The problem of life after death has occupied the minds of people throughout the history of mankind. However, not a single thinker, be it a scientist or a clergyman, asked the question: is it possible to go through life indefinitely, or is death impossible to avoid?
Will live
It so happens that science fiction writers and philosophers manage to literally "look into the future" without having either a time machine or a magic ball. For example, Jules Verne, who "launched" into space and "landed" on the moon the first man a century before the space victories of the two superpowers began. And there are many such examples. However, the ideas of Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov turned out to be truly incredible - he looked ahead for more than one century.
The outstanding thinker was born on May 26, 1829 in the village of Klyuchi, Tambov province, received a law degree and worked as a teacher of geography and history in the gymnasiums of county towns. He led an ascetic life, devoting it to one idea - overcoming death in the past, present and future.
Asking the question “Why does a living thing suffer and die?” Fedorov considered nature to be a source of suffering - a meaningless mechanism leading to the death of the living.
A mechanism to be tamed. In the manuscript "Philosophy of the Common Cause", which combined scientific concepts and religious dogmas, he called the "duty" of each person to resurrect their loved ones - offering to collect the scattered atoms and molecules remaining after death in order to "fold them into bodies" and achieve immortality. Seemed fantastic, his ideas, nevertheless, eventually gained hope for implementation …
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Memory chains
It has been scientifically proven that any object of existing reality is an accumulation of atoms in time and space. Man is no exception, since atoms are the “building material” that binds together a variety of molecules, which, in turn, form cells - the basis of a living organism. After the death of an organism, its material disintegrates into its constituent parts and is "absorbed" by the surrounding ecosystem, without disappearing anywhere.
However, it will not be possible to restore a body from atoms - it is difficult to imagine a technology that will be able to “find and collect” the necessary atoms scattered everywhere. And from a single surviving cell - it is quite possible.
A cell of the human body contains genetic information, which, for example, makes it possible to create a clone, which, according to the conclusions of some scientists, will be an exact copy only in terms of physiological correspondence. It is not yet known whether the character and inclinations will be "passed on" to the clone - the world has never seen the first clone of man.
Largely because human DNA has not yet been fully deciphered - about 90% of its chain performs functions that are still unknown to science. Meanwhile, some scientists are inclined to conclude that it is there that information about a person is stored - including not only memory, but also consciousness, mind and everything that is understood as a “soul”.
And their conclusions are confirmed - for example, employees of the University of Alabama (USA) David Stewett and Courtney Miller found that chemical methylation processes (modifications of a DNA molecule without changing the nucleotide sequence itself) occurring in DNA are responsible for the memories of certain life events …
Opponents of the possibility of resurrecting people stated that it would not be possible to completely revive a person - with the death of a person, his brain, the "storage" of all personal data, dies. However, the structure of the brain is retained "in the memory" of the cell, since each cell contains, along with genetic data, a spatial model of the whole organism, which means that the structure of the brain can also be restored.
Most likely, DNA “hacking” will really allow “reviving” the dead - not millions, but at least several centuries ago. Unlike a cloned body, a "restored" person can have identical consciousness and intelligence, which means that he will remain himself even in an environment and lifestyle that are far from those of his lifetime. The likelihood of returning memory increases.
Eternal mind
But how will the future generation be able to keep themselves alive? In this he will be able to help … nanotechnology. US physicist Raymond Kurzweil and a team of scientists from Singularity University (co-founded by NASA and Google) are currently developing nanorobots that can support life as much as the technology itself will allow.
The meaning of his idea is that millions of tiny nanomachines will move through the bloodstream, restoring worn out and injured cells. The only problem is accidents, which can lead to brain death and, as a result, to the disappearance of consciousness.
However, neurophysicists from IBM, the world's largest multinational computer technology company, argue that the problem can be solved by gradually replacing the human brain with an artificial computer brain during his lifetime. According to the latest research by scientists, the so-called "consciousness" (or "soul") is contained in the brain, more precisely, in the neurocortex (part of the cerebral cortex), and is an array of encoded information.
In order to preserve it, IBM Corporation created Blue Gene, a project to create a model of the human brain. The model will eventually make it possible to create a chip identical to the brain in structure and functioning, which will gradually "replace" dying cells until the moment of complete death - at the last moment the computer brain will completely replace the outdated biological one.
By the way, like-minded IBM - Swiss scientists of the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne, who created a computer model of the rat brain, in 2009 registered an amazing phenomenon: simulated neurons (cells of the nervous system) began to connect, which meant one thing - the possibility of their development like natural, "natural" cells brain.
Our common cause
What will happen if humanity manages not only to resurrect the dead, but also to achieve immortality? Will problems such as overpopulation and lack of resources get worse? Wouldn't this be a violation of Divine intentions? You should not be afraid of this, since each of the problems, no matter what the modern media reports, is very relative.
The relationship between life expectancy and the number of children born is known for certain - developed countries with their growing life expectancy already today are forced to resort to attracting migrant workers from other countries due to low birth rates and a natural shortage of labor.
It is worth remembering the laws that control the birth rate, such as the doctrine of "one family, one child" in force in China. And not everyone is attracted by the idea of "eternal" life. Those who wish to die would allow those who need it to give birth.
Nanobots in the bloodstream
Lack of resources is caused not by their insufficiency, but by banal human greed - according to UN data, the average American or European consumes three times more resources than he needs for a normal life. The problem of hunger in the world is, first of all, the problem of the conscientious observance of laws in states, whose citizens are starving.
As for religion, the theme of the resurrection of the dead runs like a red thread throughout the entire text of the Holy Scriptures, and Buddhism sets the ultimate goal of liberation from the cycle of birth and death - samsara, which does not imply the disappearance of the personality.
N. F. Fedorov believed that death is the punishment for sins, and resurrection is their atonement; he saw science and religion as brothers who must go hand in hand towards this goal. His ideas were admired and inspired by F. M. Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, K. E. Tsiolkovsky and Yuri Gagarin …
Undoubtedly, there are many people who do not accept the views of the great Russian thinker and the achievements of modern science, believing that there can be no future without birth and death.
And the current level of technology development, even in the next millennium, will not allow us to either achieve eternal life or resurrect the dead. It remains to believe that the day will come when a new world will appear before us - in which people will be able to independently choose whether to die or continue to live.
Sergey ALEXEEV