Book Review

What if life goes on and on and on ...

How to Live Forever or Die Trying: on the new immortality

The iconography of Hell is always more vivid and memorable than that of Heaven, perhaps because it is so much easier to imagine eternal torment than eternal bliss. While pleasures are always fleeting, pains are often chronic: and a longer life is not necessarily a better, let alone the best, life.

In this book, Bryan Appleyard, a journalist long concerned about the effects of science and technology on the broader aspects of our existence, speculates on the consequences of the much-increased human lifespan that some scientists claim will very soon be possible, thanks to expanding scientific knowledge and technological advance.

Life expectancy has long been increasing, of course. When my father was born, he could have expected to live 49 years; a baby born today could expect to live to about 80. Moreover, there has been no halt to the increase, as some demographers thought there might be once the biblical span had become more or less universal. Our life expectancy continues to increase incrementally.

But some scientists are talking about a much more radical change than that brought about in increments, a month here and a month there. They are talking about virtual immortality, the abolition of death, or at least its postponement for another hundred years. What would this mean for human existence, experientially?

Of course, the first thing to decide is whether the scientists to whom Appleyard spoke are being realistic, or are merely the scientific equivalent of share-boosters. Personally, I rather suspect the latter: and while a projection of past experience into the future is not infallible as a guide, it is the only means of assessing likelihood that we have. Appleyard draws attention to the similarity of proponents of nanotechnology, microchips and other marvels to the alchemists of the past, but does not draw the obvious conclusion. This time, he implies, the discovery of the philosopher's stone really is at hand.

I don't believe it; every three or four years, I am asked to review a book which promises  the complete transformation of medicine, which will render the experience of illness (and therefore of human life) completely different from what it was in the past. What happens in the meantime is that operations become ever more sophisticated and recovery from them correspondingly quicker, and drugs ever more expensive if not necessarily more effective; we grow a little healthier for a little longer; but the transformation does not happen. We are neither grateful for our advantages, taking them for granted as soon as we have them, nor more contented than we were.

The doubtful premise of his book notwithstanding, Appleyard gives us an interesting, if a somewhat disorganised and undisciplined, meditation upon longevity and the meaning of life. Man has always wanted to prolong his sojourn on earth, and I doubt if there is a human group existent that does not try by one means or another to stave off death, whether by means of throwing bones or by the latest imaging technology.

While death is to be avoided for as long as possible, philosophers have long been aware that it is the finitude of our existence that gives it purpose. If I knew that I was going to live to be 2,000 years old, and the editor of these pages had asked me to produce a review of this book at some time before my death, I doubt I should have read it in two days and sat down at once at my desk to write my comments upon it.

Proponents of immortality, or at any rate of a vastly expanded lifespan, argue that, for enquiring minds such as ours, the world is, de facto, infinitely various and exciting. How long would it take to read all the books in the British Library, for example? For myself, if I had my time again, I would like to have studied entomology and also Amharic, and become an expert on Ethiopia. Very well, say the immortalists, we grant you another 200 years of vigorous existence; you can learn those things in the extra time allotted to you. What more could you want?

Far from filling me with pleasure, however, the prospect would fill me with absolute horror. I am not suicidal, I enjoy my life, a good meal still delights me, I am thrilled by the unexpected discovery of an interesting book in the shop of an antiquarian bookseller, but I have reached an age when I do not regard my approaching death as an absolute catastrophe, as an insult to my human rights. I am content with the limitations of human existence.

It is here that I think Appleyard misses, or rather does not make explicit enough, something that is quite important: the secularist's inability to accept those limitations. We see this daily in our newspapers. Homosexuals would once have accepted that one of the consequences of their sexual orientation was that, through no fault of their own, they could not be parents. This is no longer the case: they are demanding equal rights to parenthood, as if parenthood were a right. Similarly, a 12-year-old boy in Austria is transformed, at his own wish, into a girl.

In other words, nothing is accepted as God-given: the Promethean bargain is extended into all corners and aspects of life, which becomes an existential supermarket, where even sex (or what is called "gender") is a matter of choice. Recently, I had to fill out a form in which one of the choices for gender was "Unknown", as if it were possible that I hadn't yet quite made up my mind.

No one would want to give up the Promethean bargain altogether, which has brought us so many benefits, not least of them the ability to cure many diseases and live longer. On the other hand, a life without accepted boundaries is not very attractive. The problem of boundaries is like that of suffering: any individual boundary may be irksome, or worse than irksome, but to live without boundaries is not conducive to human contentment. It is not the attempt to relieve suffering, but the expectation that life can be lived entirely without it, that is the error.

Appleyard deserves a lot of credit for raising the question about the purpose of our lives, a question from which we divert ourselves by the circuses division of our bread-and-circuses regime. For myself, however, I found the scientific optimists whom he encountered, and who thought that earthly immortality was just round the corner, to be deeply chilling. No doubt it is my age.

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