Is a person ready to live forever?

Olga Ivanova, Naked Science

Modern technologies are trying to prolong a person's life, and in the future make him immortal at all. But are the people themselves ready for this?

Numbers

In November last year, sociologists of the Levada Center turned to passers-by with an unusual question: "Do you want to live forever?" It would seem, who is not tempted by eternal life?.. But the results of the survey surprised: 62% of Russians do not want a similar fate for themselves. The question of immortality was asked by non-believers, Orthodox Christians, and representatives of other faiths.

However, the specialists of the Levada Center have already conducted a similar study in 2007, and the results have not changed since then, the number of people dreaming of immortality has remained the same. But the number of those who rely on God has decreased by 17% in six years, while the share of those who rely only on their own strength has increased by 14%. 39% of respondents did not think about death, and of those who thought about it, only 15% noted that they were ready for its arrival.

However, some researchers say that such surveys may contain inaccuracies and errors. Firstly, in such a questionnaire, too deep, as sociologists say, "sensitive" questions were raised. At the same time, the personal contact "interviewer-respondent" especially affects the answer. Secondly, different people can understand "eternal life" itself in different ways: for some it is bliss in paradise, for others it is empty nothingness… Absolutely trusting such figures is not entirely correct. But how, in this case, to answer the question, is a person ready to live forever?

Immortality is the dream of mankind

– I have read some research on this issue, – says Valeria Udalova, CEO of the only cryonics company in Russia, KrioRus. – One fourth, one fifth of the population is really ready for eternal life. According to legend, Benjamin Franklin wanted his body to be preserved in a barrel of wine after his death. In the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero was busy searching for a means that would make his friend Enkidu immortal. People have always dreamed of eternal life. Of course, if a person is tormented by illness, poverty and old age, he will not want any eternal life, because for him it is associated with these torments. But if he becomes healthy, will live in prosperity – why not?.. People in developed countries are already living longer due to the development of medicine and cultural lifestyle. Maybe someday we will talk about immortality.

How to learn to be mortal?

– While technology is struggling to create an immortal cyborg in which a human "I" could be implanted, scientists are wondering if a person wants to live forever at all? – says the famous St. Petersburg psychoanalyst Dmitry Olshansky. – Does such a life have any meaning? And what about the attraction to death, which makes a person human?

Borges has a story about people who have gained immortality, and after a few centuries have lost any meaning of life, and after a few centuries have degraded to an animal state. Indeed, life has meaning and value only if it is finite, when every moment is unique, and not a single minute lived will return. Only then can a person have motivation, a goal and a desire to achieve it. If life is an endless straight line, and not a segment that needs to be lived as interestingly as possible, then she will not have a goal, and the desire to live will disappear. After all, a person's imagination and possibilities are not limitless, and many modern people, even in their 20s and 30s, live boring and meaningless: study, family, children, loans, housing, pension… Take away this scenario from the layman – and you will see what anxiety he will fall into from his senseless stay on this planet. And then it turns out that this emptiness can last forever. For many, it would be a disaster. Probably, hell is an endless monotonous life.

Another literary character said: "I don't need an eternal needle for primus, I'm not going to live forever." Many people not only do not want to live forever, but even experience anxiety when such an idea arises. On the one hand, eternal life is unbearable for a person mentally, and for many neurotics such a thought causes fear of infinity and emptiness. On the other hand, man is by nature a finite being, this is his ancestral trait, to become immortal means to cease to be human. That is, if it comes to immortality, then this is not so much the lot of a person as a cyborg. To become immortal, you need to give up your human nature, and this cannot but inspire awe. This is not only a physiological, but also an eschatological meaning: someone hopes to gain immortality by connecting with a machine, someone – with God… But both fantasies involve the rejection of their human nature.

The question of immortality still belongs to the realm of science fiction, and it is unlikely that our children and grandchildren will have to seriously answer it. But there is another question that each of us faces: how to stop living in "groundhog day", when each new day "copies" the previous one, and the entire life cycle repeats the prescribed scenario? How to get out of the cycle of bad infinity and the eternal monotony of life? How to overcome alienation and return to the irreversible flow of life, where every moment goes irrevocably? In other words, the main question for modern man: How to learn to be mortal? How to live your own life and always do it cleanly, without rewriting? This is an existential task for each of us.

People aren't even ready to live long

Psychoanalyst, specialist of the European Confederation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Lyubov Zaeva:

– The theme of eternal youth, eternal life is a favorite fantasy of people at all times. Moreover, it is assumed that development must necessarily stop at the point of a certain maturity, at the age peak of physiological activity. But "perpetual motion" is impossible neither at the level of soma, body, nor at the level of the psyche.

Mental old age presupposes stagnation of desires, lack of positive expectation of the future, inability to transform, development – there is nowhere to go forward and there is no need. A huge mass of people are unable to overcome social stereotypes and create something regardless of age, within the framework of their age characteristics ("There is no life after 50 years", "Menopause - there is no more me as a woman", "Retired – life is over"). Hence, there are so many extinct, depressive faces in those who no longer belong to the childbearing age.

Even within the framework of one life, not everyone is able to change the objects of application of their forces, to find new meanings of life, new goals. Eternity, on the other hand, assumes that a person must have internal resources for many such transformations.

That is, to be ready to be forever inventing, "fertilized" by an idea or feelings, bearing, giving birth to projects and new things, putting on their feet and their offspring-ideas and handiwork. If we assume that the body continues to remain healthy and strong, what high flexibility, adaptability, stress resistance, libidinal activity should be at the level of deep processes in the psyche!

There are isolated examples when, in old age, despite illness, some actors, scientists show amazing examples of a bright creative, intellectual life. But for the most part, it is easier for people to dream of something eternal than even within the framework of one of their finite lives, to be able to be functional, complete one creative cycle and start another.

Our world is gripped by a depression pandemic. Complaints about the lack of a sense of life within oneself are ubiquitous. Does this not prove that it is very difficult for a modern person in a neurotic world, and sometimes even in a psychotic space, not even to live for a long time, but just to live. That's why there are so many self-destructive behaviors: workaholism, alcoholism, food and chemical addictions, dangerous professions and hobbies, destructive lifestyle. A person on an unconscious level does a lot to die earlier, completes his mental life much earlier than the physical one. People in the mass are not even ready to live for a long time.

The question of readiness for eternal life is not easy, especially since no one has yet invented the elixir of immortality. Create it, and– who knows? – perhaps the number of those who want to live forever would increase. In the meantime, as you know, nothing is inevitable except death and taxes.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  21.03.2017