On Immortality

As creatures of flesh that crumbles and consciousness that fades, we only have two roads to immortality, and one is easier and thus chosen by most, and one is infinitely more difficult and even the ones who choose it, inadvertently or not, usually fail. Some may try both, but in the end one will always be sacrificed, whether through lack of attention or logistical failings. We have two choices: genetic or artistic immortality.

Genetic immortality is self-explanatory. You reproduce, have a kid or a dozen, pass on not only your genes (though, biologically, that’s really the only purpose of our existence) but your ideas, teachings, and the traditions of your family and your language and your nation, and hope your kids live on to do the same.

Artistic immortality is much trickier. You must give birth to an idea so potent, so pivotal it becomes part of the human story, and is passed on from generation to generation. Perhaps there’s a better name for it than “artistic” immortality, as I don’t mean just creating a visual or auditory masterpiece a la da Vinci or Beethoven (though that’s certainly one way); Einstein, Heisenberg, Darwin, Copernicus, Satre, Curie, Marx, Rand, Newton… all of them did this, for better or for worse, and that’s the level of ingenuity each and every one of us is competing with for immortality.

Perhaps that’s what separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom: our belief that we are more than our genes, that ideas can live on just as organisms do. Ideas evolve, adapt, and sometimes die out, but once they’re out there they become separate entities with fates no longer bound to their originators.

Of course, the word “immortality” is misleading itself, as unless we make contact with intelligent beings from other worlds or the robot singularity occurs or a new, even more intelligent species evolves on Earth, both types of immortalities are tied to the mortality of the human race. But since we’re a part of that closed group labelled “human”, we can’t see past the event horizon anyway, so this simulated immortality will just have to do.

Thoughts?

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