Thursday, August 22, 2013
Immortalilty
In chapter sixteen of Jaron Lanier's Who Owns the Future? Lanier states that naturally, we humans think ourselves immortal. Though there are various evidence that the majority of our civilization believes in the concept of death and mortality as humans, Lanier groups us all together and states that we believe that we do not truly die. Of course religion plays a major part in the beliefs of an afterlife that could be considered immortality, but to generalize our thoughts as if all of our mindsets as humans are all the same seems, in a sense, close-minded. Humans individually are able to, and they do, think individual thoughts that seems to almost always contradict another's. The subject, however, had me pondering the concept of immortality. As Lanier states, our advancement in technology is rapidly improving and by this standard an actual, realistic, method of achieving immortality, or near-immortality, might just be possible. The question, though, is whether or not immortality is a trait that we should strive towards. In a state of immortality, we do not move forward, instead we stand, ageless as time keeps turning. For others this might be the perfect way to build everlasting empires, but for others it is just a sad cruel fate that they may never reach their lost loved ones. Left forever ageless, but never being able to move on and experience that our time should be passing, should immortality exist in our culture?
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Ivan, it's the day after my birthday, and I've been contemplating my own mortality. I was recently given a fistful of big fat yellow roses after a wedding reception, and I put the roses in a vase in my kitchen. Over the last many days, I've watched them wither and fade. Of course, they were doomed as soon as they were cut from their stems. On further reflection, they were doomed as soon as they formed into buds, when they were bud nuggets, mere bud potential.
ReplyDeleteSo, yes. I know intellectually that I am mortal -- and always have been. Lately, I know it in my bones, in my weakening eyesight, my slower reflexes. But I don't believe it somehow. No matter how many gravesides and bedsides I visit, it is inconceivable that this will also happen to me.
Human beings build towers and rockets to the heavens; we plumb the depths of the subatomic, write epic poetry, make beautiful music. The existence of an afterlife in our stories and belief systems demonstrate most poignantly how tenaciously we cling to life, even as we have to let it go, despite its sweetness or its terrible pain. This certainly connects us as human beings. It's not a wish, really. I've watched people very peacefully let go of their lives.
We think ourselves immortal even as we live our vulnerable lives.
Maybe teenagers can't see this yet since they are living within the most robustly immortal years -- the years where one feels invulnerable. We consider ourselves lucky if we can delay bumping up against the inevitable.