Thursday 27 April 2000

Pic of the day: Well, this is me, such as I am.

I did not feel much improved this morning, so I called in sick today too. But at least I am alive, and more than that, I can move about in my apartment. I have all the usual senses and limbs. Not bad!

There is not a lot to tell, since not a lot happened. I got up around the usual time, but stayed at home all day. I played Alpha Centauri, played Daggerfall, napped in a comfy chair, ate a bit, played a bit, read mailing lists, and wrote on yet another harmless attempt at a novel. It's a pretty pathetic one at that, about two 16 year olds, a boy and a girl. (Hey, they're just friends. Well, approximately.) The boy is the main character and it's told from the girl's point of view (but not in first person, in narrative). This is a style I have experimented with a bit lately, to have an "observer" as a pseudo main character. But of course it doesn't work too well with a female observer, since I don't really know how girls think and observe. Oh well. It's not as if I am ever going to publish it, even if I live long and prosper.

You know, I've really wondered what would happen to us if we could live really long. Not like really long today, 120 years, though that would be nice too. No, let's say 1000 years, for starters.

I don't think it would be all that different. Presumably we would be more reluctant to enter into lifelong commitments ... but then again, we are already. Ahem. No, but seriously, as the average lifespan has increased, lifestyles have changed. They would again, if we lived much longer. But I think 1000 years would mean mainly more of the same. A longer time studying for more advanced careers, for those who could afford that. But eventually I think more people would change careers, even if that meant having to go back and study again, even if it meant less money for a while. I bet after a hundred years in the same job, most people would want a change. Stuff like that.

But what if we up this with another order of magnitude, to 10 000 years? I wonder ... I suspect that might be enough to take us over what I see as the Threshold. At some point, I think the hurry would leave us. The running around to get it all done while life lasts. Studying, working, having kids, building a heritage. Become famous, or at least well liked. Stuff like that, that's what we hurry to do. What if we took away the hurry? What would be left?

Would we ascend to transcendence? Or sink into despair? I wonder. Or perhaps our memories would fade eventually, after a couple thousand years, and we might return and experience the same thing anew, with virtually the same freshness. Perhaps a slight feeling of deja vu as you return to the place where you lived 2000 years ago ... Like reincarnation without the death. Perhaps you were a rabid socialist when you were 500, but now that you are 2500 you can't remember ever having been anything but a liberal ... Yet you have this sense of continuity, the feeling that you are the one you always have been. Vivid, but disconnected memories from your childhood and youth, and fairly clear and consistent memories of the last few decades. And in between, scattered memories like stars on a dark sky.

I wonder which of these outcomes would fit me, if I was magickally given such a lifespan. (And magickally includes the new branch of fantasy, "nanotech". Wherever I read "nanotech", my mind translates it into "magic" and that works quite well.) Anyway, I doubt I would despair. Unlike many others, and perhaps philosophers especially, I see no downside to just living and living. Boredom is an almost entirely alien concept to me ... I vaguely remember it, but it is not a part of my life. So I find it more probable that I would spend the millenia growing, developing, maturing into something more than our current status as "human".

But probably more realistic is that I would feel like I was ever growing, but would never quite make it. Because I would eventually forget as much as I learned, and like a serpent biting its tail I would arrive at the same revelations again. Much like you'll sometimes find a new entry in my diary that is strikingly similar to one in the archive. No, I never recycle old entries. But I have occasionally found myself saying the same things over again, forgetting that I had already said that. I bet, given more time, I would do that a lot more.

But chances are we won't find out, never in a lifetime.