“Who wants to live forever? Who dares to love forever? When love must die…But touch my tears with your lips, Touch my world with your finger tips, And we can have forever, And we can love forever…” This Freddie Mercury song was a favourite. My friend and I would cruise the high roads in his beat-up Toyota, and with wheels screaming louder than the speakers, we’d join in with Freddie and scream our lungs out belting and bouncing on the high notes the best we could… The euphoria of the open road, the wind in our hair and that song on our lips… it was exhilarating, and yet when the song played out, I had tears in my eyes… maybe it was the wind, the lyrics or the high notes, maybe it was all of it put together… ‘Who wants to live forever?’ A beautiful song, and memories, more beautiful still…
15 years ago, my friend died in a road accident, and the man I loved more than I would have a brother was gone. More than a friend, he was a mentor and a measure. I sought his approval, his companionship, his support and the light of his goodness. And in a heartbeat, it was all gone. I remember carrying a sack of marigolds to his house the day after he left , thinking, I should’ve been doing this for his wedding day, not for today, no, not for today… and that song played on and on in my head, ‘Who wants to live forever….?’
Having met death so intimately for the first time as an adult, and having lost someone who I still feel might one day be waiting beyond, I developed a mild sense of equanimity for the grim reaper. Hitherto, death was what I thought only happened to ‘others’. I grudgingly began to accept death as a part of ‘my life’, and that others I love might also ‘leave’ before it is my time. And born of that acceptance was a fervent prayer to the powers that be that let none be taken before their time. Let death strike if it has to, but with patience and compassion…
But is it possible to have the power of our will over our own death? Like Bheeshma in the Mahabharata, is it possible to attain the boon of ‘Ichchya Mrityu’ and not necessarily by having to take a vow for celibacy? Across cultures, in Indian and Chinese mythology, as in the Bible, the ancients, Vishwamitra, Vyasa, Abraham and Noah have all been depicted as immortals or at least as people who live for hundreds and hundreds of years. The elixir of life and the fountain of youth are concepts that have fired the human imagination from the beginning of time. And history would have us believe that whatever the human mind imagines will in all probability become reality sooner or later. From the days of Icarian dreams, man has dreamed of flying and today, we fl y without giving the once apparent improbability of it a second thought; Star Trek, the TV series from the 1960s dreamed up wireless ‘flip communicators’, touch screens, video conferencing of sorts, automatic doors, laser guns and ‘the matter transporter’, which allowed people to be ‘beamed’ to various locations, were all the stuff of fantasy, and yet, today all but the last of them is a part of our everyday existence. Even beaming people around, as we do with images today, who knows, might well happen tomorrow. So you might not have nanobots coursing in your veins right now but it is only a matter of time before Ray Kurzweil’s vision of human beings living forever with the help of nanotechnology becomes a neighbourhood reality.
So what of it? Is there a problem? What’s wrong with living forever? Apparently, lots, say some …
To begin with, a group of close friends I was sitting with wondered if love would lose its meaning if we went on to live forever? Would we care as much for our parents and friends if we knew that we might not lose them as generations past had? Would we love our great great great grand parents and children as much as we do our grand parents? And to that I say, of course we will. Love is not a function of time. We love because we love to be with someone. We love because we need and want to be loved and we love because someone else completes us in a way that no one else can, and that could be a parent, a friend, a sibling, a beloved and a pet. And the good thing is that with the opportunity to live forever, we will be working harder on our relationships. We could see our ‘love’ grow to a whole new level. Parents won’t be able to hide behind old age and generation gaps to withdraw and demand love and respect ‘for whatever little time they have left ’, and we children will know that if we were spending time with our ageing parents only because they might not have many more decades left , then would realize that we both need to work on the relationship because we love not because we expect to lose what we love but because we love being with what we love.
