Eternal Life

April 4 2020

Hydra are tiny aquatic creatures

that appear to have conquered death.

But the scientists

who suspected they live forever

and followed them for years

found it tiresome

and eventually moved on.

When even a lifetime

wouldn't be long enough to be sure.

They live in freshwater ponds,

microscopic creatures

suspended in a column of constant fluid

oblivious to gravity.

And because they're immortal

are indifferent to time.

So they exist

in a dimensionless void,

no here and there

no now and then.

With no inner life

no sense of self.

No reflection

transcendence

redemption or grace.

Only the elemental drive

to eat

reproduce

eliminate waste.

Is this the promise

of eternal life?

Existing to simply exist

outside of time

outside of place?

And will we get what we wish for,

a superhuman race

of ageless venture capitalists,

condemned to live forever

by themselves?

Of course, nothing is immune to death.

Accidents happen

ponds evaporate

and even hydra become prey.

Otherwise, only they would remain,

cannibalizing each other

on a dying planet

over-run by their kind,

a mile deep

in hungry hydra and jellyfish

once they'd finished-off all the rest.

I couldn't resist throwing in the jellyfish. I would also have shoehorned in the durable cockroach, except it didn't quite fit. Because jellyfish, aside from probably being the last marine creature that will survive our assault on the oceans – pollution, overfishing, climate change, acidification – are also the closest analogy to the hydra among all the large visible creatures: another amorphous blob of mindless protoplasm.

Below is a link to the podcast that inspired this poem.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/821647042/the-reluctant-immortalist

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Why are scientists dubious about an animal living forever? (I'd suggest you skip down to the 2^nd last paragraph if you don't find evolutionary biology of interest.)

The molecular biologists are dubious because is it reasonable imagining DNA repairing itself indefinitely? Errors happen, eventually and inevitably. Ultraviolet breaks the chain; the wrong base pair gets inserted.

And evolutionary biologists understand how evolution would strongly select against immortality.

A progenitor has to die to make room for its offspring. Otherwise, it will out-compete its less experienced young, who would never mature. And if not that, then over-population – the growth of which is exponential, if older members never die – will eventually exhaust a species' food and habitat – the resources on which it depends – and the species will collapse. This dynamic balance between resource depletion and population (taking account, as well, of culling by predation) eventually settles into a sustainable equilibrium: the lifespan of that species. The most generous thing a parent can do for the survival of its young – and all that evolution “knows” is reproduction and survival – is to die. (At the appropriate time, of course. Once the young are raised and on their own.) So genes that orchestrate senescence are selected for: those individuals and those species who have them are favoured; while organisms without them disappear, eating themselves out of house and home.

This idea of a sustainable equilibrium is seen any time an ecological system is studied. Why do we die? And why do we die when we do? You could also ask why squirrels misplace 80% of the acorns they bury. Both seem wasteful. Harmful, even. In both cases, the driver is resource scarcity: so if there were no limits to food and land, death may well have never evolved; and if squirrels didn't depend on a limited supply of acorns, we'd be surrounded by squirrels who eat them all. The dynamic equilibrium here is between the squirrels getting enough to eat and the oaks flourishing. Because those squirrels with the great memories failed to replenish the trees upon which they depended: so the forest eventually died, and those very efficient squirrels were weeded out. Extirpated, if not extinct. Meanwhile, the 20 percenters survived, despite how much energy they wasted burying lost acorns. Because, of course, they weren't wasting them, they were planting new trees. (Acorns that fall from the mother tree will germinate but then die in her shade unless they can be moved and buried in more open soil.) In this case, the dynamic balance – the feedback mechanism between environment and animal – settled in at the 20% mark: only 20% of acorns are retrieved. Any higher, the forest thins or dies. Any lower, the squirrels starve. So those lamentably forgetful 20 percenters are the squirrels still with us today. Life span is the same: a sustainable equilibrium between a species and the resources it needs.

