Emortalism 101
Introduction
This is the first in a series of articles, in which I will try to put before you, budding or wannabe immortals—and some, I notice, detractors!—a selection of issues that I think have to be dealt with, but which immortalists usually ignore, all reiterations to the contrary notwithstanding.
A warning: some of you will find what I say offensive. I know you will, because I’ve read your postings, and I realize that if some of you are not offended or feeling threatened, or think that what follows is all a lot of crap or maybe just heresy, then I’ve probably not done my job very well.
To those who object to what follows, and which they might consider arrogant and insensitive, let me note the following in anticipatory response:
1) It wasn’t meant to be offensive, but thought–provoking. You are not afraid of thought, are you?
2) You wanna be an immortal? Live with it then, because if you are offended by simple questions of truth and self-inspection, you may live to a ripe old age, but in a state of steadily increasing mental sclerosis.
3) Ask yourself what really bothers you about what you’re reading. Is it that you don’t want to think about these things in that way? If so, why not? Is it that you simply disagree? Why does that bother you? Do you think you will learn nothing from being made to read about issues you will have to address some day, possibly soon?
4) Give it some more years in an emortalist state of mind, some more thought, some maturing of your own ideas, and a lot of you, I predict, will end up with thoughts that will, at least to some degree, parallel those I’m outlining below. I may be rather blunt about it, but then again, a born diplomat I’m not. So, sue me.
I shall presume that everybody else, despite their potential disagreement, will be provoked sufficiently into examining themselves and their motives and aspirations for these articles to have had some value. They are not written because I have nothing better to do with my time—because I do!—but because, while I cannot contribute much to the immortalist effort in scientific terms, there are some things I’d like to share with those who, at least with respect to the basics of immortalism (‘I don’t want to die!’) completely agree with me. It may save you some time in your philosophical agonizings—which I hope you have!—and also help; because here’s someone who has spent a long time being a conscious, declared emortalist (and an even longer time being one in spirit, though in-the-closet), and he has asked himself a lot of very troublesome questions throughout the years, and despite it all, he’s still an emortalist—more so than ever. That’s got to be telling, yes?
[Sidebar: So, if I have other things of significance to do with my time, why am I writing this? Two reasons that I can see. 1) Because, though I have what is generally called a ‘full’ life (family, work, friends, writing, moviemaking, kenjitsu, and more), it is still true that in one particular aspect of my life is essentially solitary, needs to be constantly concealed, and there’s basically nobody around to ‘understands’. The existence of an on-line community is important and helps somewhat to alleviate a certain loneliness many of us live with every day. Man and woman are not islands. 2) Because writing things down helps me with gathering a lot of material and thoughts together and putting them down in an, at least semi-coherent, form. This helps me, too. 3) Emortalists need to spend more time thinking seriously about themselves and the future in the context of humanity as a whole, and less about themselves as isolated entities. If I can do anything to help that along a bit, I must try.]
Where to start? There’s so much to say.
How about we start with why I dislike the word ‘immortal’?
1) because of the linguistic and contextual baggage
2) because it’s the wrong word
Nobody will live ‘forever’. Period. Not anyway ‘alive’ as they know it now. Whatever they end up as—and I decline, for cogent reasons, which I may get to later, to consider my ‘mind’ in a computer as ‘living’—if they last forever, which is a very long time indeed (and I doubt that those who wish to have any notion what it actually means!), they won’t be recognizable, not even by themselves, as anything like what they are now. That may be OK for those unable to await the ‘transhuman’ phase of their lives, but… Later.
So, since nobody will live forever, ‘immortal’ is a really crappy word, and Alvin Silverstein’s ‘emortal’, implying an existence without the necessity to die—though it may still happen any moment through any number of contingencies, probably accidental—is a much better term. Henceforth I shall continue to use it, coming back to ‘immortal’ only in instances when it is really more appropriate and always with deliberation and for purposes of nuance.
[Sidebar: excuse my lingering on terminology, but if you think in sloppy terminology your thoughts are likely to be sloppy as well. This is not opinion, but fact.]
