“This is the ghost of everyday assumptions which declares that the ultimate purpose of life, which is to keep alive is impossible but that this is the ultimate purpose of life”
-Robert M Pirsig
This brings to mind immortality, a topic that has become immortal itself. One which has to be ironically, mortalized to make sense of the whole underlying principle itself.
Since the time principles and justifications and theorems have existed, we have tried and successfully tried to give everything an age. Anything that comes across as an ongoing process has been forever and ever, given a lifetime. Every living organism has an age, after which, in scientific terms, it dies. The stars have been given lifetimes, the whole universe has been given a lifetime. Perpetual motion is time bound. It has been justified so. We try to rationalise our quest for an “ageless” life by saying that technology, which is mortal in itself, will one day take us to a point, where we would not need to have a lifetime. Our lives would start, but not end. One cell would give birth to another, the other to another, and hence a man would be born who would grow old but not die. His cells, lets assume, would either not grow old or one would be able to get rid of the old cells and replace them with newer ones. Immortality is not a just a wanted, dreamt of phenomenon, but as we know it, now an area of research. A branch of technology.
Let us try and analyze all this from a different plane.
Rapidly changing technology has given us the confidence to think that anything can be achieved at some point of time. If enough time is spent towards a specified goal, we can really achieve it. But is it really technology that has made us so capable? Technology in itself is static. If left at a point, no progress is possible by itself. It is the change that brings the improvement in technology that has made this possible. This change is what has made technology a source of such anchored confidence. Let us try dig at the roots of this source of confidence. What brings about change? What is change? But to answer these questions in the literary sense would be useless here. That would not get us to the explanation being put forward. In reference to our pivot, i.e. technology, change can be said to be a kind of re-orientation. In the simplest form, a re-orientation of aim, path or deductions. This re-orientation takes place with the genesis of thought, or principle. This is the point where the problem has to be viewed from a different angle, a new angle. But to change ones perspective, a perspective that has been the guide to the point where change is necessary, something drastic has to happen. This is where technology shows its static nature. Here no progress is possible until you change something. You change your path or your deductions. This is a state of lull, an impasse, a hang-up. Now, you have to think and bring changes in a way you have neither anticipated, nor have you programmed your technology is such a way.
To indulge deeper into explanation, let us start from where technology starts. It starts with one basic truth that we assume. This truth, which is an assumption initially, may not be an assumption at all. It may just be a dream. But to get to that dream we need to start. We start by climbing a ladder of truths, one truth at a time in such a manner that every truth is based upon the truths lower than it in the ladder. To start building this ladder, we need one truth to start with. It might not be the most crucial one, but it is the one that starts off the process. To choose this base truth, we assume our dream to be true, and start off with the ladder.
Now, when we are building this ladder, it may be possible that the first ‘x’ truths may be placed in exactly the same order, in which they were placed to prove some other assumption. But to get to this new assumption, we have to change our orientation. This is critical to place the next truth ‘y’ so that our whole path is re-oriented.
Hence, change is required, in the aim (assumption), the path and the deduction (i.e. to understand what we have arrived at).
To make progress, the major element that provides change is the human mind. But a single, same, mind cannot provide all the change at every point. This change is provided by different people at different times, in different centuries, in different lifetimes. As people change, so does technology. It changes faster than time or nature. Mind is the most dynamic of all forces, the most unimaginable ‘changing force’ that drives progress.
This force is so dynamic that it is constantly changing itself too. Its dynamic nature can be realised by two attributes:
The ever changing state of mind.
The ever changing minds comprising the total mind-force.
New minds are born everyday and every one of these minds is changing every second.