When friends get together for a good time how oft en have we heard the lament ‘oh how we wish this could last forever’. So fear not fellow immortals-to-be, our love for each other can only grow the more we have of each other. While studying at IIPM, we were taught about the Law of Increasing Marginal Utility – the more you have of something, the more you want more of it, and love and loving relationships are such that the more you have of them, the more you’ll forever want them. And as for the great great grand kids, unlike if you were not to live forever, at the very least, you’ll get to know them. 15 years ago, I wondered if anybody ever would want to live forever but then I fell in love and realised that when in love you could live and grow and love back, forever and a day. Love in every form is all that makes you want to live forever…
But a jarring note to that thought was a question by a lady whose first reaction when she heard of what nanobots could do was ‘gosh, I’ll be with one man for all those years?’ So what of eternal love, eh? To that I’ll say, we are social creatures and it is in our nature to love and share with more than one lover, friend, parent or child. But though we share our love there is always one parent, lover, friend or child who happens to be our favourite and so shall it be in years to come. The mind might seek variety and the body varied pleasures, but in healthy and secure relationships, we’ll learn to manage negative feelings like jealousy and possessiveness. We’ll always return to the one who happens to be our ‘soulmate’. Maybe after all our dalliances over hundreds of years, we’ll evolve towards monogamy because we’ll learn to appreciate true love so much more, for only when the flesh is satiated does the spirit come to the fore.
We’ll become robots, say some. But I say, don’t worry. When a blind man gets another man’s eyes he does not become that man. Organs, whether bionic or real, are mere tools and little else. But, what of the environment, of wars, scream the ‘immortality-phobes’. Wouldn’t the earth be over-crowded? Hear ye then… Extreme longevity will push us into exploring other planets and solar systems. Reasons such as these pushed our ancestors out of their islands into discovering new lands, new countries, new continents. It were reasons such as these that brought our forefathers to India and it were reasons such as these that helped us grow, diversify, come together and grow further as civilizations, and as a race. And if we don’t discover new planets and moons, we might have to take a cue from Bheeshma and pay the price of our immortality.
And wars? Well wars today mean a soldier could lose a few decades from his life but tomorrow the loss could run into hundreds and thousands of years. Wars would be fought with far greater caution for the stakes are too high to risk. So peace should be the order of the day, till super soldiers impervious to bullets and missiles – things that could kill before you could get to a nanotech hospital – emerge. (See ‘Fie Death, Fie’ on Page 50)
Youthful longevity is a great gift but it is by no means the key to happiness. We’ll still struggle for recognition and status, with our fears and our peers. Like planes, computers and markets, sometimes, even nanobots will crash (thus the concept of God and prayer will survive). It only gives us a little more time to play, to figure out profound questions and strive to become the gods we were meant to be, without help from technology, for as long as we fly, fight and live with the help of technology, we’ll keep living in fear of that technology failing us. Our real accomplishment would be to live without fear, and for that, fellow immortals, we can’t live or wait forever…
15 years ago, my friend died in a road accident, and the man I loved more than I would have a brother was gone. More than a friend, he was a mentor and a measure. I sought his approval, his companionship, his support and the light of his goodness. And in a heartbeat, it was all gone. I remember carrying a sack of marigolds to his house the day after he left , thinking, I should’ve been doing this for his wedding day, not for today, no, not for today… and that song played on and on in my head, ‘Who wants to live forever….?’
Having met death so intimately for the first time as an adult, and having lost someone who I still feel might one day be waiting beyond, I developed a mild sense of equanimity for the grim reaper. Hitherto, death was what I thought only happened to ‘others’. I grudgingly began to accept death as a part of ‘my life’, and that others I love might also ‘leave’ before it is my time. And born of that acceptance was a fervent prayer to the powers that be that let none be taken before their time. Let death strike if it has to, but with patience and compassion…
But is it possible to have the power of our will over our own death? Like Bheeshma in the Mahabharata, is it possible to attain the boon of ‘Ichchya Mrityu’ and not necessarily by having to take a vow for celibacy? Across cultures, in Indian and Chinese mythology, as in the Bible, the ancients, Vishwamitra, Vyasa, Abraham and Noah have all been depicted as immortals or at least as people who live for hundreds and hundreds of years. The elixir of life and the fountain of youth are concepts that have fired the human imagination from the beginning of time. And history would have us believe that whatever the human mind imagines will in all probability become reality sooner or later. From the days of Icarian dreams, man has dreamed of flying and today, we fl y without giving the once apparent improbability of it a second thought; Star Trek, the TV series from the 1960s dreamed up wireless ‘flip communicators’, touch screens, video conferencing of sorts, automatic doors, laser guns and ‘the matter transporter’, which allowed people to be ‘beamed’ to various locations, were all the stuff of fantasy, and yet, today all but the last of them is a part of our everyday existence. Even beaming people around, as we do with images today, who knows, might well happen tomorrow. So you might not have nanobots coursing in your veins right now but it is only a matter of time before Ray Kurzweil’s vision of human beings living forever with the help of nanotechnology becomes a neighbourhood reality.
