Stoking and Severing Origin

Lately, I've been reading a lot of books by Chuck Palahniuk and I now consider myself a fan.  I love Palahniuk's distinct satirical style as well as his explosive imagination that's always "at the edge of crazy" as one reviewer put it.  I now have five Palahniuk books in my possession: Haunted, Snuff, Choke, Pygmy, and Rant.  Every book has its own share of complex characters, memorable lines, and unexpected twists, and I'll probably write about some of them in my future posts.

For this post, I would like to write about one thing that I read about in a Palahniuk book which really left a mark in my mind.  It's about the idea of stoking and severing origin which I read about in Rant.  First, let me explain stoking and severing origin in my own words.

Stoking means you go back in time to repeatedly breed with your ancestor (of the opposite sex) such that you become your own grandfather, father, son, grandson, etc.  The effect is that you become stronger and stronger and you extend your life indefinitely.

Severing origin means you go back in time to kill your ancestor.  Now, you may recall the popular Grandfather's Paradox which supossedly makes the idea of time travel problematic.  The paradox arises in a thought experiement wherein someone travels back in time to kill his or her grandfather and consequently he or she whould not have existed in the first place to be able to kill his or her grandfather.  Now instead of a paradox, the idea of severing origin proposes a different ending to the thought experiment.  If someone goes back in time to kill his or her ancestor, then he or she would have gotten rid of his or her beginning.  Thus, he or she becomes someone with no beginning, and consequently, no end.  In other words, the person becomes immortal.

I love how Chuck Palahniuk was able to integrate something so philosophical and mind-stimulating into a fictional story but what I love even more is how this book got me thinking about the aspiration of immortality.

The premise of immortality seems simple enough - making yourself live forever or live eternally.  But it is actually a lot more complex when we try to consider the scientific and philosophical dilemmas that afflict the feasibility of immortality. 

The first dilemma is scientific.  To make immortality possible, there should be a way to make time infinite, whether it's linear time, relativistic time, warped or discreet time, etc.  But right now the most popular theory on the origin of time is that is was created, together with matter and space, during the big bang.  And since it was "created," time will also decay and eventually collapse into nothing, like it was prior to the big bang.  So how do you make time timeless?  How do you sever time's origin?  How do you make time without beginning and without end?  I think the bigger dilemma is not how to go back in time to kill your ancestor but how to kill time's ancestor.

The second dilemma is more philosophical.  Being immortal means making yourself exist forever.  The dilemma is that "the self" has always been one of the biggest philosophical questions ever.  What defines you?  What defines yourself?  Is it your physical state (your body), your consciousness, your memories, or the collective of these three, or is it something else.  One of the most profound philosophical statements is, "You never cross the same river twice."  Every single fraction of time, you shed skin cells, you undergo biochemical, developmental, and degenerative processes, you gain and lose memories, you slip in and out of different realms of consciousness.  So clearly, the "you" this moment will not be the same "you" in the next.  So what it is that defines your identity as you/yourself.  To make yourself immortal, you have to preserve this thing that makes you you.  But what in the world is this thing?

I also aspire for immortality simply for the reason that I find the popular sentiment of people not wanting to be immortal because they don't want to be lonely too philistine, unintellectual, and simplistic.  Clearly, temporary loneliness is a very small price to pay compared to the unimaginable possibilities that immortality would bring.  Actually, people seeking for religious salvation or people who want to go to heaven are actually aspiring for immortality.

But then again, as fate would have it, seriously considering the feasibility of immortality requires resolving dilemmas that seem beyond the human mind's cognitive capability.

But it's fair enough, when we come to think of it.  We haven't even figured out how to stop killing each other, so how can we expect to figure out how to live forever?