by Andrew Stark
But if immortal life would be boring, then wouldn’t it also offer the mechanisms that we mortals have always had available to snap out of boredom, or even turn it to good use? In our mortal existence as it is, the Sanskrit scholar Wendy Doniger notes, boredom introduces times of “temporary death” into life, allowing a person to withdraw—to take an extended time-out if necessary—and then return to the world refreshed.9 Periods of boredom and world-weariness came to be viewed as wholly bad things only in the twentieth century, Patricia Meyer Spacks argues in her 1995 book Boredom; in much of Western thought boredom was welcomed as a kind of “suspended attention” that allows for “semi-conscious brooding” and “makes a space for creativity.”10 Why, then, should immortal boredom not redeem itself in the same way: by instilling, even into immortal life, periods of rejuvenating “temporary” death? We could then enjoy the advantages of both immortality—living forever—and mortality—dying periodically to restock our creative juices—without the evils of each.
But how, exactly, does boredom lead to creativity? How does it snap out of itself? What are the mechanisms? A preferred kind of imagery has emerged to illustrate the answer to this question: boredom is like a prison cell. A “solitary prisoner for life,” Kierkegaard says, “is extremely resourceful; to him a spider can be a source of great amusement.” You’d think with just a spider to occupy him all day long the inmate would be bored forever, but he will eventually learn to provoke the insect, prod it, play with it, turn it over and over in the changing light, follow its every unpredictable move for hours on end every day, thus sooner or later replacing boredom with creativity and intrigue.11 Camus’ prisoner Merseault, too, “end[s] up not being bored at all.” In jail awaiting execution, Merseault observes
I keep thinking about my room and, in my imagination, I’d set off from one corner and walk around making a mental note of everything I saw on the way . . . I’d remember every piece of furniture . . . every object and, on every object, every detail, every mark, crack or chip and then even the colour or the grain of the wood. . . . I realized that a man . . . could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He’d have enough memories not to get bored.12
For these inmates, Kierkegaard’s and Camus’, their cells—which seemingly cut them off from all that’s entertaining in the world, thereby threatening interminable boredom—in fact still necessarily contain some “objects,” as Merseault says. And objects, however humble—spiders, cracks in the wall, grains in the wood—can, at one point, begin drawing the mind down unplumbably deep wells of fascination.
I am not saying that I necessarily buy any of this. I am saying only that the prisoner in his cell seems to be the default metaphor for those who want to suggest that boredom—emptiness, idleness, a vacuity of experience—can provide space for the mind to wander, noodle around, take its time, and become expansive, creative, and imaginative, so that ultimately boredom expunges itself. Arthur Koestler, too, sees the confined space of the prison cell as the crucible for boredom’s chrysalis into stimulation. In Dialogue with Death Koestler writes: “Memorable events are understood, in the murky bell-jar of the prison, [to be] things like . . . a spider in the window, a bug in the bed. These are breath-taking experiences; they employ and stimulate the free-running mechanism of thought for hours at a time. They are substitutes for visits to the movies, making love, reading the newspapers . . .”13 The question, though, is whether these images of confined spatial boredom apply in any way to the boundless temporal boredom that immortality threatens.
They don’t. Kierkegaard, Camus, and Koestler mean to suggest that even if our life’s confined circumstances reduce us to just one single solitary object, a spider or a table, that object can nevertheless always provoke any number of new mental events—an endless flow of “free-running” thoughts. And so mortal boredom can always be transcended. The problem with immortal boredom, though, would be just the opposite: the world would remain full of any number of objects, from Eiffel Towers to espressos. But all of them would eventually occasion the same single solitary event in our mind: a humming sound so all pervasive that, as David Foster Wallace says in describing the most excruciating boredom he can imagine, it’s no different than silence itself. A single sound, a sound that’s at the same time a nonsound; a single event that’s at the same time a nonevent. As the 342-year-old Elina Makropoulos puts it in Karel Čapek’s play The Makropoulos Secret, “Singing is the same as keeping silent. Everything is the same. There’s no difference in anything.”14 And it’s hard to see how, if and when we ever get into such a state, we would then get out of it.
Think of it this way: new “events,” as Koestler says, can always happen to the same persisting object, say a spider. We can run it through our fingers, set it in a quest up the wall, imagine it’s an alien creature invading our cot. And so we remain engaged. But new events cannot happen to the same continuing event, say a hum.15 If they do, it’s a different event. And so what if we have, as immortals, reached a point where we see all events as the same, as “intolerably identical?”16 Could we ever break out of it?
I am in no position to say whether boredom would be our lot if we lived forever, and in the following chapters I consider some alternatives. The question here is whether, assuming boredom is our immortal fate—assuming that immortality comes to feel like a single event unfolding in limitless time—the mortal-boredom metaphor of a single object placed in limited space would capture it, giving us reason for hope. It wouldn’t.