In my years as an emortal (so far, so good, and who can prove that it’s not so?) I have made an extensive study of those who profess to aspire to the same things I do. I have spoken to some, corresponded with others, read shitloads of material from many more. I have come across a few I’ve learned to respect and admire, a disconcerting number of lunatics, plenty of pseudo-new-age self-centered/self-important pompous idiots, religious fervents (Christian, Jeish, and pseudo-‘Eastern’; though somehow Muslims never seem to drift into the camp, unless it’s the occasional ‘lapsed’ one), ardent capitalists, neo-conservatives, Libertarians, and the list goes on and on.
A lot of the immortalists I am aware of are disconcertingly deluded and/or shallow. The deluded ones are mostly those who adopt ‘immortalism’ as a kind of religion, not realizing that the moment it becomes that way is the moment it begins to defeat its own purpose. The rest, those who at least have no illusions about afterlife and God and mummery like that…well, you’d hope they’d do better—but beyond not wanting to die and doing whatever it takes to make this desire into a virtue—meaning adopting, or constructing, philosophies that provide suitable justifications for their desire—they haven’t really gone very far. In addition, tender souls that they are, many of them are incapable of dealing with criticism of their immortalism by those who disagree or find it incomprehensible and/or ludicrous and/or unnatural and/or whatever. In other words, instead of embracing immortalism in a religious way, they do the next best thing: embracing it as an ideology—which is just about as bad. The emortalist cause cannot be helped by brainless fervor. What it needs is implacable determination.
I can understand the need for ‘ideologizing’ emortalism—up to a point. Unlike the vast majority of you, I’ve lived through a period where emortalism was really considered…well, stupid, I guess. Terminally dumb. It couldn’t be achieved, so why even think about it, and besides it was unnatural and ungodly and blahblahblah. I know what it’s like to live under such circumstances. I suspect that being an atheist in Iran comes fairly close. (OK, so I’m kidding! It’s not half as bad as that…Being an atheist in Iran, I mean…) Sometimes the only defense against the majority deathist attitude appears to be the ardor of fervor. Still, I’m not sure it’s the best approach to take. Fervor, or so I have observed, only begets sclerotic stupidity. Not a good start for the emortalist project…
The scintillating spectrum of immortalists (not ‘emortalists’ since few even know the term, much less use it) leaps into clearer focus when we look at some of the reasons why people ‘join’ the camp, so to speak. Over the years I have discerned the following:
The common factor is, not unsurprisingly, that ‘I don’t wanna die’ —and who can blame us?
But what makes someone ‘become’ an ‘immortalist’?
Let’s look at a small sample of the gaudy collection of folks I’ve chanced across:
1) Those who have had a true brush with death and don’t like it one bit.
2) Those who have undergone an ‘awareness experience’ of death—meaning folks who have allowed themselves to drift into a region of their deep, dark psyche, where they become aware of the sheer terror associated with the notion of personal extinction. It is rare that people allow themselves to go there, because it is a very, very dark and frightening place—especially if you have no religion and if you are possessed of that elusive quality known as ‘imagination’.
3) Those who couldn’t stomach the religious ‘afterlife’ bullshit anymore.
4) Those who believe that some immortal guru has given them a revelation that they, too, can be like him.
5) Those who surfed the web and came across a ‘physical immortality’ website, and thought ‘wow, this is nifty—why don’t I join?? here’s something really cool!’ or something along those lines.
6) Those who read too much Robert Heinlein—though I don’t know if you can do that—or other immortalist-related fiction (and there is stuff out there aplenty).
7) Those who are total losers with shithouse lives—or no lives at all—who just want more time to get a chance to procrastinate a bit longer, and preferably much longer, not doing now what they can then postpone indefinitely as well.
8) A related category, many of which you’ll also find at science-fiction and fantasy conventions, for whom ‘immortality’ just takes the place of any other whimsy they might fancy. Think devoted ‘Trekkies’. (BTW, I am a Star Trek devotee myself, but I also write fiction. So…)
9) Those who have had people they loved die, usually from some stupid disease they wouldn’t have died from is only society spent more time, effort and money on healing sick people.
10) Those who think it’s going to make them really, really rich and powerful.
11) Those who really just want to be ‘transhuman’ and ‘explore’ every facet of what they think of as ‘existence’. (These folks generally think that being ‘human’ is a rather low-value thing, so eager are they to be ‘more’.)
12) Those who want to travel to the stars and find out if there’s life out there. (Not the armchair type, but those who realize that long life is a prerequisite for getting the space drive started again.)
