Is it OK to have 'Fear of Death'? :: CIRA TOPIC

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This is an email exchange I experienced. The author has requested to remain anonymous - BJK

In my request to his insight on the possibility of living forever...

Anonymous Said:
You completely misunderstand my points relative to living forever. I have two completely different insights relative to the issue, one short-term and one long-term:

Short term: I am already beginning to feel like I have lived too long. As I watch the direction of contemporary society, I increasingly am thankful that I am not 20 years old and looking at that future (I am near 60 now.). But after seeing your photo on the attached link, realize that you don't yet have the perspective of years. Western culture is in decay. Within the next couple of hundred years, America will be about as relevant as Italy is today. You still perceive the entire future as a never-ending extension of the privileged position where you now stand. That is a fool's paradise, and I see that much much more clearly now than I did just 20 years ago. Would you still want to live forever if you had to live a few hundred years of it in the future equivalent of today's Third World? Or do you secretly believe that your immortality would somehow exempt you from such a trial (a la Highlander)? I am a combat veteran (Vietnam). I have killed; I have seen friends, enemies, and innocents killed; I came within a fraction of dying from wounds there; I have stared death in the face and lived, and since that day no longer fear it. My last 30+ years have been grace (no theist implication here). I understand death to be the reconciler of and the enabler of life, and without it, most people simply lose momentum and stagnate (there's always tomorrow). I have lived every day since that experience like it could be my last (no unfinished (emotional) business). I stay straight with the world and with all those that I love, and the result has been a freedom to live and enjoy life that defines "grace". Life without death is like a magnet with only one pole.

Long term: NO ONE on that (IIDB) thread (that I posted to) seems to have ANY comprehension what FOREVER is! If the age of the earth (roughly 4.5 billion years) were represented by a book as thick as a football field is long, the entireity of recorded history (the last 10,000 years) would take up only the last three sheets (and the span of one lifetime, about two words on the last page). FOREVER is a LOT longer than the age of the earth!!! You cannot convince me that any person would not soon become impatient with the pace of human (as opposed to technological) progress to the point of depressive boredom, cynicism, and madness. The sci-fi movie Zardoz (starring Sean Connely) comes to mind as representative of the madness that comes with immortality; in the case of the screenplay, after only a thousand years or so. To consider one's self to be exempt from the price of having seen nothing new (in the nature of man) under the sun day after day for thousands of years is terminally naive. The human psyche is not compatible with immortality. For the human psyche, immortality would be no blessing but rather the ultimate curse.

In my experience, it is the young that want to live forever, and they do so because they don't know any better. If this sounds harsh, I'm sorry. Just remember I have been where you are, but you will need at least 20 years to get to where I am.

Thank you for your interest,


BJKlein Said:
Thank you for your words of wisdom. I respect your knowledge and historical perspective. While I don’t by any means consider myself an expert on the topic of physical immortality, I do believe it’s the only viable alternative if one feels strongly that death equals oblivion.

While the pursuit of immortality may appear vain and egotistical or fruitless and impossible, this doesn’t assuage my fear. I toil on. Luckily, there are some others who feel the same, and I’m not alone in the quest. We’re doing our best to clearly explain and understand the possibility of infinite lifespan. It’s daunting for sure. My lifespan thus far may be laughable short and one would question my drive and desire since I have a seeming long time left. I don’t feel as much. My motivation driven by fear compels me to focus as much energy as I can to stop aging and kill death.

Again, thank you for your insight. Would you object to my posting your email to the forums at imminst.org for others to glean?

Sincerely,
Bruce J. Klein
Director, Immortality Institute Inc.
http://www.imminst.org


Anonymous Said:
I don't have any problem with medical research to extend the natural lifespan by slowing the aging process, because I am convinced that long before man finds corporeal immortality, he will have extended life to the point that he will crave death as the only release from endless ennui. In the meantime, I have no problem with extending the average lifespan to say 150 years (except its impact on an already overcrowded world).

You said: "While the pursuit of immortality may appear vain and egotistical or fruitless and impossible, this doesn’t assuage my fear..."

