When Bilbo received the Immortal Ring of Omnipotence, the wizard Gandalf asked him how he was feeling. The hobbit replied, "I feel like a piece of butter smeared on a huge piece of bread." Modern technologies are trying to extend a person's life, and in the future to make him completely immortal. But are people themselves ready for this?
Numbers
In November 2013, Levada Center sociologists asked passers-by with an unusual question: "Do you want to live forever?" It would seem, who is not attracted by eternal life?.. But the results of the poll surprised: 62% of Russians do not want such a fate for themselves. The question of immortality was asked by non-believers, Orthodox Christians and representatives of other confessions.
However, the specialists of the Levada Center already conducted a similar study in 2007, and the results have not changed since then, the number of people who dream of immortality has remained the same. But the number of those who rely on God has decreased by 17% in six years, while the share of those who rely only on their own strength has grown by 14%. 39% of the respondents did not think about death, and of those who thought about it, only 15% noted that they were ready for it.
"Cure" for death - stem cells
… Or rather, the organs of them. The idea is the same as in the case of cloned organs: replacing worn-out ones with new ones. It is assumed that living organs grown from the patient's own stem cells will take root much better than artificial "spare parts".
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However, some researchers say that such surveys may contain inaccuracies and errors. Firstly, in such a questionnaire, too deep, as sociologists say, “sensitive” questions were raised. In this case, the answer is especially influenced by the personal contact “interviewer-respondent”. Secondly, different people can understand “eternal life” itself in different ways: for some it is bliss in paradise, for others it is an empty nothingness … It is not entirely correct to trust such numbers one hundred percent. But how, then, can one answer the question of whether a person is ready to live forever?
Immortality is the dream of humanity
“I've read some studies on this issue,” says Valeria Udalova, General Director of the only cryonics company in Russia, KrioRus. - One fourth, one fifth of the population is really ready for eternal life. According to legend, Benjamin Franklin wanted his body to be kept in a barrel of wine after his death. In the ancient "Epic of Gilgamesh" the hero was busy looking for a means that would make his friend Enkidu immortal. People have always dreamed of eternal life. Of course, if a person is tormented by illness, poverty and old age, he will not want any eternal life, because for him she is associated with these torments. But if he becomes healthy, will live in abundance - why not?.. People in developed countries are already living longer due to the development of medicine and cultural lifestyle. Maybe someday we will talk about immortality.
"Cure" for death - cryonics
Cryonics is one way to avoid eternal sleep in a wooden box, replacing it with a long sleep in a high-tech freezer. After death, a person's body is either frozen entirely, or only his brain is put into "hibernation". Cryonics is a groundwork for the future, when, as expected, technology will allow to revive cryonauts who sleep long sleep in freezers.
How do you learn to be mortal?
- While technologies are struggling to create an immortal cyborg in which a human "I" could be implanted, scientists are wondering if a person wants to live forever? - says the famous St. Petersburg psychoanalyst Dmitry Olshansky. - Does such a life have any meaning? And what about the death drive that makes a person human?
Borges has a story about people who gained immortality, and after several centuries have lost any meaning of life, and after a few centuries degraded to an animal state. Indeed, life has meaning and value only if it is finite, when every moment is unique, and not a single lived minute will return. Only then can a person have motivation, a goal and a desire to achieve it. If life is an endless straight line, and not a segment that needs to be lived in the most interesting way, then it will not have a goal, and the desire to live will disappear. In the end, human imagination and possibilities are not limitless, and many modern people, even at 20-30 years old, live boring and meaningless: study, family, children, loans, housing, retirement … Take away this scenario from the average person - and you will seewhat anxiety he will fall into from his senseless stay on this planet. And then it turns out that this emptiness can last forever. For many, this would be a disaster. Probably hell is an endless monotonous life.
"Cure" for death - clones
After the birth of Dolly the sheep, the conversation about creating exact copies of their own kind ceased to be science fiction. However, experiments even on the cloning of individual organs, which could serve as an excellent replacement for worn out, sick parts of the body, not to mention the whole body, are met with zealous opposition from the public, and are practically everywhere regulated in the most stringent way.
