Immortality Protocol — A Philosophy of everlasting Contribution
Tags: Philosophy, Hope, Contribution, Immortality, Mortality

Did you ever entertain the thought of an immortal life?

When was the last time you contemplated your mortality asking yourself: How to best live your life facing the ultimate fact: we all must die some day? — or:

Is there a way to overcome death?

🗿“Memento Mori” (beware of your mortality), the Stoics keep reminding us. “Carpe Diem” (seize the day) is the answer provided by yet another school of Ancient philosophers, the Epicureans.

Despite this advice or maybe just because of it, the quest for an immortal life has been the ultimate motivation for a lot of people across the millennia.

But what is it that so many people are actually looking for when they want to achieve immortality?

Immortality in Pop Culture

A lot of the our favorite binge-watch series (or multi-part movies) these days tend to come with dramatic cliffhangers in which one of the main protagonists gets killed in a spectacular way. So it seems at least. We remain in breath-taking suspense — only to see that figure being magically revived or returning as surprising survivor in a later episode. Indeed, the best fictional characters (heroes and villains alike) are just very “hard to kill”. This might be why we love them so much.

In fact, the pop culture motive of immortality was already addressed in the most famous narratives of ancient myths: Continuous rebirth (virtual immortality) is actually a super-power possessed by the legendary fire bird “Phoenix”: The creature is continuously being remade, reincarnated from its own ashes after literally burning to death — a most impressive comeback that became part of the popular phrase “rising like a Phoenix” and also the name of the famous capital of Arizona. 🐦🔥

Spiritual Immortality

A lot of people also tend to seek immortality in religion and spirituality. All major world religions take up this concept or theme in their scriptures and teachings. I do not intend to touch too deeply on this aspect, but my core observations are these:

While the ability to become immortal is firstly achieved by a central figure (in Christianity: Jesus), it is then also made accessible to the followers respectively believers — provided they live a life according to the teachings. Thus all followers can eventually become immortal.

A though that might surprisingly bridge spirituality and modern science could be contemplating our origin in the universe itself as a source of immortality.

✨ Since we are all made up of the same particles, namely “stardust” and after our biological death are “converted back” to the very same matter (so that new life can be born from it), we continue our immortal existence — only in a different form. This “infinite cycle” is also a central motive in the teachings of Hinduism.

Counting the Days

Speaking about science. Let’s do a quick math. Shall we? Assuming, you have a life expectancy of 80 years (about the European average), your life has about 29,000 days. Surprisingly, this sounds like a rather limited timeframe while “80 years” might sound like eternity to most people.

By the time you are reading this (under the assumption that you are a mid 20 person), you have already spent more than 7,000 days on this planet (~22,000 remaining). Let this sink in. 🕒

OK, so what is the point here? The point is: Your time is extremely valuable (actually the most valuable good you have in life) and nothing (currently known by science), can bring it back. 😱

Modern Ways to extend Life

OK, so if we cannot bring it back — how about: Adding a few days?

Over the course of the past century alone, humanity (specially large branches of our economy) has come up with countless ways of “cheating death” or “stop aging”. This starts with cosmetics and plastic surgery, it covers the Quantified Self and various health/diet movements and ultimately culminates in the sci-fi phantasy that one day we might be able to “upload our minds into the Cloud” (I am not talking about crematories here, but the digitalization of your soul —that is, if you have one. 😅)

Think about it: When was the last time that you counted your steps, checked your heart rate after/during a run or monitored your sleep ?— Just with the ultimate goal to squeeze out a few more hours, days or — so we hope — years out of your finite lives.

If you gave these options some thought (most of us do this for the better part of their lives because this all sounds super tempting), you will, nevertheless, ultimately reach at the sobering conclusion that none of those methods are “sufficient”, that is, at least not today. (Some of them are not even sustainable!)

Imagine for a short moment, that humanity will eventually manage to prevent our biological death or extend our life span indefinitely and that you actually will be around to witness it and even become immortal.

How would you then spend eternity — procrastinating watching your favorite Netflix hero die to be reborn time and time again?

Immortality already is within our Grasp

The good news is: We are already there. Wait, what?! Not with the Netflix stuff, of course! But immortality actually already is within our grasp.

Yes, humanity has already achieved immortality in two ways.

The first one is based on evolution. All organisms on this planet are designed in a way so that they would eventually pass on their genetic information to their offspring before their death.

That way we are in a sense the continued “cloned variation” or “mutation” of the very first cell(s) that ever evolved, from a biological standpoint. From a social or philosophical standpoint, this means that we continue to live through our children, grandchildren and so on. 👪

It also implicates that sex is the evolutionary “protocol” to achieve immortality — and might explain our biological “predisposition” towards wanting to attain it. 💑

It is the second way, in my opinion, however, that truly deserves the name Immortality Protocol — as an actual guiding philosophy that can help everyone of us achieve immortality.

Large parts of this discussion have focused around how your person, your ego, can become immortal as an individual.

I want you to think bigger. I want you to leave your ego behind.

Think about the contributions you can make or are already making in this life and think about the causes you are dedicating them to. Keep asking yourself:

What is my contribution to humanity?

Beyond Eternal Fame

Our species has created a lot of famous monuments during the course of its existence. Among them are buildings like the great pyramids in Egypt, or more recently sky towers like the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

Those buildings were not only constructed to give pharaohs or architects eternal fame, as an amplifier for their large egos! They were created by everyone involved in the process, every single person that made the smallest contribution. They can be more than proud of these achievements!

The same is true for all organizations that people built: The European Union, the United Nations, charities — every group and entity that is focusing on improving conditions around the Globe.

Also ideas and visions like the French Revolution, the United States of America, the Arab Spring and many more, were only made possible by the contributions of each and everyone who was involved — their legacy and thus their very existences thus become immortal.

We can think of a lot of famous people in history: Marcus Aurelius, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein — if you look closely, they have all become immortal, not through their lives, but through their contributions to mankind.

These are what remains beyond fame.

Make every Day Count

Taking their guiding examples and those of so many other people who inspired us in our lives, we can try to create a philosophy of everlasting contribution that will drive our lives.

Author Brendon Buchard tells us that he keeps reflecting about three questions every day in his life — he would recite them even at his deathbed:

Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?

The last question could also be rephrased as: Did I make an impact with my life? The answer might be hard for most of us, today.

But every single one of us can find their purpose in this life, an idea which is so much bigger than oneself, an eternal cause that will serve society, a cause that needs our ever-lasting contribution.

Let it be science, let it be education, let it be community service. It does not matter what it is for you, as long as the ultimate goal will be becoming immortal by:

Leaving this planet as a better place than we found it — and helping to take humanity to the next level in the process. 🆙

Let this be our “Immortality Protocol”.

Make every day count.

Cheers!

#thestrugglebeginstoday

I hope this article could help you contemplate or at least give you a few new perspectives on this rather “heavy topic”. I am grateful to count you among my readers. 😌

As always: I am curious about your thoughts in the comments below!

Disclaimer

The “clickbaity” title of this article may sound like it has been taken from the next James Bond or Mission Impossible movie, but it was inspired from somewhere else.

In the now more than a decade old real time strategy computer game, Starcraft 2, it is your mission to command an army of soldiers and machines on a virtual battlefield. One particular troop unit under your command eventually develops the ability to completely repair and rebuild itself, right on the spot, after it was taken out — a full “reincarnation” on the battlefield, like it was never gone. This intriguing capability is called “Immortality Protocol” back in the game. Had a nice ring to it, the term stuck with me. 😅