My Reply: The fear that you are desperately trying to assuage is the fear of your own death. The exaggeration of that fear is a natural derivative to the ever-increasing fixation on youth over the past four decades of our history. The fixation on youth is itself a natural derivative of overcrowding insomuch as overcrowding brings with it an increased need to appear inoffensive in our social intercourse...and youth/children biologically manifest the properties of submission and inoffensiveness. But this benefit occurs at a subconscious level (at the body-language level), while at the conscious level youth comes to be valued for its own sake. The true nature of the benefit to society is concealed while its vehicle is exalted, desired, and even worshipped. The vulnerability intrinsic to this misplacement of value is that birth/youth is antithetical to aging/death, and with the exaltation of the former comes dread and denial of the latter.

Youth personify this misattribution in that they are all immortal insomuch as they perceive (and comport) themselves as such (Why do you think that armies conscript 18 year olds rather than 25 year olds, except that 18 year olds are still much more solidly bound to their immortality than their older counterparts, and can be convinced to risk their lives in ways that older men can't?).

But alas, there comes a time in life when the illusion wears thin and the reality of death can no longer be denied. That is a scary rite of passage...the moreso when the illusion has been held too dear for far too long. I see the true motivation for your fear-driven search in that light. Your headlong flight is nothing but a last desperate attempt to cling to denial while denial continues to evaporate before reality. If you want true freedom from death, face that inevitability squarely, do your grief work for your death now. Personally appropriate your death, then get on with your life. That is the great life-lesson I came out of the war with. It came to me when I faced up to the extremely high probability that I wouldn't survive my tour of duty, but knew I had no choice but to go on. Sure, I started out in denial (brightly wrapped in bravado), then when that wouldn't hide the truth any more came the anger...later the negotiation...and finally the acceptance. Well, I did survive, and that acceptance was the most profound and liberating thing that has ever happened to me. That was the grace I spoke of in my earlier response.

In Frank Herbert's DUNE, there is a passage called the "Littany Against Fear" that is nothing short of profound, and it is appropriate here. It goes: I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that leads to total obliteration. I will turn and face my fear. I will let it pass over me and through me. I will turn and see its path, and when it is gone only I will remain. Fleeing from fear only further empowers it. You can only conquer it by facing it, inviting it to take its best shot and in the process revealing the limits of its power to control you by virtue of your survival after it has blown itself out. The awareness of that survival is what brings release. Make no mistake, this is no intellectual exercise. It is a visceral cathartic experience...as powerful and life-changing as any theistic epiphany.

So go LIVE your life, let go of your fear-induced greed for life because it is robbing you of the only life you are certain to have. Like the great philosopher (comedian) Gallagher said, "Have all the fun you can in life, 'cause when else are you going to do it?"

(I'm working on a response -BJK)

Here is someone who, because he came so close to death, appears to have special insight into the dangers of living forever. His comments on the prospects of cultural decay, ennui, and the supposed value of death in relation to life, are fairly typical of those who live inside a vacuum of knowledge and culture generated in the wake of religion and ideology.

One may yet enjoy life in a state of grace (where love, joy, peace and confidence remain natural to us) without the baggage of religious or ideological conviction ~ and without the inevitable pessimism of trying to swim in their wake, or of putting a dubious value on death because one came so frightfully close to getting swallowed by the darkness of oblivion.

Here again, my thoughts on death in relation to life ...

--
"Memento mori.

This Latin phrase speaks to the finality of death. In English, it simply means: remember death. In it, you can know the supreme value of your life when you realize that death, when it happens to you, is final, for all time. If you should die, everything you know would slip into oblivion: all that you have worked so hard to accomplish, all the people that you have grown to love and befriend, all that you own and cherish. Gone. Forever.

Over the past several years, my stance on death has changed little, but I now realize how important it is to treat the specter of death with a certain respect, even a touch of wonder and a hint of mystery, and to write about the will to live forever in a tone of voice more akin to gentle persuasion than subtle defiance.

I have learned that my will to live forever, in this life, in this world, is better informed by the finality of death, and by the possibility of my own death in particular. On the one hand, I feel compelled to seek ways to postpone my death; on the other, I want to feel prepared to face death if or when it should strike with little warning. For the seekers of everlasting life, this is a strange dualism, but one that remains necessary until humanity has eliminated virtually every known threat to human life."

[Excerpt from Memento Mori: A Reflection on the Finality of Death]

The fear of death is part of our DNA for the good of life. This lifesaving fear of evil (Death=Disharmony) is of great value to an immortalist because it helps him to ensure lifes continuety

I personally do not desire Immortal life in a world where others are still dying. How could a Person enjoy all this suffering; that would translate to a life of Eternal Hell on earth. [ggg]
Most of us want to live happy everafter but as we continue to age the evil death- force gets the upper hand and we look forward to the end of our suffering by the ending of Life with Death.
The present human psyche is not compatible with immortality because of the belief that death is part of life. Once it is realized that life wants nothing to do with death our psyche become compatible with immortality.