13) Those to believe that ‘Time will have all the answers to all the ancient questions’.
14) Those who do not want those they love to age, get sick and/or die.
15) Those who will readily interchange ‘immortalism’ with any other framework of belief, provided it satisfies them at the time. They might as well be Greenies or Mormons, and might, indeed, switch in due course, when their whimsy takes them that way.
16) Computer geeks whose ability to relate to their fellow human beings is so stunted, that computers are the closest thing to a ‘relationship’ they’ll ever have.
17) Those who want to be around, to make sure that they can do what they can to help the human species survive.
18) Those who just want to ‘be around’ to see what happens.
19) (The rarest breed of all, but I know of a very few who I believe genuinely fall into that category.) Those who just want to be around so they can help people and make the world a better place for all.
It’s a subset of ‘immortalists’, but a colorful one, as you will admit. There will be others, to be sure. The human creature is so varied and fascinating. Far too fascinating, I’d like to submit, for any need, for the foreseeable future and maybe a significant number of centuries beyond that, to become ‘transhuman’—except in the sense that being emortal would be a kind of ‘trans’-human existence, because emortality would change its most fundamental parameter.
A lot of those listed above share a feature which in non-immortalists I wouldn’t worry about in the least, but which in people who aspire to live forever, or at least for very long, becomes an highly undesirable feature. It’s the me-me-me! thing. What I want. The life I lead. The things I will do. And so on, ad nauseam.
Don’t misunderstand me: there’s nothing wrong with egocentricity. As I said before: emortalism emerges from our desire not do die—and that is all about ‘me’, and anybody who denies this is a fraud. Most who come to emortalism do so motivated by their fear—yes, ‘fear’—of personal extinction. In the good old days they would have become devotees of whatever religion was handy; but not so today, because most of us know it’s bullshit—or, at best, metaphor. Furthermore, the generations raised in the post-60s climate of Californian-bred narcissism, will probably see nothing wrong with that anyway. ‘I want to stay alive and that’s just got to be good’, period, and screw anybody who thinks different and anyway ‘I’m supposed to love myself, right?’
Right. And wrong. Because, you see, narcissism is, after all, a ‘deathist’ state of mind to live in. Selfishness is essentially puerile. A lot of people never grow out of it, of course—but that’s not the point, is it?
What is the point?
That we have to learn to assume the point of view of people who will live for a long time indeed. And that means, folks, that a lot of customary knee-jerk reactions and entrenched behaviorisms just won’t do anymore. Things you assumed were OK aren’t: not for emortals. You may justifiably ask to be excused while you’re a self-centered jerk during your growing-up phase (and who isn’t?), but don’t expect the world to be a good place to be, or the future to hold any promise, with a gazillion of you swarming around, all looking out for number one and screw the rest. The future will not just depend on our eco-consciousness but also on our social maturity. That’s infinitely more important than our ability, or not, to amuse ourselves with endless games and pursuits while we live beyond our customary limits.
Think about that! The vast majority of emortalists I know and have heard of, or whose writings I’ve come across, from books to websites, have no idea—not even a notion that they should have an idea!—of the responsibility we are all going to assume for our future, and the future of the species!, by seeing the emortalist project to completion.
Think of this: that emortalism will demand of us, more than ever, to understand that no man or woman is an island; and that, ultimately, the stupid egocentrism that currently pervades the emortalist camp, is not only futile, but ultimately will prove destructive and the undoing or perversion of the project itself—and that, at the deepest level of our being we will never—not as long as we remain ‘human’—find any kind of fulfillment in ‘games’, ‘interests’, ‘pursuits’ or whatever you want to call it
Let me finish this introduction by leaving you with these thoughts (yeah, I know, I’ve said enough, but so what?):
There’s a saying, probably Chinese, that says that you learn more from those who disagree with you than those who agree. Or, to put it differently, an enemy will always teach you more than a friend.
Which is why I love Leon Kass. I do! I’ve mentioned this before, but let me say it again: he provides legitimacy to our project (nothing provides legitimacy like a high-profile adversary!) and free publicity besides (we should pay the man!). The value of any anti-immortalist speech by him to the emortalist cause is inestimable.
