Nothing, Infinity and You

External circumstances can only cause you physical pain. Suffering is created in your mind.
— Sadhguru

Most, if not all, people want to live forever. Yes, this is a desire of mine, but every time I contemplate on it, I find a problem with it. You see, living forever sucks on so many levels. Forget the fact that you can do “all the things” you want to do (or wanted, if you’re looking back at a lost opportunity). Then what? Explore the Universe?

Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s start by listing “The Suckabilities of Immortality”:

You’ll live longer than your friends and loves ones

This one is a major suckability. Seeing your loved ones get old and eventually die and having to repeat that process over and over again with new loved ones. Then again, unless someone truly had a hold on you, you will eventually forget. You will eventually get jaded by that fact. Perhaps you’ll become colder or more indifferent. Inapproachable. And, eventually, alone. This will, no doubt, commence a search for the formula for immortality. A way to grant it to someone else. Then (and only then) you can search for that ONE person that will “do it” for you, and you both can live happily ever after. Literally.

But maybe your immortality is a fluke, and only you are immortal. Then you can rely on your indifference and keep moving so you won’t need to witness such loss. But as chaotic as the universe is, this fate may prove to be inescapable. Just like it was for John Oldman from the film The Man from Earth, in which, despite John moving about every ten years so as to not attract attention to his unaging appearance, witnesses his son’s death, who appears to be older than John at that time. But in the off-chance that you inherit a “timebelt” as Daniel Eakins did in the novel The Man Who Folded Himself, you could, like Daniel, travel back in time and meet a former immortal self or even a self of the opposite sex (like Daniel eventually did), then, and only then, would you live happily ever after. Literally.

Okay, so you’ve solved the “lost ones” and “finding the right one” problem. Does this mean, you’ll just keep going back in time forever? Then you’ll never “know” the future. Maybe there’s something utterly fantastic about it. I know! What if you go back in time, grab that loved one (or all of them), jet back to the future, thus moving forward and enjoying what’s to come. THEN when those loved ones die, go back in time, grab them again and continue where you left off. Sound like a plan? A bit complicated, but it’s doable. The only thing is, if you believe that going back in time alters your future, you’ll never truly know exactly what’s to come. I mean, you don’t anyway, but NOW you’ll “know” that your future changes with every jump back in time, so you “know” that you’ll never truly “know” what your future will be.

Too complicated?

I guess you can just “capture the moment” with your smartphone and move on. But, you’re gonna run out of memory very soon (relatively speaking; perhaps every decade or so, depending on how much memory the device has). Don’t fret! Just wait a few technological waves and you can have a device that will last a few centuries! At least.

Anyway, your smartphone is evolving, which brings us to suckability number two…

The Human Race is Evolving. Are you?

You better be! Unless you have been blessed with the “evolving immortality” kind of….immortality. Something like John Oldman. Supposedly he was born a Cro-Magnon man. Have you seen a forensic reconstruction of a Cro-Magnon? Yeah they kinda look like us, but there is definitely a difference. Perhaps your friends will call you Cro-Mo as either a term of endearment or an anti-social slur. If it’s a term of endearment, you and your friends will laugh at it and eventually it’ll wear off, then you’ll eventually have that friend with a slightly lower IQ than average and try to “freshen up” the name calling and call you “chromoly”, not knowing that that’s actually a high carbon steel more so than a species, and you’ll either shrug off his ignorance or tell him he’s stupid or something. Either way, you’d have wished that your immortality came with some evolutionary process.

But what if Jerome Bixby, the writer of the story, got it wrong? Perhaps he neglected this little fact. It seems likely, since none of John Oldman’s guests ever brings up the notion of evolution. I mean, the man is 14,000 years old! Somethings gotta look off! So what does this tell us? Well, it tells us that there’s no evolutionary process when it come to immortality. Think about it; you get shot or maimed and your body just regenerates to your former self, just like Jack Harkness of the Doctor Who series.

