Deus ex Techne — The Felicitous Harvester v1.2
There is a thought experiment that goes something like this:
The highest good (that I can think of) is a collective human project in which we overcome death and suffering. We rescue the dead from death—past and future.
If humans continue to pursue technology, we may eventually reach the point where we can overcome death. We may be able to reach the point where consciousness is no longer dependent upon a biological human body.
If can we master time, matter, and biology, then, I suppose, future-people can harvest the consciouses, the souls, of people moments before they die. The metaphysics of time travel and the ontology of the human soul are beyond the scope of this post. However, the idea is that it might be possible to go back in time and snatch souls before death; that's the gist.
What I have described here is the only form of universal salvation I can think of: I don't need anyone to die for my sins, and I don't want to totally extinguish the flame-of-desire; what I want is not to die and not to suffer, and I don't other people to die or suffer.
If my idea is right and things go well-enough, when we die, we will be greeted by future humans (or whatever intelligent beings replace us) who will then tell us the story of how Life overcame death and how our loved ones who we never thought we would see again are in the room next door waiting to say hi.
Maybe the first moments of living after life will be what we need it to be: an introductory course into learning how to cope with eternity; this should sound Hindu or Buddhist in nature. Maybe we have to be reincarnated a few times within a virtual world. (Maybe that's what happening to us right now.)
Maybe when some people die, they'll find themselves in the heaven they expect to be in, and after they get bored of super thick jasper and gold walls, pearly gates and worshiping "God", they'll slowly be introduced into something greater than the expectation of heaven that they had on Earth.
I expect that my metaphysics of time travel, my metaphysics of eternity, and my ontology of being human is fundamentally wrong. Regardless, I think that we should live life in a way that may bring about a future that could reach back in time and save our souls at death.
If we, as a species, are responsible for creating the afterlife, then everything we suffered was, in the end, a necessary step in the creation of something eternal. Thereby, momentary suffering—especially life in despair of the inevitability of death—is redeemed: if we are both capable of and responsible for creating the afterlife, then our despair of death will have served a real purpose: fear of death was a motivation to do what we thought was impossible.
...
Post Script Ramble:
The thought that I am guaranteed a good eternal life drains me of my will to abide any suffering. Therefore, I only entertain the idea that there might be an afterlife.
Absolute hope corrupts my soul.
The possibility of failure makes things real, or at least it makes things appear more meaningful to me.
...
Post Post-Script Ramble:
Perhaps the capacity to enjoy eternity must be earned; therefore, souls are cycled through Samsara until they are perfected—able-and-willing endure and enjoy eternity. Perhaps, I have already died once or twice before, but I don't need to remember that this moment because I have something to learn this time around that requires carefully crafted ignorance.
Or maybe all is flux, veil and void. We simply exist in one of an infinite number of possibilities.
Maybe suffering is merely the preparation of the great work. After all, it was necessary to gather material, a quantity of lead to turn into a higher, more noble, more eternal form. Our lives now, our suffering may be the prima materia (the starting material) of eternity. How could we appreciate eternity if we had nothing to compare it to? Suffering and despair are the first step in the process of transcendence...that it was truly necessary to truly experience real despair, that it was necessary to experience real risk and overcome...that overcoming is a necessary ingredient.
...
...
Post Post-Post-Script Ramble.
I bet that the possibility of the afterlife exists, and future generations are the ones repsonible for setting that up, so, therefore, our likelihood of creating a good afterlife is dependent on our ability to survive and grow as a species. The fate of the magnum opus, i.e. redeeming life, is dependent on my actions today. Every choice I make either helps bring about the success of future generations or it does not, which is quite the existential/moral responsibility...
Ultimately, I think that everything I have said here in this post is founded in dubious metaphysics; the assumptions I used about the fundamental nature of reality and being are wrong.
If I have a soul—if there is a part of me that can survive past the death of my body—I don't know what it is or how it works.
...
Post...
One of the principles that sciencey-materialists hold is that as a rule, we can overcome any obstacle by using the scientific method. So then, why not overcome time, space, suffering, and death? Who can rightly say that such a goal is impossible?
Reasonable, right?