Another literary character said: "I do not need an eternal needle for a primus, I am not going to live forever." Many people not only do not want to live forever, but even feel anxiety when such an idea comes up. On the one hand, eternal life is mentally unbearable for a person, and for many neurotics such a thought evokes the fear of infinity and emptiness. On the other hand, man is by nature a finite being, this is his generic trait, to become immortal means to stop being a man. That is, if it comes to immortality, then this is not so much the lot of a person as of a cyborg. To become immortal, you need to give up your human nature, and this cannot but inspire awe. This is not only a physiological, but also an eschatological meaning: someone hopes to gain immortality by connecting with a machine, someone - with God … But she, too,and another fantasy involves the abandonment of one's human nature.
The question of immortality still belongs to the realm of science fiction, and it is unlikely that our children and grandchildren will have to seriously answer it. But there is another question that faces each of us: how to stop living in “groundhog day”, when each new day “copies” the previous one, and the entire life cycle repeats the prescribed scenario? How to get out of the cycle of bad infinity and from the eternal monotony of life? How to overcome alienation and return to the irreversible stream of life, where every moment is irrevocably lost? In other words, the main question for modern man is: How can one learn to be mortal? How to live your own life and do it always clean copy, without rewriting? This is an existential task for each of us.
People aren't even ready to live long
- The theme of eternal youth, eternal life is the favorite fantasies of people at all times. Moreover, it is assumed that development must certainly stop at the point of a certain maturity, at the age-related peak of physiological activity. But a "perpetual motion machine" is impossible neither at the level of the soma, body, nor at the level of the psyche.
Mental old age presupposes stagnation of desires, lack of positive expectations for the future, inability to transform, develop - there is nowhere to go forward and there is no need. A huge mass of people are unable to overcome social stereotypes and create something, regardless of age, within the framework of their age characteristics ("After 50 years of life there is no more", "Climax - there is no more me as a woman", "I retired - life is over"). Hence there are so many extinct, depressed faces in those who are no longer of childbearing age.
Even within the framework of one life, not everyone is able to change the objects of application of their forces, to find new meanings of life, new goals. Eternity assumes that a person must have inner resources for many such transformations.
That is, to be ready to be forever inventing, “fertilized” with an idea or feelings, nurturing, giving birth to projects and new deeds, putting on their feet both their brainchildren-ideas and the work of hands. If we assume that the body continues to remain healthy and strong, what high flexibility, adaptability, stress resistance, libidinal activity should be at the level of deep processes in the psyche!
There are isolated examples when in extreme old age, despite illnesses, some actors and scientists show amazing examples of a bright creative, intellectual life. But in general it is easier for people to dream of something eternal than even within the framework of one of their finite lives, to be able to be functional, complete one creative cycle and start another.
"Cure" for death - nanorobots
Another way to combat the inevitability is to send robots into the body that will destroy disease-causing agents, track and "clean up" infected and destroyed cells. Work in this direction is carried out by many medical and scientific centers of the world: it is believed that sooner or later nanorobots will help cure almost any disease. However, such technologies are unlikely to be implemented in the near future, since they require a huge amount of additional research, the development of new technologies - and clinical trials for each new product.
Our world is in the grip of a pandemic of depression. Complaints about the lack of a sense of life within themselves are widespread. Does this not prove that it is very difficult for a modern person in a neurotic world, and sometimes even in a psychotic space, not only to live long, but simply to live. That's why there are so many self-destructive behaviors: workaholism, alcoholism, food and chemical addictions, dangerous professions and hobbies, a destructive lifestyle. A person on an unconscious level does a lot in order to die earlier, completes his mental life much earlier than his physical one. People in the mass are not even ready to just live long.
The question of readiness for eternal life is not easy, especially since no one has yet invented the elixir of immortality. Create it, and - who knows? - perhaps the number of those wishing to live forever would increase. In the meantime, as you know, there is nothing inevitable except death and taxes.
Olga Ivanova