Can We Live Forever???

Off Topic
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Live Forever?

I have a few things to confess. I have been having a lot of “death” dreams lately. And I have written quite a few posts on death and have made numerous references to my Father’s recent death. It has always been an oddity for me because death is largely ignored by our culture, BUT is such a big factor in the cycle of things.

As a youngster growing up in the Catholic Church, the Nuns and the Priests had a field day invoking fear into the tiny little hearts of many students. I remember laying in bed at night and wondering and hypothesizing about burning “forever” because of my sins.

I thought about how “burning” might feel. I already knew about burning my fingers on a cigarette butt, or the burning feeling of scraping my knuckles on the pavement. ( KNUCKLES) is one of my top ten favourite words. Two silent “K’s” and that sound…I shall elaborate in a later top ten word post).

Anyway I would toss and turn for hours imagining what it would be like to BURN FOREVER…
Cripes that would hurt over and over and over and over…or maybe you get used to it~!!

All I know it was not a nice thing to tell little kids. And as I get older I notice when I burn my hand in an oven or have the shower on" too hot" these old catholic memories come back to haunt me. Fleetingly. Still the memories are there all the same. Fire and Brimstone. I never got past the “fire” part. I have no idea what “brimstone” is, and I don’t think I want to know.

Enough of that stuff. I get hot under the collar thinking about it. As did the priests no doubt, pricks that they were. I cannot think of a “nice” priest in my upbringing!!!..Some good teachers though!!

Ok …LIVE FOREVER…of course this is not really new. Since the ancient Greeks, people have went on about immortality, and the quest for suchness. Alchemy, wrapping themselves up in wierd concoctions in caskets in tombs and …you name it people have tried it.

Anyway, there is a dude living as we speak that is a pretty damn smart dude. His name is Ray Kurzweil. He has invented all kinds of voice recognition software, invented computers that can simulate a grand piano and has invented countless other truly unique items. He seems like a nice enough guy and looks pretty ordinary and pretty short as well!!

He has a longevity website, and an artificial intelligence website mingled with other business that is profit driven. A smart dude, no doubt. My point. He thinks we are on the brink of being able to live forever. He bases this on the exponential explosion of knowledge and DNA info and a plethora of other scientific data that I will touch in in a later post.

This man has balls. This man has Moxy. For a man as smart as him, to come out and admit such a possibility shows a gumption that makes me stand up and take a lot of notice.

What if there is some truth in his statements??? I can’t dismiss the guy as a nutcase, because he has got a damn good track record. He is brilliant and a ton smarter than yours truly. A lot smarter that our political leaders too. If you take the time to see what he has already accomplished…google him up…you will be impressed.

Can we live forever…who would want to?

Ray thinks that nano-technology…little robots wil go into our bodies and REPAIR all kind of damages and cells and what not. Sounds far fetched, but is it?..I recently had my right knee sort of re-built with a donor ligament from a cadaver done by laser and it turned out great and my knee feels like it did 20 years ago. No shit. This is how good medicine can be…!!!

My one BIG BIG worry. If all he says is true about the future and the possibilities of living longer lives…(I don’t think forever is reasonable)…but longer lives is reasonable through science…only the rich and the favoured will have access to such things.

Sad but true. You need money to live longer honey.

Just live well as best you can for now. Ray’s robots are a little ways off yet!!! More on this tomorrow.

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We can prolong our life, however the second law of thermodynamics would seem to indicate that we can not live forever.

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[quote]musiclete wrote:
I can’t dismiss the guy as a nutcase,[/quote]

I can. He’s talking about living forever. That’s nuts.

Howard Hughes had a good track record. Completely out of his mind. Frank Lloyd Wright designed Central Park (among many other things). He was institutionalized. Caligula, Vlad Tepes and even Hitler had impressive track records.

Besides – if being ninety sucks, who wants to be three hundred ninety? No thanks, I’ll take 4 by 10 plot, preferably in Forest Hills, overlooking a mountain if I’ve really played my cards right.

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No.

Thread over.

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Interesting… really.

Brimstone is what they used to call sulfur. It is also the smell that occurs when demons appear and disappear, and when Nightcrawler of the X-Men “bampfs”.

As far as living forever… why would you want to? If you KNOW u can live forever what can u learn from life?

I read a lot of vampire fiction, and that is a reoccuring theme in it. The plight of immortality.

HOWEVER there are teaching in Kabbalah that discuss immortality, and the Eastern teachings of re-incarnation are also about immortality.

