Saturday Evenings: Stay In, Sit Up and Switch On

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.

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.

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 3^rd June at 6pm (GMT)

Urban Diary

As soon as I get off at Victoria station I notice the buzz. The blue and white scarves, the Samsung logo emblazoned across the shirts. The District/Circle Line platform is alive with the sounds of victory chants. ¡Campeones, campeones, olé, olé, olé!. It might feel strange to hear Spanish words amongst the mainly Anglophone crowd but this is the Premier League we are talking about here, the multi-million pound business that makes globalisation feel real and palpable. Chelsea Football Club has a powerful Brazil-born Spanish striker up front, a no-nonsense Serbian midfielder sitting in front of the defence, a promising, up-and-coming Dutch left-back and a world-class Belgian goalkeeper. Only two of Chelsea’s all-conquering regular team were born in this country. Who cares, though? Today it is all about celebrating.

What was a trickle at Victoria station becomes a flood thronging out at the gates of Fulham Broadway tube station. The Royal blue flags are out and for a couple of square miles become the only sight to behold. Correction: the only beautiful sight to behold. As I take up my position behind one of the barriers to see the three open-top victory parade buses I scan the crowd. Standing next to the cockney-rhyming-slang Londoners are turbaned Sikhs, pram-pushing Eastern-European-looking men and hijab-wearing Muslim women. Families mill out and about, the atmosphere is more suitable to Alton Towers than Fulham Road. But this is modern football, served with a tall skinny latte.

The temperature cannot seem to make its mind up. My hoodie is pulled down and pulled back up in quick succession. I regret my decision not to wear anything Chelsea today. I console myself with the thought that since where I live is not an SW6 postcode I am being sensible by not standing out. But I feel jealous of my fellow supporters. I, too, have got the shirts, the jumpers and the hoodies. Back home.

Suddenly there is a roar. The first of the three buses appears at the top of the road. The blue flags are hoisted higher. The chants grow louder. Parents hug their children closer. Selfie sticks spring up. Smartphones are held aloft. The players wave from the bus. The crowd waves back. London shrinks.

© 2015


Photo by the blog author

Next Post: “Saturday Evenings: Stay In, Sit Up and Switch On”, to be published on Saturday 30^th May at 6pm (GMT)