I was poking around an old (non-tumblr) blog of mine, long abandonded, login forgotten. I guess my computer remembered the login for me because in my haphazard clicking I ended up falling into the backend, a list of posts before me. Including drafts. Posts never posted, that I barely if at all remember writing. Snapshots of a younger me, seperated from now by just over a decade. So focused, so idealistic.
I thought I'd finally let some of those words see the light of day. I've changed somewhat, I've definitely lost the surety of gender, but I like to believe that I have retained some of that idealism, and that the sentiment of last sentence remains true.
"There's this boy" 24th Feb 2013
Labels: Futurism, Sleep deprivation
There's this boy, and all he wants in life is to live in the future. Not so much to get older quicker, more to experience the far future. So he devours sci-fi and spec-fic media. Books like Neuromancer, and The Diamond Age, where humans blend seamlessly with the technology around them. Games like Mass Effect that demonstrate a relatively newly space-faring humanity, veritable virgins in the galactic landscape. Settings like Revelation Space, where humanity, wiser but still possessing it's myriad flaws, is verging on transhumanism, moving beyond regular evolution, to Eclipse Phase, where transhumanity is all there is. Consciousness can be uploaded and downloaded, tinkered with and altered as easily as one might get a tattoo.
Science is another passion. Physics in particular. He doesn't remember which came first, his love for the future, or his love for science, but it doesn't seem to matter. Each lead directly to the other, and he studies hard, or at least as hard as a boy will when surrounded by his beloved tech, so he can be part of as much of the future as his human life will allow. And he hopes beyond hope, that that limit keeps moving further and further away as science and technology continue to make breakthroughs in longevity.
I think about this boy and I think, all he really wants is what any, or at least many of us want deep down. He is working under the same mental drive that forces people to believe in a supernatural afterlife, or reincarnation. He wants immortality. He fears death, yes, though he will not readily admit it to himself, but it is not this that drives him. You see he loves science and he loves the future because he loves humanity, as one loves and worries about a dear friend. He wants to see humanity's potential realised, to witness them reach out into space and explore and learn. To beat disease, and eventually death. To inevitably become greater than humanity itself, and be born into something wholly new.
He fears death, but more often he fears that this will remain in the realm of sci fi and spec fic. He wants to live long and learn, and for humanity to learn with him, for he knows that we live in a finite universe, and learning is all there is. There is no greater goal, no greater reason to live than to learn and experience and love, and there is so much of it to do, so much that his heart screams out in joy and terror at the shear magnitude of it all, and he cannot do it alone. So he studies his physics and follows his technology, and he hopes. He loves humanity and he hopes.
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