Some would argue that re-incarnation is true immortality, since the soul is what is permanent, the body is temporal.

PS i dont want any robots in me… no no no…

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It is interesting that you bring up the Catholic Church in you post. One of my favorite saying about death comes from something that Benedictine monks tell themselves each day in order to promote humility.

The saying is as follows.

“One day you will die, and before long no one will remember your name”

I also like what is told to Catholics on Ash Wednesday:
“Your were dust, and to dust your shall return”

The point is you will die, and I think that you should not be so attached to the world that you cannot accept your death. I am not saying that this is easy for anyone, myself included, however deep down I feel that this is the right frame of mind to be in for numerous reasons.

Very interesting thread that you started IMHO

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You? No.

But I’ll say hi to your great-great-great-great (etc) grandchildren in the year 3000 if you want.

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[quote]bamit wrote:
It is interesting that you bring up the Catholic Church in you post. One of my favorite saying about death comes from something that Benedictine monks tell themselves each day in order to promote humility.

The saying is as follows.

“One day you will die, and before long no one will remember your name”

I also like what is told to Catholics on Ash Wednesday:
“Your were dust, and to dust your shall return”

The point is you will die, and I think that you should not be so attached to the world that you cannot accept your death. I am not saying that this is easy for anyone, myself included, however deep down I feel that this is the right frame of mind to be in for numerous reasons.

Very interesting thread that you started IMHO
[/quote]

thanks…part 2 of my thoughts will be on here tomorrow.

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There’s also the possibility that advances in medicine, nano-technology, or even cryogenics will enable at least our brains to survive long enough to become part of Kurzweil’s concept. His idea is not so much that we’ll repair our bodies forever but that we’ll eventually learn to transfer our consciousness into a great technological group mind a’la the Borg. There will be no ‘bodies’ at all, just a huge conglomerate of integrated intelligence.

No bodies???

Resistance (training) is FUTILE!

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[quote]Agent Frost wrote:
Interesting… really.

Brimstone is what they used to call sulfur. It is also the smell that occurs when demons appear and disappear, and when Nightcrawler of the X-Men “bampfs”.

As far as living forever… why would you want to? If you KNOW u can live forever what can u learn from life?

I read a lot of vampire fiction, and that is a reoccuring theme in it. The plight of immortality.

HOWEVER there are teaching in Kabbalah that discuss immortality, and the Eastern teachings of re-incarnation are also about immortality.

Some would argue that re-incarnation is true immortality, since the soul is what is permanent, the body is temporal.

PS i dont want any robots in me… no no no…[/quote]
r
Thanks…love the Eastern stuff too…
and thanks for the brimstone info…not buying any today though.

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[quote]Kruiser wrote:
There’s also the possibility that advances in medicine, nano-technology, or even cryogenics will enable at least our brains to survive long enough to become part of Kurzweil’s concept. His idea is not so much that we’ll repair our bodies forever but that we’ll eventually learn to transfer our consciousness into a great technological group mind a’la the Borg. There will be no ‘bodies’ at all, just a huge conglomerate of integrated intelligence.

No bodies???

Resistance (training) is FUTILE!

[/quote]

excellent response. Are futile and future word cousins…hmm. What the fut!!

Lawyers in nevada and arizona manage cryoed clients’ cash in case they come back!!!..no kidding… hard to believe but interesting.

take care

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We can’t live forever but in the future we will be able to live much, much longer. We grow old because the ends of our DNA unravel over time.

We lose the valuable genetic information that allows all our organs and body parts to rebuild the way they were when we were 20. In other words, the wrinkled, liver spot riddled skin of an old man is that way because he lost the information needed to generate skin the right way.

It is likely that technology will develop means to prevent this unraveling. Expected life spans will double or even triple.

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I’ve read Kurzweil’s book. I think much of what he envisions will happen, although I don’t think it will happen soon enough for me personally.

Live forever? Unlikely, unless in some sort of future cybernetic sense. Not in a flesh-and-blood body. Live 200 to 500 years in good health, barring accidents? Possibly, for my great-grandchildren.

Meanwhile, none of the past five generations of men in my family have made it to age 70. My father died just over a year ago. I feel like mortality has tapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear “Tag - you’re next.”

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Well, we won’t live “forever,” because, apparently, the universe itself won’t last forever.

