Live Or Let Die?
RORY ATTWOOD
CONTEMPLATES HIS FAVOURITE SUBJECT.W
Everything you do is rendered
AND YOUR CHILDREN WILL DIE TOO, AND SHORTLY AFTERWARDS THE PLANET WILL BURN AND IT WILL BE JUST AS IF WE HAD NEVER BEEN AT ALL. “Unless we escape also die.
to Mars,” you say, but you’re an idiot, because Mars will be deep-fried like its chocolately namesake (an analogy which suggests, worryingly, that God not only plays dice, but is also a Glaswegian), and then the Universe will collapse and if someone is unlucky enough to still be alive, that will be the point at which they regret it. So what are we to do? We could try to beat Death up. Not literally, but with science. Some scientists believe immortality is just around the corner, notably Tit Hall graduate Aubrey de Grey (who is, apparently, a distant relative of mine: I don’t think he knows about me though, so I’m putting it in writing just in case he sorts immortality and decides to hand it out to his extended family). He says – and only a fairly large minority
Jane Hall
pointless by the inevitability of death. Think. Do you know anything about your greatgrandfather? Do you care? Of course you don’t, (unless you’re a duke of some description, in which case you can stop reading, because I don’t like you). I ask you: what was the point of their having lived? “To have children, and preserve their genes?” You suggest. No, fool, because a) they don’t care about that now they’re dead, and b) anyway, you (a fool) are their genes, and you will
of scientists think he’s a lunatic – that we’ve got enough science to invent immortality, just not enough funding. Which seems perverse: surely we should spend all the science funding on immortality, because once everyone’s immortal we’ll have literally forever to classify daffodils and kill Higg’s Boson. There are a few problems with even this apparently straightforward solution, however. For a start, if we make everyone immortal, we’ll have an immediate overcrowding problem. And does everyone even deserve immortality? What about Nazis? Furthermore, immortality might be expensive. We should be OK in Britain – so long as the NHS is still around (and that’s as good a reason as any to vote Labour right there), but what about everybody else? It seems unlikely that many insurance companies would be prepared to pay out for eternal life, even though if there was ever a serious health condition, then ‘mortality’ is it. We might end up with a planet segregated between a superrace of wealthy, immortal
demigods, and the pathetic mortal humans, or ‘mortys’ as we will call them, who will resent us enormously, and we’ll feel bad, but it’s unlikely we’ll do anything about it. Enslave them maybe. It’s probably best to just forget about it. The thing is, even if we could live forever, there still wouldn’t be any point in doing so. Once we’d watched all the box sets of The Sopranos, what would we do with ourselves? Taunt the mortys for a while, I suppose (‘lookin’ a bit old there, squire’, or ‘dying much?’) but even that would
NAH, JUST QUIETLY ACKNOWLEDGE THE INEVITABILITY OF YOUR DEMISE AND GET ON WITH IT. get boring eventually.
Take comfort, if anything. Your exams are every bit as pointless as this article (unless you’re a natsci studying immortality in which case hurry up). Your examiners will die. Imagine them, all grey and corpsey, and get on with your meaningless life. You can’t escape death, but you might escape becoming fat or bald. Although that’s fairly unlikely as well.
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