Sunday, April 15, 2012

Will We Become Invincible?



      It seems that after completing the novel Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood brings along a central theme that gets brought up numerous times throughout the story, that of immortality; humanity's quest to extend human life. Just like Crake and many other intellectuals in that society dedicate their lives to finding new pills or new ways of extending or even diminishing life, a simple question remains within the palms of our society
; do we have the capabilities to maybe accomplish in medicine, immortality? 
      In today's society, famous English author and theoretician in genetics, Aubrey de Grey, has been praised as the leading brain in the extension of human life. Aubrey de Grey is also a co-founder of the famous Methuselah Foundation which focus's on the methods of extending lifespan. Since this foundation is meant to motivate scientists all around the world to quicken research in maybe achieving immortality one day with a top prize estimated to be around 4 million $.
            However, would this actually be a good idea? Will the investments of private corporations make actually turn out positive for the survival of humanity? Or will we be exploited and used for profit just like in Oryx and Crake? Whatever happens our generation will be able to experience it first hand and there will be an interesting response to this whole situation.
            Atwood’s perspective about immortality is very interestingly portrayed through the character Jimmy and in todays society, technology and medicine are only advancing and only time will tell if we will reach a point of immortality in our lives. 

6 comments:

  1. One question that I was asking myself is that if ever they developed a way to reach immortality, will this be only accessible to rich people and poor people will still have to die? Because I guess the prize to pay for such a thing is not really cheap!

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  2. While reading your post, I immediately thought of the movie Daybreakers. Basically immortal vampires have completely taken over the world and wiped out their one food source, humans. Wouldn’t extending the gift of immortality to our race cause just the same problem, and most likely only intensify overpopulation and lack of resources that we already struggle with?

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  3. Paolo Bacigalupi has a short story called "Pop Squad" which explores a world with drug-induced immortality. Keeps you young, keeps you infertile. Some people choose to go off-line and have kids, which makes them criminals, hunted by the police. It's an effective story, at least initially, because you have no idea what's going on until the main character, a policeman, starts shooting children. Eek. It appears in an anthology of dystopian fiction called "Brave New Worlds."

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  4. Immortality is an interesting topic, but let's take a step back from human narcissism for a second. First of all - immortality is a conceptual thing that does not exist in our world in any form. Nothing is immortal as far as we know.
    Secondly, evolving and progressing is only possible through death and destruction. Old things have to make room for the new ones.
    Alternatively, what is considered an "immortality"? Continuation of life? What is "life" that is worth "continuing" ? Is it consciousness? Is it breathing? Consider an idea of "moving" a mind of a human into a machine. Or into another body. Or copying your being as a whole. Is that considered as a continuation of life?

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  5. I think that this text shows how Margaret Atwood is predicting, in some sense, the possible consequences of the experiments that we are currently doing, such as, research about immortality. when I think about "Oryx and Crake" I also think about Jules verne's "Dr. Ox's Experiment" which explains the consequences on the environment due to an experiment on beings, which is what we are doing today.

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  6. I think that this text shows how Margaret Atwood is predicting, in some sense, the possible consequences of the experiments that we are currently doing, such as, research about immortality. when I think about "Oryx and Crake" I also think about Jules verne's "Dr. Ox's Experiment" which explains the consequences on the environment due to an experiment on beings, which is what we are doing today.

    ReplyDelete