saving ink

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?

It’s all too often that, in the name of orderliness and simplicity, a dichotomy is established when the matter at hand is far more complicated. Such, I believe, is the case in the age-old classification of human beings into leaders and followers.

At least one more category is necessary, and this one I’ll dub “free agents”. A free agent is neither a leader nor a follower. They work best on their own, keeping to their own schedules and habits, and completing tasks at their own pace and with their own modus operandi.

However, problems arise when free agents are forced into the leader/follower polarity. Free agents do not follow commands well. They will do assigned tasks, as long as they’re allowed to complete them in their own manner. But if they’re forced into a rigid structure, they naturally rebel, sensing that their perceived way of doing things is the only correct way, whether this feeling actually corresponds with reality or not.

Just the same, free agents do not make good leaders. Leaders often mistake a free agent’s independence and hard work as a sign of their desire for a leadership position, and free agents themselves often fall into this trap because that’s what others have come to expect of them. But free agents have no desire to hold power; inherently, they’re rather be left to their own devices, and having to rule over others is a distraction from their actual goals.

When leaders and followers congregate, a natural order is immediately established: the followers follow the leader (or occasionally leaders). However, when several free agents are in a situation where they must work together, a completely different pattern emerges: that of collaboration amongst equals.

So what system of government would be more reflective of this situation? A democracy - the best we’ve managed to come up with so far - by nature is composed of leaders and followers, with no place in its framework for free agents. Could this system be altered to include free agents in the most productive way, or would an altogether new system have to be established?

And, perhaps most of all, why do thoughts like this come to me in the shower after a cold, mostly sleepless night?

Or, it’s all about resources.

A 10-person panel released a report for NASA today, titled “Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation”. In it, they basically suggested scrapping current plans for a space shuttle replacement in favor of a cheaper, simpler option, and sticking to shuffling astronauts to and fro the ISS rather than launching grand plans of lunar or Martian colonization - that is, if current funding continues on the same path. More importantly, they said this:

“About $3 billion a year more would be needed to have a robust exploration program, and even more than that to keep the existing program essentially on schedule, according to the report.”

(via this Washington Post article)

The future of humanity is worth just $3 billion a year. That’s less than two bucks per human being. That’s about one percent of what we spent on unemployment and welfare in 2008. It’s HALF of one percent of what we spent on social security. That piece of shit film called Titanic grossed two-thirds of that. TITANIC!

But because we’re fighting wars and saving our economy and wasting money on unnecessary medical procedures, it’s more than we can spare. And really, it seems so insignificant now - what good does going to Mars do for us, when we probably wouldn’t even get there for at least a decade or two. By that time, those in power today will be far more worried about the future of their own ageing organs to care about the future of the human race. In fact, no viable colony is likely to be possible in my lifetime. So why should I care? It’s so much easier to just be short-sighted.

Because I’m sick of living on a planet where my species is perpetually fighting over resources. Every conflict comes down to the fact that we live on a planet with limited surface area and limited materials and our evolutionary imperative drives us to accumulate those materials for our own kind - our family, our race, our ethnicity, our religion. Any time you hear that someone is fighting in the name of their god, they’re lying, and usually to themselves. They may hide behind a façade of religious fervor, but at some stage the conflict they’re so passionately maintaining is really about resources.

The only way to solve this is to let the scientists do their jobs and find a way to get some of us off of this rock. The resources on our planet are finite, and as long as we stay here we’re doomed as a species to keep fighting over them and eventually destroy ourselves. Only with improving our technology can we break this destructive cycle.

But don’t listen to me, listen to Stephen Hawking:

“I think the human race doesn’t have a future if it doesn’t go into space.”

And why do I care? Because I don’t want to be forgotten. I don’t want all of my achievements, whatever I leave behind me when I’m dead and buried, to go to waste if my species fails. I want my legacy, whether tangible or genetic*, to continue as long as possible.

So what can one do in this situation? Write your congressman, write to Obama? Encourage private sector innovation to fill in the gaps in NASA’s capabilities? Wait for the Chinese space program to get to Mars first? I’m all ears.

