You are currently browsing the daily archive for July 15th, 2008.
It’s true; mankind was built for immortality, and has always abhorred death. Sure, we’ve theologized it, wrapped it in linen and buried it in the desert, attached to it monumental importance, and even readied ourselves for its global scale during plagues and the nuclear showdown, but it terrifies us, and we hate it. We hate it with ever ounce of strength we have, hate to be reminded of it, hate to think of it. We hold our breath as we pass the graveyard.
Now, we’ve reached a point where it’s feasible to talk about getting rid of it entirely. It’s attractive to imagine a world without death, where you never have to be separated from the people you care about. Transhumanists want to, through technology, increase the possible human lifespan to border on endless, replacing biological parts with machines, and eventually downloading the mind into a computer. Once that’s the case, you are no longer bound by anything at all.
It makes me think of the elves in Tolkein. They were immortals, and they longed to die. They envied man that he could escape the bonds of the earth, and enter into eternity.
The sad reality is that the role of the Catholic Church in the future is going to be that growing suffering and death are good things, to reject wholesale the immortality project and abandon the culture’s growing obsession with never growing old. Maybe in the future, people will pay attention to the death of a pope because no other public figure will die at all.
Sweeeet.
