Life Extension, Immortality, and Society(Last Part)
If we do achieve the ability to become Immortal, extend our lifespans or reverse our ages... what exactly comes next?
Photo by Alexander Popov on Unsplash
This is the last post on the series about immortality and life extension. I delved into the possible consequences of life extension/immortality on some of the bedrocks of society. I had quite a bit to write on this, but I reserved some of my thoughts as that made this a lot more digestible.
Enjoy!
What does an immortal society look like?
Let’s say we manage to extend our lifespans indefinitely; that the scientists, investors, and transhumanists within their midsts all have their ways.
What would a “post-mortality" world look like?
It’s difficult to imagine, isn’t it? Or maybe you have some images floating through your head. Do you see flying cars for some odd reason too? Utopic visions of the future?
I’d argue predicting the future is pretty simple. You take a variable you want to observe and measure its impact today. Next, you simply go through all the possible consequences that may come as a result of that variable’s impact by inference.
Voila! Prediction.
But to predict doesn’t necessarily mean that one will be right. And neither do I expect to be.
For us to be able to imagine a post-mortality future we must ask ourselves this:
How much of society is framed on the perception that death is inevitable?
What does a society full of people living 50-60 years longer look like? What consequences would that have?
A lot of us expect to die. But even more so do we expect others to die. We constantly doubt our own mortality. So painful is this thought that our minds consciously try to shield us from it.
But eventually, we do think about it. There comes a time when death hits home. When we see someone we care about lose their lives. Death stares us all in the face.
It’s very easy to die, far harder to live.
As such, something as disruptive as death is bound to shape how we live.
This is obvious in the ways in which death is ingrained in society. It’s the one thing that’s always present, but also the one thing we all hate to talk about.
We have rituals that celebrate or mourn the dead. Some ancient philosophies concerned themselves with the presence of an afterlife. Some even believed — and still do— in a resurrection or the presence of a heaven and a hell.
We have laws that legally certify that one is indeed dead. Sometimes, death is even seen as honorable; a path to justice. Other times death appears to us as a feedback loop. One may encounter sayings such as:
“From the earth, they came, to the earth, they shall return”.
Quotes like this have us believe that death is a necessity. A concept that is integral to the sustenance of balance.
This may be valid. We must think about the finitude of resources this planet has. But I’ll come back to this point later. For now, I find myself believing this acceptance to be somewhat terrifying.
Humanity’s ability to grapple with horrors is a scary phenomenon. We readily accept that this thing we call consciousness will cease to exist. If we were to imagine some intelligent alien arriving on earth one day, what would their perception of human mortality be, especially if they have moved past it?
These traditions and unspoken rules that permeate culture are rarely present because we will them to be. They are present because we have no choice but to have them there.
So what changes if we lived longer? What happens to some of these social mores?
What about the concept of love?
Many of us imagine a love that lasts forever. We imagine monogamy to be the embodiment of our dedication towards this ideal. But what happens when you change, and they( your lover ) change? Would you rather adjust to those differences?
We fall in love by choosing to discriminate. We seek “the one” and in doing so, we consciously project our desire to want a certain set of traits. But if you do live eternally or even just 50 years longer, what assurance would you have that you wouldn’t change?
Furthermore, I can’t help but think of boredom. I don’t see immortality or an extended life as being boring, as much as I see the desire for change to be an ever-present need.
In a world full of endless distractions, how well do you think you can manage 3 hours of complete silence? I’d presume not that well. If you’re like me you probably reference your phone every few seconds. I mean these devices were designed to make us look in a certain direction every second. But these were designs to take hold of our instincts. They make use of our ever-present desire for change.
Stagnation can feel like death. In many ways, it can cause it. Sitting is the new smoking, isn’t it?
Life rewards and demands change. I simply believe then, that a longer life would demand a never-ending cycle of change. This will be no different in the way we approach work and it certainly will be no different in the way we approach love.
Generally, people still feel attached to the concept of “the one”. I asked my twitter timeline a while ago if monogamy would still be a viable option if they could live eternally with the youth and exuberance of a 25-year-old.
In general, many of the answers reaffirmed that they would indeed prefer the singularity that monogamy provides.
