When I'm in a complaining mood, I like to curse the cosmos for crap that particularly annoys me. Who asked for this stuff? We'd be better off without it.
For example...
Fourteen billion or so years after the big bang, life on Earth has evolved to the point that we humans can envisage the possibility of our self existing forever, even though it is obvious that every single Homo sapiens who has ever lived, has died.
This is totally fucked up. Whoever is in charge of the cosmos, and it seems pretty damn clear that nobody is, there's obviously hugely better ways of arranging human consciousness. Here's two.
(1) Make it so we always die and are gone forever, and we can't envision any alternative to this inescapable reality.
(2) Make it so we never die and live forever, and we can't envision any alternative to this inescapable reality.
Either way would leave us satisfied with what actually is. Either death and eternal non-existence, or life and eternal existence.
However, what has transpired is a splitting of our awareness. We are conscious of both our concrete physical self, and also of our abstract symbolic self.
In his book, "The Antidote," that I've blogged about recently, Oliver Burkeman describes this viewpoint, first expressed by Ernest Becker in his classic The Denial of Death.
Indeed, an enormous proportion of all human activity, in Becker's view, is 'designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man.'
We are able to sustain this denial, he explains, because we possess both a physical self and a symbolic one. And while it is inevitable that the physical self will perish, the symbolic self -- the one that exists in our minds -- is quite capable of convincing itself that it is immortal.
...If Becker is right, the 'wondrous' fact that we behave as if we're immortal isn't so wondrous after all. You don't fail to think about your mortality. Rather, your life is one relentless attempt to avoid doing so -- a struggle so elemental that, unlike in the case of the 'white bear challenge', for much of the time you succeed.
Don't think of a white bear for the next two minutes. This almost-impossible feat ("Mustn't think of a white bear... damn, I just did!"'; "Am I not thinking of a white bear?... damn, now I am!") somehow is made semi-possible when white bear is replaced by death.
But that's only because we put so much effort into distracting ourselves from the reality of death.
Which is why I say it would be much better if we could just accept what freaking is, rather than feeling compelled to conjure up a possible future where our symbolic self lives on after our physical self dies.
Keeping that symbolic self tidily in order, psychologically well-fed, protected from messy realizations like Woody Allen's below (from his 1975 movie Love and Death), this is a wearying job.
BORIS: Nothingness. Non-existence. Black emptiness.
SONIA: What did you say?
BORIS: Oh, I was just planning my future.
I look at our dogs and envy them. They seem to enjoy their lives. Every day. Eat, go for a walk, sleep, play, get patted, sleep, eat... start over. One of our dogs likely only has a year or two to live. But she doesn't know that. She is happy being alive now; doesn't worry about being dead later.
In a different way, I envy people who are sure they will live forever, albeit in a different bodily or non-bodily form. I used to be one of those people. It was comforting to believe that my symbolic self was more lasting and real than my physical self, despite any convincing evidence that this was so.
Being stuck with the knowledge that (1) I will die, and (2) I won't live after I die -- that sucks. Not that I have any alternative. For me now, trying to forget about (1) and (2) is like trying to forget about a white bear.
When I try to do it, I fail. The only approach that makes sense to me is to enthusiastically embrace those two almost certainly true facts. Such is the approach that Burkeman advocates in his book, a subject for another post.
Being stuck with the knowledge that (1) I will die, and (2) I won't live after I die -- that sucks. Not that I have any alternative.
Supposedly you can get your dog cloned. If there's any truth to this, when you're an octogenarian, you and baby Brian could be in diapers together.
Posted by: cc | August 28, 2013 at 09:20 AM
Have you read Becker's "Escape from Evil"? Worth the read.
Also, recommend "Bad Religion" "How we became a Nation of Heretics". A lot of American religious history that I was not aware of. A particularly EXCELLENT and meaningful read if one happened to have been raised Catholic in the 40's, 50's, or 60's.
Posted by: BrainWay | August 28, 2013 at 09:22 AM
If you get your physical self cloned now, Brian1, your symbolic self can teach young Brian2 to carry on as you (symbolically), and you can physically die with the assurance that "you" are not really dying.
It's like a relay race. If you're both in sync, the hand-off (your death), is a cinch. So get started! It will take some time for you and Brian2 to train for this.
Posted by: cc | August 28, 2013 at 05:02 PM
Yeah - just imagine your symbolic self actually becoming "embodied" in a cloned version of it's physical self that has died. How would you (symbolic self) explain to other symbolic selves that you were actually able to defeat physical death? And how would you know if the other symbolic self was already actually aware of this possibility (inevitability)?
Cloning is nothing more than reincarnation dressed in a lab coat. My own symbolic self cannot even imagine wanting to survive physical death. As a matter of fact, it is quite glad that it will not.
Posted by: Willie R. | August 29, 2013 at 04:01 AM
How would you (symbolic self) explain to other symbolic selves that you were actually able to defeat physical death? And how would you know if the other symbolic self was already actually aware of this possibility (inevitability)?
I was being facetious, Willie. Cloning can't extend the symbolic self's life. Nothing can. Thus, notions of "soul", out-of-body existence, consciousness independent of the brain, reincarnation, etc., are so prevalent. The mind can't imagine itself non-existent.
Posted by: cc | August 29, 2013 at 08:51 AM
Of course I knew that you were having a bit of fun with your comments, cc - I was not attempting to be contentious.
It is not outside of the realm of possibility to genetically engineer a human organism which would have identical characteristics to the DNA donor. But that cloned organism would have to progress through inevitable growth stages which would engender its own symbolic self.
Undoubtedly, the reader will have at least heard of Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil believes that homo sapiens will inevitably obtain the knowledge that will enable at least a privileged few to live as long as they choose to. We will be able to regenerate tissues that currently do not have the capability, replacement organs will be commonplace, not to mention such things as synthetic hemoglobin that can carry 10 times the amount of oxygen that natural hemoglobin can, allowing us to stay submerged under water for long periods without SCUBA. He also believes that we will shortly be able to transfer the configurations of our neural networks digitally, in essence capturing the symbolic self in a stable medium (assuming, of course, that the symbolic self is actually the vast complex of molecular configurations that exist at any given moment). Not too far-fetched, but certainly a long way off into the ostensible future.
Kurzweil takes between 150 to 200 vitamin and nutritional supplements per day. (I don't see how he can avoid damaging his digestive system thereby). The secret to quasi-immortality is to live long enough to take advantage of the inevitable leaps in scientific knowledge and then access the regenerative modalities that will surely be in place.
Good luck, Ray! I personally think he will need at least a kidney transplant in a relatively short while.
Posted by: Willie R. | August 29, 2013 at 04:01 PM