Our Crazy Quest for Immortality

by Malcolm Jones Info

Malcolm Jones writes about books, music, and photography for the Daily Beast and Newsweek, where he has written about subjects ranging from A. Lincoln to R. Crumb. He is the author of a memoir, Little Boy Blues, and collaborated with the songwriter and composer Van Dyke Parks and the illustrator Barry Moser on Jump!, a retelling of Brer Rabbit stories.

Why are we always driven by the elusive goal of living forever? A new book argues that we should give up on perfectability and embrace our mortality. Malcolm Jones talks to philosopher John Gray.

The English political philosopher John Gray has a quarrel with progress. It's not that he doesn't believe in it. Indeed, he cheerfully admits that science and technology have, in many ways, improved our lot. "Remember what DeQuincey said in the 1820s in his Confessions of an English Opium Eater: a quarter of all human suffering is toothache. It would've been true then. Now we don't suffer that," Gray says, by phone from his home in Bath. "Progress in dental science is real. And it's only one example of a respect in which the growth of knowledge is absolutely real."

The problem, according to Gray, is that while technology improves, human nature does not. "I'm old enough to remember that when photocopiers came along we were told that they would destroy tyranny," says the 62-year-old philosopher. "I'm sure people said the same thing about radio or the telegraph, just as now they say the same thing about the Internet. I suppose you could say that all these people in the Middle East are partly triggered by social networking and all the new technologies. But whatever comes out of the profound and complex turbulence that's going on there, I think one can be pretty confident that it won't be a situation in which technology will have worked consistently to promote freedom, because all technologies that enable people to communicate with one another can also be used for surveillance, and are. The ambiguity is just built in to the way humans use knowledge."

That ambiguity is everywhere in his latest book, The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death. Beautifully conceived and executed, it is a dark cautionary tale on what happens when we mix science and religion. Deftly blending philosophy and history, it rips along with the narrative drive of the most vivid fiction.

The incident with which Gray opens his book reads like a scene from a Tom Stoppard play: on January 16, 1874, Charles Darwin attended a séance at the London home of his brother Erasmus. Also in attendance were Frances Galton, anthropologist, eugenicist and a founder of the modern science of psychology, and the author George Eliot. The séance did, indeed, take place, and there were reports of table rapping, sparks flying, and chairs being lifted onto tables, but Darwin, who found it all only "hot and tiring," left before the fireworks. Galton and Eliot remained, but they, like Darwin, departed unconverted. The three Victorian luminaries had only attended in order to, as it were, check out the enemy. "All three were anxious," Gray writes, "that the rise of Spiritualism would block the advance of scientific materialism." They were right to worry.

"Without spurning any of the advances of science, we could be friendlier to our mortality. The transience of our lives is one of the things that makes it valuable."

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Spiritualism petered out in England sometime before World War II, but not before it seduced, at least a little and often entirely, an amazingly long list of Victorian and Edwardian figures, including William James, Henri Bergson, Henry Sidgwick, Arthur Balfour, John Ruskin, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. Their interest had less to do with belief than with hope—that somehow they could find a way out of the dark corner into which Darwinism had painted them. They did not want to accept a world where man was merely one more animal, where species, including ours, go extinct with no good reason and where death was absolute—if man was really just another animal, a creature without an immortal soul, then nothing survived physical death. But these intellectuals were not feckless. They sought to apply the rules of science to their exploration of a possible spirit world. Before they were done, "the boundaries between science, religion and magic were blurred or non-existent."

Gray devotes the second half of his book to a similar quest that took root in the early days of the Soviet Union, where within the intelligentsia there arose a group called the God-builders. It included Maxim Gorky and Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Commissar of Enlightenment (but never Lenin or Stalin, who scoffed at their aims). The God-builders were not religious, but they did believe in the idea of human perfectability—and in the oxymoronic notion that new technologies afforded by science could help them escape from the very world that science, in the form of Darwinism, had created. The results of this quest in the Soviet Union did not lead directly to the mass deaths perpetrated under Lenin and Stalin, but the willingness to experiment on human beings and to see humans as mere fodder in the quest for the Soviet version of the Nietschean superman certainly went hand in hand with the terrors.

