This Crazy Life
Death Versus Immortality
Back in the day, when I was grappling with science versus religion, an argument presented to me was religion is the opiate of the masses mostly to appease man’s fear of death. I don’t think I was ever afraid of death. I am afraid of pain. I came out of the womb life weary, and though I am much improved today, I still have those days when you know, I’d just rather not be here. And so, when scientist talk about immortality, and I am thinking- you mean like, having to work an 8 to 5 job for eternity? Well, fuck that!
Science is just as much concerned about life and death as any other religion I have ever seen. They’re also tricky about it. Like this article: New ‘super Earth’ discovered where you could live for more than 29,000 years, by OMG, anonymous. Why? Why are the snarky articles un-championed? This was a sleight of hand trick. You won’t live 29,000 years- precisely. You would live your normal life, in terms of earth years, but you’d go around that sun 8.5 times for every earth year.
Time is tricky and relative. We can count life spans in heart beats or orbits. We can also change the rate of time with acceleration, moving away from gravitational sources, and moving closer to gravitational sources, which doesn’t change the life-span in terms of number of heart beats, or in terms of orbital experience. Astronauts in orbit age a little faster, but they went around the sun with the earth.
The longevity of things is not the measure of life.
It’s not that I haven’t thought of ways to extend life, or even lament out loud the disparity in the distribution of lifespans. Why do sea turtles live a hundred years? I would rather be a dolphin than a sea turtle, but I also think- that both might be boring after a moment. Seriously, sea turtle have been around a 110 million years? At what point does a soul looking through the teary eyes of turtle laying eggs on a beach in Trinidad finally say, “Do the stars twinkle because I am crying? Why am I crying? I have been doing this for 99 years and I have never wondered why am I crying? Why now?”
Some trees can live a thousand years. So, my arrogance here, am I not more important than a turtle or a tree? Yeah, yeah, yeah, only God can make a tree, but my place in this archetypal scheme feels out of alignment with my perceived worth. My perceived worth is echoed by a culture that says all humans are worthy, but treats 80 percent of them like crap, so if you suspect I am dealing with cognitive dissonance, well, it’s because I am.
I can make arguments that I have squandered time, and not engaged in activities that would promote better longevity. I give lip service to those ideas, but take vitamins randomly. I eat pizza, chips and salsa, and am heavy on the pink, Himalayan salt regularly!
Scientist do this, too. I can go back to a NYT article in the 90s that said we would be immortal within the next 20 years. Well, more than 20 years has come and gone, and that hasn’t happened, but a new wave of ‘immortality’ is in reach, and I am like, ‘yeah that was appealing 40 years ago, but now, fuck you I am ready to check out.’
Is that important? I am just now content, or let’s say- approaching something that I like in terms of wisdom, kindness, being introspectively reflective, and capable in my most broadest sense of utility. If I had been given immortality at age 20, would I be forever a jerk?
Did grappling with death looming ever closer temper me?
I have no doubt immortality is possible. I mean, think about this. Atoms don’t die. Well, maybe they run out of energy and fade like fireworks, but we’re talking universal scales here. The molecules and organelles that comprise the machinery of the inner life of cells, they don’t die or break down. Seriously, you take the inner organelles of a cell and give them a nutrient bath that simulates their environment, they will do what they do all day long forever, whether that’s a Earth year, or that super Earth year, or till the shimmer of quantum particles fade.
Cells die first and foremost because they are programmed to die. If that weren’t true, we’d all have gills, webbed fingers, and tails. If you look at the progression of the fetus, we look like the history of evolution up to a certain point of diversion. There is evidence, and this is new shit, bacteria may explain aging. Fecal implants can make you young, reverse dementia, and determine whether you’re fat or skinny. Aint that some shit?
It almost feels like science dangles this immortality pill in front of us every so often to encourage us to stay here on this planet. Do they mean stay here under my present capacity, or can I have the money and means of Elon Musk? If I could be Elon, or even a fellow CEO, and I can see humanity established on Mars, or moving out into the galaxy. I will take that pill.
If this pill results in a new economic game like in that Matt Damon movie, Elysium, well, fuck that, too.
I imagine that immortality pill is going to be blue. I would rather have the red pill, and break out of simulation all together. Because if we live forever, that means we will be around to see Earth die.
I feel the Earth move, under my feet…
Mind you, scientist have been thinking about making earth live forever, too. Ella Alderson, probably my favorite science writer on Medium, wrote about moving earth to another star. Beyond the technical probability of such an act, which I do think is plausible given the right technology, I am wondering if it’s worth the energy and time beyond the speculative engagement of science and engineering.
Is it hubris to extend my life, or think I am somehow so special out of all the Universe that I should have a longer life? Is it hubris to think Earth is so special it deserve a longer life than any other planet in the universe? The ultimate in matriarchy, save the earth cults! Or until the apple is eaten to the core?
