Just Finished Reading: The Immortalization Commission – The Strange Quest to Cheat Death by John Gray

Even after several weeks of thinking about it [I have quite a backlog of reviews I’m working on] I still haven’t quite decided what this book was actually about. Gray is notorious for his negative views of the Enlightenment Project and this comes across clearly here as he dissects two areas where science, of a sort, was used (or abused) in an attempt to ‘conquer’ death. You see my problem I hope. Let me explain…

The first area studied (or case studied) was an attempt in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries to prove, using apparently scientific methods, that personality survived death. A group of, mostly, English intellectuals and radicals hatched a plot where on death they resolved to contact the living to reveal secrets obtainable in no other way – thence proving beyond reasonable doubt that life after death was a scientific reality. In his second case study Gray outlined the attempt to preserve the body of Lenin after he died using every scientific tool at the disposal of the Soviet regime.

After reading the admittedly interesting (if rather convoluted) stories outlined above I was still unsure as to just what point the author was attempting to make. I realised quite quickly that he had little time for the idea that science could, in some way, actually conquer death but the way he rubbished the idea was, to my mind at least, rather bizarre. The fact that the English spiritualists failed in their attempt to provide coherent consistent proof of life after death came as no great surprise to me nor, I suspect, to anyone else who read this book or knew previously of their attempts to do so. Likewise the efforts to preserve the living likeness of Lenin after he died – rather than bringing him back to life – was an odd target to choose if criticism of the scientific assault on death was the objective. Indeed both case studies in my mind completely missed the point, either that or I completely missed the point of the whole book which is more than possible.

I also think that Gray’s underlying scepticism is misplaced. Though I do doubt that we will ever eliminate death from the human condition I do think that it’s more than possible to greatly postpone the inevitable and that our ability to extend this postponement will increase into the future – barring the death of the species brought upon by that very same progress in our technology. Although we will all eventually die I think that future generations will view our life-spans as tragically short. Ages in the hundreds or even into the thousands are probably not impossible and that’s before we even consider the option of ‘uploading’ people into virtual environments or housing an uploaded personality in a purpose built mechanical body. Whether or not these people are alive is a philosophical and legal question that will, I suspect, have to be answered at some point in the not too distant future. If at this point, with regular back-ups and maintenance, there is no theoretical limit to life span it could be argued that these individuals are effectively immortal. Or at least they will be until the Universe ends….. Unless of course we can figure out a way to survive that too……