In his memoir Miracles of Life, J. G. Ballard writes of the teenage years he spent with his family in Lunghua, a World War II Japanese prison camp. Something different, though, happened at this prison: the boredom of bounded space somehow shifted into the boredom of boundless time. At one point, Ballard recalls, the prisoners ceased to find the various objects around them—chess sets, old magazines, discarded toys—even minimally stimulating. Why? Because all these objects had begun to furnish exactly the same undifferentiated experience or event—or more exactly the same nonevent or nonexperience. The camp had become an “eventless world,” Ballard writes, of irreversible, “crushing boredom.17 And so too would the immortal boredom that death consolationists foresee, should it be our fate, come with no redeeming features, no goad to creativity. No way out. Better, then, that we remain mortal than experience that kind of fate.
Any hopeful scenario for immortal boredom, based on the ways in which mortal boredom can be self-correcting, must confront the fact that events do not persist in time the way objects do. Yes, even a single object in a confined space—think of a child in her bedroom with just a cardboard box to play with—may be able to provoke any number of events over time, and so allow for an escape from boredom. But once the same single event in endless time—the same continuing undifferentiated hum—is provoked by any number of objects, interminable boredom sets in. Immortal boredom would be far worse than the mortal kind. Once it took hold, it would be inescapable. And in this way, the “boredom” consolation for mortality does have validity.
ten
STILL LIFE
A human life, the philosopher Timothy Chappell writes, “is a rope of overlapping threads.” At any given time, some threads—some episodes in our life—are coming to an end. Others are in the middle of their duration. And still others are just beginning. As long as this “overlapping” persists, then even if the threads at one end are entirely different from those at the other, it’s the same life all the way through. Just as it would be the same rope.1
Or consider the ancient imagery comparing a human life to “the ship of Theseus.” Suppose that over time, each and every one of a ship’s planks gets replaced. As long as all of them aren’t replaced at once—as long as the replacement is staggered, with some planks remaining on at any given time while adjacent ones change—it’s the same ship at the end as at the beginning. Likewise with a human life. As long as there’s never a moment when each and every one of a person’s beliefs, hopes, thoughts, commitments, and memori
es are all replaced at a stroke—a catastrophic event that we would equate with total amnesia or utter personality breakdown—it will still be the same life, led by the same self, at the end as at the beginning. No matter how much complete turnover in beliefs, hopes, thoughts, commitments, and memories there is in the interim.
Is this true? It’s a critical question when we think about the allure of immortality.
Bernard Williams says that an immortal life would eventually take one of two forms. It would be either interminably boring or else, in the final analysis, no different from a mortal one. Suppose, on the one hand, that as immortals all our memories, desires, habits, values, feelings, projects, attachments, and aspirations stayed with us endlessly over time, never trading themselves in for new ones. We would, as millennia passed, ultimately reach a stage at which we’d have seen everything we cared to see and done all we cared to do. Our life would settle into an excruciating, insufferable, unending combination of ennui and lethargy. Catatonic boredom would be our fate.
On the other hand, Williams says, we could avoid such immortal boredom if—over time—we regularly lost our tired old memories, attachments, thoughts, aspirations, appetites, beliefs, and desires, replacing them with new ones. New things, things that we would find engaging, would continue to happen to us. We’d elude terminal boredom. But nor then would we really be immortal. After all, if we habitually shed all memory of our past experiences, perceptions, and thoughts—and if we ceased to harbor any interest at all in the aspirations, desires, and attachments that we used to have—then our old life would in effect have ended to make way for a new one. And that, of course, is what defines mortality, not immortality. We would no longer, Williams says, recognize ourselves in the new person we would eventually become. And so “he” might as well actually be a new person. Since we will have disappeared anyway, we might as well actually die.
Bone-crushing boredom—or else a kind of perpetual self-alienation, a kind of recurrent dying-to-oneself. That’s the choice that Williams believes immortality offers us. Timothy Chappell nicely sums up the dilemma. If our life remains our own it “goes around in circles.” And “if it doesn’t go round in circles it ceases to be [our own].”2
Yet as the images of threads in a rope or planks in a boat suggest, mortal lives, even within themselves, already involve the continual replacement of the old with the new. Over time, we relinquish the memories of high-school shenanigans, romantic crushes, sporting pursuits, desire for Goth clothing, and ruminations inspired by the metaphysics classes of our youth, and eventually replace them with the attachment to our significant other, pursuit of pinochle, desire for argyle cardigans, and reveries inspired by the Maeve Binchy novels of our later years. Earlier versions of ourselves are always fading away, to be replaced by newer ones. In a normal mortal life, these turnovers in our memories, beliefs, attachments, pursuits, aspirations, and desires transpire in a staggered way, not all at once. Because there is no radical break, never a time when novelty in some areas of life isn’t accompanied by persistence in others, we consider our early self and our later self to be the same one—even if the memories, desires, habits, beliefs, attachments, and aspirations we harbor toward the end of our life bear absolutely no resemblance to those we had when we were just starting out. We wouldn’t ever think that we have died several times while still alive.
