spifflink: Yeah, I think this is a good direction, although I hesitate about establishing a negative connotation between Immortalist thought processes and complete mental breakdowns/alienation from society. What do you guys think?
I think that it’d be okay to include a character with some risk-averse characteristics. It’s always possible to do it in a palatable way without it being one of the major attributes of the character. For example, the character could have a strong Buddhist spirituality, who has simply come to believe that simplicity allows for a more intellectually refining lifestyle. Keeping things simple, therefore, means that basic, biological and psychological needs are identified, and what follows is the natural tendency
not to want things rather than
avoiding them.
The character could convey some genius in certain respects because of his or her choice to be productive for income purposes and also productive for sophistication. In other words, even though the character is “simple,” it must be manufactured likable to the largest audience possible.
The plotline could be chronological and involve a profound development in the character from childhood discovering the power of philosophy and science, to adulthood creating a powerful network of minds in making immortality possible, to maturity in which the audience would get a sense of posthuman capacities that can’t even be fathomed yet.
However, I would caution that making a movie like this will get discouraging philosophical bashing like the “Matrix” movies did regardless how thoughtful and dead-on your premises are.
For example: You would have to assume that life is better than death, which is not the case for a lot of people. Simply asserting that “oblivion” equals death is not very compelling; if we’re oblivious, we can’t care that we’re dead; a love for life must exist prior to any scary thoughts that oblivion might evoke. You would then need to assume that immortal life is better than a relatively long life. No one can make this assertion because no one has led a really long life, especially in times when the world is always changing and people are forced to constantly reinvent themselves in order to survive. This is exhilarating for some, but not for everyone. And one of the only attitudes that would nicely circumvent this problem is social Darwinism, but the world currently refuses to embrace this ethical predilection.
Anything Transhumanistic is too intellectual, meaning that it takes too much thinking to appreciate. People can’t be sold on these ideas. These ideas are unmarketable whatever the entertainment quality. People who embrace them are too smart to be marketed to. They embrace them on their own.