Requiem Aeternam: Ambition and the Curse

Botox, the immortality of today

Humans throughout all of history have sought immortality in one way or another. We see the myth of Heracles, embarking on twelve labors in order to achieve this goal. Qin Shi Huang of the Chinese Qin Dynasty drank mercury in the hopes that it would make him immortal (this did not work out quite like he hoped), even in today's "enlightened" age of science and rationalism, we still try as hard as we can to escape the progression of age. We may be taught that with age comes wisdom, but this seems low compensation for the loss of the youthful vigor that flows through our veins; and worse yet, the gradual fading away of an easier time. Even today, people desperately try to escape such an inevitable progression, seeking to restore at least the facade of youth by way of Botox or hair regrowth technologies. We are also prone to place our hopes in the science of today to reveal some way that we may escape age, by way of stem cells or repairing telomeres or 3D printing in the body or something.

People cling to this fantasy, and yearn to make it a reality. Indeed, one of the most defining characteristics of gods compared to humans is their immortality, their permanence even as we fade away.

What do we hope to gain by immortality? On Wednesday, our English class was made to practice 24 multiple choice questions of the AP test variety (I scored a 20/24, and suffice it to say, that discouraged any possibility that I may take the AP test...), on this multiple choice practice, a particular passage stood out. The passage dealt with a hypothetical society of immortal people. These people could be divided into two types of people, those who made haste to do everything they could possibly do in an infinite amount of time, and those who sat back and waited, believing with infinite time, all things were eventually possible.

Is this what we hope to gain with immortality? The time to do everything we may ever want to do with our lives? The prospect is certainly tempting, one could be a beggar and a prince, an officer of the law and a thief, a soldier and a professor. One could do all things and travel all places and still not have experienced all of what an infinite life has to offer. Is what we want as people the ability to not only experience all things, but to know that we are able to experience all things, that death has no hold or limit on us?

Friedrich Nietzsche, master of existentialism... and mustaches.

Perhaps we want to be free from the obligation to impact the world, to make a mark and be remembered. As John Green said, "You are going to die. And what's more, everything you ever make, think and experience will be washed away by the sands of time. And the sun will blow up, and no one will remember Cleopatra ruling Egypt or Watson and Crick untangling the structure of DNA or Ptolemy fathoming the stars." To look oblivion in the eye is difficult, if not impossible. When you stare into oblivion, oblivion stares back, to borrow a phrase from Friedrich Nietzsche. It stares back with an eternal gaze, and when it stares back it can strike fear into our hearts, fear of the existential meaninglessness of what we do in our lives when we face this inevitable prospect. We may look for a shadow of immortality by affecting the world in some way, leaving behind people to immortalize our memory, if not our bodies. But this too is finite, the Sun will blow up, and just as no one will remember Cleopatra and Ptolemy, so to will our mark be forgotten. We may escape this with infinite life and infinite time, we don't have to face oblivion in the eye if we do not one day have to succumb to it.

But the passage from the multiple choice also went on to reflect on what we lose when we shed mortality. We lose meaning in our actions, for everything we do, everything we could do will have already been done. We lose our freedom from the past, as those who preceded us will live forever as well, and thus we may not be free from their expectations, we may not be free to make mistakes. But immortality cuts deeper than freedom. Relationships become fleeting, countries become mere lines on a map, rather than a subject of loyalty and pride. And all along we must watch as the world around us crumbles and rebuilds, as the world as we knew it is replaced over and over until we must ask the question of how much of it actually matters.

We aspire to immortality, we want to live forever, but immortality can be a blessing and a curse, just as mortality can be.

But what is really interesting is the basic desire to be immortal. This desire to become more than mortal, to transcend, is reminiscent of Nietzsche's Ubermensch, the hypothetical "overman"; one who, according to Nietzsche, transcends the ordinary man through enlightenment.  We seek to escape the inevitabilities of being human, the mortal coil that holds us back. Not only does this desire remind me of Nietzsche, it reminds me of the trans-humanism movement, a cultural and intellectual movement that seeks to transform the human condition by way of technology from multiple disciplines. Technologies such as nanotechnology or robotics, which hold the potential to transform life. The trans-humanism movement represents the desire of people to move past our limitations, just as our aspirations toward immortality reflect the same thing.

So, what is the point of immortality? Time, freedom from fear? Perhaps none of these, perhaps such aspirations, such a desire to transcend, is just the nature of man.