February, 2015
Pierce Timberlake has written a wonderful and thought
provoking short book ruminating on the ultimate questions of life and
death. “The Art of Living Forever” dissects
various established philosophies on how best to live this wonderful and
mysterious thing we call “life,” and then subtly and logically leads us to a plausible
rationale for the current popular notion that what we perceive as existence may
actually be a turbocharged virtual reality game.
Timberlake’s meditations begin with observations one day at his
job as a telemetry technician in a hospital observing the CRT screens
displaying the heart signals of several patients. One of them is experiencing
his last moments. The patient’s acknowledgment that he is ready for “the big
show” stimulates Timberlake’s own thoughts on
the Big Question.
He starts by questioning the (seemingly) inherent unfairness
of death itself. This leads to the question of how best to use the time we have
before arriving in that last hospital bed. He cleverly dissects the
incongruities inherent in “living for the moment,” taking the time to correct
the common misconception of Epicureanism while comparing it with hedonism, and
then contrasting both with stoicism and altruism, living for others. Finally,
he explores the common notion of “life is for learning.”
Timberlake writes with a dry sense of humor while displaying
a sparkling wit as evidenced in this passage on altruism:
“Altruism: fulfilling yourself through service to others
“One standard of conventional
wisdom is that we find meaning in our lives by living for others. I’ve heard
this in some form since I was very young, and have generally bought into it.
Even as a child, though, one question bothered me: If I live for others, who do
they live for? Do they live for some third party, who in turn lives for someone
else, and so on, going around in a daisy chain until it finally comes back to
me? It would seem to be more efficient if everyone just lived for themselves.
Living for each other sounds friendlier, but it would be more straightforward
if we each took care of our own situations. After all, who knows what you want
and need better than you do?”
Man’s belief systems on the big picture, what it all means,
cannot rightly be separated from the state of his technology and understanding
of the physical universe. Presently, a new explanation of the Big Picture has
emerged that reflects the digital revolution. Timberlake speculates on a
perfect future where human ambitions have been fully realized and even
immortality become possible. What this would mean for the human condition
eventually leads us to the fanciful notion that our experience of reality is
actually software, within a huge virtual reality game existing in cyberspace.
This new reality paradigm would not have been possible before the advent of the
computer. It has been popularized in science fiction, most notably with the “The
Matrix” movies, and intelligently explored in the TV show “Caprica,” the “Battlestar
Galactica” (remake) spinoff.
Timberlake incrementally, and ingeniously, leads us to how
such a “world” could evolve from a highly intelligent, technologically advanced
species. Step by step, he reveals how a life such as we all experience, with no
knowledge of the higher reality and no memory of past life excursions into the
“Game,” is the logical outcome.
***
Assume immortality is medically and technologically
achievable, how long would it take for boredom to take its toll? It can be
argued that once we have reproduced, had children, Nature is done with us. We
have served our purpose. Once one reaches a certain age, and has children, this
can come to feel intrinsically, and painfully, true. Certainly our aging bodies
behave in this way. At a ripe old
age, observation of family members who inevitably pass away, usually—or at
least, often—confirms that at our expiration date we are ready for death. We,
with resignation, understand that there is really nothing left for us to “do.”
If it were possible to “reboot” our consciousness (mental
capacities?) into a new body, how many would choose to do so? In the cyber-reality
“Game” scenario, those who do so would eventually realize that the ennui could
only be overcome if any memory of our previous existence (both the “real” as
well as our cyber-reality “avatar” lives) were hidden from us.
This scenario so neatly fits the Hindu concept of
reincarnation that it can’t be ignored. A question arises: Does this similarity
with an existing religious worldview make it a more, or less, plausible picture
of “reality”? That depends on the
individual, and their existing beliefs.
For me, there is a fundamental flaw in the concept of reincarnation.
The notion of a wheel of repeated lives requires an absolute framework within
which these lives occur: a constant, universal flow of time. But not only do we
know from Einstein that no such thing as absolute time exists, we can reject it
on the basis of two other lines of reasoning:
(1) On an epistemological basis, namely that our perception
of time is a result of our physical bodies and our senses, and as such it is
not provable that time represents anything “real.”
(2) If reincarnation were real, then we could claim to
understand what happens after we die. That is, what happens after death is
something that can be understood rationally, by the brain of this species of
life that evolved over some 2 billion years on this particular planet. I refuse
to accept that that is the case. I do not believe that what happens after death
is something that can be understood, expressed and communicated, in the sense
that our human-created languages could codify it into words. As one wise person
once said, “The map is not the territory.”
Nonetheless, the “Game” scenario is an intriguing thought
experiment, if nothing else, and makes at least as much sense as the various other
theories of the afterlife believed by billions of people.
***
Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius, Nietzsche, William Blake,
Descartes and Plato all make guest appearances as either authors or exponents of
various philosophical schools of thought or important contributors to the grand
discussion of the human condition throughout the ages.
Other than Zen and the reincarnation aspects of Hinduism, religion
gets small mention. This book is not about rote belief in a prescribed set of
explanations for life and the afterlife. Timberlake acknowledges that a more
comprehensive treatment, including religious thought, would require another,
different book.
Timberlake writes with humanity and gentle wit in a voice
that doesn’t preach or condescend, guiding the reader with reason, humility and
honesty through his landscape of ideas on the ultimate questions. He has three
other titles that followed “The Art of Living Forever,” they are:
“Sex, Not-Sex, and Love,” “Should You Study a Martial Art?”
and, “Style as Ideology / Ideology as Style.” They are all available on Amazon for the
kindle, and I look forward to reading them.
# # #
Timberlake, Pierce (2014-01-19). The Art of Living Forever
(Kindle Locations 443-444). Kindle
Edition.
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