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A very interesting article! They didn't discuss the Nazi's and their efforts to engineer perfection. Dispute the possibility of an end to war, and strife, all manner of positive potentials, I don't find Mr. Kurzweil's predictions of the foreseeable future at all encouraging. It does seem quite inevitable though. I doubt that we will see {effectively} immortality achieved via regenerating tissue. I believe this is quite possible, and I personally would prefer it, I simply believe we will have discovered a way for our identity -- all the thoughts, memories, emotions residing in our gray matter -- to continue in a virtual environment devoid of tissue. I imagine this will be more practical/cost effective, and harvesting organs or using nano-technology to preserve our physical bodies would be deemed obsolete. Surely we can't be more than a generation away from integrating humans with the Web. Such technologies already exist at a primitive level and have, as I recall, been tested and used. The demand for a more comprehensive interface with computers, smart phones is pushing for ever rapid development. With all this I suppose the possibilities are nearly endless. Along with some of the negative, I believe we will eliminate much of the positive attributes in the process. To me, much of the current technologies in the works are nothing short of the sad end of humanity.

Flag It | Permalink | Reply 4:35 am, May 15, 2011 ravenrdr

Over my lifetime, I have realized that (for the most part) the people who are the least religious are the most unselfish. Because Jesus' teachings emphasize unselfishness and empathy over and over, I puzzled over this. I have come to the conclusion that the answer lies in human nature--not our religiousness but our use of religion to escape death--to be part of a group of "chosen" people, warriors for a religion who fight the bad guys and eventually win "eternal" life. In order to be "chosen" others have to be "unchosen." Not believing in this allows people to realize that we are all mortal and others are just like us; therefore, it encourages unselfishness. On the whole, this is the reason I believe religion is ultimately harmful. Peace to you all on this beautiful Sunday morning. Jane

Flag It | Permalink | Reply | (–) Show Replies Collapse Replies 4:54 am, May 15, 2011 Sajwert

And peace to you also, Jane. I've never understood why on earth anyone would want to live forever. If one lives forever, life has little value. My life is past the Autumn of my years. IIt isn't immortality that we should aim for, but a life lived in such a way that our immortality will be in the hearts and minds of those whom we have been closest to, or helped in some way, or, perhaps in the memory of a stranger we offered something to in their time of need without our knowing that they even needed it. My grandmother died 55 yrs ago, and lives in my daily life in all that I do in one way or another, by how she loved and treated me as I was growing up.

Flag It | Permalink | Reply 7:58 am, May 15, 2011 Seslyd

Thank You Ravendr and Sajwert. Lovely words of wisdom. Peace!

Flag It | Permalink | Reply 8:39 am, May 15, 2011 johnstafford

Nothing is more pathetic than "Type A" personalities pursuing eternal youth and extended life through organic food and punishing exercise. =One of their "personal trainers" should let them in on a little secret: it's not what you eat or how much you sweat that matters, it's who you are. =So, if these people want to live a better life as well as a longer one, they might try cutting back one day a week on the Pilates/Yoga/SEAL training, and volunteer as a reading tutor for kids or as a "friendly visitor" with old folks at a nursing home. They might even enjoy it!

Flag It | Permalink | Reply | (–) Show Replies Collapse Replies 8:46 am, May 15, 2011 gardengirl

bingo!

Flag It | Permalink | Reply 11:25 am, May 15, 2011 PigFarmer

Who is "we". I've no desire to live forever. One lifetime is plenty. 50 years of work is more than enough for me, thank you very much.

Flag It | Permalink | Reply | (–) Show Replies Collapse Replies 9:52 am, May 15, 2011 jeanne8617

Bravo PigFarmer! You said what I've been thinking for a long time. Living that long would be ultimately boring. I just don't get how anyone would willingly do it all over and over again. Short of maybe getting to watch the inevitable end of the universe, that might be worth it:)

Flag It | Permalink | Reply 12:37 pm, May 15, 2011 preeyapan

Humans do not want to die. If it death were accepted as a result of simple logical argument, then the human race would probably have died out a long time ago. I don't think it is possible to have a fierce desire to live and at the same time accept death as the result of a simple argument. I do not believe the author can over turn thousands of generations of evolution.

Flag It | Permalink | Reply 9:53 am, May 15, 2011 redjacob01

Straightening out one's crazy life is the true quest for immortality. You know - New Year's Resolutions, changing jobs, changing spouses, dumping lovers, etc. There is a mysterious standard for life within each culture, society, religious creed, family, and individual. The human quest: "Damn it, I'm gonna keep starting over, or trying something new until I get my life right!" Too bad the human heart is jacked up. No mere mortal change that desperately wicked creature into immortality.

Flag It | Permalink | Reply 8:10 pm, May 15, 2011 me_am_legion

Personally, I don't want immortality. I want longevity. The world is vast with so much to experience. I would like to have long enough to enjoy a good fraction of it.

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