On Immortality

I wrote the bulk of this on May 24 just after I finished my university final year exams but I didn't post it. Today, I finished it off. And now, after all these months, you get to read it, Larry, you sick fuck.

It it with some guilt and trepidation that I proceed to put forward what I fear will be trite and pretentious so-called 'reflections' on the character of the angst of young people with comfortable upbringings as they confront a new section their lives. However, the angst felt by amateur bloggers is, if possible, less compelling so I had better get over this and proceed.

One thing that people seem to be concerned with is the extent of the command over the world's resources that they expect to be afforded by the various employments that are in prospect for them. A fellow graduand predicted that, in seven or so years, he would be compensated for the application of his knowledge of English law with goods amounting to an equivalent of eighty thousand pounds every year. Others were disposed to compare the scale of their annual consumption now (typically around half of an average British income) to conservative estimates of the remunerations prevailing in the industries to which they proposed to hire their labour power. Many expected that the increase in income would lead to an unprecedented capability to acquire consumer electronics and a relaxed attitude towards restaurant bills.

It was not thought that the future would be unambiguously better than the present. Quantity of resources is only one of a plurality of criteria by which future well-being may be measured. A colleague was grimly confident that he would never again be able to down tools and go outside to enjoy fine weather.

Intense work of the kind required for university finals leaves no time for reflection. It requires concentration on specifics; broader concerns are forgotten; as is the inevitability of death. The period after a time of intense work thus encourages mild catatonia and a heightened awareness of mortality. It is often said that young think that they will live forever. They may claim to fully acknowledge that we all will certainly die but they do not give that fact the proper attention in their thoughts and actions.

And, indeed, I find it difficult to believe that it is so certain that I will die. It has not yet been conclusively demonstrated that I, you and anyone else now alive will ever die. Of the 90-110 billion people that have ever lived, it has not been shown that 6.67 billion are mortal. The same is true of all the world's plants, fungi and other members of animal species living now. Several of my ancestors have not died. As such there may be a genetic precedent for my immortality. A critic might point out that all of my ancestors who have not died are the ones who have been most recently born. Furthermore, they constitute a vanishingly small fraction of the group of people to whom I owe my genetic inheritance. Most of them have shown themselves to be susceptible to the process of cell-death and corruption evinced in the ageing process.

But then I certainly feel immortal. I remember remarking to my mother when I was about five that while I realised that I had only been around for about five years, it felt like forever to me. I feel much the same way now. Also, as I consider my future, I am only in a position to prepare for or conceive of the next year or so. I may live for much longer than a year, it may as well be eternity.

What would eternal life be like? Very bad, say some, notably Ronnie the Bear who, in Wizard People, Dear Reader, declaims against heaven, calling it "the sick bed of pansy lies":



Far better "to live in the flesh and blood of the now" than to dwell on the possibility of cowardly dreams of infinite life. Dicky Dawkins takes a similar line, saying that he would like two to three hundred years but no more.




He imagines that such a period of time would be sufficient to be hailed as a Númenórean overlord provided that it was only he that enjoyed such a span of life. I think that four or six hundred years would be necessary for such a plan, something that he will perhaps realise in time. In this endeavour he will, of course, be well served by his knowledge of genetics; doubtless he could adapt his body for expiry at three hundred but leave open the possibility for extension of a further three hundred years when he reached two hundred and fifty. I wish him well.

I am quite happy with the idea that I might live forever. Given the likely progress of matter into drifted-apartness and entropy most of this eternal life would be spent floating alone in space; I would need to have plenty of interesting things to think about; maybe I would extend my immortality to some books and DVDs. That is unless you subscribe to the theory of the oscillating universe: big bang, big crunch, big bang, big crunch, big bang, big crunch ek setru. In fact, if the universe does oscillate then the theory of the oscillating universe is true whether you subscribe to it or not; why you ever thought that your weak-minded opinions have an effect on material reality I do not know. You're just an egotist like the rest of them, I guess.