I mean, if it’s a planet’s time to go, it’s time for it to go, right? Is it better to use time wisely, or extend the time of frivolous play? What are we talking here?
If we’re extending Earth life so we can play our present economic and war games, I’d say blow up the sun now, it’s the only way to be sure. But if the Earth is worth saving, isn’t the sun? How about instead of moving earth, we heal the sun?
Star Trek: TNG, half a life grapples with saving a star, as well as the life of a man. In that episode the culture believe in order to save resources, it is necessary that all citizen end their life at age 60. Talk about existential angst, which exists but doesn’t exist because society squashes it with beliefs! They think about death in terms of their sun and planet and society, but don’t apply that philosophy to the natural world. Cognitive disconnect? And you can’t say we’re improved over that. One of the arguments for doctor assisted suicide is out of control health care cost! People would rather die than bankrupt their family?!
And no one wants to regulate heath care cost. Sure, for forty dollars you could have an Uber drive bring you a whole bottle of aspirin from CVS, but if you ask for one damn pill from the doctor the insurance gets billed a 100$! We know it’s broken, but we don’t fix that, and then wonder why people chose death?
Lwaxana Troi (Majel Barrett) falls in love with Timicin (David Ogden Stiers), formally and famously on MASH, who plays the scientist that might extend this star’s life, saving his world, his species, his family, in the process, but he’s too old, and his socially designated time to die has arrived. Literally. His society practices ritual suicide at 60, making arguments about how that is better for society and the family, by saving cutting health costs, and helping the planet in population control.
When his time is up, and he doesn’t follow tradition, his world ceases to consider his research. He is excommunicated, which is a social death. His family thinks he is crazy, and will turn their backs on him. There is lots of death talk in this episode. Troi is like, why fight for you sun’s life if you can’t fight for yours? Your time is up, your time is up. That’s it.
The existential angst in this episode is palatable. Troi’s servant, who reminds me of lurch from the Adam’s family looks like walking death. He is more zombie, in terms of character, than an active agent that has thoughts and feelings and character development. Is that my fate if I live forever?
Moving a planet may end up being child’s play, if the technology in the science fiction book Moving Mars, by Greg Bear is plausible, which makes the theoretical approach explored by Alderson rather quaint. Then again, many hard scientist will consider this approach over the approach of using quantum physics to magically make things happen.
Which brings round to this point discussed by religion. Who and what are we? Are we this life? Are we something deeper and more fundamental, like energy, or consciousness, or something even more subtler? If we are energy, we’re already immortal by definition. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
And so, what do particles of energy do for entertainment? They build race tracks and drive fast. Computer chips, brains, bodies, rivers, planets, interstellar structures that look like neurons, race tracks all!
And so, here we are grappling with life. We have yet to agree that life is so precious that we should care for each other and all the other species and this world to a better degree. We have yet to decide war is wrong and we should stop acting like kids. I hear the argument, wars are because we disagree about how we should approach life.
We been doing this war dance for a long time, and if this is because we don’t agree on how to treat life, then maybe we need start thinking of this in terms of death. The next great war could be the last. If Mars once held life, then that is evidence planets can and do die. Let that be our monument to death. If we revitalize Mars, that would be a monument to life!
If per science Earth is special because it’s the only place we know life is, then fuck we need to walk a little softer on this world. We need to treat each other the way we would want to be treated.
Stop avoiding thinking about death. Western pharmaceuticals and medicine need to stop avoiding death as if it were the worst outcome, and unthinkable. Death is one of the certainties in life. Even though I am against societal ritualized suicide, as seen in Half a Life, I don’t want my last years being in a hospital bed where someone else is wiping my ass because I can’t get up. I know many people that share that sentiment.
Everything dies. Plants. Animals. Planets. Stars. Universes. If we extend human life, then by definition we need to extend the planet’s life, which means extending the sun’s life, which means extending the universe’s life and the life of all the particles that make it up… Seriously, how is science not exactly life religion? At some point we have to face reality- death is part of this universe, by scientific definition. Is there another perspective, probably, but science can only deal with what it measures.
Why extend the life of a planet and star if one day we won’t even be able to see the stars because the expansion of the universe has dispersed even all the stars in the galaxy?
If in grappling for life, you are killing others to have more stuff or more life, then you can be certain, eventually, someone will kill you, or wage war on you, because you have what they want. Perhaps if immortality results in no children, then that will become less and less a threat as wars and accidents wheedles down humanity, but that, too, is a death. And if extending the life of people, or our planet, means we’re extending this game of war indefinitely…
Are we really ready for immortality? Do we deserve it? Maybe the turtles and trees are more suitable for eternity. Maybe turtles cry while laying eggs because they’re grateful. That sounds nicer than the scientific explanations for that.
I am grateful. I find I cry a lot these days. Sunrise, sunset, social gatherings… I am also world weary. I was from the start. I am ready to go home.
