It's Midnight on the Cosmic Clock

There has always been a fascination with mortality. At some point in our experience, we realise that life is not unending. That we will eventually need to leave it behind.

I am a religious man, and in my religion the belief is that this life is a test. We try to go about our lives in the best way possible and follow our guidelines. We try to be good to others, pray when we're supposed to, fast when we’re supposed to, among other things, in the hopes of entering heaven in the end.

Of course, life, being a test, can sometimes get overwhelming, and we can easily get swept into its currents. Still, we, at least speaking for myself, try to maintain an objective view of life when we can, and remember that it's not the be-all and end-all of our existence.

Despite my own belief, I will take a more objective human view of immortality in this piece.

In my opinion, the concept of immortality has existed since the very first human died. The reason I say this is because, excluding the desires of those about to die, the survivors would most definitely have thoughts about life being easier if those who died hadn’t. If we think about life before technology, it was a lot more collaborative and interdependent. I believe grief created the implicit desire for immortality. But, weirdly enough, as far as my quick googling went (I won’t pretentiously call it research), the oldest record of the concept of immortality goes back to around 2100 BC in Ancient Mesopotamia.

Before we look at how we try to overcome the Grim Reaper, let’s look at the default setting for human existence: mortality. We’re born, we experience, and then we die. We have a finite time on this earth to do whatever it is we decide to do.

Carl Sagan’s cosmic calendar puts humanity’s existence in perspective. In the calendar, the Big Bang happens on 1st of January, which brings everything into existence. Where do you think humanity appeared in that calendar? The first human appears around 10:30 pm on 31st December, and we are currently at around midnight. So our existence, to say it mildly, is insignificant to everything around us.

I bring this up to demonstrate just how much humanity has done during this infinitesimal period. We harnessed fire, built shelters, then houses and then skyscrapers. We used to die of diarrhoea, and now we just wish we did. We built steam engines and then planes. We even dared to explore what was above the sky!

What humanity has achieved until now is amazing, to say the least. I believe one of the most powerful motivators is our mortality. The fact that we have a finite time on Earth. Leaving something behind- a book, an idea, an invention, a creation- is a way to immortalise our existence. While we can’t be physically immortal, our existence can be acknowledged by those who come after us for centuries.

We can create things and put our names on them: Ford, Ferrari, Edison, Tesla (the scientist and the car). This is the closest to immortality humans have gotten, but that doesn’t mean we won’t try for real, physical immortality.

Medicine has come a long way to a point where we can now replace faulty hardware in the biological machine we call a body. In 1954, the first successful organ transplant was done: a kidney transplant between twin brothers. And just a little over a decade later, in 1967, the first successful heart transplant. We’ve successfully replaced the filter, and now even the pump!

Of course, that was just the beginning. Organ transplants are now an irrefutable tool in medicine, allowing us to heal things we’ve never been able to heal before. Almost as if giving ourselves more time… a small step towards immortality.

The filter, the pump and other parts of the machinery weren’t enough. Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero plans to perform the first-ever head transplant. Yes, that’s right. The motherboard itself, along with the hard drive and the CPU.

I’ve built PCs before, and I can tell you that replacing the motherboard basically means that it is a new PC, even if everything else stays the same. For now, let’s sidestep the philosophical question of whether it is a head transplant or a body transplant, and what that means for who the final body represents, because the issue here isn't how we extend life—it's what happens to our drive when time becomes an infinite resource.

Think about that closet you threw everything into. It’s messy, but all it needs is a few minutes of organising for it to look better. How many times did you think, “I’ll do it tomorrow. I’m too tired today”? Tomorrow never comes. It just gets pushed further and further into the future, because there is nothing stopping it.

“Necessity is the mother of invention”. Would humanity be as advanced as it is now if we were all immortal? True, we might have created things to make life easier, but our limited time is a major driver for most big inventions. Would cars exist? Boats? Planes? Would we be curious enough to explore?

What is your take on immortality? Do you think infinite time will result in infinite creativity and invention? Or infinite procrastination?