Ultimate Satanic Trick?
                          By Ammond Shadowcraft


    On lifespan extension for our future...

    Recently I found Alan Harrington's book, THE IMMORTALIST, at a used
 books store. He wrote in 1970 (Discus Books by Avon) much of what I
 felt and still feel to be true about man's religious and emotional
 state. I've said for a couple years that humans were insane. I
 suspected death was at the root of this condition. Now I have a little
 support.

    'Tracking man's spiritual history, we can follow this path: from the
 beginning, human consciousness longs and plans to perpetuate itself.
 Out of individuated consciousness [1], which is the original sin, what
 Miguel de Unamuno called "the hunger for immortality" is born. Man
 craves personal immortality, but observes that everyone dies. He then
 creates gods, and worships and placates them. Assuming that "we must
 have done something wrong" he constructs systems of self-punishment to
 pay for the primal crime. Still everybody dies. Then, since eternal
 life on earth obviously is not forthcoming, and placating divine
 authority hasn't worked, he more or less unknowingly resolves to knock
 down the gods, or replace them, or to become God [2]. Since this must
 be done warily, for fear of retribution, he informs himself of what he
 is doing through myths [3]. In these dream-projections the Promethean
 and satanic types, or the "Foolish Woman" such as Eve, always undergoes
 a severe chastising, but the idea of rebellion is thereby passed along.
 [4] No good, everyone goes on dying.

    He attempts to trick fate, as in the Far East, by pretending that he
 doesn't want to come back to life. That doesn't accomplish anything
 either. Now he grovels before the gods saying, All right, I won't eat
 or make love too often; I'll play half-dead in advance, refuse to
 enjoy, even die before I die, offer myself for wounding, expose my
 undefended belly, genitals, backside, anything, is that what you want?
 No help.

    Thus men alternate between abject surrender and assertiveness. But
 whatever our tactics, we have always been in a state of Permanent
 Revolution against Gods. Rephrasing and extending the Freudian
 conception, all culture has been a subtle and devious attempt to usurp
 divine authority, to conquer death--at the same time taking care not to
 excite the anger of the gods who inflict mortality on us until we are
 strong enough to overthrow them. [5]

    Man is a rebel, as Camus says, but he also resists himself, resists
 and sabotages his own rebellion. The Permanent Revolution is constantly
 being interfered with. Counter-revolutionaries in humanity's own ranks
 have always managed to slow down the centuries-old drive to remove
 death. Their counter-measures spring from an everchanging set of
 superstitions.

    A fifth column of superstition obstructs every advance against the
 citadel of death. Oddly enough, in an evolutionary context, the race's
 sabotaging of its own progress may turn out to have been functional.
 [6] An innocent revolutionary spirit running ahead of scientific
 advances, without superstition to slow it down, might long since have
 killed itself off after prematurely looking death in the face.

    To rein ourselves in, we invented primal guilt. Even as it has or
 once had evolutionary sanction, guilt is more than painful. The
 imaginary gods in our psyche exact a toll when they are threatened. [7]
 They strike back and sometimes cause us to panic, to twist and turn,
 and to become frightened of our own daring, and to hate and fear others
 who dare. Challenging the gods can estrange us from ourselves as well
 as from others and make us odd and unconfident. It can reduce natural
 exuberance, and make this acceptable as payment for hubris. The rebel
 is at all times exposed, vulnerable, and afflicted by the suspicion
 that in his refusal to accept divine authority which leads to death he
 is somehow "wrong".

    Above all, we conceal from ourselves the existence of our
 underground drive against the cosmic establishment. Men must keep it
 from themselves that they are in revolt against the gods, or "against
 Nature." [8] Only by means of this hypocrisy has our species been able
 to keep the revolutionary program going. It has enabled man to plot
 against the his gods while he worshiped them.

    A disguised drive toward divinity, the creation of our own divinity,
 carries us forward. At certain times we advance too quickly, and the
 gods in our heads [9] inflict a terrible revenge--sometimes on
 ourselves, more often on others. Galileo and Bruno move too far out in
 front of their day, and are cut down. But in another country, in Jung's
 phrase 'the godly sense of curiosity strives for birth." Man, in the
 person of Francis Bacon, sets up the scientific method to dominate his
 environment, to remove all mysteries (divine property), in order to
 find the base Archimedes sought, the place to stand from which he could
 move the world, and ultimately remove death."  [IBID, pgs 18-20]
 Notation ([*]) is my own.

    [1] Alisandra (my lover) and I have discussed several times the
 psychic shock children receive when they realize they have a body, a
 self, which is not entirely part of their imaginary world. It's a great
 shock to realize that our imaginary world really isn't reality.
 (Evidently some haven't realized this yet.) It does hurt, but can be
 coped with. Although I don't remember mine she vividly remembers (as a
 tactile dominant) hers. As well can be seen when we learn about death
 as children we are generally confused because death really isn't part
 of the program for little humans.

    [2] When I came to realize that either God was a cold, heartless SOB
 or an imaginary and emotional data structure in my brain I realized
 that I had to do something to change my point of reference. If God
 truly exists as commonly believed by many, then I'm at risk. However I
 don't think so and consider my own emotional programming first.

    [3] In my opinion some myths, dreams and Gods are our fondest
 aspirations for ourselves. After all, who in their heart-of-hearts
 doesn't really secretly covet Q's (of ST:TNG) status?

    [4] It is the odd human circumstance that what we struggle against
 we pass along. Memes are that way.

    [5] Have I never felt fully free of my fear of Daddy-God sitting on
 my lonely shoulder, waiting for me to screw up?

    [6] Man's religions do serve the purpose of coping with the
 realization of mortality. But even as our Christian friends rejoice in
 their imagined victory over death we should remind ourselves that their
 self deception is indeed useful.

    [7] I sometimes describe the Gods as memes. Memes, if they exists as
 I envision them, are informational entities with a synergistic life of
 their own. They can perform and act in their subjects gray-matter.

    [8] A revolt against nature? Surely you must be joking Mikie? Surely
 not he replies. Alan Harrington speculates that if (as Americans) put
 as much money into an immortality project as we did with Apollo we
 might be on the knife edge of overcoming death today. Supposedly we
 have entered the "materials era" of human science. Nanotechnology is
 not too far beyond. We could have built a national community by
 tackling death. And in a synergism we might have progressed far.

    [9] Many times I've approached the abyss of meaninglessness and the
 eternal blank screen. I've met the same dilemma as others and think
 that now is the time for an adventursome group of humans to tackle this
 thorny project. With a substantial percentage of persons working on
 this project we could achieve our goal in our lifetimes.

    It'd be a damn shame to die the day before immortality processes are
 free for all humans. Being an optimist I feel our future is bright
 providing we get a grip on our insanity and deal with the root causes.
 The human species should know itself from the inside out, not from the
 POV of our fantasies. We should stop pretending and use the tools
 available to achieve the dream which will begin all new dreams.

  "Surely you shall not die, but become as the gods, knowing good and evil."
  --- A certain slink snake in a faraway garden.