Culture

Not Buying This Immortality Thing

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

 

As you’ve probably heard, immortality is again under discussion thanks to Nectome, which promises to preserve your brain in such fine detail you could be one day reconstructed. The process is fatal, but at least they’re open about it.

Allow me to remain skeptical – not if this is possible (at some point in theory maybe you can be copied over to a computer), but if we really can maturely think about – and handle – immortality as we conceive of it (usually in a very immature manner). If you read any of my previous writings on this you probably realize the answer – no.

A lot of quests for immortality I see among modern immortalists is really “how I will perpetuate myself so there’s a sense of continuity.” It’s basically taking the current “you” and extending it as long as possible. It’s a secular idea of heaven that believes there’s enough of a “you” to preserve that it’s really just a soul wearing a funny hat.

First, the idea really ignores that we’re not permanent, we’re not stable, we’re not eternal. We’re a rolling ball of experiences and information that changes. Modern techno-immortalism sounds like a desire to “freeze” oneself.

Secondly, because of this, it’s peculiarly non-evolutionary. All the idea of uploading one’s mind to the internet and such really ignores the idea you can change and evolve. All the life-extension cycles around the current self. There’s no growth or change.

But third, most importantly, modern simple immortalism sounds like it veers way to close to vampirism. I’ve felt this for years, but lately I’m even more convinced this is the truth.

If we extend the life of people, how much more power will they accumulate, and in turn, try to perpetuate their limited selves? We’ve already got serious issues of inherited wealth and power, do we want to jack it up further? Altered Carbon‘s premise is really just a simple idea of far more problems.

If someone’s entire life is about extending said life, that makes the rest of us, our world, our universe prey. It eliminates all meaning in one’s life and one society, an eternal quest for “more years” at the cost of everything.

Will we burden the future with endless seas of preserved brains? With digital personalities languishing away never changing – or making demands? How the hell will our ancestors think of us?

What does having children mean in an agle of immortality? Doesn’t this short-circuit both our need to reproduce but also the ability to create new, independent entities? Is the future a bunch of people repeating the same things and same habits over and over with nothing NEW?

How much could money to give someone another five years be spent on something better and greater?

Are we even building a world we’d want to live longer in?

How sane would people be living the same mind, same personality, immortal? Can we even handle it? Are we suited for immortality?

Our current immature immortalism’s focus on the ego, the stand-in for the soul, has some terrible repercussions for our future and ourselves.

In the end, as I’ve said in various ways, we don’t need to build a better Heaven; we need to build a better reincarnation. Rethink who and what we are. Think of more ways to be connected and leave a legacy. Focus on personal development and evolution – which may require rethinking death and life. Make lives worth living without us trying to find new ways to perpetuate our limited current idea of ourselves.

I would also add this – maybe we need death. We accumulate our burdens, our neuroses, our sadness our weariness. We get tired and wear out. Maybe at some point, having left our best legacies and influences, it’s time to put up the chairs on our lives and turn out the lives. Close the book, so more stories can be written. Approach life not as something to go on forever, but something that can be upgraded and rebooted to make room for more and greater things.

If I had a chance to extend my life? I’d probably go for it. But I’d want to be able to grow, to change, to evolve – and to declare when it’s time to shut it down. And I wouldn’t want to do it at the expense of things much greater and larger and more beautiful than me. Being that big would mean I’m not me.

– Steve

False Work and False Leisure

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

I was reading this depressingly brilliant Cracked article on BS inspirational stories. Short form many of them are about people in horrible circumstances managing to survive (ignoring many who dont), or they’re people of means who we’ll never be. Somewhere in the article it also mentioned how we’ve idealized work and working ourselves to death.

I write on careers and jobs and all that. I am a careerist in that I like what I do and its part of me. But I don’t believe in idealizing work.

Why? Work is a neutral thing. Amount of work, hours put in, and so on – is no measure of value.

