Thursday, August 18, 2016

Who Wants To Live Forever


Will our attitude about aging, dying or desire to live forever be different if, say, our average lifespan is 200 years, 500 years?  Or, put another way, what would our outlook be if we do not get past our tenth birthday?  A short book, more like a novelette, “Logan’s Run”, tells a futuristic story of a society where people’s lives were “terminated” at the moment they got past their 21st birthday (in the movie version the individual’s “lifeclock” was changed to end at 30, perhaps because producers could not find enough named young actors twenty one or younger; in fact, Michael York, the lead actor, was already 34 years old during filming).  The book was set in the year 2116 – that is exactly a hundred years from this year.  (Book is free online and the movie, I’m sure, is available from Netflix or Amazon).  The popularity of that and many fantasy stories in that genre are an indication of society’s fascination, if not an obsession, with aging and dying. 

Today we’re told the average human lifespan in the developed world is above 70 years and more and more are getting up to the high 80s and reasonably living a fair quality of life; this puts aging by far in a better stage than three decades ago.  Now, for perspective, in ancient times men were old and dying in their 30s and 40s. Baby boomers realized that it was not too long ago, growing up, that to be 60 years old was not only a retirement terminal age but that there was not much to be expected beyond that.  Today, we’re told that sixty is the new forty.

Here is the thing though.  We look across the whole spectrum of living things and we find life expectancy that can be very short as in an individual microorganism to a very long one as in one bristlecone pine that is supposed to be 5065 years old (tree ring counts prove it). The mayfly, a breathing, metabolic insect lives only for a day!  As a mayfly, that is.  It is not only a fascinating life span but one that is so fleeting yet observable within a 24-hour period.  However, I must disclose that the mayfly has a previous life as a nymph living as an aquatic insect, its activities mostly underwater, which makes it a wonder of adaptation.  It could live as a nymph for years before turning into a mayfly, to surface from its watery world, develop wings, mate, lay eggs and die within a day.

On the other hand a jellyfish is immortal.  It can keep on living unless eaten by predators or physically harmed in some other way.  It is in my opinion one of nature’s weird sense of humor because a jellyfish does not have a brain, let alone a structured backbone, with only a primitive sense of sight but with no ability to hear but it is endowed with immortality.  Why couldn’t humans have that gift? Tortoises can live up to 150 years, a few known to have lived beyond that, but a bowhead whale will be just about middle age as the tortoise reaches its age limit.  Here we are with our advanced brain power, an unlimited capacity to imagine, dream, and think up these wild questions about immortality and our lifespan is comparatively short lived compared to these creatures that will never understand simple philosophical questions, let alone ask the basic meaning of their lives.  I know we ask and we propose answers or speculate or offer conjectures but undeniably we do not have answers to the meaning of life either; but at least we try.

Meanwhile, since the dawn of time we asked, we pondered, we philosophized, we developed over a hundred different expressions of faith in the form of religion. We’ve come up with natural and scientific explanations of the world around us, theorized about everything as we seek for answers and indeed we did get some but not all the answers. Into the future we can expect even more as we begin to remove the cloak of mystery on many unanswered questions but only to ask even more. 

Out of all the questions we can come up with, nothing is more compelling, more intriguing, or sometimes more frightening to ask than what happens after death. It is such that we’d rather use a phrase like “passing into the great beyond” or use the alternative substitute like the “afterlife” as a way of coping. Quickly, you will note that such words are always more hopeful, stressing even that there must be something better after death.  I, like almost everyone I know, was raised in the tenets of Judeo-Christian faith but aware that there are other households all around the globe where different faiths are subscribed to including atheism and agnosticism. As a result children and adults grow up with particular biases already built in to their existing belief system. We know, or at least we can know if we spend the time to read up, that there are major and minor differences or just simply nuances in every religious belief from organized systems, including sects, cults, and sometimes from the fringes of the occult. What about someone who has never had such influence, completely devoid of such biases?   

Meet ELB, the Everlasting Being. He has knowledge of the natural world through science which includes math, biology and physics but he is indifferent to philosophy, morality, ethics, politics and religion. All he would like to work with is what he knows of everything that can be explained by hypothesis and proof.  He does not know his age or if his life has a limit but he does know the workings of the cells in his body and as much knowledge of all living things, the planets, the galaxies, the stars, and the workings of the universe to the extent that he has access to the most recent discoveries.  Here is ELB and his thought provoking views of the world. 

