|
Back to Methusaleh?
After a quick survey of all the reasons Americans have to be pessimistic about the future, Randall Parker continues:
But the future holds out some amazing promises. Most notably, the youngsters need to know—failing a total breakdown of civilization—that by the time they get old full body rejuvenation will become possible. 20 year olds today will turn 70 in the year 2057. Their life expectancies at that point might be measured in the thousands of years.I once took a course with F.M. Esfandiary at the New School. Esfandiary, an Iranian immigrant and New Age guy, was a believer that science could change everything about human life, even mortality itself. But in order to believe this, one must believe that the structure of existence can be changed by man. A basic aspect of the structure of existence is that living things come into being, and then, after an allotted time, they go out of being. Whether we are speaking of a fly, or a dog, or a human, or an elephant, the life-span of a species is a function of the nature of that species. A species does not create its own nature, its nature is given to it by something beyond itself, by that from which all being comes, with some species given a larger portion of being, some less. The notion that human life could be extended, not merely by a few tens of years, but by thousands of years, is a fantasy born of the rejection of transcendence, and the resulting desire to make man into his own god. The desire to create human nature over again is expressed in the name of Esfandiary’s movement, “Transhumanism,” as well as in the fact, which I learn from Wikipedia, that F.M. Esfandiary changed his name to FM-2030,
to reflect the hope and belief he would live to celebrate his 100th birthday in 2030. In his own words, “Conventional names define a person’s past: ancestry, ethnicity, nationality, religion. I am not who I was ten years ago and certainly not who I will be in twenty years…. The name 2030 reflects my conviction that the years around 2030 will be a magical time. In 2030 we will be ageless and everyone will have an excellent chance to live forever. 2030 is a dream and a goal.”Reading this brings back to mind the kinds of things Esfandiary said in the course I took with him, which was around 1980. Even then, before I was consciously a conservative, I felt his worldview was repellent, anti-human. Having lived in many countries and feeling attached to none, he made a big thing about the idea that all people should feel that way. And of course he was an atheist. Notice how the rejection of any transcendent reality above us so often goes hand in hand with the rejection of any enduring cultural reality around us. As for F.M.’s hopes for extending human life by hundreds or thousands of years, Mark Plus at “Yet Another Transhumanist Blog” writes:
In 1976, F. M. Esfandiary predicted the crossover to longevity [meaning humans living for hundreds of years] would happen by 2000. In 1980, Dr. Alvin Silverstein predicted it by 1990.In 1981 Esfandiary predicted
Around 2010 the world will be at a new orbit in history. We will translive all over this planet and the solar sphere—at home everywhere. We will be hyperfluid: skim on land—swim in the deep oceans—flash across the sky.He thought the entire structure of human nature and human society would be transformed into his sci-fi fantasy by the year 2010. It is now 2007. Lots of things have changed since 1981. The structure of human life has not changed. Which reminds me of the scene in Annie Hall, when Alvy Singer as a boy is worrying that the universe is expanding and will soon fall apart, and Alvy’s mother says to him, “This is Brooklyn, Alvy. Brooklyn’s not expanding.”
Reader Dan R. is reminded of a song by the rock group Sparks, from the early 1970s:
NOTHING IS SACREDI never heard this song. The lyrics are remarkable and express several things about the idea of human life extension that I had in mind to say earlier but didn’t say. For one thing, it’s prescient that the songwriters connected the idea of human immortality with the idea that nothing is sacred any more. If man ceases to be limited by the normal human span, he will have no need to look beyond this immediate realm. He becomes completely sufficient unto himself, which is spiritual death. Then there’s the idea that even if the life of the physical human body could be extended indefinitely, an individual human personality is not designed to live for hundreds or thousands of years. We are not just bodies, but thoughts, desires, will. This inner life of ours goes through a normal cycle during the course of a normal human life span and is not meant to go beyond it. This is expressed by the line:
We are now forever people, we’ll outlive our will to liveThen there’s this:
I remember when I needed you several billion years agoWhat this is saying is that human immortality would screw up the intimate, mysterious connection between love and death. In a world without death we would cease to need and want each other. Now, how do these criticisms of indefinitely extended human life relate to Christ’s promise of eternal life for his followers? “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.” “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” The difference is that the eternal life of which Jesus speaks is lived in God’s kingdom, in which man is perfectly following God’s will, as does Jesus, who even in his earthly existence was living every moment in perfect communion with God:
And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him. (John 8:29)A statement that had such sincerity of truth in it, that
As he spake these words, many believed on him.In contrast with the human soul living toward God and partaking in God’s eternal life and perfect love and joy, the infinitely extended physical life imagined by the transhumanists is one in which the body lives forever, but the self is the same ego-centered human personality it has always been, a personality, moreover, that consciously rejects the possibility of God. Imagine that limited human self living forever! This is the hellish situation, like an eternal Air-Conditioned Nightmare, that is described in “Nothing is Sacred.”
Charles T. writes:
LA wrote: “In contrast with the human soul living toward God and partaking in God’s eternal life and perfect love and joy, the infinitely extended physical life imagined by the transhumanists is one in which the body lives forever, but the self is the same ego-centered human personality it has always been, a personality, moreover, that consciously rejects the possibility of God. Imagine that limited human self living forever! This is the hellish situation, like an eternal Air-Conditioned Nightmare, that is described in “Nothing is Sacred.” ” Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 21, 2007 08:48 PM | Send Email entry |