And also, I think, life span may have evolved as a sustainable equilibrium between subsequent generations. Theoretically, an animal could evolve to keep reproducing forever: immortality, instead of the quick order of infertility and old age ending in death. (At least in a world of ample resources it could.) So why has evolution selected for species that weed out their older members in this way? One can only infer it's because sexually reproducing species in which older members become infertile and soon after die are more successful. I think the way to understand this is by appreciating the critical importance of diversity; which is the key to resilience, and which is, in turn, the key to survival. And from where does this diversity come? From the recombination of genes. And it's the next generation that offers more opportunity for novel recombinations. While the older ones, their parents, have already been there and done that. Not to mention that longer life means more error-prone germ cell DNA, and therefore longer lived individuals will reproduce less successfully. So first, by opening up space for the young, death supercharges the dynamism and resilience that diversity confers, increasing the odds of survival. And second, the healthier germ cells of younger animals mean more and healthier offspring who will have more resources for themselves. Sexually reproducing species that evolved to die off and renew by opening up space for the next generation did better, out-competing their cousins who either lived too long or died too young. Over time – in a world of limited resources – death became the norm and life spans were selected for.

How long we live past reproductive age varies. Normally, an older non-reproducing adult would be a drag, competing for scarce resources. But among social animals like primates – and especially among ones like us, whose big-brained children are helpless for so many years – the “grandmother effect” has probably selected for a relatively long post-menopausal life. Long-lived grandmothers helped more grandchildren survive, and those grandchildren would have inherited those long-life conferring genes. We see something similar in killer whales (orca): highly social, matriarchal, big-brained predators with a long period of dependency. (Men, I suppose, are simply free-riding on their mother's genetic endowment. Or could there be a “grandfather effect” as well?!!)

It would be nice to avoid the infirmities and challenges of ageing. But would we become bored, living forever? Would life lose its spark and urgency without the immanence (I could also have used imminence here!) of death? Do we need death if life is to have its trajectory and rites of passage and familiar arc? Indeed, if life is to have meaning? ( ...Or is all this just a pious rationalization for the fact I am going to die? Would I renounce everything I just wrote if offered the chance of immortality? I suspect yes!)

There are scientists and wealthy Silicon Valley types who are actively looking for a “cure” for ageing. And indeed, the molecular biology of the hydra have been very much of interest to them. But I see a kind of solipsism, elitism, fear, and greed verging on desperation behind this quest. It represents the apotheosis of the fundamental conceit of modernity, which elevates the individual above all. Yes, these rich young venture capitalist bros might attain personal immortality; but how will that life be when everyone they've known and loved is dead? Perhaps they'd be better off cultivating a more enlightened and philosophical approach to their mortality, accepting it with grace and humility, and using their time well. ( ...Although again, if put to the test, would I be so serene about this if offered immortality? Would I be so gracious and philosophical and resigned to fate, accepting death instead of agelessness? Once again, I suspect not!)

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After sending the first draft to my first readers, I revised the middle part of the blurb, the part about evolutionary biology. Here's what I wrote to accompany the new version.

I'm including it here because you are probably wondering why in the middle section of my commentary I went on so long down such an obscure rabbit hole . The obvious answer is that I'm fascinated by evolutionary biology. It's my go-to for most human behaviour. But I also went there because of the big question implied by this poem: that is, why do we die? Anyway, here's what I wrote:

Not that I needed to include it at all. Just felt like getting some of my thoughts down in writing. 

But more than that, it's really written as an answer to one of the big questions:  why do we die? Which is so often answered theologically or metaphysically. And as an atheist, that drives me crazy. Nonsense about heaven and hell, reward and punishment,  reincarnation, some kind of after life. No, we die as individuals so the collective can survive. So the whole complex interdependent ecological system works. 

At bottom, there really is no "why". It's the wrong question. It presumes meaning. It presumes some guiding intelligence. When all there actually is is the instrumental work of evolution, which has no intelligence or purpose:  just the elemental life force, allied with the twin drivers of survival and reproduction.