Recently, I’ve become completely obsessed with the idea of living forever - of becoming the master of my own fate, prolonging if not avoiding the inevitable. Perhaps it’s because of my unpalatable outlook on death itself, or maybe I've seen the Last Crusade too many times, but ever since I’ve refuted all religion, and decided that there is nothing after we leave this world, I’ve become terrified of going coldly into that dark night. And I’m not here to start a religious debate.
Now while for many, immortalising themselves in death is enough, that is to say - leaving behind a substantial legacy to which you will always be remembered. Be it a musical masterpiece, a son or daughter, or even an overwhelming act of kindness - there are many ways to be remembered by those who survive you. But for me and many others, we choose to define immortality in the truest sense of the word, and try to refute the claim that living forever is a trait only possessed by Gods or fictional characters. So all of this got me to thinking (and googling), and we haven’t even nearly reached the pinnacle of the technological revolution - in fact we’ve only grazed it’s outermost corners. So what if immortality is to us, what a smartphone would have been to someone 20 years ago?
Humans have been pushing the boundaries of life expectancy for decades. We now live twice as longer as we did 100 years ago and we’re still pushing that figure. Google’s Ray Kurzweil believes that the human race will be immortal by 2030 and reportedly takes up to 250 vitamins a day to sustain his health until that time. Perhaps the most realistic shot humanity has at immortality, Kurzweil believes we will be able to upload our consciences to a computer in the near future allowing us to live as machines theoretically forever. Since computer processing power has nearly doubled every 18 months since 1965, by 2030 there could be a machine powerful enough to harness the complexity and sheer magnitude of our brains.
Tortoises and lobsters can live forever(but don’t(ever)). An Aldabra Giant tortoise named Adwaita lived to be 255 (which interestingly enough is nearly a whopping 3 decades older than the age of America). We as humans age because when our cells are constantly dividing and losing what is called telomeres. When cells reach the Hayflick Limit - the point in which a cell is too short to divide - we begin to die. However this doesn’t happen with tortoises and lobsters meaning their chances of dying don’t increase the older they get meaning their DNA could hold the key to humans living forever.
Just like Einstein predicted gravitational waves, Demolition Man could predict the future. While Pizza Hut will never monopolise the world’s restaurant industry, cryogenics is a real thing and as I type there are over 180 people kept in various facilities all over the world whose bodies or heads(the latter costing significantly less) have been preserved with liquid nitrogen, hopefully to be resurrected in the future. The only issue is that scientists are relying on technology that hasn’t been invented yet but are hoping our future brethren will have the power and indeed technology to pull off the impossible - a procedure currently beyond the bounds of possibility.
There are many other ways scientists have been exploring the possibility of realising this obsession, and many TED talks I would encourage you to watch, particularly by Aubrey De Grey - the chief scientist working on reversing the aging process. But mainly I’d ask for you to look at the research with an open mind, and really ask yourself how you’d feel if it were all a possibility. Would you be among the first to sign up, or is it morally objectionable to play God and upset the natural order of things? Or is this just the next logical step of Darwinism, where in the future there’ll be paper’s published entitled: “How we used to die”.
If nothing, I hope this articles brings solace to those who are like me - semi-crippled by the thought of death, and perhaps the thought of immortality, like a religion, makes the ascendency period easier to deal with. If not, you can Demolition Man again.
