Numinous Nonsense

In the first post of this series I defined death more broadly than the common understanding of biological death, to mean the ending of things. And in the second post I showed how this understanding of death leads to living more fully, and can if explored adequately can actually lead to a transformation of our very identities and to a kind of “spiritual immortality.” This immortality has everything to do with seeing that “I” am not this fleeting body, this fleeting mind, etc. but instead include all of that and more.

When speaking of death and immortality though, it’s important to bring in the perspective of a school of thought called the Transhumanists. These thinkers believe that information technologies are growing exponentially and that this exponential growth will transform nearly every aspect of our lives, including our ability to extend life indefinitely, which is also known as radical life extension. I happen to agree with them, and am a big fan of these theories. One of my favorite Transhumanists, Ray Kurzweil, explains radical life extension this way:

One analogy that life extension researcher Aubrey de Grey uses is, “How long does a house last? If you take care of the house diligently, and quickly address any problem that comes up, the house can last indefinitely. If you don’t take care of it, it won’t last very long.” The reason that analogy fails in regard to our own bodies is that we don’t yet understand all the methods and we don’t have all the maintenance tools for our bodies like we do for houses. We fully understand how a house works, because we engineered the concept of a house. We don’t yet have all that information about our bodies and brains, and we don’t have all the tools. But we will have them within twenty to twenty-five years, so we will be able to indefinitely maintain our bodies—and even anticipate, before they occur, the kinds of issues that now cause us to age and die. We’re talking about putting your life into your own hands rather than leaving it in the metaphorical hands of fate.

Now there’s a whole lot more to their argument, which I won’t go into here¹, but what I will say is that much of their vision is quite compelling. What I do want to explore is how the Transhumanist vision of life extension—or what basically amounts to biological immortality—can be understood in terms of my broader definition of death, and how it relates to the “spiritual immortality” that was discussed earlier. Are they the same thing, completely opposite, or something altogether? But first let’s see what Mr. Kurzweil thinks about death.

Up until now, we’ve had no opportunity to circumvent our mortality. So we had no alternative but to rationalize this tragedy—which is what death is—saying, “Oh, it’s really a good thing. And it’s ennobling; it gives life meaning.” A large part of religion is to rationalize this tragic loss of knowledge and skill and personality as something positive. But really, what’s positive about human beings is our pursuit of new frontiers.

So basically he sees death, specifically the death of a biological entity, as a tragedy. But is radical life extension really going to forgo the death of our biological being indefinitely? Not really. Firstly, accidents can still happen and with each leap in technological maturity comes an even greater possibility that we kill ourselves. The very same technologies that will give us the abilities to live longer will also give us an unprecedented ability to wipe out the entire biosphere². Secondly, people may still choose to stop living. There is no guarantee, just as there never has been, that just because people can live that they will. And thirdly, our physical longevity may increase, but that doesn’t mean that death won’t happen eventually. We will still be limited by whatever physical constraints exist (ex. the end of the universe). Granted that could be a long time out, there will always continue to be limitations on conditioned systems.

Putting that aside for a moment though, and not just engaging his argument at the level it was constructed, I think it’s valuable to look at his claims in light of the broader definition of death. If death is equated with change and with the ending of any particular constellation or pattern, then in Kurzweil’s world there will actually be more death and not less! The radical transformations he discusses would mean the death of so many things that are familiar to us. He envisions biological and non-biological (i.e. technological creations) intelligence merging, such that what we now see our our bodies and minds would become radically different (think cyborgs but way different than Robocop). Also, with the exponential change of technology each year will bring about more and more change (indeed change is doubling!). There is nothing about Kurzweil’s vision that will allow us to avoid death. We may be able to prolong some sort of pattern of identity over a longer period of time, but that pattern will be so radically altered in the process that it would be fair to say that we will have to die many times over before it’s all done with.

Different Kinds of Immortality

Another thing I’d like to mention is that many of the Transhumanists aren’t themselves familiar with the “spiritual immortality” that is discussed in many of the world’s spiritual traditions. This statement from Kurzweil evidences that:

Religion talks about transcending death, but it has a mystical answer to how that happens. In fact, we find this transcendence in the real physical world. We find it in technology. If you put materials and energy in the right configurations, magical things happen. You get powers that go beyond the original materials. That’s what excites me about being an inventor.

And we will transcend death and that natural cycle. We’re not just grapes on the vine—we are overcoming that natural process that we emerged from. Yes, we came from nature, but we are going to surpass it through the power of our technology, which comes from our mind made manifest in the real world.

Two things pop out immediately when reading his statement. One is that he thinks mystical experience is limited to some sort of magical power, of “powers that go beyond their original materials.” The other is that he definitely conceives of our ultimate identities as being inextricably tied to our physical bodies and minds. The mystics understanding doesn’t have anything to do with magical powers as much as it does with untangling the sense of identity from any thing which can change, until identity finally includes everything! Unfortunately, Kurzweil just isn’t qualified to make these kind of claims.

And if he could, if he had awakened to an identity that went beyond the body and mind, would he still be chasing physical immortality with so much passion? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with extending the human lifespan. Indeed a lot of suffering can be alleviated by doing so, and in many ways we have a moral obligation to ease the suffering of all beings. The real problem has to do with extending it in hopes that we can somehow achieve spiritual immortality, which is actually our birthright. This immortality has nothing to do with the conditions of the world, including those that could extend our physical life spans, but instead has everything to do with knowing directly that life and death are all natural parts of the conditioned world. Knowing this, we can live and die with grace, no matter how long that is. Knowing this we are free.

1. Check out The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology if you’re interested in learning more. [↩]
2. Kurzweil himself claims that self-replicating nanotechnology, if it were spread across the globe, and was unhampered, could destroy the entire biosphere in 90 minutes! [↩]