Back to the tree of life

I think we were all impressed when we saw the movie «The Immortals», starring Christopher Lambert. I remember the feeling I had when I saw that Scotsman appear centuries later with the same appearance. While I was watching the film, I accepted that it was possible to go through the centuries like the sea or the land, why not spend time?

However, the question was to be immortal, it was not to travel in time. I do not know which of the two represents more difficulty, at the end of the day we do not talk about the tree of time in the garden, but that of knowledge and the tree of life.

The Tree of Life

I write this article about the tree of life, for the phenomenal challenge that comes on the back of a possibility that I read frequently. It is about immortality. I will not enter the debate on whether that possibility is realistic and in any case, when it would be possible. I only admit that it has passed from the cinema to debate in scientific circles, true that at an initial and speculative level, but nevertheless there are advances that produce a serious and respectable type of imagination.

I find two large groups. Those who work in a biological plane and those who also make the biobiotic a recipient of the individual, recognizing that the human is extrapolated to a cybernetic ingenuity. There is an enormous amount of scientific fields that are developed in this area and it can be inferred that they will bear fruits making human life longer and with more quality.

I do not share the optimism of José Luis Cordeiro engineer and mechanic of MIT, who predicts that in twenty or thirty years we will reach immortality or the futuristic vision (less serious in my opinion) of the millionaire Dmitry Itskov who finances a project to transfer the mind to a new computer body. There are very serious and prepared people working in these fields.

And if it were possible?

Something I see in common with these and other scientists is the lack of calculation in the trajectory of their affirmations. In the dialogue of Plato, called Phaedrus, we are told the judgment that the god Thamus makes to one of Theuth’s inventions, writing. For its inventor everything is advantage and progress but Thamus makes him observe.

The Tree of Life — Theuth, god of writing

«Theuth, paradigm of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the most appropriate judge of the damage or benefit it will bring to those who make use of it. This is the case in this case; you, who are the father of writing, have made clear your affection for your creation by attributing to it practically the opposite of its true function.

Because those who learn this art will stop exercising their memory and will become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring the
memories to their memory by external signs rather than by their own internal resources.

What you have discovered is a medicine for memory, not memory. And, as far as wisdom is concerned, your students will have a reputation for owning it, without it being true: they will receive a lot of information without proper instruction and, consequently, they will think they are very learned, when they will be largely ignorant.

And as they will be filled with the appearance of wisdom, instead of true wisdom, they will become a burden on society. » (Tecnopolis, Neil Postman)

An example

An example of this is the Internet, originally created for military purposes, however the economy, customs, way of communicating and relating to us, including our perception of the world, has changed. The acceptance of a technology is not an addition to what we have, it is a power factor n, which changes everything. However, the Internet was in tune with a society that increased and improved the media it already had, press, radio, TV, telephone. Internet was a gigantic leap but within the human circle.

A non-human world

Immortality is not a jump, it would be the migration to a totally different world. A world not human . It would not be an evolution of medicine and its achievements.

In this field we have experienced the improvement of human life in all aspects but we have also received the ebb of that positive tide, aging of the population, crisis in pension systems, proliferation of degenerative diseases, increase in social spending, increase in taxes etc.

A migration to a different world at the hands of immortality, would put us on the surface of a strange planet without having any idea of what our future would be about it, without any notion of the consequences

Following the example of Thamus, we can do an exercise and reflect on the matter of immortality.

What impact will it have on the psyche of man? All our way of thinking and deciding is conditioned by death even if we are not aware of it. If we remove that frame of reference what will be its effect. Nobody knows, because science is interested in the possibility, not in its consequences, simply because they can not be calculated.
By not having a time limit, since we will not die. How will our desires be intense? Enough for the effort and the sacrifice?
How will it affect science itself? the geniuses of all areas of knowledge will not be relieved, that will give a too personalistic and narrow focus. The generational change brings new visions, but inbreeding will limit the imagination.
What would be the affects towards others? Our affections and feelings are now contained in a life, in a period of time, if there is not, will the feelings be diluted in an ocean of time? Will our emotional life change? Will it affect the family, when our children are brothers, then friends and in the end strangers? Do we think that if we introduce that immortal caterpillar in our interior, our emotional ecosystem will remain sustainable?
When we think of that indefinite temporary mountain above us, will we consider it an opportunity or a burden? Are we so deluded to think that all these questions will be answered by science?
How will memory manage an endless past and what will we conclude? Maybe they look like ridiculous questions. But my friend, eliminate death and many more will arise.

