The Immortality Delusion

Elon Musk would like to think he can live forever. His vision of colonising Mars - because we've fucked up our own and only planet, feeling that the great and the good in his eyes should escape our self-inflicted armageddon - is the vision of a man with absolutely no vision. He is completely blind to the realities of human history. He is completely blind to our fragility and our inability as a species to look after what we've got, including ourselves. He is completely blind to the ultimate insignificance of humanity in geological, let alone cosmic terms. We've been around for just a few thousand years: that's it. The Earth is four-and-a-half billion years into its existence, and will itself cease to exist, long, long before the heat-death of the Universe itself. The Universe is some fourteen billion years old. The calendar of human existence is but a dust mote in the firmament of space-time.

Measuring absolute value and worth in human terms is ultimately pointless and frankly insulting to both the Universe and to ourselves. The very notion of our eternal continuance flies in the face of reality, and the intellect which marks us out as different is the very tool that has pointed this out: we know it to be true that we will cease to exist - as will the planets of the Solar System, long before the Universe itself succumbs to its own inescapable physical laws. We are a blip in existence, no more, no less, and we needed to wise up to this ineluctable truth decades ago, before we tipped over the balance-point of our global survivability due to our own, collective stupidity. The question one might ask, is what do art, music and culture; our greatest achievements - and as far as we know, unique to us as a species - matter, outside of our own perception of it all. Of course, the answer is 'not a lot' in the broader scheme of existence, itself an interesting philosophical conundrum: without a sentient being to perceive it, is 'existence' a thing at all. Very Zen...

Looking around the glorious landscape of Eryri in which I live, I can only marvel at the geological wonders that surround us in the form of the majestic mountains of North Wales. Strange to think that all of this landscape we humans term as Gogledd Cymru started out as an archipelago of islands far away from where Wales is now, moving across the globe in inconceivably slow geologic time to where it is today. Chuck in volcanic and glacial activity over some very considerable millions of years and here we are. The mysteries are not to be found in human history, but in that of the Universe, our Galaxy, the Solar System and ultimately, the Earth itself, in that order. However remarkable we think we are, it is only because we think and have the capacity for self reflection and self esteem. In reality, we mean little to the Universe, and you either believe there's a reason behind our existence, or you believe that it's all an illusion, created of our own mind, itself an accident of evolution. Whatever your view, the concept of human immortality is ultimately, simply, a delusion in the minds of those whose egos won't allow their intellect to conceive of finality. Makes you think...