The most outstanding answer, in my opinion, was by a user with the username “Jeff”. He remarked that due to the law of large numbers, regardless of the separation that eternity may cause, a pair would always end up together.
Now, isn’t that romantic?
But what about reproduction? I mean, that is after all the biological reason for all of this messiness a love life introduces.
Do we have more or fewer babies? Would we see the benefits of having offsprings in the first place? And if we do, what role would they serve in our society?
I think back to China’s one-child policy, and the inhumane way with which it separated many parents from their children. But I can’t help but think this to be a feature in a world in which many of us are ever young and ever strong. Why wouldn’t it be?
A post-mortality world, or at least a “post early death” world, would have to grapple with the consequences of the resources that surround it. Unless it manages to become so technologically advanced that scarcity does not become an issue. But immortality and scarcity aren’t mutual concepts. And of the two, a technology that indefinitely extends one’s lifespan is bound to come first.
Laws like the one mentioned above would expand the reach of governments worldwide. Technology tends to have that effect though. We rarely think about how we create technology to protect ourselves from our fragility. But that is indeed what they do.
Technology helps us transcend those fragilities, but as a by-product, it reveals that those fragilities were ever-present. Then, it enhances those fragilities as some sort of balance, through law.
An example of this is exemplified in the invention of nuclear weapons. With it, humanity was able to destroy the world that birthed it. But as a byproduct, it brought forth a reality in which it (humanity) could destroy itself. Hence, the necessity of laws: To help limit us; to keep us, human, even though we might as well be gods.
An extended life could present us with a new bunch of laws. Many of which could be awesome. Some of which could be genuinely absurd and dangerous. No technology is a single-edged sword, and I do not think we should treat it that way, Despite my advocacy of a post mortality world, I genuinely do not think that I should be blind to the sort of despair such a world could bring upon us.
But those are what I believe to be some of the more gloomy parts of the consequences of a post mortality world. What are some of the good things such a world could bring?
Well, if post mortality does also mean enhanced health, then we could put an end to a lot of human suffering. The sort of pain a cancer patient goes through is unimaginable. Even worse when we realize that one’s likelihood of getting cancer increases as they grow older; as the body is more likely to malfunction. It would be a crime to increase the years that we get to spend on this earth while refusing to increase the amount of time we remain healthy.
There’s also the illusion of time that gives us so much angst.
As Einstein remarked:
The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
A lot of our daily stresses come from the fact that we set ourselves artificial boundaries. The student is expected to learn in a certain amount of time so they may obtain a job in the future that is rarely of great relevance to their personal aspirations.
The worker dreads that they do not have enough time to spend with their families.
The old person dreads that they may have wasted their time on earth.
Many of these fears, come due to thinking of all the different ways in which we may think that time is scarce.
What if we removed those artificial limits? Heck, what if death truly became optional?
These limitations exist because they are used to ground us; used to help us be more focused. They help us achieve more in less time. That said, a lot of those limitations are still self-imposed.
If we remove mortality from the equation, one gets to truly participate in the exploration of the universe at a scale like none before. One gets to travel and learn… and build…invent… philosophize…celebrate. Only when one feels that they are tired of it all, could they choose eternal rest.
But I place emphasis on the nature of choice here, because as of now, this choice does not exist.
A lot of what we commit to, we do so because we are cognizant of our limited time. Actions are an investment no matter how beneficial they may be to an individual or society at large.
A truly satisfying life— in my opinion—is thus exemplified in being able to get what you want. But this requires an element of control over one’s environment which in turn takes time to manifest.
The introduction of true control and mastery over one’s environment would be the single greatest achievement a post-scarcity world could bless us with.
This has enormous implications.
The entire reason we exist is so we struggle to keep existing. A post mortality world is one, in which that element of “struggle” ceases to be a problem and becomes more of something to be contemplated. That detachment from our mortality is bound to make us more rational and far more compassionate.
But even if it were possible to live longer, we cannot immediately assume that you or I will get the chance to do so.
It's one thing to see something as possible. It's a whole other issue to convince other people that change is necessary.
Achieving immortality or the drastic extension of the life span doesn’t immediately mean that humanity will benefit.