I disagree.
I suspect that things are much weirder than we are capable of accounting for.
When it comes to big existential questions, my money is always on the idea that the fundamental nature of reality remains unknown to humans, so I don't put my faith in these thoughts about the felicitous harvester saving my soul after my death; this idea is really nothing more than sublime rumination. (Or maybe it is an unconscious myth driving the rational minded hard-workings scientists of our time. Maybe this is what Neil Degrasse Tyson and Bill Nye and the late Carl Sagan believe...that technology will save us. Maybe that's why they're so chill. They believe that we can overcome anything using the scientific method, and their brains are applying that idea to their thoughts about their own inevitable deaths.)
...
Afterword:
I was in an altered state of consciousness (read: stoned out of my gourd) when I first had this idea. It was a difficult and overwhelming experience. I felt like a Dark Ages peasant woman falling on her knees, sobbing, thanking Christ for having saved me.
It went something like this:
I imagined I was living a shit life of peasant-suffering: I birthed 10 kids, 6 of them lived; I didn't have any teeth; my shit husband beat me daily, but he was so poor he couldn't afford the excuse of being a drunk because he couldn't afford to drink; and the single turnip that I had today was rancid, and my bunion started oozing again. And all I ever really knew was tragedy. But a golden light shined down on my from heaven, and it told me that I would taken to heaven because I believed in Christ, and my life and my suffering would become something beautiful. And I became filled with this golden light and hope.
You see, Christ was the man who had figured out the next step in advancing humanity by preaching cooperation. So, by being like Christ, we were going to bring about the kingdom of heaven (i.e. unify our efforts to bring a better future). My belief was necessary because it had a real impact on the coming of Christ's Kingdom .
(Christ was the old hero, a now outdated hero-myth used to guide simple people to real and effective truths, but that's a story for another time.)
Afterword Pt 2:
It seems I have been beat to this idea. There is a self-published book called Technological Resurrection: a Thought Experiment. The author suggests we use wormholes to recover dead bodies.
Here is a quote from Dostoyevsky that I found on a transhumanist website that seems to ring true.
I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Try to imagine the best possible future. Then, try to live your life in a way so that future can come true.
The highest good (that I can think of) is a collective human project in which we overcome death and suffering. We rescue the dead from death—past and future.
If humans continue to pursue technology, we may eventually reach the point where we can overcome death. We may be able to reach the point where consciousness is no longer dependent upon a biological human body.
If can we master time, matter, and biology, then, I suppose, future-people can harvest the consciouses, the souls, of people moments before they die. The metaphysics of time travel and the ontology of the human soul are beyond the scope of this post. However, the idea is that it might be possible to go back in time and snatch souls before death; that's the gist.
What I have described here is the only form of universal salvation I can think of: I don't need anyone to die for my sins, and I don't want to totally extinguish the flame-of-desire; what I want is not to die and not to suffer, and I don't other people to die or suffer.
If my idea is right and things go well-enough, when we die, we will be greeted by future humans (or whatever intelligent beings replace us) who will then tell us the story of how Life overcame death and how our loved ones who we never thought we would see again are in the room next door waiting to say hi.
Maybe the first moments of living after life will be what we need it to be: an introductory course into learning how to cope with eternity; this should sound Hindu or Buddhist in nature. Maybe we have to be reincarnated a few times within a virtual world. (Maybe that's what happening to us right now.)
Maybe when some people die, they'll find themselves in the heaven they expect to be in, and after they get bored of super thick jasper and gold walls, pearly gates and worshiping "God", they'll slowly be introduced into something greater than the expectation of heaven that they had on Earth.
I expect that my metaphysics of time travel, my metaphysics of eternity, and my ontology of being human is fundamentally wrong. Regardless, I think that we should live life in a way that may bring about a future that could reach back in time and save our souls at death.
If we, as a species, are responsible for creating the afterlife, then everything we suffered was, in the end, a necessary step in the creation of something eternal. Thereby, momentary suffering—especially life in despair of the inevitability of death—is redeemed: if we are both capable of and responsible for creating the afterlife, then our despair of death will have served a real purpose: fear of death was a motivation to do what we thought was impossible.