So what of it? Is there a problem? What’s wrong with living forever? Apparently, lots, say some …
To begin with, a group of close friends I was sitting with wondered if love would lose its meaning if we went on to live forever? Would we care as much for our parents and friends if we knew that we might not lose them as generations past had? Would we love our great great great grand parents and children as much as we do our grand parents? And to that I say, of course we will. Love is not a function of time. We love because we love to be with someone. We love because we need and want to be loved and we love because someone else completes us in a way that no one else can, and that could be a parent, a friend, a sibling, a beloved and a pet. And the good thing is that with the opportunity to live forever, we will be working harder on our relationships. We could see our ‘love’ grow to a whole new level. Parents won’t be able to hide behind old age and generation gaps to withdraw and demand love and respect ‘for whatever little time they have left ’, and we children will know that if we were spending time with our ageing parents only because they might not have many more decades left , then would realize that we both need to work on the relationship because we love not because we expect to lose what we love but because we love being with what we love.
When friends get together for a good time how oft en have we heard the lament ‘oh how we wish this could last forever’. So fear not fellow immortals-to-be, our love for each other can only grow the more we have of each other. While studying at IIPM, we were taught about the Law of Increasing Marginal Utility – the more you have of something, the more you want more of it, and love and loving relationships are such that the more you have of them, the more you’ll forever want them. And as for the great great grand kids, unlike if you were not to live forever, at the very least, you’ll get to know them. 15 years ago, I wondered if anybody ever would want to live forever but then I fell in love and realised that when in love you could live and grow and love back, forever and a day. Love in every form is all that makes you want to live forever…
But a jarring note to that thought was a question by a lady whose first reaction when she heard of what nanobots could do was ‘gosh, I’ll be with one man for all those years?’ So what of eternal love, eh? To that I’ll say, we are social creatures and it is in our nature to love and share with more than one lover, friend, parent or child. But though we share our love there is always one parent, lover, friend or child who happens to be our favourite and so shall it be in years to come. The mind might seek variety and the body varied pleasures, but in healthy and secure relationships, we’ll learn to manage negative feelings like jealousy and possessiveness. We’ll always return to the one who happens to be our ‘soulmate’. Maybe after all our dalliances over hundreds of years, we’ll evolve towards monogamy because we’ll learn to appreciate true love so much more, for only when the flesh is satiated does the spirit come to the fore.
We’ll become robots, say some. But I say, don’t worry. When a blind man gets another man’s eyes he does not become that man. Organs, whether bionic or real, are mere tools and little else. But, what of the environment, of wars, scream the ‘immortality-phobes’. Wouldn’t the earth be over-crowded? Hear ye then… Extreme longevity will push us into exploring other planets and solar systems. Reasons such as these pushed our ancestors out of their islands into discovering new lands, new countries, new continents. It were reasons such as these that brought our forefathers to India and it were reasons such as these that helped us grow, diversify, come together and grow further as civilizations, and as a race. And if we don’t discover new planets and moons, we might have to take a cue from Bheeshma and pay the price of our immortality.
And wars? Well wars today mean a soldier could lose a few decades from his life but tomorrow the loss could run into hundreds and thousands of years. Wars would be fought with far greater caution for the stakes are too high to risk. So peace should be the order of the day, till super soldiers impervious to bullets and missiles – things that could kill before you could get to a nanotech hospital – emerge. (See ‘Fie Death, Fie’ on Page 50)
Youthful longevity is a great gift but it is by no means the key to happiness. We’ll still struggle for recognition and status, with our fears and our peers. Like planes, computers and markets, sometimes, even nanobots will crash (thus the concept of God and prayer will survive). It only gives us a little more time to play, to figure out profound questions and strive to become the gods we were meant to be, without help from technology, for as long as we fly, fight and live with the help of technology, we’ll keep living in fear of that technology failing us. Our real accomplishment would be to live without fear, and for that, fellow immortals, we can’t live or wait forever…
Such a Deep thought put in so simple words.....
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