A sustainable world?

What will we do with the reproduction of our race? we have already answered, we will colonize other planets, but then will we take the above questions and some more to those planets?
What will an economy be like based on a population without generational change?
Will human thought be mineralized by crystallizing on them and the same way of thinking for centuries?
Will we continue to be part of a world whose nature and mortality have come out?
Will we have the vigor of yesteryear to overcome unexpected challenges or challenges?
Will immortality be a right for all, without distinction? Will it be optional? Will it generate a new aristocracy like the old Roman law of citizenship?
Will the great religious stories continue to provide guidance and guidance to billions? If not, will science do it? With what story of the world?

If you read the article by José Luis Cordero or Dmitry Itskov you will see that everything is an advantage because they want to be Theuth. But we live the science in user mode and we will receive the results whatever they are, we will not be part of the power groups of this new «art». And I assure you that we are legitimized to ask these and more questions.

Is it possible?

Personally, I believe that it is possible for man to attain immortality, but he can not do it. Yes, I know it’s a contradiction (who does not?

We can return to the story of creation where the believer and the non-believer can immerse themselves in the mysteries that have made us as we are. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they acquired that knowledge, incompatible with immortality. Then Heavenly Father says:

«And I, the Lord God, said unto mine Only Begotten: Behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil; and now lest he put forth his hand and partake also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever, « ( Moses 4:28 )

That is what we are doing, extending our hand towards that tree. But we have three difficulties.

«So I drove out the man, and I placed at the east of the Garden of Eden, cherubim and a flaming sword, which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.» ( Moses 4:31 )

The first difficulty is that we were expelled. We lost the way to the garden and that tree. But I think we have found it, we are on the path of that knowledge. In the Book of Mormon we find a very significant quote regarding the three Nephites who did not prove death.

«But behold, since I wrote, I have inquired of the Lord, and he hath made it manifest unto me that there must needs be a change wrought upon their bodies, or else it needs be that they must taste of death; Therefore, that they might not taste of death there was a change wrought upon their bodies, that they might not suffer pain nor sorrow save it were for the sins of the world.» ( 3Nefi 28: 37-38 )

Totally in tune with those changes that our Theuth seeks in the DNA of man, we know that changes in bodies are necessary. And I wonder, could we endure pain and grief forever?

The second difficulty is the burning sword that spins on all sides to protect the tree of life or that knowledge. This is the point where I think we are. The extraordinary difficulty involved in avoiding this burning sword. An optimist José Luis Cordeiro rates him in a fight of 30 more years in the fields of research that encompass this challenge. It is the optimism of the vanguard soldier inflamed by the voice of his commander. I personally have no doubts about the ability of man to get around it. We are children of who we are, it should not surprise us to be capable, but I would say that we would take much longer.
But the road and the sword are passive elements, they are fixed barriers, complicated, but subject to be surpassed by a constant and well-directed will. That is why the Heavenly Father, knowing that «man has become like one of us» added an independent and intelligent element » I placed cherubim of the Garden of Eden» This last security measure supposes a clear commitment in which man does not get to that point to extend your arm. The cherubs represent the direct intervention capacity of the heavens.

I understand that there is a general interest in the society of the heavens so that man is not immortal by the way of the search for the tree of life using the knowledge received from the first tree, but by that of the redemption of the soul provided by the Savior. Because I believe that in this last way we would not have any of the questions that I have asked before.

And even so

Allow me to finish this article with an assumption in which I have placed myself on many occasions when meditating on this.

And still, if one day someone offered me a blue pill (because the red one I already took at birth) and gave me the option to choose what would I do? Would you be alone in that decision? Would I have the lucidity to think? My story of the world, would you stand that moment? Would it be a fit decision for someone designed to be deadly?

Dear reader, let me express what I feel now: it is the same challenge as when I was young, when dealing with the challenges of my time. How wonderful to live in this era where we feel the powerful forces of knowledge pull our constitution in unexpected directions.

You can not be a believer without seeing or touching the side of the world that opens before us.

A sustainable immortality requires an environment different from ours, which is based on generational change. To touch our inner nature to make those changes is to get out of the earth’s ecosystem and every time we have altered something in this we have caused problems or catastrophes.