[extropy-chat] ENOUGH again

[Bryan Moss]

Damien Broderick quotes Bill McKibben:

> `But you *can't* "enjoy the gift of life" forever. Maybe with these new
> tools you can *live* forever, but the joy of it--the meaning of it--will
> melt away like ice cream on an August afternoon. It is true that nothing
> short of these new technologies will make us immortal, but immortality is
> a fool's goal. Living must be enougn for us, not living forever' (161).

It's interesting that the valorization of death always seems to coincide
with uncertainty over the persistence and authenticity of happiness.
Perhaps there's something comforting in the possibility that you might end
life on a high note, rather than watch everything good eventually pass,
indefinitely, without any assurance of more good to come.  Maybe we can
reorient our notion of "emorality" around choice: the freedom to choose when
to die.  Then, perhaps, at a stretch, we can call out people like McKibben
as fellow emortalists, for they too, in championing the utility of death for
man, ultimately make it an intentional act.  That, perversely, would
position him closer to those of us who want to keep chugging along
indefinitely than those who don't recognise the contingency of death at all.

I haven't read McKibben's book, but I'd guess the feasibility of painting
him into that particular corner would depend on getting him to loosen his
grip on Nature and rely more on the notion that death has utility for man.
I don't think such a feat would be *that* difficult, since most notions of
Nature, its plan and cycle, can be dispelled with some choice facts: the
cellular structure of life, the fact that we remain in covenant with Nature,
returning to the Earth as it were, throughout our existence, that burial is
mostly symbolic; that analogues of what we hope to achieve technologically
already exist in Nature to certain degree; and so forth.  If this could be
achieved, I would suggest giving up some ground to the likes of McKibben:
promote death, if you must, and promote it as something that has utility for
man, something reasonable men should consider (and in your opinion agree
on), but respect those of us who wish to endure as we respect you.

I imagine a book, which I am in no position to write, that would begin by
describing, in the spirit and passion of those who valorize Nature above all
else, life in the small: bacteria, microbial life, cells and DNA, and such.
It would outline the swirling, beautiful world under the microscope, and
underline the dymanism of it all, how it erupts out of and returns to the
Earth, who we love.  The book would then look at death in history, death in
philosophy, death in religion, the many rituals, celebrations, and mournings
of death in culture; what we've said about it, how we've prepared for it,
its value, its science.  It would be a grand celebration of death.
Simultaneously, it would, in its untamed affirmation of the vast potpourri
of all things death, underline the contingency of death.  The book would
conclude by spelling out a new direction for death, one that would combine
recent trends -- the euthanasia debate, medical research, the utility of
death for man -- into a single philosophy: death as choice.

Such a book wouldn't have much to say about living forever, but would have a
lot to say about choosing when to die and when not to die, and doing so with
our faculties intact.  It's only necessary, I think, to highlight that the
choice is personal, certainly not something that should be subject to public
policy, and that life is not the fear of death, that we do not choose to go
on living because we fear dying.  The rest should take care of itself.

BM