Immortality

"I intend to live forever, or die trying." -Groucho Marx. 

I do not want to die. I assume this is true for most of us. Sure the acutely depressed, perhaps spiritually enlightened and the ultra complacent might welcome death, but most of us want to live forever. In fact, most of the major religions of the world teach some form of immortality albeit mostly manifested through leaving the physical body and the tangible Earth. I, however, want to live in this form and in this place forever. In fact, most of the people I know desire this too. But if I succeed in living forever, I also want to maintain activity, intelligence and curiosity. Perhaps this could go unsaid, but if I lose all or portions of my ability to act, think, and investigate, then I am partially dead. So to be alive at 198 but bed-ridden, demented, and reliant on a machine for respiration, is not living forever; it is existing forever, and that I do not necessarily want to do. So I must amend my opening statement to I want to live forever with a high quality of life.

Ironically, almost every character in film and literature who is presented as immortal ends up pretty much detesting it. They tend to outlive everyone they know and love, they tend to be too experienced to connect with the new people

they meet, they tend to be bored and tired of the world, and they tend to indulge in excess in order to feel some sense of enthusiasm or thrill. In other words, our great creative minds, when focused on immortality, tell us that it ain’t so great. Yet I still want to live forever, and fortunately for me, the medical field is focused on satisfying my desire. Of course medical technology and advancement is still a long long way from assuring my immortality, but at least immortality does seem to be the goal of the field. 

So we mostly no longer look for an elixir of life in strange metallic compounds and exotic animal parts or search deep crevices and

ancient caves for a fountain of youth. Now, the medical field has become our best bet at achieving that ever elusive immortality. 

The dilemma occurs of course on several levels. On one level, if the medical field continues to prolong life with quality, lots of things get messed up. Our economy is based on the idea that retired people will not live too long, but

retired people are living a long time in their post-work world. Funding this is problematic, and if the trend continues, it would only make sense to push the retirement age to 70 or 75 or 80. But wait, I don’t want to work that long. I want to retire at 60 or around there and travel, relax, do those cool things I never had time to do when I was working. Retirement is not the only issue, population sustainability is another problem. I addressed this in my last blog, but in sum, if we do not die, the population issue is really problematic. And what about relationships? Will we see nine or twelve marriages over the course of a 200 year life. Will we play catch with our great-great-great grandfathers? Will we have real difficulty figuring out who our half siblings are?  So practically, even if the medical field could grant us immortality with quality of life, we should refuse it. I’m not sure I’m that altruistic, however.

Another ugly issue that must be addressed is the issue of natural order. Some call this playing God. Many contradictions exist here. On one hand, those hardcore religious people who spurn medical intervention of any kind are accepting the natural order of all living beings. If I am injured or become ill, I will either naturally recover, or I will die. The natural order of survival will regulate life and death. Our brains evolving into inquisitive rational states however also seems natural, and it is this natural state that has produced science that is helping us recover better and live longer. So do we embrace this as natural, or condemn it as unnatural. We seem to do both. We condemn cloning and stem cell stuff as too manipulative, but we praise surgeons who can transplant a vital organ and see nothing unnatural about living with someone else’s 

kidney. Nietzsche believed that technological advancement left unchecked would lead to our destruction. If we include life-lengthening intervention, it very well could. 

So here we go again. The hypocrisy exists through my strong desire to play god mixed with my rational understanding that playing god is not all that good for humanity and through my desire to live forever when I know that living forever would probably really suck.