Do you know the movie 'The Box'? I didn't until I clicked the 'play' button last weekend and gave this movie a chance. IMDB wasn't very positive with a 5.6 rating. Normally, I would ignore such a movie. However, the short summary I read intrigued me enormously.
It was about the choice between doing nothing and receiving money with a dead person as a consequence. Not just any money. A million dollars. In the 70s! That's a lot of money! A movie with an 'impossible' choice, or maybe better said, a 'difficult' choice.
Money versus Morals ...
Although it was to be predicted the money would be chosen, the movie was still quite interesting in some respects. A story with unexpected twists here and there. Not too bad acting. Nicely portrayed. Great cinematography. With a huge retro look and feel. Colours jumped off the screen!
The plot (no spoiler alert): A lot of things happen that we cannot directly relate to what we know from science, which could give this film the label of science fiction. However, the story revolves more around the choice and how to live with the choice instead of being a SyFy movie; The pressure we experience when we choose something we know is the wrong choice from the start.
I myself like these kinds of choices. Not to make them, but to philosophize about them. For example, I find the choice between the finite life we know and an infinite life very interesting. For many, an easy choice: The finite one. However, for me, this choice is not so obvious at all. I would like to experience our world as it is say, 100 years from now. The 22nd century. And, if we make it, also the 23rd century. If I were to choose the normal end of my earthly existence, I would have to hope for an afterlife or something similar, where I still have some kind of contact with earthly life. But hope is not a certainty. The choice for infinite life guarantees that I can experience everything I would like to experience. What has AI resulted in, for example? Are humans living in harmony with AI in the 22nd century? How have our societies transformed? Does the concept of 'money' still play a role? What has replaced it? How centrally or decentrally are our societies organized? Are we living in peace and harmony? Have we settled somewhere outside our planet? Will HIVE still exist? Oh, that last one might just be THE reason to choose infinite life 😆
But yeah, an infinite life is also a bit much. When I eventually hit 200 years, my life has just begun. On my 1000th birthday, I'm still not very far along. At 10,000 years, I still have a long time ahead of me. At a million, I may be the only human left. And what if I reach one billion years? Maybe the Earth no longer exists? Am I on some kind of spaceship? Maybe picked up by aliens, like Arthur Dent was picked up in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? As I write this, I think, "What an adventure that would be! Maybe I should just choose infinite life after all!"
Infinite is not finite. It will never, ever stop.
Uhm...
So I become ice-cold, 0 degrees Kelvin when the universe continues to expand and never implodes. Or do I become part of a black hole when the universe contracts and the inverse of a big bang take place?
Uhm...
When the universe implodes, isn't that the end of the infinity of my existence? That certainly offers possibilities! 🙃 How beautiful would it be if the choice for infinity ultimately results in finiteness?
In that case, the choice for me is super easy: I'll go for it!
What about you?
What would you choose?
70 to 100 years of life on Earth?
or
Eternity
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