Let’s say that there are no “evolutionary features” of immortality. What do we do? Well, existence and the fight for existence is merely the fight to keep oneself conscious forever. The body really has nothing to do with it. It would be nice to keep your body forever, but we’ve all seen how problematic that is. The brain, in theory, can live forever (with a little help of a perfect environment, that is) so why not put your brain in “something” like an android body or something. Just like one of Mudd’s Women told Uhura. This way, you can “engineer” a new body that resembles the current iteration of the species. BUT make sure you follow Dr. Noonian Soong’s design in making an anatomically correct android body or else it will be a pretty boring life!

Perhaps this evolving thing is overrated. Maybe you’ll never like how humans look in the future, which would then make you a freak of sorts. Almost like a Gollum. After all, Gollum was a hobbit, albeit a changed one. Come to think of it, he was an evolved hobbit. So, there you go! You can stay a “Bilbo Baggins” as opposed to evolving like Gollum. Though, you have to admit, it is quite cool to see in the dark, catch fish with your bare hands and scale down a wall or side of a mountain face-forward a la Spider-Man.

There’s a lot to think about! Granted, you’ll come to miss eating things like bread and cheese which brings us to suckability number three…

The Foods and Things That You Know Will Cease to Exist

This is a bit inline with the first one, though not as detrimental. Well, for me it would be. I would certainly miss New York City pepperoni pizza, Apple-Cinnamon Pop-Tarts and Bosco in the glass bottle, for example….wait….the last two don’t exist anymore.

[Pausing for a moment of disbelief]

Maybe future foods would be better. Look how the pizza evolved. Started out as flatbread with oil, a few herbs and cheese, and evolved into the rich, over-the-top and vulgar food that it is today, at least in the United States of ‘Merica. It will only get more vulgar as generations become more and more experimental. I mean, barbecue chicken pizza? Or as ‘Merica become more and more “allergic”. Cheese-less? For the dairy intolerant? All due to environmental issues that we cause? New generations won’t care. Heck! I don’t care about mutton or mead for that matter. Particularly since I’ve never had them, but I’m sure some Viking, hobbit or dwarf would miss it. Gimli is an avid salted pork eater. I shunned at the idea until I had some. Now I’ll miss it when our society stops “abusing salt” due to some fabricated health reason. Yes. People want to live healthier which, to them, translate to living longer. Immortality, so to speak.

Immortality has a price. Which brings us to suckability number four…

What Will You Do For a Living

I know one of these days, software development and even photography will be as arcane as blacksmithing or papyrus maker or even a harpsichord tuner. Remember Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott of the USS Enterprise trying to get the Apple computer to show the formula for transparent aluminum? He had to resort to using the keyboard! How quaint! Show of hands: who knows (besides me) how to use a slide-rule?

What will you do for money? I guess ONE profession that never goes out of style is prostitution. But that, eventually, will go the way of the court jester, or even the milkman. It’s just a matter of time. Though, around the 24th century, money will no longer be necessary. At least that’s what Captain James T. Kirk told Dr. Gillian Taylor at the pizzeria. Apparently, there is no beer in the 24th century either since Kirk reacted sourly to the taste. I’m gonna miss beer.

Okay. Let’s say you’re not worried about all those aforementioned things and you’re just enjoying your immortality. Do you want to live until the end of the Universe? If there’s an end? What if in five billion years the human race (or whatever race that would exist at that time) hasn’t developed interstellar travel? What are you going to do? You’re either going to burn or freeze to death, depending on what our sun decides to do. If freezing is chosen, perhaps those….creatures would have developed a perpetual source of energy and, thus, can generate heat to survive. Let say you survive, what about trillions upon trillions upon trillions of years from now when the universe “dissipates”? I think that’s game over. What do you think? Go back in time and do it all over again?

Which brings us to suckability number five…

You’ll Eventually Want an “Answer”

By this time, you’ll probably realize that immortality is not all that is cracked up to be or, you can make matters worse by continuing to ponder, and, thus, fearing, non-existence. Yet, the futility of existence is too much to handle (remember, you’re not evolving). You hope for a painless and totally surprising death, but even that you fight. You decide that you will keep looping in time until you can come up with an answer, which brings us to suckability number six…

The Problem With Time Travel

Actually, this be better discussed in another post…