X-Message-Number: 1256
Subject: CRYONICS IMMORTALITY: LIBERTY'S FINAL FRONTIER
From: (Edgar W. Swank)
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 92 07:25:01 PDT
[Reprinted from the September 92 Immortalist]
The following appeared originally in the newsletter of London based
Libertarian Alliance and is reprinted with permission of the author.
Mr. Nicholas is a banker in London and has studied philosophy at
London University and the University of Sydney.
If you would like a reprint of Mr. Micholas's paper, with footnotes,
or if you have comments or questions that you would like to relay you
may write him at:
The Libertarian Alliance
1 Russell Chambers
The Piazza
Covent Garden
Lonbon WC2E 8AA
IMMORTALITY: LIBERTY'S FINAL FRONTIER
DAVID NICHOLAS
"If a mass death sentence defines man's condition, then rebellion is
in one sense its contemporary. When he refuses to recognize the power
that makes him live in this condition."
Albert Camus
The continuing fact of death renders all talk of liberty ultimately
futile. Brave notions of freedom which passively accept the certainty
of personal extinction are increasingly seen as so much empty
rhetoric. The gods have deserted us and our clever excuses for
oblivion are wearing thin. In our hearts we know that there is
something very wrong with our condition, and yet faced with the
seeming inevitability of our fate we recoil from the obvious
implications: we must save ourselves or perish.
THE APPROACHING VOID
Denied the prospect of survival through supernatural agency, secular
Western man has become psychically traumatized. Increasingly, life
seems meaningless and absurd, and the fear of death and nothingness
lie just below the surface of everyday consciousness. Although the
structures and institutions of religious belief linger, their function
is now largely sentimental and ceremonial. The once faithful have
deserted to the post-psychedelic spiritual supermarket in a frantic
search for new answers to the problem of death. One of the modern
prophets of scientific immortalism, Alan Harrington, argues that the
anticipation of death is now the most important single determining
factor in human behavior.
The effects are subtle but unmistakable. By limiting our horizons to
a single lifespan, the approaching void adds an urgency and a
desperation to our project. There is a noticeable quickening of pace,
a sense of little time left. Sometimes this is seen as a response to
the threat of mass nuclear death; but collective mortality is an
abstraction: death is only comprehensible at the individual level
where it is experienced. In any event, concern with the manner of our
departure is dwarfed by the growing certainly that nothing follows it.
Without the prospect of continuity there is a truncation of
perspective and short-termism dominates in a hot-house world. Our
concern for the future begins to disappear with the likelihood of our
own extinction. And yet to avoid emotional collapses we are compelled
to devise defensivestrategies.
"WE DIE BEFORE WE DIE"
A common response is to hide from our fate by seeking distractions
which help to reduce our sense of separateness, in the words of the
song, in "sex and drugs and rock `n' roll". We throw ourselves into
work and play; into conformity; and by living other people's systems
and creeds. Through communal action and the organic warmth of the
crowd we achieve a swamp-like collective immortality, but at a heavy
price. By becoming quite literally "mind-less", the precious ego
which dissolves in death is deliberately scrambled ahead of time. As
Harrington puts it, we "die before we die" and "commit suicide on an
installment plan".
Tragically, by sacrificing the rational ego we destroy the only true
key to our salvation.
Others rage at death. Faced with only a fleeting appearance in life's
arena, desperate men seek ever more bizarre ways to erect monuments to
their existence. The mass murderer, the assassin, the roof-top sniper
and the lone hijacker are all saying: "Don't forget me. Kill me if
you must--but don't forget me."
Responses from more "sophisticated" men appear profound but, since
they leave our condition unchanged, are just as futile. Subtle
posturing ("A man who is afraid of death has never really lived") and
word games ("Death does not really exist") sound plausible. But in
the middle of the night, alone with the void, the clever fatalist
wants what we all want: survival. Lacking the courage to rebel
openly he is driven to rely on ever more diluted and indirect notions
of continuity. The traditional ersatz form of "immortality", being
succeeded by our descendants, has now spawned a variant: survival
through our genes. So Richard Dawkins in Selfish Gene can argue that
the sole function of the human body is as a vehicle to promote the
survival of our DNA. The final development of this line of thought is
that the body is, in the last analysis, Pure Energy and therefor
ultimately indestructible: death merely brings a change of form!
