Our attempts to defeat death.
Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2016 10:35 am
Humans have attempted to conquer death in three ways - two of which are related.
Firstly we attempted to do it with religion. That, when all said and done, was the basis of all religion. Where do we go when we die; are we forever lost to the World. Emphatically not [says religion]. You....i) enter the sprit realm where the ancestors go and a Shamen will occasionally pop in to say Hi...... ii) Just get recycled over and over and over untill you get clever enough not to need to be anymore and then you're in another place altogether! .........iii) get to go to the Land of Milk and Honey, where all you have lost will be returned to you and you get to do good stuff all the time untill - well, forever [or if you've been bad, well, best not dwell on that.]
Secondly we attempt to do it with medicine. On the face of it doctors will say they are in the business of making people well, aleviating the suffering that illness causes - but ultimately it's all about cheating death. If I have a heart attack, the system swings into action in it's attempt to drag me back. Cancer has to be erradicated, Old age has to be pushed further and further away. Death is the final goal that medicine confronts - and it won't give up intill it understands why and how we age, and how it can be perevented or circomvented.
And finally we have Physics. Physics and medicine hold hands in their primary attempt to defeat death. If we can strip down brain function to it's basic coinage of elctrochemical signals, reproduce it and upload the information onto a hard drive or whatever, we can live a virtual life, be beamed from our home to the far reaches of the Universe, improve and adjust ourselves untill we have the power of gods - oh yes, and never die. the secondary attempt of physics to defeat death is to demonstrate that in actuallity, all of that stuff is really a waste of time anyway - because in truth you never die anyway. There is always a Universe somewhere where you are alive doing your thing [or all the things that you wished you'd got to do but never achieved - and the other stuff as well]. Or it may be that time is just an illusion and that in reality all of it exists all the time anyway, so the subjective 'life and death' you imagine are really just illusion anyway - you exist, you always have, you always will.
[finally I should include the sub-catagory of the 'ok - death exists, we can't do shit about it so lets just get out and have a good time and stop worrying about it' mentality. Still in it's own way, an attempt to defeat death.]
Firstly we attempted to do it with religion. That, when all said and done, was the basis of all religion. Where do we go when we die; are we forever lost to the World. Emphatically not [says religion]. You....i) enter the sprit realm where the ancestors go and a Shamen will occasionally pop in to say Hi...... ii) Just get recycled over and over and over untill you get clever enough not to need to be anymore and then you're in another place altogether! .........iii) get to go to the Land of Milk and Honey, where all you have lost will be returned to you and you get to do good stuff all the time untill - well, forever [or if you've been bad, well, best not dwell on that.]
Secondly we attempt to do it with medicine. On the face of it doctors will say they are in the business of making people well, aleviating the suffering that illness causes - but ultimately it's all about cheating death. If I have a heart attack, the system swings into action in it's attempt to drag me back. Cancer has to be erradicated, Old age has to be pushed further and further away. Death is the final goal that medicine confronts - and it won't give up intill it understands why and how we age, and how it can be perevented or circomvented.
And finally we have Physics. Physics and medicine hold hands in their primary attempt to defeat death. If we can strip down brain function to it's basic coinage of elctrochemical signals, reproduce it and upload the information onto a hard drive or whatever, we can live a virtual life, be beamed from our home to the far reaches of the Universe, improve and adjust ourselves untill we have the power of gods - oh yes, and never die. the secondary attempt of physics to defeat death is to demonstrate that in actuallity, all of that stuff is really a waste of time anyway - because in truth you never die anyway. There is always a Universe somewhere where you are alive doing your thing [or all the things that you wished you'd got to do but never achieved - and the other stuff as well]. Or it may be that time is just an illusion and that in reality all of it exists all the time anyway, so the subjective 'life and death' you imagine are really just illusion anyway - you exist, you always have, you always will.
[finally I should include the sub-catagory of the 'ok - death exists, we can't do shit about it so lets just get out and have a good time and stop worrying about it' mentality. Still in it's own way, an attempt to defeat death.]