My good friend is a transhumanist. He believes that we must work to keep ourselves healthy and intelligent so that we can develop scientific means to prolong our lives. He believes that we are destined for the stars, but that, until we can work together to better humanity, there will never be enough momentum to really settle other worlds. The biggest obstacle in his opinion? Religion.
I tend to agree.
I am perhaps too old school to want to live forever. I, it must be said, value the idea of death. Always have. It's a very human thing. And, while I no longer follow the ways of religion or take thought for the afterlife, I am coming to terms with my death. And that has helped me to live without fear of the afterlife or of loss and pain.
That said, there are many people on this world who are not dead but who wish they were. Or act that way. Their main goal in life is to muddle through, avoiding everything, basically, until they can go home to be with Jesus.
And while it may surprise you I get this mentality. Life is long and full of grief. How many children must die before their parents, before the weight of sadness crushes you? Losing loved ones is stark, horrible, and endlessly prowling on the margins. It, like our own death, is inevitable.
We can see that a person who clings to a religious belief in the face of all this loss can be forgiven if it gives them hope to see their child or lover again one day.
I, too, would have continued on believing in the face of my own incredulity, if I thought I could see my mother and grandmothers again. The only thing that saved me from a life of fear and trembling and worshipping the afterlife was, perhaps ironically, love.
How could I pine for death to see lost loved ones while my own children and wife and friends were busy loving me right here?
If I am loved now, then why would I ignore that?
People are afraid of death. They are afraid of how it will take their families. They do not want to be alone in their grief. I do not blame them. But the only real thing that we can continue to believe in is love. While all the people that we loved may go, we must not forget their love for us. It is painful, but somehow it is the fulcrum upon which our lives balance. It swings us, love does, to face the reality of our situations, which often is, that we are still alive. The only thing to do with ourselves in that condition is to live our lives to the fullest.
We cannot go forth clinging to mythology and hoping to die, if we allow ourselves to encounter the full power of those that truly love us.
We may someday colonize the stars. We may someday be able to shrink the vast distances in spacetime. We may someday learn to live forever.
But my friend is right, we will never be able to do that if we focus on religion and forget about love.
