Are there any C.S. Lewis enthusiasts in the house?
How about people who, well, detest the famous Oxford don and Christian apologist?
It is my hope that this think piece (pounded out during a two-week road trip) will appeal to both.
Right now, I am about to finish reading — for the 10th time, or something like that — the Lewis “Science fiction trilogy.” It ends with “That Hideous Strength,” a head-spinning mix of science fiction, Arthurian legend and a blistering satire of stuffy, insular, corrupt, boring elites in British higher education (in other words, the world in which Lewis lived until his death in 1963). It’s the narrative fiction take on his prophetic “The Abolition of Man.”
I do not want to give away the plot, of course. But the big idea is that elite there’s that word again) scientific materialists, in a quest for their own brand of immortality and desire to modify the human person, turn to the occult and, well, the Powers of Darkness. You may never hear the term “head,” when used to describe the leader of a school or movement, again without thinking of this book.
So what would Lewis think of this haunting feature from Suzy Weiss at The Free Press? Here’s the double-decker headline:
The Tech Messiahs Who Want to Deliver Us from Death
They see death as a software error — and they have a plan for fixing it. But should they?
The overture:
Kai Micah Mills is going to freeze his parents.
“They’re both going to be cryopreserved, regardless of their wishes,” Mills told me.
Don’t worry, he’s told them. “Even my dad has been pretty open to it. Most Mormons are really just transhumanists.”
Transhumanists believe that cutting-edge technologies can help us augment our minds and our bodies to transcend the human condition. Mills identifies as one, though he adds, “I think a new term is needed.”
The 24-year-old’s dirty blond hair, which reaches his mid-back, flowed down and out of the video chat window when we talked a few weeks ago. (He has a scruffy blond beard, too.) He was talking to me from Salt Lake City, Utah, sitting in his bright white house with exposed steel beams and a flat-screen TV set to a video of a bonfire—an eternal, if synthetic, flame. He’s talking low and slow. He’s not in much of a rush. Along with his parents and two sisters, he’s planning on living forever.
Last year, Mills launched the company Cryopets, which aims to use cryogenic technology to preserve freshly deceased animals, and eventually humans, forever—or until someone comes up with a cure for whatever killed them, in which case they’ll be thawed, healed, and set loose for a Second Coming.
Spot any newsworthy religion ghosts in that mix?
Yes, there is more — a lot more. Dig into this chunk of material:
Mills, who grew up Mormon but has since left the faith, was 16 when he sold his first company, MyMCServers, a platform that hosts video game servers for Minecraft and Team Fortress 2. He’s also part of the latest batch of Thiel Fellows, who are awarded $100,000 over two years to pursue their start-ups through Thiel’s foundation, provided the grantees drop out of college or skip it altogether—which isn’t a problem for Mills, who left high school at 14.
“I was definitely a cocky teenager,” he explains, “and I just didn’t want anyone else’s opinions.” He only read his first book at the age of 21, The Future of Humanity by Michio Kaku.
I wondered what Mills’ idea of an infinite future might look like. Like The Matrix? Groundhog Day? Later, I texted him: What will you do if you live forever? What’s on the top of your list?
He texted me back: Living forever = eternal progression, we should become gods and create for eternity.
Yes, Weiss finds some interesting people to respond to this. But why go with the pro-natalists and that is pretty much that? I wonder if anyone in the editing process knew that smart people — of radically different faiths — have been arguing about this for decades?
Meanwhile, read it all.