I found this article today in Scientific American, “What if We Could Live for a Million Years?” by Avi Loeb. As you might expect it examines the idea of what life would be like for human if we could live for a million years. In such a span of time, some of the thoughts here are silly and intended to be so. We’re going to have to cap tenure, it states. Yeah, we’ll have to cap a few things, I’m thinking. And because we’re human we’d have to have stupid debates like what sort of health insurance would cover it and whether or not some people could save enough money to live a million years. I’m sure in the end we’ll iron out all the kinks and everyone will live happily ever after until our Sun goes critical or the entire universe collapses or some such.

It’s fun to think of these scenarios and I do wonder what it would be like if we humans managed to extend our life spans a significant amount. Perhaps with consciousness studies we could even learn how to cheat death and store our consciousness digitally. There are many fascinating philosophical questions we can ask. My question is, should it be something we even want?

It seems to me that our egos try awfully hard to draw out their lives, even way beyond their usefulness. The quest to live forever? That’s ego driven. There is so much more to me than my ego, and there’s so much more to everyone else. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. We learn through each incarnation. We take those lessons and we move on to something else. I would not want to be stuck in ego existence for centuries, let alone for millennial or eons! This is spiritual stagnation.

In Buddhism one’s essence is in a constant state of change and flux, so there is no-permanent self (anatta). Buddhism teaches to not get attached to ego, as who we are always changes whether we want this or not. We grow old, we get ill, we lose a limb, we change our views, people come into and out of our lives. Suffering occurs when there is an inability to let our own idea of self/ego go because it creates rigidity. Rather than bend as the winds of change come, we crack when we tightly hold to what once was.

A good friend of mine said a while back, “To believe in a permanent self…is to deny the possibility of spiritual self-change.” If there is a permanet, sustained self, is there any real possibility of change or growth?

Perhaps if someone is a reductive materialist, eternal life in the body or some other material form sounds appealing. To me it sounds like a prison sentence.

Some Queen to cure the ear worm…