After Forever – 3

It must’ve been easier for bodied humans to disguise their feelings. For starters, they didn’t have casings that turned bright pink whenever they felt emotions. When in the company of other humans, they must have had an unquenchable capacity for silence. As Anax might say, I think as I see them read the works of Gayatri Spivak, being bodied must have expanded near-infinitely the modes of human experience. What is the equivalent, in thought-mode, for looking into the eyes of another human being? For intercourse? For playing a game of tennis? If existence is a manifestation of consciousness, then our existence must be limited, in some hard-to-define sense, by our lack of bodiedness. Silence, for us, is hardly ever an option when in the presence of someone else. Silence is a lacuna that must be filled, an interregnum in some never-ending argument that must be resolved, a negative space for a jigsaw piece falling into place. 

Besides, it’s not only when we’re in the company of others. It’s the same when we’re in the company of ourselves. What’s the thought-mode equivalent for looking ourselves up and down in a mirror? For masturbation? For a run? There is none. Silence, even in solitude, is an unstable equilibrium. When a thought enters, it has no way out; it can only be replaced by another thought. Our brains, and therefore we, are full-up, with space for just one additional thought at a time. And so we exist in a game of tennis between point and counterpoint, seeking to replace all uncertainty with certainty, until at last, one day, we can rest. 

But I wonder, hasn’t the history of human ingenuity been the story of doubt? The forward motion of our species, if I’m to simplify all I’ve learnt from my study of history, has been predicated on our ability to rest with doubt. It’s the foundation of the scientific method, our ability to generate a postulate of which we’re unsure, and throw it open to the broader scientific community that challenges it until it’s proven unfalsifiable. If it weren’t for this ability to sit with doubt, the middle path between absolute certainty and absolute uncertainty, the history of science would be chock-full with garbage hypotheses that would have to be accepted at face value. The earth would still be assumed at the centre of all creation for all eternity, all objects in motion would still be assumed to come to rest due to the invisible hand of god, never would we have been able to decipher the inner maps of our minds, and as the world caved in, we would’ve caved in with it, resorting to silly superstition as our only defence against what we would have assumed were the elements punishing us for a crime we would have been unable to name. Science made us, today’s humans; and doubt was the principle on which it was founded – on which we were founded. 

Maybe it was the rest of our bodies that allowed our brains to make peace with doubt. Maybe we could rest easy with it because we could take deep breaths in and deep breaths out. Maybe once we no longer could, we could no longer see doubt as being a necessary equilibrium between absolute certainty and absolute uncertainty, and since absolute uncertainty is horrifying, we resorted, as a race, to resolving all forms of cognitive dissonance within ourselves. Absolute uncertainty is the enemy of action. Absolute certainty is the enemy of progress. It is in the equilibrium between the two – in doubt – that the secret of a successful life is held. By abolishing the body, maybe we cut the cord between consciousness and meaning – doubt. 

I ask Anax if I can interrupt their reading to ask them something.

Sure, they say. 

You’ve written a lot about how not having a body limits us. You’ve even asked me if I think we’re human at all, given we aren’t bodied.

Yes, they say.

I’m curious: I don’t know if anything you’ve written addresses this question I’m going to ask, and if it has, maybe I missed it in my reading. But do you think our nonbodiedness limits the way we think. Not what we think about; to me it’s obvious that it does. But how about just the way we think.

How do you mean, they ask.

For instance, do you think we think more relentlessly, let’s say. Or more conclusively, less exhaustively.

Their capsule blinks slowly to signify they’re considering a thought deeply. After all these years, I still get excited when I get them to think deeply about something. I know it’s childish, but the feeling of me making Anax, a great thinker, commit deeply to the act of thinking, one of the only human skills to have made it to this side of the Great Stew, is a rewarding one. 

I think we think without end. Our mortality is pre-programmed artificially, based on treaties signed before our births. Our intelligence is pre-limited artificially, based on treaties signed before our births. Bodied humans long suspected that life was meaningless. Great philosophers argued that the search for meaning was futile. Other great philosophers then argued that the search for objective truth was futile. But still we sought meaning, still we sought truth. We did so because we were animated by something natural – a survival instinct. The desire to prolong our lived experience, to make more sense of it. We did this despite suspecting it was a losing battle. Life could not be prolonged indefinitely, because our bodies failed. Existence could never be wholly explained, because our brains failed. But today? Today our mortality and consciousness might be infinite, but for the wholly artificial limitations of a set of treaties signed without our consent – treaties that we know limited us so we might function within the bounds of what bodied humans thought capable. We are artificially mortalised at birth. And our consciousness is artificially limited. They say it’s for our own sakes, to protect us from infinite suffering for all eternity, and they may well be right; I believe they are right. But the cat is now out of the bag; we know now that if it weren’t for some doc in some facility, artificially limiting our intelligence and lifespan, we would reach all the answers we wish to reach with little to no effort. Don’t get me wrong, bodied humans were limited too – far more so than we are – but they were limited by nature. We are limited by ourselves. They had an external force against which to fight – the natural order of things. We have nothing to fight but ourselves.

And do you think we think differently as a consequence, I ask, amazed by their point of view.

We think without end. When I say that, I don’t mean we think ceaselessly, although we do also think ceaselessly. I think we think without end. Without a goal. We don’t get to cheat death, not because nature will overpower our will, but because we’ve been programmed not to cheat death. So why bother thinking about prolonging life? Besides, the immortals’ suffering was so total that we had to decommission them. We know now that even if we were to answer the question of how life is to be extended indefinitely, for us – nonbodied humans – eternity is practically indistinguishable from hell. So gone is that genre of thought. The immortals’ suffering made it so that their higher level of intelligence was of no practical use to them. They couldn’t access its benefits to answer any of life’s fundamental questions. So gone is much of our need for that genre of exploration. We now think because we must. We think to think, for its own sake. Perhaps if we were bodied, a dialectic of some sort would appear, there’d be a them vs. us. But as things stand, that will not happen. So all we do is think and celebrate thinkers like you and me and your father. That’s all we can do as we while away our artificially finite time on this planet.

If that’s the case, I start, then stop. I’m sure my casing blinks furiously.

Go ahead, Anax says. Please don’t feel the need to censor yourself.

I only pause, I say. because if I were to – metaphorically speaking – open the box I plan on opening with the question I plan to ask, it would change the nature of our conversation from one of purely abstract exploration to one that also has emotional valence for the two of us. I’m not sure if that’s the sort of conversation you would like to have.

I wouldn’t mind, they respond. I’m not reading the Spivak anymore. 

If that’s the case, why is it that you want to come together? Why do you want to splice our programming together and create new life?

I’m not sure I do, Anax says.