The goal of Life is Harmony= Perfection.


Perfect life is Ecstacy of Mind and Body.

Medical life extension is the beginning of Immortality. lol
Ancient texts have prophesised that the knowledge of Immortality will be known to the whole world.

The fear of Death is a healthy emotion in my humble opinion. [ph34r]

Edited by fruitimmortal, 14 February 2003 - 04:46 PM.

First of all, I think you can make a legitimate distinction between having a fear of death versus not wanting to die.

In my experience, the cryonicists who seem afraid of dying tend to drop out because they can't handle the constant, low-level anxiety. The ones who stick with their cryonics arrangements seem motivated by something better. The now-unfashionable psychologist Abraham Maslow distinguished between "deficiency needs," where you act to attain values in the absence of which your ability to live is impaired; and "growth needs," values you seek once your deficiency needs have been met, values that separate humans from mere animals, but which only relatively few humans have been able to pursue. Leonardo da Vinci needed to fill his belly like his neighbors; but after doing so, unlike his neighbors, he then felt the need to study nature, draw, conduct experiments and so forth. (I suppose I should insert a disclaimer about the role of evolutionary psychology in this aspect of human behavior, but that's a whole other discussion.)

It seems plausible to me that the immortalists who "fear death" fall into the category of exclusively focussing on death as a deficiency to be avoided; while the ones who "don't want to die" view life as an opportunity for achievement that absolutely has to be exploited, and the current regime of life expectancies just isn't adequate.

Secondly, unless progress get horribly sabotaged somehow, it's quite likely that some future human society will have the ability to enable its individuals to enjoy engineered negligible senescence, for as long as they like. Does this anonymous correspondent think that the people who grow up in this kind of society, where open-ended life expectancies are considered normal, will voluntarily decide to die at 85 years or so in good juvenescent health because they've exhausted the potentials of life by then?

Obviously we don't know, because the experiment hasn't been done yet. Maybe engineered negligible senescence will be like manned space travel, something that generates a lot of excitement for a few years but never becomes accessible to the masses and eventually falls into desuetude. But I think the experiment is well worth performing. Unlike Mr. Anonymous, Leon Kass and other individuals who let fictional portrayals of the evils of immortality tell them what to do, I want to experience immortality first hand. For a long time now I've felt that a proper society should have the means to allow the productive, law-abiding individual live as long as he wants. As my friend Mike Perry likes to say, a life rightly lived cannot be rightly terminated.

Relevant parallel forum topic RE: FEAR (Another God)
http://www.imminst.o...ST&f=1&t=783&s=

Would you still want to live forever if you had to live a few hundred years of it in the future equivalent of today's Third World? Or do you secretly believe that your immortality would somehow exempt you from such a trial (a la Highlander)?

I wish to live forever regardless of economics or living conditions. The fundamental principle of immortalist thinking is that a life lived is infinitely more desirable than death. Granted one would not desire a tortuous existence, but a quick look at history gives rise to cautious optimism. I can point to numerous examples of better standards of living all around the world, even in 'third-world' countries. Imagine if one returned to Vietnam after a 30 year absence. Progress made there in health, quality of life, etc. is remarkable.


Youth and Physical Immortality
You're right. A growing number of young people are attracted to the idea of living forever. This is partly inherent, but it's also a result of our time in history. Youth are more likely to play with technology, surf the web for answers, think critically and openly, and expect miracles from these technologies.

There's also a growing movement called Transhumanism. This group embraces the possibility of immortality and a post human world. Plus other groups, such as Cryonics organizations, have grown in number because of media, better outreach thought the internet and more funding form clients. Also, Nanotechnology is now readily accepted as a plausible and implemental sometime in the near future. And Artificial Intelligence may bring us smarter than human intelligence soon. So, there's been a convergence lately... and there's much to be optimistic about in terms of real progress.. No 'Highlander' needed.

Fear of Death:
I'm not paralyzed by the thought of death - it's a motivating factor in my life. Maybe the word has negative connotations, but I think it best describes my feelings toward death. I'm not terrified - I just fear death and have taken in response to this feeling. Most people fear snakes and they’re rightly justified in that some snakes are poisonous and can kill.