Such sophistry may appeal to some in a bloodless sort of way, but it
can only delay our assault on the one true enemy--personal oblivion.
PERSONAL PHYSICAL IMMORTALITY
Another group, professing a concern for dispassionate scientific
enquiry, but harboring a thinly disguised religious impulse, clings to
the vestiges of Cartesian dualism. But as brain science increasingly
uncovers the physical basis of behavior and experience, they are in
perpetual retreat, pursuing the "God of the Gaps". Any evidence of
"independent" mental activity, however insubstantial, is seen as the
last refuge of the soul and with it the hope of a disembodied
immortality. Parapsychology provides a fertile source of examples.
Arch-debunker James Randi, quoted by John Taylor in Science and the
Supernatural, commenting on how a band of PhDs in physics, chemistry
and mathematics could reach convictions so contrary to their science,
says: "Because I have seen what grown men will do to satisfy a deep
need to believe." And yet, supposing the psi people are right, can we
really conceive how an incorporeal immortality could be satisfying?
All the evidence suggests that personality grows with the body and is
inseparable from it. As Wittgenstein observed: "The human body is
the best picture of the human soul." What we want is personal
physical immortality, nothing less. We need to survive as a
psychosomatic unity with all our memories, thoughts, hopes and desires
intact.
LIFE'S TERMINATION IN NOTHINGNESS
The great issues of death and survival were once the business of
philosophers and theologians; but neither have been left untouched by
the general spread of disbelief, and both have retreated into narrower
concerns. Academic philosophy has largely abandoned metaphysics in
favor of arcane linguistic analysis, and the church has turned its
attention to more mundane social and ecumenical matters. Death now
seems something to be either ignored or accepted as the great given.
In any event philosophy, according to Montaigne, consists in learning
how to die. So Alan Harrington argues that precisely because it
teaches accommodation to death, philosophy's practical usefulness has
come to an end: "The philosophy that accepts death must itself be
considered dead."
Only the existentialists come closest to a true understanding of the
fundamental significance of death. Those writing as
atheists--commonly and rightly seen as the purest representatives of
theschool--recognize the central paradox: that the necessary freedom
entailed by the absence of god is negated by life's termination in
nothingness. So Heidegger argues that to live authentically we must
face squarely and constantly the boundary set by death and accept the
anxiety that this brings. Sartre's doctrine of "bad faith" performs a
similar function, uncovering our strategies of self-deception, and
attempts to avoid a personal response to death. For example, by
seeking significance for ourselves as part of some deified abstraction
like "Mankind", "Humanity" or "Nature", rather than accept that we
alone must decide the meaning of our life and death. Camus protests
against the "incompleteness of human life, expressed by death",
rejects despair, and calls for rebellion against the implicit
consequences of extinction: "If nothing lasts then nothing is
justified."
Although the existentialists offered a particularly clear-eyed
analysis they could in the end advocate only a kind of stoical
acceptance of our condition; not shirking the anxiety it entails, but
seemingly lacking the means to challenge it. Even Camus's call for
rebellion, although admirable, is ultimately impotent. Perhaps the
Existentialists were trapped in a transitional phase--science had
undermined the religious worldview but not yet begun to offer its own
solutions.
WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF PRACTICAL SPECULATION
If Camus is right and death is the real enemy then it is not life
after death that we want but the end of death itself, at least as an
inevitable consequence of being born. Who then will take up the
challenge against the conventional wisdom? Most "serious" thinkers,
although driven by the same emotional imperatives as the rest of us,
fight shy of any public discussion of the topic, other than in mocking
tones. So we see, for example, occasional coverage of the cryonics
and life extension movements portrayed very much in "flat earth"
terms. A mainstream scientist who strays into these areas is quickly
marginalised as an eccentric by bemused colleagues. As Thomas Kuhn
pointed out, science is far from the purely rational systematic
process it pretends to be.
Fortunately a small but growing band of heretics--fringe scientists
and speculative writers--are challenging the current paradigms, and
providing a platform for a legitimate discussion of the field. They
argue with increasing confidence that science and technology can
deliver what religion once promised; the age-old dreams ofimmortality
may not have been wrong but they depended more on faith than fact.
Scientific progress has now begun to allow personal immortality at
least to be brought within the bounds of practical speculation.