Why? People need to relax. You can’t work all the time.

Why? Because we have to goddamn stop expecting people to work all the time in America.

At the same time all this workaholism in America is paired with a weird kind of hedonism. We’re supposed to have the right clothes, eat the right food, take vacations, and keep up with the Kardashians. We’re supposed to work all the time and also relax, we’re supposed to be Inspirational Poor People pulling themselves up and also Beautiful Rich People.

This hedonism thing bullshit as well.

Why? Buying something doesn’t mean its good for you or what you want; sometimes someone is selling you something.

Why? A lot of what gets sold to us is to make up for a void in our life or show other people – we’re not really enjoining it.

Why? Because a lot of this is not about what we really want – which is probably to work goddamn less.

We’re Calvinist Hedonists. Sounds like an oxymoron? That’s the point.

Work, leisure, and everything else is highly messed up in our culture. But down deep I think they come from the same problem; a lack of meaning and larger context.

We don’t build a sustainable society, but a stratified one of haves and have-nots (read Twilight Of The Elites). It’s a society that’s meaningless, grubbing for money, trying to tweak that next tax bracket. It’s one where work means nothing except trying to scrape by or trying to show up the next person with a bunch of money.

We build a society on selling people B.S., things they don’t need. Ask yourself how much of our economy is really just a bunch of bullshit anyway. how many things don’t mean anything, aren’t practical or aren’t fun. But if we slow down our hedonism, we might realize how pointless our work is and how much our society abandons its members.

Look I write on work. I love doing it. I also write on cool stuff. But I write on what has meaning to me and to people.

Maybe we need to slow down and ask what’s important. Or maybe we’re scared because we’ll realize how much we’ve done wrong.

– Steve

Creativity And Freedom

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

Creativity cannot be separated from Freedom; it is the source of it and the result of it.  Share it, encourage it, understand it.

Creativity allows people to think in new ways that both liberates and maintains liberty. The creative can dream around problems, finding new solutions when none were apparent.  The creative are harder to constrain by despots, as they have the tools to out-think oppressors.  The hopeful tyrants cannot face down dreams they know nothing about.

The despot worries in his throne room, heart racing.  Someone is out there who can find solutions, communicate in new ways, invent new treasons.  The despot fears you and doesn’t even know your name.

Creativity strengthens the people that treasure it.  Society is stronger for the news ideas the creative people bring.  The imaginative see dead ideas and infuse them with new life, resurrecting the lost things of value. Creative people can see the foundations of society and connect them to their innovations, joining past and present, the new and the renewed.

A single shining inspiration in your mind and old ideas come alive, history is connected, and you can see how ancient thoughts and new dreams come together.  Centuries and aeons link together in new strengths and old wisdom.

Creativity strengthens relations among people allowing them to support each other.  The creative are open to new relations among people because they can dream.  The creative find new connections among people, building alliances that resist tyranny.  The creative discover new ways to understand others and cooperate in ways unforeseen.  A web of connections and associations and alliances makes people all the more resilient.

Those that create are your allies, and a single conversation can create a year’s worth of dreams.  A moment’s pause lets you see everyone new.  You reach out to make new friends easy.  What tyrant doesn’t fear a web of collaborators who can out-dream them?

Creativity should be encouraged and shared among people.  To arm people with creativity is to give them tools to find meaning and protect themselves and others.  To share with other people builds connections and camaraderie, creating alliances that maintain the society. The sharing and encouragement of creativity is a measure of the strength of society.

Once someone lifted you up and said you could create.  Now you can reach out to others, teach them to use their creativity.  Each person so encouraged is an ally and a beacon.  Connection spreads from the outstretched hand.

Creativity is the result of freedom.  Because new thoughts can come to mind, the unthinkable becomes possible.  As old ideas can be seen anew, the foundations of society are renewed.  Because new ideas are encouraged, society can change and evolve.  As people encourage creativity, alliances are built.

– Steve