Death, be not proud!

Natasja Burger - 25210298

The humanists believe in reason, science and technology and are opposed to any religious doctrines. In line with this view, the musician Ben Harper once said that the only reason people believe in a God is because we know that we are going to die. People are perhaps striving towards immortality because we do not want to serve a God anymore. If we are immortal, we do not have to abide to any rules in order to get into a Nirvana or Heaven. People want to kill God and become the gods of this world.

If immortality were to become a reality, only the rich would be able to afford this technology. Only the rich will live on. Would this then be the new aristocracy? The rich would be able to live their happy and prosperous lives for eternity, without the poor bringing them down. They would be able to create their own Heaven on earth. The problem is that people will always strive to be better than somebody else. Without this strive to be better, there would be no progress and things would only stand still or even move backwards.

Naturally the human body will disintegrate as some point. This would mean that the human brain would have to be put into some kind of cyborg or robot. The brain and the body are accounted for, but what about the soul? Is the soul connected to the brain? Like Bob Dylan said, all the money you made could never buy back your soul. Ever get that feeling that you are the only ‘real’ person on earth and everybody around you is a robot?

Yes, this strive towards immortality in South Africa would be a luxury. It would be the elitist utopia. There would be no poverty and no diseases. It would be affordable, because there would only be a few people left in the country. But why would you want to stay in this hell we call earth, when there can be so much more waiting for us on the other side. The heaven created on earth by humans would always just be a superficial one. In the end everything must die, not just humans, but even technology.