I am having sleepless nights. Nothing to do with insomnia and all to do with an article I read a few days ago in the newspaper. Apparently in the next 200 years or so we, humans, will be able to move on to the next, ultimate step of evolution. A step so far-fetched that I keep thinking it might be connected somehow to the recent release of the Mad Max film. This piece of news could only be thought up by a marketing team. Yet, I suspect that once more I am being naïve and disingenuous. This is, I am afraid, the shape of things to come.
According to a book called Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, we will eventually progress (I am using that word cautiously) to an amortal, divine state, either through biological/genetic manipulation or by the creation of part-human, part-non-human beings. Phew! So, after all both Ridley Scott and James Cameron were right. But in the case of the latter, this won’t happen in 2029. It is 200 years, not fourteen more. That means no “I’ll be back” from Arnold the “Guvernator”.
Why the sleepless nights? I should be jumping up and down at this piece of news. Amortality for all! Forever! Just take this chip, dear, and put it… let’s see.. shall we go for the ear? I know, I am being facetious but the article filled me with horror rather than joy.
©2015
Next Post: “Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts” to be published on Wednesday 3rd June at 6pm (GMT)
According to a book called Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, we will eventually progress (I am using that word cautiously) to an amortal, divine state, either through biological/genetic manipulation or by the creation of part-human, part-non-human beings. Phew! So, after all both Ridley Scott and James Cameron were right. But in the case of the latter, this won’t happen in 2029. It is 200 years, not fourteen more. That means no “I’ll be back” from Arnold the “Guvernator”.
Why the sleepless nights? I should be jumping up and down at this piece of news. Amortality for all! Forever! Just take this chip, dear, and put it… let’s see.. shall we go for the ear? I know, I am being facetious but the article filled me with horror rather than joy.
First off, this supposed injection of eternal life will not be only for yours truly. Participants will include: the colleague who always borrows your stapler and never hands it back (you’re on your tenth stapler now), the politician who lies and then acts surprised that people want him out of office for his lying. Another amortal being will be the bully who tormented you on the school playground all those years ago and who never moved out of the barrio and neither could you because your low wage as a shelf-stacker in the local supermarket doesn’t give you the opportunity to up sticks and leave for good. That is why you keep bumping into the same bully twenty years down the line at work. Your work. Imagine that scene being repeated ad infinitum. Amortality? No, Dante’s Inferno.
Secondly, can you imagine out-living those you love the most? I am thinking that once these intravenously-injected nanobots are created they will not be a free-for-all product. You will have to cough up a lot of dosh for them and not many people, even in the same family, will have the means to acquire them. What if you out-live your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren? From the class division we have at present we will move on to a different division between those who will become amortals and those who will remain mere mortals. I think someone used the word “evolution” in the article I read. I think they were wrong to use it. I cannot think of a different term to describe this amortality malarkey but it is definitely not moving forwards, but backwards.
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| One hundred and fifty-two years down, three hundred more to go |
Thirdly, happiness and satisfaction as we know them will probably be lost to amortality. As I mentioned before on this blog, to me happiness is the moment, the instant that makes us smile and love life just that little bit more. Satisfaction stays with you longer because it is a process on which we invest time, energy and financial resources. Remove the need to seek out that self-fulfilling moment and we will become a planet of automatons. Well, I have mentioned robots in this post.
Part of the magic of life and being human is our constant endeavour. As hunter-gatherers that we were and still are, we set ourselves goals in life and we endeavour to achieve them. Sometimes we fail and we learn from our failures, or we do not and we fail again. It does not matter, it is still magic. Sadly, death occasionally robs us of the opportunity to taste our success. But it is the deal we make when we are born. Amortality would probably sound the death knell of human strife.
However, I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that if/when amortaility becomes a reality there will be people taking the opposite route, bumping themselves off just to show that there is more to life than eternal life. You could call it death perhaps (by the way, amortality is not immortality. The former does not exclude physical demise through violent means). As in a beginning, a middle and an end. The irony of it? All they would be demonstrating would be the magic of life, human life.
©2015
Next Post: “Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts” to be published on Wednesday 3rd June at 6pm (GMT)
Soooooo not for me. For all the reasons you mentioned and more. Mind you, I am not sure that we will have a world to live on in 200 years.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'd rather just keep my health up and then go in my sleep when it is time, no robots extending my life for another 100 or more years.
ReplyDeleteDidn't Jonathan Swift have a take on this kind of world (and the horrors that went with it) in Gulliver's Travels? Yeah, not for me. Maybe I should go back and reread Arthur Clarke's "Childhood End"
ReplyDeleteI would not give it a second thought, CiL, much less a sleepless night.
ReplyDeleteTo begin, any number of catastrophes / calamities will probably put an end to humankind before another two hundred years pass. Overpopulation is my favorite choice of the slippery slope to oblivion, with mobs battling for the last bites of the last rats in New York City. Or, it would be fun to watch the approach of a comet on a collision course with earth -- we could have a final countdown. A pandemic actually would seem to be the most likely final scenario -- a virus of immeasurable strength wiping out "we mere mortals." It would especially be poetic if this virus arrived on earth as a passenger on a meteorite from another galaxy.