But that we’ll eventually be able to retard, stop or even reverse aging is certainly not out of the question. Once we better understand the human body and the various mechanisms of aging, we should be able to engineer solutions for them.

So, we won’t get to “forever” (without another planet, we’ve got a few billion years at best) but we might get to the point where death, barring a major accident or crime, becomes voluntary.

We’ll have to deal with a lot of ethical questions between now and then, though, and possible economic problems too (such as overpopulation, if people don’t die and keep reproducing.)

As for the vampire problem of growing bored with immortality, there’s a difference between being extremely long-lived and being immortal (ie, not able to die).

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[quote]jwillow wrote:
I’ve read Kurzweil’s book. I think much of what he envisions will happen, although I don’t think it will happen soon enough for me personally.

Live forever? Unlikely, unless in some sort of future cybernetic sense. Not in a flesh-and-blood body. Live 200 to 500 years in good health, barring accidents? Possibly, for my great-grandchildren.

Meanwhile, none of the past five generations of men in my family have made it to age 70. My father died just over a year ago. I feel like mortality has tapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear “Tag - you’re next.”[/quote]

thanks my friend…sorry to hear about your dad. I had a hard time with my dad’s death, but it did get me thinking, and living a lot differently since his passing. I have not read his book . I was intrigued by his web site and some of the articles I have read.

By the way your dad may not be gone altogether yet. Mine still visits me a lot (once a week in my dreams), and still gives me bad advice…lol. And some good tips as well…

cheers

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[quote]musiclete wrote:

As a youngster growing up in the Catholic Church, the Nuns and the Priests had a field day invoking fear into the tiny little hearts of many students. [/quote]

I got to this and stopped.

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[quote]pookie wrote:
Well, we won’t live “forever,” because, apparently, the universe itself won’t last forever.

But that we’ll eventually be able to retard, stop or even reverse aging is certainly not out of the question. Once we better understand the human body and the various mechanisms of aging, we should be able to engineer solutions for them.

So, we won’t get to “forever” (without another planet, we’ve got a few billion years at best) but we might get to the point where death, barring a major accident or crime, becomes voluntary.

We’ll have to deal with a lot of ethical questions between now and then, though, and possible economic problems too (such as overpopulation, if people don’t die and keep reproducing.)

[/quote]

That’s pretty much the post I was going to make. Basically, even if we could make each individual person have the ability to live forever, there would be the issue of population since people would never be dying. Once the earth filled up with people, there would not be enough food and stuff for everyone, and people would get killed.

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[quote]pookie wrote:
Well, we won’t live “forever,” because, apparently, the universe itself won’t last forever.

But that we’ll eventually be able to retard, stop or even reverse aging is certainly not out of the question. Once we better understand the human body and the various mechanisms of aging, we should be able to engineer solutions for them.

So, we won’t get to “forever” (without another planet, we’ve got a few billion years at best) but we might get to the point where death, barring a major accident or crime, becomes voluntary.

We’ll have to deal with a lot of ethical questions between now and then, though, and possible economic problems too (such as overpopulation, if people don’t die and keep reproducing.)

As for the vampire problem of growing bored with immortality, there’s a difference between being extremely long-lived and being immortal (ie, not able to die).
[/quote]

I agree…at this point there is nothing that I think science won’t be able to do in the future.

But then… why would you want to live forever? To me, life is far too painful to want it to go on for an extra 200 years…

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[quote]Petedacook wrote:
musiclete wrote:

As a youngster growing up in the Catholic Church, the Nuns and the Priests had a field day invoking fear into the tiny little hearts of many students.

I got to this and stopped. [/quote]

Understood. Whether your stoppage in reading was due to bad memories or in defense of being catholic , the intent of my post was not about religions . It would take a crowbar to yank the catholic out of many psyches. Guilt and Fear were the prime motivators. And those two can sometimes stay in our heads for a while. Sorry if I offended ya or dredged up some dirt.

Thanks

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Scientists have done experiments with fruit flies where they “bred” longevity in the flies. They managed to extend the average lifespan of an entire fruitfly community by, I think, 150%.

In a nutshell, their results suggested that the flies could either

1.) Live fast, die young

or

2.) Live a very long, but slow and steady life.

But not both.

They have also found that organisms across the board, including humans, tend to die younger if they produced offspring. The experiments suggested that if you want to live a lot longer, you have to “sacrifice” your youthful exuberance.

Since stopping death really throws a wrench into the natural cycle, I think that nature will find a way to kill you no matter what level of technology you have.