...
Post Script Ramble:
The thought that I am guaranteed a good eternal life drains me of my will to abide any suffering. Therefore, I only entertain the idea that there might be an afterlife.
Absolute hope corrupts my soul.
The possibility of failure makes things real, or at least it makes things appear more meaningful to me.
...
Post Post-Script Ramble:
Perhaps the capacity to enjoy eternity must be earned; therefore, souls are cycled through Samsara until they are perfected—able-and-willing endure and enjoy eternity. Perhaps, I have already died once or twice before, but I don't need to remember that this moment because I have something to learn this time around that requires carefully crafted ignorance.
Or maybe all is flux, veil and void. We simply exist in one of an infinite number of possibilities.
Maybe suffering is merely the preparation of the great work. After all, it was necessary to gather material, a quantity of lead to turn into a higher, more noble, more eternal form. Our lives now, our suffering may be the prima materia (the starting material) of eternity. How could we appreciate eternity if we had nothing to compare it to? Suffering and despair are the first step in the process of transcendence...that it was truly necessary to truly experience real despair, that it was necessary to experience real risk and overcome...that overcoming is a necessary ingredient.
...
...
Post Post-Post-Script Ramble.
I bet that the possibility of the afterlife exists, and future generations are the ones repsonible for setting that up, so, therefore, our likelihood of creating a good afterlife is dependent on our ability to survive and grow as a species. The fate of the magnum opus, i.e. redeeming life, is dependent on my actions today. Every choice I make either helps bring about the success of future generations or it does not, which is quite the existential/moral responsibility...
Ultimately, I think that everything I have said here in this post is founded in dubious metaphysics; the assumptions I used about the fundamental nature of reality and being are wrong.
If I have a soul—if there is a part of me that can survive past the death of my body—I don't know what it is or how it works.
...
Post...
One of the principles that sciencey-materialists hold is that as a rule, we can overcome any obstacle by using the scientific method. So then, why not overcome time, space, suffering, and death? Who can rightly say that such a goal is impossible?
Reasonable, right?
I disagree.
I suspect that things are much weirder than we are capable of accounting for.
When it comes to big existential questions, my money is always on the idea that the fundamental nature of reality remains unknown to humans, so I don't put my faith in these thoughts about the felicitous harvester saving my soul after my death; this idea is really nothing more than sublime rumination. (Or maybe it is an unconscious myth driving the rational minded hard-workings scientists of our time. Maybe this is what Neil Degrasse Tyson and Bill Nye and the late Carl Sagan believe...that technology will save us. Maybe that's why they're so chill. They believe that we can overcome anything using the scientific method, and their brains are applying that idea to their thoughts about their own inevitable deaths.)
...
Afterword:
I was in an altered state of consciousness (read: stoned out of my gourd) when I first had this idea. It was a difficult and overwhelming experience. I felt like a Dark Ages peasant woman falling on her knees, sobbing, thanking Christ for having saved me.
It went something like this:
I imagined I was living a shit life of peasant-suffering: I birthed 10 kids, 6 of them lived; I didn't have any teeth; my shit husband beat me daily, but he was so poor he couldn't afford the excuse of being a drunk because he couldn't afford to drink; and the single turnip that I had today was rancid, and my bunion started oozing again. And all I ever really knew was tragedy. But a golden light shined down on my from heaven, and it told me that I would taken to heaven because I believed in Christ, and my life and my suffering would become something beautiful. And I became filled with this golden light and hope.
You see, Christ was the man who had figured out the next step in advancing humanity by preaching cooperation. So, by being like Christ, we were going to bring about the kingdom of heaven (i.e. unify our efforts to bring a better future). My belief was necessary because it had a real impact on the coming of Christ's Kingdom .
(Christ was the old hero, a now outdated hero-myth used to guide simple people to real and effective truths, but that's a story for another time.)
Afterword Pt 2:
It seems I have been beat to this idea. There is a self-published book called Technological Resurrection: a Thought Experiment. The author suggests we use wormholes to recover dead bodies.
Here is a quote from Dostoyevsky that I found on a transhumanist website that seems to ring true.
I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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