I have wondered out loud in the past if life seems to be a race between Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" and George Orwell's "1984." As for the theme of the book reviewed in the newspaper article in question, I think Mary Shelley sort of predicted such a future just a few years shy of two hundred years ago, so the author of the book is way, way, way late to the party. Science might progress quickly, but the imagination is faster.
An interesting post, CiL, and, essentially, I agree with your points.
Life is so sweet because we know it's so brief! I can't imagine us living on for almost ever... And also, the world will certainly give out with so many people using up its resources...
ReplyDeletehey - i don't think you have to worry cause i'm 100%sure that this will never happen. if you study the bible - before the flood people were 700 or 900 years old - and healthy - then things changed because of less ideal living conditions. we have gained a few years back with what medicine manages to do today but honestly - sometimes i wonder if it's worth it and what quality of life some people have left. our environment is getting worse and worse - sickness and allergies increase - the quality of our food decreases - so logic and history and what i see tells me that this is never going to happen... luckily...
ReplyDeleteI promise you - the world won't exist that long. Thankfully I shall be long gone before scientists overdo things... as is their wont!
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot for your comments.
ReplyDeleteUs scrambling over vermin? There's a thought :-). How would you like your rat, sir/madam? Well-done or rare? :-)
My biggest concern is that some idiot or a group of idiots will think it's worth investing time and money, and even humans (we don't know, do we?) on such an enterprise. We'll see.
Have a great week.
Greetings from London.
Greetings from London.
Hi Cubano, I think changes will come from medical advancement, which is certainly a kind of evolution. Hard to know. The trick seems to me to be staying healthy and vibrant longer-- not just alive-- and so far people don't seem that good at that-- but it is certainly an interesting topic--so many of our systems developed to encourage population growth-- they will definitely not work-- so what will be the new morality? All ibteresting-and a little scary! Thanks. K.
ReplyDeleteAs Freddie Mercury said 'who wants to live forever?'. I agree with Fram too, catastrophe will probably hit before we get the chance to try amortality.
ReplyDeleteI bet we'd all jump at the opportunity, just as we are jumping at the opportunity to get knee and hip replacements and vascular surgery. These things were not available in my parents' time, I might add. My husband is on his third generation of pacemakers, the last one containing a defibrillator.He never refused any surgery that could prolong his life, and neither would I, cost or no cost. We are forward thinkers, visionaries, hopeful for things to keep getting better...We are going to embrace every single device that allows us to live longer and pain free. What for, you ask? Because we can!
ReplyDeleteWhat a horrifying thought. As one with a bus pass and wonky knees, I'm quite happy with the knowledge that my lifespan is finite. I have wrinkles because that is what skin does. I shall pop my clogs when the time comes - and pass the baton onto my wonderful children and grandchildren. No amortality for me, thank you!
ReplyDeleteTan solo hoy te dejo mis saludos, que pases una buena semana.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with some of the others - I think that we will manage to destroy the earth, and/or our race long before we arrive at amortality. In the meantime, health care already seems to be creating a chasm between those who can afford life-extending treatments and those who cannot. I can certainly visualize a future where the wealthy live well past 100 with lab grown organs and robotic prosthetics, while the poor continue to die young from things like malaria, malnutrition, and diarrhoea.
ReplyDeleteI hate to be a cynic, but I don't think humans will improve any if they were given the "gift" of amorality. We'd find other ways of killing and oppressing each other. There are a couple of science fiction stories that predict societies where the wealthy are immortal and everybody dies. That sounds all-too believable.
ReplyDeleteYes...think I'll be having sleepless nights too, after reading this!
ReplyDeleteAll the current genetic experiments we hear about already set off alarm bells within me...will we someday create and unleash an indestructible monster race that will destroy us all?
And I totally agree with Rob, humans with the "gift" of amorality would still find ways of destroying or oppressing each other regardless of their new indestructible status.
I really hope I don't live long enough to see the metamorphosis...
A deeply thought-provoking post, CiL.
Many thanks!
Have a Good Day! :
I don't know about us destroying the Earth. She has a few more tricks up her sleeve than we can even begin to conjure up. We might end up destroying each other, though. That is entirely in the realm of possibility. You shouldn't lose sleep over it, ACIL. You've got a distinct advantage over those bullies and stapler stealers: integrity--moral as well as intellectual. No scientist can re-create or manipulate it. If you cultivate it in your kids and others do likewise, then we humans might have a chance of not just surviving but thriving
ReplyDeleteeternal life? Not for me. I hope I die long before that. :) I read an SF book on the topic a few weeks ago. The humans had learned how to get eternal life. But, at a cost. All creativity and art was lost in the process. Living hundreds of years, people long for music and art but nobody was able to create. They had to spare a few talented people that had to create and then die of old age.
ReplyDeleteHave you watched Black Mirror? It's on Netflix. It's a British TV series and each episode documents a future in which technology has changed things, usually with bad, bad results. One episode involved a chip we all have (optional) that records everything we see. We could replay anything we wanted and even beam it to a TV screen. So married couples get in arguments and replay past things... It was very powerful. I think they're making a movie of it...Robert Downey Jr. is starring I think?
ReplyDelete