More Food For Thought From Anonymous

MORTALITY to IMMORTALITY - THE TRANSITION
How does the world transit from a mortal human population to an immortal one...presuming that we could create the first immortal today? First, we need to envision how we go about creating the first immortal. The least likely scenario is that we discover some "fountain of youth" potion that can convert (to immortality) persons born mortal, so let's set that option aside for the moment. It is far more likely that the first immortal human will be born that way (a product of genetic engineering). For even if genetics isn't the entire answer, there is almost certainly no answer that can completely exclude genetics, hence the requirement not only for immortality from birth but also for each birth to be individually genetically engineered (the new immortals must have a sufficiently large gene pool to prosper). This dictates a slow gradual replacement of mortals over at least several hundred years. In the meantime, mortals continue to reproduce as they do now. Barring draconian governmental measures, it cannot be otherwise.

While each possibility (fountain or genetic engineering) carries unique issues with it, both choices beg the question: How is the mortal population going to react to the new privileged immortals? In a word, they will hunt them down and kill them. In a world where a comment about the contestants in a Miss Universe contest can evoke days of rioting including killing and the destruction of property...in a world where terrorists can hijack an airliner and fly it into the side of a skyscraper...the discovery of immortals in our midst is SURE to foment witch hunts that will drive immortals into permanent hiding along with their creators. If you doubt this, just look at the furor over genetically engineered foods and over human cloning.

Conversely, if a "fountain of youth" drug were found and could be made available universally, what kind of pandora's box would that open? Unsustainable overpopulation within a generation or two? Economic monopolies developed for the distribution of the drug? A criminal system with an aging-based sentencing structure (withdrawal of the drug for a time sufficient to cause a certain amount of aging)? These represent just a few of the societal upheavals inherent to any transition from mortality to immortality by contemporary man, which draw towards the inescapable conclusion that mankind is not ready for immortality...nor will he be in the forseeable future.

IMMORTALITY vs. EVOLUTION

Immortality must necessarily supplant human evolution to succeed! If over the next few hundred (or thousand) years mankind achieves corporeal immortality, birthrates must concurrently drop precipitously to prevent a catastrophic population explosion of immortals. This has the net effect of similarly slowing the rate of mutation to almost nil as the rate of transfer of genetic properties must follow the birthrate. So either further natural evolution of homo sapiens essentially ends, or humanity deems itself mature enough to begin to engineer its own decendants. Personally, I have a difficult time crediting humanity with that maturity when it has not yet demonstrated the maturity to solve much more fundamental problems like war, economic oppression of third-world populations by totalitarian dictators, environmental consequences of industrialization, and countless others. Setting these obstacles aside, let us explore in turn the presumptions that: "A" man succeeds at creating immortals (and they are not killed by the remaining mortals) but does not pursue directed evolution through further genetic manipulation. or "B" that both processes go forward. As we will see, the outcome doesn't change, only the timeframe. In the former case, it may take 50,000 years; in the latter, less than a thousand.

In case A, while immortals are busy minimizing the effects of evolution on the privileged group (themselves), Nature will attempt to sidestep this now evolutionary dead end and come up with a better model of mortal man, setting up a natural selection competition between immortal contemporary humans and mortal superhumans. This competition would have many of the same features as Neanderthals' struggle to avoid being supplanted by Cro Magnons. So, let's extend the analogy a bit. How efficacious would immortal Neanderthals have been? Would that have enabled them to avoid extinction? and if so, just how enlightening would it be to Neanderthal consciousness to have survived this past 100,000 years? Would such a being still experience the joie de vivre that you as (wannabe) immortal modern humans expect to carry forward for far longer than that? I seriously doubt it.

In case B, the same process occurs, except that it is not nature but man that sets the competition. As each technological breakthrough enables the creation of increasingly superior humanoids, contemporary immortals become increasingly obsolete...and the outcome of the competition (barring some form of genocidal jihad to prevent obsolescence) is inevitable. Only the timeframe can be measured in centuries, not millenia.

That is the fallacy of argument that I alluded to when I said, "You still perceive your entire future (as an immortal) as a never-ending extension of the privileged position where you now stand. That is a fool's paradise." Just how do you (evolutionarily frozen by your birth genes) plan to stay "front-row center" with the genetically engineered humans born a thousand years (much less centuries) hence? The painful truth is: YOU CAN'T POSSIBLY. You would be as much of an anacronism to them (and they would be as unfathomable to you) as a living homo australopithicus would be today. That is the hubris and vanity of your quest...that you believe that you can remain contemporary forever just by living that long.