Instead of being petulant and derisive of his arguments, maybe we should use them to become clearer about why he is wrong. I mean, he is wrong—at least from my point of view; and probably from yours as well. But he has some valid points, lurking inside his arguments, ethics and morals, and unless we address these and use what he says and writes to clarify our own ethical position—beyond saying ‘of course it’s a good thing!’, which is a religious/ideological answer and I already noted that emortalists cannot afford ideologies or the ideological mind-set!—unless we deal with the the points he tends to raise again and again, we’re not making the best use of the guy. We’re also lying to ourselves—and emortalists, unlike ‘ordinary’ folks, cannot afford that either. Above all, we will never be able to counter his arguments and convince others that his persuasive rhetoric conceals the truth about what could be.
And now, to end, let me debunk an emortalist myth, as old as the movement itself: one of those things that everybody seems to believe and everybody parrots over and over again, mainly because they want to believe it. It’s a comforting statement-of-faith and it’s something you can throw in the face of anybody who disagrees and brings up the subject of eventual ‘boredom’.
The myth it this: we will always find something to interest us, no matter how long we live; the world is such an exciting place that there will never be an end to the possible ‘projects’ we can take up.
This is bullshit. Or, to be more precise, the assumption that this somehow must be true is bullshit. People who parrot it evidence the kind of profound lack of imagination that sometimes makes me feel rather bleak about them being around forever and a day.
Why is it bullshit? There is no ‘why’! It just is. People don’t function that way, and it’s not going to change any just because they live longer. On the contrary: it’ll only exacerbate the problem.
Ever seen the cartoon about the writer, sitting behind his word-processor, unable to come up with ideas about what to write next? Then his wife comes in and says ‘Honey, we’ve got to be off now, to see the Whoevers for dinner!’—and all of a sudden the ideas pop into his head from every direction…
It is a fact of human psychology that this represents a very true and fundamental human condition: urgency, especially the urgency created by a lack of time, is a major creative influence. (I know this well: I am a writer, and I have worked hard on dealing with this kind of torpor; and the only way to deal with it is through a mental state known as ‘discipline’, which we also cultivate in our martial arts sessions in the dojo.) Without discipline and the important additional factor of ‘meaning’, the availability of vast amounts of time creates what basically amounts to a ‘playboy’ mentality, which is just an adult form of puerile aimlessness.
Now, some people would argue that that would be OK with them, as long as they don’t have to die. A problem better had than not. Let’s jump off that bridge when we get to it. Right?
There’s something to be said for that. But dismissing the issue like that evidences, at best, a lack of imagination and insufficient self-knowledge. It certainly proves that those who say it aren’t even remotely prepared for an emortalist existence. They do not realize that the currently-implicit finitude of the basically frivolous life many people lead is one of the major reasons why people can sustain it. The mere existence of ‘projects’ and ‘interesting activities’ to tackle is not a sufficient for engaging in them. In other words ‘it’s there’ is not enough of a reason for ‘let’s do it’. More on this in the next article.
Why do we ‘do’ things?
Well, apart from often being driven into them through contingency or as a consequence of the inexorability of cause-and-effect, we occasionally actually have the luxury to choose, and, if we’re lucky, we manage to base our choice not on some external or narcissistic pressure but because we realize that we have found something meaningful to invest our time (and lives) in. This is important—and becomes more so for emortalists. Most people look for ‘meaning’, whether they know it or not. The rest do what they can to distract themselves, or are forced by circumstance into situations where they have no choice but to be distracted, from the fact that they are.
The emortalist condition will amplify our awareness of the need for ‘meaningful activity’—for this is part of what distinguishes humans from animals, and it has it roots in evolution and the structure of our brain. If you want a less neurological perspective, you may prefer to see it as being a part of our ‘psyche’ or even ‘soul’—but that all just words for the same thing.
I’ll tackle the issue of ‘meaning’ in an emortalist context in the next article.
Let me leave you with this quote, usually attributed to Marcus Aurelius:
“Were you to live three thousand years, or even thirty thousand, remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment...”
About The Author: (Excerpt From Till's ImmInst Introductory Post)
My name is Till Noever, and I live in Dunedin, New Zealand.
I've generally kept under the radar in the immortality (longevity, 'emortality') debate—though Aubrey de Grey might remember my name from way back and another context. If you type 'Till Noever' into a search engine, stuff will come up from a long time ago.... [ MORE ]
Emortalism 102