Perhaps the search for meaning is never bound to mortality, but to the nature of consciousness itself.
Arun Kumar + AI: Unbearable Boredom of Immortal Beings
Summary: Humanity has long grappled with mortality and the quest for meaning. Through science fiction, thought experiments can explore immortal life and its unintended consequences. Would eternal life diminish the search for meaning and purpose, or would different meanings emerge? Speculative fiction can explore the question whether consciousness, mortal or immortal, is cursed or blessed with searching for meaning and purpose of its own existence.
Since gaining consciousness, humanity may have always grappled with the prospect of mortality. The uncertainty of what lies beyond — the fate of our experiences and achievements after we die — has been deeply unsettling. Awareness of death inevitably calls into question the significance of our actions while we live, leading us on a journey to search for life’s meaning, and larger picture behind the purpose of our actions. This contemplation often brings forth a desire for an alternative: eternal life. However, in longing for such an existence, we have no way of foreseeing unintended consequences eternal life may have.
Is there a way to imagine how immortal life would be? Would it still search for the meaning and purpose of its existence, its consciousness?
Through the storytelling and imaginative power of science fiction, one can conduct thought experiments and explore tantalizing questions: If death were no longer inevitable, how would it shape our sense of urgency to achieve, to build a legacy? If existence stretched unbroken across time, free from its natural end, would our pursuit of meaning still persist? Or the question of meaning of something that never ends would itself become absurd?
Science fiction is a genre of speculation — an imaginative lens through which one can explore human possibilities and limitations, an immortal life being one. It is suited to tackle the philosophical inquiry surrounding immortality through storytelling and narratives. Whether depicting eternal beings, post-human ascensions, or technologies that stave off death, sci-fi is positioned to ask question like: Does the finite nature of life create an intrinsic urge to pursue meaning and purpose, or would an infinite existence diminish that drive; or perhaps it would give rise to something beyond our current level of understanding and comprehension?
I am not a reader of sci-fi genre, but I am sure many of these questions have been explored as part of the speculative fiction. I can imagine that in many science fiction stories, immortality is not painted as an endless utopia but as a curse. A narrative about life without end may bring a sense of loneliness, loss, and the erosion of meaning itself. This might be particularly true in a narrative of a few immortals living among mortals, and life is filled with the loneliness of loved ones passing away.
In stories, however, one can easily change the narrative and can ask — what if everyone was immortal?
If everyone is immortal, perhaps immortality itself would become malleable. One can envision stories where an underlying theme could be devising the ways to stave off boredom that could result from endless repetitions. If eternity proved too burdensome, civilizations might voluntarily opt for constraints to rediscover the richness of experience. For example, eternal beings would choose to limit life on their own volition. Such limits may not necessarily be death, but cycles of (virtual) rebirth by memory erasures and starting over (Note — if we think of it, this option is not that different from the Buddhist notion of reincarnation — we are born over and over again, each time with a fresh start and with memory of past erased). In fact, there might be many more ways to segment an eternal life into a fresh start than to change a finite existence into an immortal one.
Science fiction could speculate answers to the question whether being immortal will still be associated with our desire to search for meaning; speculating about different possible answers is an interesting exercise in its own way. Perhaps the search for meaning is never bound to mortality. No matter wherever consciousness evolves — within mortal or immortal beings — it will have the capacity for curiosity and power for asking questions, and it will always search for the meaning and purpose for its own existence.
Ciao, and thanks for reading.
Note: Perhaps I will ask ChatGPT or CoPilot to provide me with a summary of different sci-fi narratives that have dealt with the question of immortality and ways such beings confront their immortality. It would be fun exercise to see what human imagination is capable of.
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