So there is a seeming catch22 here: The genetic manipulation necessary to create immortals also carries the power to accelerate and direct human evolution. In attempting to do both (and I hold that the temptation is irresistable), it creates a surplus of inferior but immortal progenitors. In fact, the process dramatically hastens their obsolescence thereby obviating any societal benefit from immortality in the first place.


P.S. All those dramatic numbers demonstrating the loss of the equivalent of several Libraries of Congress worth of knowledge is fatally flawed for at least two reasons. First, the comparison presumes that there is no overlap in the knowledge of each deceased...categorically untrue. Second, Extension of lifespan tenfold only changes the denomination of the loss. It has no impact on the volume. To wit: Ten deaths per year each with 80 years of accumulated knowledge is essentially equal to one death per year with 800 years of accumulated knowledge. This example exposes the shallowness of most of the "justifications" that I have read on the thread you directed me to.

- Anonymous

I'd like to address a couple of issues regarding immortality brought up by Anonymous. One "problem" often mentioned when discussions turn to the morality and feasibility of immortal humans is that of overpopulation. So Anonymous is not alone in using this as an argument for the long term sustainability of physical immortality.

However, history is littered with such concerns which later turned out to be completely incorrect. The usual reason for this is that the party making the assertion that if X happens, Y will be the result, only concerns themselves with a direct cause and effect relationship between two or three items. For example, a respected scientist in the mid 1800's declared that, based on the rate of population increase in London and the per capita rate of horse ownership, London would be buried in horse droppings by the early 1940's with no way to handle the clearing of all that manure. Of course, the invention of the automobile caused that particular problem to disappear.

In reality, the development of technology allowing the extension of human life spans and eventual open ended life would not occur in a vacuum. Most immortalists believe it will be a combination of genetics and nanotechnology that will bring about open ended life. These same technologies would have drastic affects on other areas of human life as well. For example, advanced nanotechnology would allow humanity to terraform other planetary bodies for our use, build huge artificial structures in space to live on (using material from the Oort Cloud, Kupier Belt, etc.) Many assumptions must go into the conclusion that physical immortality won't happen even if technology allows it: that we will not figure out how to live anywhere else except earth, that life extending technology won't be available to anyone except the privileged few, that we won't have improvements in food production, production of goods (so there is less/no pollution) and many other assumptions that are unlikely to be accurate.

Anonymous also indicates that he believes that mostly young people are interested in physical immortality. If this is true (which I'm not sure it is) its due mostly to where we are in history right now. For example, mostly young people under 25 used to be interested in computers. Now though, as computers have been around longer, the age of people interested in them has gradually increased. My children for example, will likely still be interested in computers when they are 60, whereas many people who are 60 and up now, don't like computers because they were not a part of their childhood or young adult lives. Physical immortality is likely to see a similar pattern of acceptance. Although the idea has been around for millennia, its only very recently that the idea has started to seem plausible through science. Some forward thinkers saw it coming as early as the 1960's, but really didn't know HOW it could be done, just believing science would figure out a way. We now have a basic idea of the technologies that would need to be developed to make this a reality. (If you want to go even further back to someone who believed science would figure out how to stop or at least radically slow aging, Benjamin Franklin lamented that he would be unable to live to see what had become of America in one or two hundred years because he lived in a time when science was not advanced enough to allow it.)

Finally, Anonymous says that when the first immortal (and others like him/her) comes into existence, it will result in mortals hunting them down because he assumes that people born mortal will not have the opportunity to become immortal. This is not likely to be true either. There is no reason to expect that science will not figure out a way to change the genetic makeup of already existing individuals. Its already done in some animals and even people on a simple level and better control over DNA editing and expression in living cells is ongoing. (One example: Two boys in Paris in 2000 and one boy in England in 2002 were cured of severe combined immunodeficiency by using gene therapy to replace a single faulty gene that causes the disorder. This is commonly called "baby in a bubble" because the only way children so afflicted can survive is to be in a bubble since they have no immune systems.) A reliable and safe means to carry out larger, more complex genetic changes is sure to be developed within the near future.

Certainly there are many unanswered questions about physical immortality, but the only way to answer them is to pursue the goal.

Edited by Dynastius, 25 February 2003 - 09:48 PM.