Thanatophobia

Ever hear of a transhumanist? Up until yesterday, I hadn’t either.

According to an article I read in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, transhumans are “a diverse group of technological optimists that advocates the transformation of homo sapiens into a new species, one “better than human.” They are people who endeavor to merge humanity with technology.

Although there are some people in this story who were interested in transhumanity as a way to do things like provide sight for the blind, hearing for the deaf, store memories in a computer outside of the human body, and so on, most of the people interested in this (at least the ones in the article) are interested in it as a way to live longer and maybe be immortal.

The thing is, everything wears out eventually and everyone will die. That’s way everything works. Even if a person lives a billion years, eventually our sun is going to turn into a red giant and incinerate the planet. People can only cheat death for so long.

Ralph Merkle, a computer science professor at Georgia Institute of Technology said, “”Most of my friends would have no problem with living 500 years or longer; there’s so much to learn.”

I have to ask, “What’s the point of learning all that you could learn in 500 years when it’s all going to be for nothing once you eventually die?”

This whole idea reminds me a bit of the movie Bicentennial Man. In that movie, Robin Williams plays a robot. The story is set in the future and there is a company which mass-produces robots to assist in different things around the home. But Andrew (Williams’ character) is defective; instead of being programmed to be smart, yet dumb his programming gives him artificial intelligence (AI).

This AI makes him self-aware, it gives him the ability to think, to reason, to solve problems, to have goals and aspirations, and to create things that aren’t based on things made by other people. It also makes him want to be human.

Since he is a robot, he outlives everyone in the family that he lives with and gets the opportunity to know what it’s like to be alone and to miss people.

During his “lifetime” he makes many modifications to himself in an effort to be human. In the end, he is very much human in almost every way and so he appeals to Congress to be recognized as an actual person, and thus have the rights and protection of a person.

They turn him down because although he possesses almost every trait and characteristic that humans do, he won’t die.

I won’t spoil the ending for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but I’d recommend the movie. I think Robin Williams did an excellent job in this, and I think it’s a decent story.

Anyways, enough of the movie review.

I find it rather strange how thanatophobic (the fear of death and dying) American society is now days. People try to avoid talking about it. People try to avoid planning for it. People are willing to spend all kinds of money and tolerate all sorts of weird, and sometimes humiliating, medical procedures in an effort to stay “alive” as long as they possibly can. When people DO die (because it’s inevitable) they are dressed up and get enough makeup put on them that perhaps the their body will still look alive if people’s tears blur their vision enough.

Isn’t it strange how death used to be just a fact of life? It used to be that when someone died, it was their friends and family who usually took care of the body. The funeral (if there was one) was usually held the same day, because they didn’t want the body to start to stink. The relatives dug the hole, the relatives put the body in, and the relatives buried it.

It seems to me that many people now days don’t really love life so much that they don’t want to leave as much as they fear death and don’t want to die. It’s a bit of an unspoken, yet commonly shared fear that people unconsciously and unspeakingly share. No one needs to explain it to someone else.

Anyhow, since I’m pretty much saying a whole lot about nothing here (which happens when I write something simply because I haven’t written in a while, but I don’t really have a “reason” to write) I’ll just say that I think the whole transhuman thing is retarded. I think that the longer people keep living, the more problems and stress is going to be created that society will have to shoulder. I think that we are all going to die and people should just accept that and get over it.

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“I’m faded and tired
And completely uninspired
And I’ll die again for you.”
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Smile Empty Soul
^Who I saw last Sunday, BTW^