“I am made of recycled material and because of that, more than anything else, I am immortal. The iron in my blood is recycled from billions of years ago when it was first created at the belly of a supernova. All of the iron we find on earth today came from an exploding star that was many times bigger than our present sun.  In fact, all the elements beyond and including iron in the Periodic Table came from such an explosion. Our sun, as all stars are too, is a fusion reactor, a thermonuclear plant, and producer of but limited to the basic elements up to iron.  Its base material is hydrogen which when fused becomes helium. Helium when fused becomes lithium, and so on and on. Each element up to iron is a product of fusing elements together through extreme pressure and heat within the star’s core. However, as soon as the star produces iron it collapses in an instant! If it is just an average size star it will shrivel into a white dwarf or brown star, as what will likely happen to this sun in another 4-5 billions years.  A very large star will first collapse but immediately explodes as a supernova. It is during that explosion, when ultra-extreme pressure and heat will create the other elements heavier than iron – again by first fusing iron to cobalt, which will fuse to become nickel, and after more and more fusions later we get to silver and gold, and so on and on. Each fusion makes the next element heavier than the previous. More fusion will make uranium and plutonium. (I am taking liberty with the process by just labeling it as fusion because it is more complicated than just “fusing” the elements. The elements must combine and bond together in a particular way to create the next material).

The simplicity of the universe is what makes me immortal and its complexity is proof that I am.

The universe may only seem complex but in reality it is very simple since everything in it – from viruses to mountains to clouds to the planets, stars and galaxies – came from one basic element: the hydrogen atom that has just one proton and one electron, the simplest element there is. It was the first element created from out of the soup of highly energized particles that condensed from pure energy a few hundred thousand years after the moment of the big explosion that started the universe; hence, it is the most common element in the universe.  All that I see today through my eyes around me and everything that can be observed by every device that ranged from optical to radio to infrared telescopes were at one time located at a single point smaller than an atom. Nothing can be any simpler than one infinitely small dot of near nothingness. Then, as if from nothing, came what I see today as the universe after 13.5 billion years from that moment when it all began.

I will neither know nor can I ever know what was before that big explosion. But this I know. Once created nothing is ever destroyed. The rule the universe goes by is that matter may be converted to energy or energy can be converted to matter but nothing ever goes into nothingness.  The other rule is that everything is recyclable. Every molecule of water I drink today came from two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen that had been around for billions of years and as I expel them from my body they could go on as a water molecule in a water vapor or settle into a piece of iron. Well, three oxygens may go together and link with two iron atoms and combine to become rust – the oxygen and iron elements clinging together as the hydrogen is expelled to find another element to combine with. It has many possibilities of creating another molecule. If two of them together find sulfur they make an acid.  It may even find a grouping of seven other hydrogens and six carbons and six oxygen atoms and voila! Create vitamin C.  These three elemental characters will hold hands in many different configurations and they could become carbohydrates.  I ingest them and they could form with other compounds in my body to build up fats and other tissues.

Everything in me, everything around me is recycled. Even a single cell that “dies” is recycled; cancer cells included. Nothing anymore is created to add to the bulk or energy of the universe; but neither is anything ever deducted. What the universe has today is what it will have forever. However new something is, it has to come from somewhere or from components from somewhere else. If today I am at the tip of an endless recycling processes since creation then have I not always existed since?

The universe is matter, energy and information.  Where matter and energy are interchangeable, information exists to keep track of events caused by matter or energy or both.  A photon of light from across the universe coming from a star carries information about it for millions or billions of years until it is stopped and absorbed by another object, such as the retina of my eye or the sensor of a telescope. When I see starlight the photon has information about the star as it was perhaps many millions of years ago depending on how far it is from me.  Countless photons had left that star at different times but even if a group of them (numbering in the quintillion trillion) left at the same instant different observers from different locations in the universe will have differing perspectives on the star but the information will be the same.  One observer will see the star as it was a few thousand years ago while another may see it as it was four billion years hence but the information the observers see will be exactly the same. If matter, energy and information in the whole universe are eternal I must conclude that I too must be eternal.

