Another year is soon to begin. At any day during the next year each of us will celebrate or bemoan another birthday; often depending on where one is in the chronological ladder.
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 twentieth birthday?
"Who Wants To Live Forever" was a song recorded by a British rock group, "Queen" in 1986 which later became a theme song for the movie, "Highlander" which was about immortals battling each other over centuries of repeated encounters of varying identities or personas.
A short book, more like a novelette, later made into a movie, “Logan’s Run”, tells a futuristic story of a society where people’s lives were “terminated” at the moment they were past their "Life-clock" that ended at their 21st birthday (in the movie version the individual’s “Life-clock” 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 was exactly a hundred years from the year when I wrote the first version of this musing, seven years ago.
Fantasy stories in that genre are an indication of society’s fixation on aging and ultimately the fear of dying.
Today, data reveals that the average human lifespan has gone up considerably from 75 years ago. In the mid fifties to get to 60 years old was a significant marker. Today, mid-70s has become the average mean while more and more are getting past 80 and reasonably living a fair quality of life. In most of Africa though, mid 50s is an average high. Of the top 5 of the population with the longest lifespan, four are in Asia, only Switzerland is from the western world at no. 4. The U.S. is at No.47. Women outlive men by 4-5 years in any group.
Now, for perspective, in ancient times men were old and dying in their 30s and early 40s. Baby boomers realized not too long ago, growing up, that to be 60 years old was not only a retirement terminal but that there was not much to be expected beyond that age. Today, we’re told that sixty is the new forty or fifty, or whatever one desires it to be.
Then again, the tombstone below asks the question:
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 the life of 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, a predator at that, 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. Tortoises can live up to 150 years, although a few were known to have lived beyond that. A bowhead whale will be just about middle age as the tortoise reaches its age limit.
Why couldn’t humans have that gift? 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 we try, anyhow.
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.
We have no answers but I found someone who has an idea.
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. Here is ELB and his thought provoking views of the world. He will be talking to you. The italicized writings are all his.
“Hello, I am an Everlasting Being. 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 your present sun.
I can't know for sure how old I am but if I have to guess I am at least 100,000 years old.
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. The most abundant elements in the entire observable universe is made up of hydrogen and helium - 99 % of all visible matter.
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 of something else. If today I am at the tip of an endless recycling process since everything begun 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. 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? 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.
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.
I am aware, and I know it very well, about humanity's desire to live long for many more years than what their current lifetime is.
Keep this in mind. If you were born in 1800 and still living today you will have been around to see or hear about over two hundred wars, revolutions, coups, regional conflicts, not including epidemics, famine, in the 19th century alone (1800-1900). The ebb of old empires and emergence of new ones were the main source of indiscriminate anguish that often outlasted a single human lifetime.
You were alive during the next century and you will not only have been around for the two world wars but the Korean and Vietnam wars as well. Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein and Pol Pot were just a few names but enough for you to rethink the whole idea of such a long life, isn't it? You had seen natural disasters devastate wide swaths of land, displaced people of all ages who escaped death and lingering illness. By the middle of that century you were in constant fear of a nuclear war. Later, you find out that there were even more to worry about - everything a threat to your very existence, depending on who has the pulpit of speech or control of what you read.
After the last two centuries would you still want to go on living?
Count it your good fortune if you were to live between 75 to 100 years old. That is enough to have experienced life, lived it to be remembered by those you've encountered.
I've encountered thousands upon thousands of people and if I ever had felt like you, as every human is able to feel - sympathy, compassion, even love for another - I must have lost it a very long time ago. I am indifferent to anything, to any situation, or capable of any emotional response or passion to discover and enjoy what is new. Do you still want to live forever?
That is ELB and that is his opinion. Is he an extraterrestrial alien? Is he what some would identify as an angel? Or, a devil? He is not a philosophical or spiritual reflection of my own personal beliefs. Let me remind the reader the heading of every musing:
"When you find yourself having to take a break from those that keep you on edge and stressed out, you can take the time to ponder with me some of the un-ponderable and the whimsical and lightly thought provoking issues you did not have the time to consider but now you may want to look into because you have a moment or two to spare or you just want some of your brain cells to be tickled out of slumber".
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 anyone 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.
Another year will commence soon but it is just another journey earth makes around the sun, one revolution, four seasons at a time. Anyone can hop on that journey at any time at one's birth and will hop off at a time of one's passing. That had gone on and will keep going on for what seems like forever but each of us gets one limited turn of some duration - some shorter or longer than others.
What is important is that first, we live life as best we can, within whatever "Life-clock" was meant for us, be good to other fellow human beings and, only secondly, how others will judge how your life was lived.
Wow, so utterly profound. It makes one ponder deeply on your intensive research efforts.
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