*By genetic legacy I mean the genetic legacy all of humanity shares from our common ancestors

“Ultimately the Objectivist movement failed for the same reason that communism failed: it tried to make its people live by the dictates of a totalizing ideology that failed to honor the realities of human existence.”

- Wealthcare | The New Republic

Disclaimer: As popular as Ayn Rand-bashing has become these days, in the text below I will defend her to some extent. You have been warned.

There is a lot I could write about this article, and I hope at some point I actually have the time to do some more research and write down every point I’d like to make. However, right now I’ll try to focus on the most important premise I found in this story - after a brief aside.

The overall article presents several very good arguments, but in many parts is guilty of the very sin it’s accusing Rand and her modern-day followers of: oversimplification. While I first read The Fountainhead at the age of 16 and Atlas Shrugged at the age of 17 and initially embraced both with a near-religious fervor, I’ve come back to both books many times in the decade since, and as my worldview changed with life experience, so did my readings of them. But to dismiss Rand’s works as capitalist propaganda is to completely miss the broader picture.

There are many lessons I learned from Rand that I still apply today: hard work matters. One should strive to be the best at what they do, and do every job - no matter how seemingly insignificant - to the best of their ability. I, as an individual, have the right to pursue my happiness in a way that does not impede in another individual’s pursuit of the same. I should not expect others to do my work for me. Life is absolutely worth living. I should only pursue relationships with those whose values I respect. It is harmful to indulge in meaningless relations, sexual or otherwise. One should surround themselves with people of quality, of moral character. One should judge art by its quality. Above all, one should hold themselves to the highest moral standards, and know that morality comes not from religion or other people, but from within.

These are values I strive to live by. And guess what? I voted for Obama.

That is because on an individual level, these are valuable lessons - but it is when one attempts to apply them to society as a whole that the theory breaks down in practice. And that’s the point I’m trying to get to, and which the above quote hits upon so elegantly:

Absolutes, whether written in novels or applied by force in reality, break down when human nature is involved, because human beings are imperfect creatures. It is why utopias, no matter how enticing and workable they seem on paper, inevitably fail when enacted in real life. And that’s why Rand’s version of capitalism and her perfect heroes - even those that start out flawed like Dagny or Rearden - do not mirror the actual world. They are a Photoshopped ideals, like models on the covers of fashion magazines. At best, they inspire those who read her novels to strive towards perfection. At worst, they allow for the kind of rationalizing that so many who have earned their fortunes today, not necessarily through hard work but through circumstance and luck, use to decry any attempts to change the status quo, to make up for the failings of human nature through intelligently implemented legislation.

Unlike her supermen, Rand herself had many failings, which the article lists in great detail. However, to blame her for the idiocy seen in today’s tea baggers and the like is going too far. Atlas in particular names many examples of rich industrialists who use their political influence to demonize those whom they find disagreeable, and she rightfully paints them as morally bankrupt. There are plenty of rich characters depicted as “leeches” (James Taggart) and plenty of poor characters shown to have moral integrity on par with the “producers” (Cherryl Brooks). When translated to reality, the philandering CEO spouting his political views on FOX would be seen as a villain, not a hero, in Rand’s world. But that detail is so often missed when all of the many theses and theories of Rand are boiled down to one simple equation: capitalism=good.

Our idealism must have limits. Our philosophies cannot ignore the everyday realities of the human condition. Any grand notion, any ideology that can motivate millions to die in its name should take into account the fact that someone, somewhere, will fuck it all up.

A is A only in the realm of science, of the physical, where rules exist that can be counted on to be constant. But human nature is not that reliable; it exists in shades of grey, of As qualified by exceptions and special cases. That’s why, when large groups of flawed humans gather in cities and nations and societies, governments are set up to try to balance the society’s ideals with the pragmatic facts of everyday life. Because in reality, those who become rich do so thanks to circumstances as often as through hard work. Those who stay poor can blame their place of birth more often than their laziness. If we’re really striving to be better, to be better as a society as well as as individuals, than we need practical solutions, not lofty moralizing. And we need to stop shouting obscenities and start listening.