If I had settled the question of my physical immortality then it follows that I must address the immortality of my consciousness?  Is my consciousness immortal? That is the question and I must say that it is. If I am the only one right now who can contemplate or at the very least observe everything around me, the universe is what it is because I am here to marvel at or ponder it.  Without me to think about these things that surround me who is to say that they exist or not?  How do I know that my consciousness too is not recycled?  I cannot know that but the physical vessel where my consciousness resides gives me the ability to receive and disburse information to and from the world around me. I have information, therefore I know.

Was it not Rene Descartes who said, ‘I think, therefore I am’? Descartes declared that the only thing he could truly believe to exist was his own mind.  Whether he does or does not have a point is not something I can judge, which brings me to the issue of philosophy, faith and religion. I am indifferent and I take a neutral stand for just one simple reason. Among the many differing religions and branches of philosophy that are out there, there is not one with a premise I can put to a test.

As interesting as these premises are, I cannot prove or disprove them but I am intrigued.  Let me look at some of them.

The Hindu religion is about as close to the premise of the recycling of consciousness as a parallel to the recycling and evolving development of species.  Below is a direct quote of a response from a Hindu scholar when asked about re-incarnation.

“Carnate means ‘of flesh,’ and reincarnate means to ‘reenter the flesh’. Yes, Hindus believe in reincarnation. To us, it explains the natural way the soul evolves from immaturity to spiritual illumination. Life and death are realities for all of us. Hinduism believes that the soul is immortal, that it never dies, but inhabits one body after another on the Earth during its evolutionary journey. Like the caterpillar's transformation into a butterfly, physical death is a most natural transition for the soul, which survives and, guided by karma, continues its long pilgrimage until it is one with God”.

“I myself have had many lives before this one and expect to have more. Finally, when I have it all worked out and all the lessons have been learned, I will attain enlightenment and moksha, liberation. This means I will still exist, but will no longer be pulled back to be born in a physical body.”

A Buddhist has this to say:

“To Buddhism, however, death is not the end of life, it is merely the end of the body we inhabit in this life, but our spirit will still remain and seek out through the need of attachment, attachment to a new body and new life. Where they will be born is a result of the past and the accumulation of positive and negative action, and the resultant karma (cause and effect) is a result of one’s past actions”.

The Judeo/Christian faith and Islam do not subscribe to reincarnation since each adherent only has one life to live and will have to account for everything he or she has done throughout the time of one’s life. There is only one physical body, one consciousness, one soul. A future event – a judgment day, a tribulation, an arrival of a Messiah or a second coming – is that time when everyone who had ever lived will be made to account for what they did or didn’t do during their lifetime.

I cannot say which one is right nor would I be capable of judging so I will only say this. One side says a person has one chance at life and one’s conduct will be judged accordingly, no opportunity for a do over. The other side says that there are actually many multiple chances to get it right; improving and evolving at each successive stage until one has reached the ultimate level; or sometimes be punished to a lower level, to suffer and pay for a life not well lived. One side sets aside a place, a heaven where good souls go to and a hell where bad ones are destined to live forever.  The other side creates a better state of life during rebirth on earth, or be reborn to a state of despair and suffering, re-learn the lessons during that tenure and perhaps be re-born to a better life on the next stage.  One creates one’s heaven or hell in the next life depending on how one conducted one’s present life.

The one common theme is the belief in the eternal state of consciousness and that is all where I can agree. I cannot know what mechanism will be the true one but I believe in the immortality of consciousness because of what I know about this universe. Matter, energy and information are known to prevail".

That is ELB and that is his opinion

I will continue to believe in my Judeo Christian faith because that is how I was raised and I am satisfied with its moral teachings. ELB is in fact a composite of everyone who believes that one life in the scheme of the vastness and age of the universe may not be enough to be held accountable for a mere ten, twenty, ninety years of life, or for that matter the short lives of babies, young children, or of everyone not given the opportunity to learn from the teachings of one or another faith and belief system. I leave that to anyone who cares to ponder during their own idle moments.


For a similar theme but with a different twist, you may want to read a prior blog, "My Conversations with Theo" by clicking below:

   https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2016/04/my-conversations-with-theo.html


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