarchy brings out the Jacobin in me.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 01:29 pm (UTC)Why? I want to know why! In another ten years, will I like Lawrence Welk? Oh, God, I just realized: I downloaded accordian music last week! Rhumba music, played on an accordian!
It's starting....God help me. I want out.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 01:42 pm (UTC)Rhumba music played on the accordion- that's so far-out it's groovy!
Rhumba on, sistah!
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 02:08 pm (UTC)I kinda like disco, too, but never mind.
Turn up the sound enough, anything sounds good.
The finest party I ever gave (while married and young) involved gigantic, throbbing woofers, drunken conga lines, and the primitive jungle rhythms of "Hey, Bo-Diddly!" vibrating the ceiling plaster. The last dancers left at three in the morning. Some of us couldn't hear for a couple of days.
Our upstairs neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. We-Study-All-The-Time-Leave-Us-Alone, were out of town or they surely would have called the police. Usually I could just play my piano softly and sing lullabies and Mr. I-Am-So-Much-Better-Than-You would begin pounding on his floor with a broomhandle.
God, that was a fine party. We were, for that one shining hour, totally groovy.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 04:16 pm (UTC)The last that I remember with any fondness must have been about eight years ago- and involved vast quantities of home-made elderberry wine. That's all I can remember about it actually- certain faces emerging out of the dark- and the glow of that thick, dark, bitter-tasting wine.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 04:18 pm (UTC)There! You have cheered me up!
This is very funny...
Choice, not Inevitability
Date: 2004-10-20 02:52 pm (UTC)Honestly, I don't think it has to be this way. I truly think it is a product of not allowing yourself to stagnate. I have seen "elderly" people who were not curmudgeons nor farts. Who still create, still allow their imagination to soar, still wake up each morning with wonder at the new day. I am determined to be one of those people - I refuse to put away my toys, I refuse to stop dreaming, I refuse to be placed into a small box and labeled "thus-and-so" and spend the rest of my life gathering dust.
Re: Choice, not Inevitability
Date: 2004-10-20 04:10 pm (UTC)Recognition
Date: 2004-10-20 05:43 pm (UTC)Re: Recognition
Date: 2004-10-20 09:08 pm (UTC)