Eternal guilt – also a potential consequence of immortality – may be something everyone will be vulnerable to, as we increasingly live lives of previously unimagined lengths. Modern science has been steadily conquering obstacles to human mortality and, in the last century alone, has increased our life expectancy by almost thirty years. Theoretician Aubrey de Grey believes medical technology will improve so fast that a lifespan of 1000 years is realizable. Likewise futurist Ray Kurzweil argues that humans will be unable to keep pace with technological advancement, and they will eventually augment their bodies with cybernetics, thereby becoming ‘transhuman’.
But the quest for long life is not new. The conquest of disease and the end of ageing have been man’s eternal obsessions, exemplified by Alexander’s quest for the Water of Life, Arthur’s quest for the Holy Grail, and even the oldest piece of western literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh. The quest for immortality doubtlessly derives from the fear of inevitability: death. This is suggested in Darren Aronofsky’s 2006 film, The Fountain, in which the protagonist eventually chooses to die – after centuries of questing – when he finally overcomes this fear.
Put another way, perhaps we can say that fear of death makes us mortal. Indeed, Jorge Luis Borges, that great renovator of fiction, wrote that ‘except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death.’ In a sense, then, it is the ignorance – or acceptance – of death that makes one immortal. According to astrologer Linda Goodman, constantly thinking about death centres our lives on death-consciousness but, with a stronger belief in life, we can create a reality for ourselves in which we never die. Queen Sophie-Ann makes this point in True Blood: ‘She’s convinced herself she’s immortal and so she is.’
Maybe the answer lies in this abstract conception for the story of the quest for physical immortality is one of constant failure. Immortality then is not a physical prize but a spiritual one. Is not the aim of the spiritual quest to live forever in – or through – the Divine Oneness? In this conception, the quest for immortality on earth becomes a physical allegory of a spiritual reality. Thus, when the quest is driven by the physical ego, it is doomed to fail. Worse, obsession tends to destruction or madness.
Freddie Mercury, in the theme song for the 1986 movie Highlander, hauntingly asked: ‘who wants to live forever?’ Perhaps very few, if they had to live with the guilt of lifetimes of misdeeds. The knowledge of impending death gives us something to live for; if we were never to die, would we ever really live? And living life with enthusiasm – having something to live for and die for – is the true source of creative beauty. After all, if Bob Marley hadn’t known he was dying of cancer, would he have felt the need for a ‘Redemption Song’?