Science fiction, in keeping with its revolutionary paradigm shattering
function, has long provided a test-bed for exploring scientific
responses to the problem of death. Immortality and extreme longevity
are recurrent motifs in sf, which has explored both the mechanical
aspects and also the social and psychological implications. SF editor
and critic Peter Nicholls, surveying the field, noted that "in some
stories immortality is the beginning of limitless opportunity, in
others it represents the ultimate stagnation and the end of innovation
and change." But there is a general recognition that such themes
exert a continuing power, typifying the Promethean spirit which is the
essence of the genre. Although sometimes criticized as "escapist", sf
may in fact be helping to prepare the ground for a quite literal
escape from death.
A CURE FOR THE DISEASE OF DEATH
In a practical sense, although unannounced as such, the road towards
immortality has already begun. Medical technology continues to
stretch our understanding of clinical death to the point where there
is no longer a universally agreed definition of what the term means.
Multiple organ transplants promise to replace more and more of our
bodies with artificial equipment, offering the possibility of an
almost indefinite postponement of death.
Through genetic engineering, man for the first time has the means
consciously to influence biological evolution. So if various
organisms have differing "natural" lifespans governed significantly by
genetic factors, then different or modified genes might permit longer
life. It follows that if, as some surmise, aging is due to an
accumulation of mistakes in the replication of DNA, then in theory at
least new healthy material could be inserted into genetically
defective cells.
Many healthy individuals are claiming benefit from life-extending
therapies aimed at slowing down and even reversing the aging process.
Diet, exercise, and the avoidance of some obviously damaging lifestyle
practices, all play a part. Support is coming from the science of
gerontology with nutrition appearing particularly important. Roy L.
Walford, a pathology professor at UCLA, and his colleagues have shown
that by severely limiting the caloric intake of rats, significant
increases in lifespan are achieved. Walford believes a similar
approach could be applied to human beings and follows such a regime
himself.
The mental influence on health is well attested. And as far as aging
specifically is concerned, there also appears to be a strong cultural
component at work. Social gerontologists note that age is not just
physical but also social. People are expected to behave in certain
ways appropriate to their age, but most of the expected behavior is
not related to any biological process and shows great variation across
societies and periods of history. Labeling an individual as "elderly"
or a "senior citizen", if incorporated into his self image, may
produce a self-fulfilling prophecy. The expected decline in
performance and health duly appears, seeming to confirm the original
description. David Lewis, in his book Life Unlimited, sees gold watch
presentations and other retirement rituals as the Western equivalent
of aboriginal and voodoo death curses. Where such symbolism is deeply
embedded in a culture its effect on physical and mental health can be
profound. To see aging, at least in part, as a social construct is to
begin to bring it under our control.
So the battle to conquer aging and death is underway, albeit in a
fragmented and uneven fashion. Sober gerontologists in respectable
institutions are making solid if unspectacular progress, and are at
one with the movement's radical wing, the proponents of cryonics and
suspended animation, and those who speculate about the mechanical
storage of human personalities: "electronic soul". All are
ultimately engaged in the same project, although, with no consensus
yet on the causes of aging, the field lacks a unifying principle, and
as Harrington observes, awaits its Einstein.
Perhaps before science will respond more fully to the challenge, we
must, as Lyall Watson argues, break the rigid cultural linkage between
and death and permanency by regarding death simply as a disease and
therefore temporary, and sometimes curable. Once this paradigm shift
has been achieved it will be no more "unnatural" to seek a cure for
aging and death than for illness.
TURNING INTO GODS
We know we must do it and that the effect will be profound. Jonathan
Schell, in The Fate of the Earth, although discussing mankind as a
whole, nevertheless echoes our project: "By acting to save the
species, and repopulating the future, we break out of the cramped
claustrophobic isolation of a doomed present, and open a path to the
greater space." With the creation of an open-ended future for
individual men, we allow more space for reflection and wisdom. Shaw
says this in Methuselah and Walford believes that a world with an
active population of 200-year-olds would not only be wiser but morally
better--saner, more in control of human passions.
There is little doubt that the heretics are gaining ground and that we
will grow up and seek immortality in the only way possible. It will
be science, intellect, and analysis that will be our salvation--not
mysticism. In Harrington's words: "We can only engineer our freedom
from death not pray for it ... having invented the gods we can turn
into them."
--
(Edgar W. Swank)
SPECTROX SYSTEMS +1.408.252.1005 Silicon Valley, Ca
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