If we do obtain the ability to extend our lifespans. Who hears of it first?
You, or that billionaire who has invested an insane amount of resources into the research of said technologies. It wouldn’t even be they who were to discover such technology first!
It would be the governments of the world and the elite institutions that keep them afloat.
Let’s presume that is the case—and it is most likely to be the case. What happens?
Well, it either becomes a sort of arms race to weaponize such technology or a way to nullify the ability that technology provides. In our case, health and longevity. I presume one could easily reverse engineer the technology and turn it into a tool that is largely destructive.
The heads of states think through strategies with which they can gain the upper hand. In many cases, these strategies could be multilateral agreements, which could distribute power from the more powerful nations to less powerful, but similarly dominant nations.
On a local level, the risks of such a revelation may be great—at least in the eyes of that one lawmaker whose own ignorance blinds him to the power of the democratization of technology. “This is DANGEROUS!”, you can imagine one lawmaker exclaim in the confines of a secret meeting somewhere. “They wouldn’t be able to understand what to do with their lives!” By then it becomes clear— at least to them— that the path forward, isn’t the democratization of the technology, it becomes the conscious control thereof.
The billionaire and their heirs get it— I mean they did invest heavily in it and are so deserving of the fruits of their investments. That politician that hordes all the power and none of the responsibility…they get it too. You? There may be a chance you barely know such technology exists until decades later when a whistleblower reveals this.
This could very easily lead to the most terrifying caste system ever.
Alright, that may be the grim outcome. Let’s say we have benevolent leaders that do indeed wish to end the suffering that old age and disease cause; that they realize they need to decentralize the sort of power that an extended life presents, albeit some obvious — and much needed— regulation. What happens next?
There’s always that one person who creatively guides the rest on a path forward. A sort of pioneer who teaches one to make the best use of such a technology.
If it isn’t a person, it is a group… a movement.
I presume it would be the grand rebirth of philosophy. Not as something to be learned for occupation, but something meant for the edification of the human spirit.
At that point leisure becomes something we can afford, it would also remove the element of failure that comes with risk, and hence, drastically push civilization forward in a way not seen before. For it is Play that is the mother of invention.
Conclusion
It is fun to dream, isn’t it? Yet I wish to remind you, dear reader, that such a world, a world in which all of these possibilities may exist, is near. We already live in a cyberpunk dystopia of sorts. But we also do live in a utopia in some other ways. The sort of information accessible to the average person, or even better yet, the farmer in some remote village in Southeast Asia, is something we couldn’t have dreamed of before.
This world I speak of, the post-mortality world and all of its possible consequences, are not that far off. We’ve discovered a lot of things that hint this. And who knows what other mysteries we may have discovered as we underwent this global “experiment” that is the pandemic. The pandemic is — in many ways— a reflection of our fragility and the things we feel we need in life. Solitude while blissful rarely fills that desire for human belonging. And so we see even well-meaning people defy the initial lockdowns that may have helped solve this earlier. We see how much of our worth we have tied up to jobs. We see the necessity of having strong leadership. But we also see the need for progress.
In many ways, I hoped this essay would have helped people become more accepting of the necessity for longer life. But after writing this essay, I can guess why some may not. I still haven’t lost my desire for a life of infinitude. But the dangers are still present. Who knows what the future may bring upon us?
It is my personal bias to see the elimination of suffering due to disease that has me so caught up in the advocacy of immortality. It makes me largely blind to the horrors that could take place. But I see the benefits of a post-mortal life to be far greater than any sort of possible downsides.
So tell me, are you on the side of humanity’s quest for a longer life span, or do you feel as many do, that all good things must come to an end. That it is the finitude of this life that propels us into living more fruitfully. I do not see the latter argument as necessarily true, but I do know some of you do.
When you do muster your voice and have gathered your thoughts let me know.
I will be sure to listen
Thanks for reading. I doubt this is the last I have to say on this topic. My needlessly disorganized mind sometimes demands that I revisit topics.
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Some great resources on the topic of immortality can be found here.
In case you’re new to the series and would like to start, here are the first and second parts.
Thanks, and till next time!