Monday, 21 December 2009

Sometimes it saddens me that I won’t live long enough to live forever. No that’s not a typo, let me explain.

It seems fairly logical that, striking any true widespread pandemic or atrocity, humans will achieve immortality in the next 1,000 years. Heck, even that is likely too generous. I’d say 200-500 years.

This both incredibly frustrates and saddens me.

(I know I’m a little crazy when I give serious thought to getting myself cryogenically frozen until the technology exists to A) extend my life permanently, and B) thaw me obviously.)

But that’s how my mind works. Science fiction has always been my favorite topic in movies, books, any story really. Hence, most of what I experience is future-oriented. Philip Zombardo gave a TED Talk explaining that it’s important to have a healthy balance of past, present, and future orientation in our lives. Mostly, he said, present should be our primary orientation, but that all 3 are important nonetheless.

And so, my guess is that I am too heavily future-oriented. I know this because I get depressed daily over the thought that there is so much humanity can - and hopefully will - achieve and I won’t be alive to experience it. When I think about how little we’ll likely achieve in my lifetime I get unbelievably depressed and cynical. Quickly, I start analyzing every system that currently exists and pointing out all its flaws; that way, at least I can feel justified in not doing anything about it all: “it’s just too damn much.”

I imagine this is how a parent feels as they age and realize they won’t always be around for their children. To me, the human race are my children and I have only 50-70 years left to share with them. ‘Tis but a tick of the clock in the grand scheme of things.

But if only I could live another 300 years, science will likely have advanced enough to at least prolong life. Or at the very least, by that point we should have ruled on whether immortality was possible or impossible.