Why, then, shouldn’t we view an immortal life—one that escaped boredom by jettisoning old memories, feelings, plans, values, and desires in a staggered way over time and replacing them with wholly new ones—in the same light? Why shouldn’t an immortal self, no matter how wholly different it becomes over time, still be deemed one and the same continuing self as long as its changes don’t all take place at the same abrupt moment? Even as mortals we do “not have a single, consistent life,” Chateaubriand observes; we have “several . . . there is always a time when we possessed nothing of what we now possess, and a time when we [will] have nothing of what we once had.”3 Perhaps not all of us follow this pattern, but the point is that we would still consider a person who did completely change his memories, feelings, plans, desires, attachments, and thoughts over his life to be the same self, as long as the changes were staggered. Why, then, should Williams think that an immortal version of this process would have to entail the recurrent death of the self?
True, we consider a rope that completely changes its fibers over its length to still remain the same rope, as long as the changes are staggered. Likewise with a ship that completely changes its planks over its life. But think about fibers and planks. There’s a vegetational, a still life, imagery going on here. Does it really capture a human self, a human life?
To address this question I’m going to explore a version of an idea that Derek Parfit floats. It’s reasonable to think that I remain the same self today as I was yesterday—or the same “person,” for Parfit—if at least half of the memories, desires, intentions, experiences, perceptions, plans, feelings, and beliefs that crossed my conscious mind yesterday also do so today.4 As long as half continue on from one day to the next, half can change. Today, for example, I completed the memo I was working on yesterday, continued an e-mail exchange with my daughter that began yesterday, and recalled a conversation about garbage collection I had with my neighbor yesterday—but I also read a Times article by Paul Krugman, heard a joke about former Toronto mayor Rob Ford on The Daily Show, and had a Greek salad for lunch: none of which occurred yesterday.
As long as I keep on mutating in this staggered way day by day, then I can remain the same self I was twenty years ago, even if all my daily memories, desires, beliefs, perceptions, and intentions then were utterly different. And if this works for me as a mortal self, why wouldn’t it if I were immortal? Why couldn’t I also remain the same self as I was 100,000 years previously, even if all my memories, desires, feelings, perceptions, and commitments then were wholly different—as long as, from any one day to the next in the interim, at least half of them continued to remain the same?
But why from one day to the next? Why not say that as long as half of our memories, commitments, feelings, aspirations, and desires continue from one five-second period to the next, then even if half change we will still remain the same person?
Presumably because, once we get to small enough units of time, there really is only one memory, desire, perception, feeling, or thought present during any given (say, five-second) period. In any given five-second span I can focus only on the memo I am working on, or on the e-mail to my daughter, or on The Daily Show joke, or on Krugman’s Times article, or on the Greek salad, or on the remembered neighborly conversation about garbage pickup. The next five seconds will contain either the same or a completely different mental event. When units of time are very brief, there simply aren’t enough distinct memories, desires, feelings, perceptions, or thoughts in each to speak of “half” continuing on to the next.
Let’s go then from very short to very long periods of time. Why not say that as long as half of our memories, desires, perceptions, feelings, aspirations, and thoughts continue from one year to the next, half can change and we will still remain the same self? I assume it’s for this reason: of all the distinct memories, desires, intentions, perceptions, sensations, and thoughts that enter our mind in any given year, far less than half will ever enter our mind in the next year. Next year—given the pace of life—I won’t be recalling the same exchanges with the neighbor, continuing the same e-mail discussion with my daughter, or (God willing) working on the same memos I was this year, let alone reading the same Times articles or hearing the same topical Daily Show jokes—although I almost certainly will have many of this year’s lunches.
So if seconds are too short, and years are too long, then a day suggests itself as the right unit—a unit over which at least half of my memories, desires, intentions, perceptions, and thoughts can reasonably be expected to continue from one to the next, and, if they do, it would be reasonable to consider me the same continuing self.
And yet there’s a problem with this day-to-day approach.
Suppose, for the sake of simplicity, that only six feelings, experiences, memories, thoughts, and the like cross a person’s mind on any given day. And suppose that on Monday, mine were the following: I had fond thoughts of my wife. I walked the dog. I experienced the feeling of anxiety about nothing in particular that I do more days than not. I felt satisfaction, given my concerns about climate change, that the world’s governments seemed to be inching toward some kind of concord. I worked on my book about mortality. I enjoyed the many levels of irony in a story a colleague told me.
On Tuesday, I continued to have loving thoughts about my wife. I again walked the dog. And I persisted in experiencing the usual vague anxiousness that I did on Monday. But for whatever reason, I permanently abandoned the concerns about climate change I held on Monday and for decades previously, replacing them with an avid yearning to see Ted Cruz elected president. I irrevocably gave up working on mortality, superseding that activity with a new career writing children’s stories. And I forever lost my sense of irony, supplanting it with a dead earnestness.
