Immortality

I don’t know if we have a soul. I know we have a mind, that persist, even unperfectly, trough our jumps from body to body.
But, after a while, death after death, what remains? Our mind, and, mostly, what it wants, what it feeled, what feeded it? Or does it changes?
Oh capsuleers. What fate is ours, immortal souls? Maybe souls are what we are in truth? Ghosts in our own fake bodies. Mind you, ghosts are powerfull. They are the rememberance of a will that once was. And that is still, here, inside us.
What do you think you are?

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Human.

That’s not a conclusion lightly reached, and a certain prior version of myself would never have said such a thing. But I think it’s true.

I think, I feel, I can even be loved and love in return. My flesh is human right down to the genetics, even if it grew in a vat and it’s got a lot of cybernetics and the bones these days are almost all osteoplastic. It doesn’t change much of how I experience it, day to day. Even if I wake up in a totally new body, it’s not such a sharp disconnect. I just wake up-- again-- and what went before is only a memory … but that’s not so different from how it is without switching bodies at all.

And also … it’s not safe, not for us or for others, to think of ourselves as something “else”-- to exempt ourselves from kinship with other human beings, even those who share our origins, and at the same time to invite them to think of us as “other.”

Exempting ourselves from humanity gives license to act in ways humans would be expected never to accept as proper. A monster, even a once-human one such as a ghost, is free to act in ways humans must not. What is proper for a wild slaver hound is proper for no human being.

The second invites our own murder. What do humans first do to other humans they would like to kill? Find ways to see them, and inspire others to see them, as other than human.

I don’t speak as someone who hasn’t changed at all. These toys of ours haven’t treated me completely kindly. I don’t even remember, anymore, for sure, what having my original body felt like.

But it changes nothing. We are human. We must be, for others’ sake and our own.

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I think to speak about this we need first to decide what exactly is a soul?
For sure it’s something we can’t really measure, but it’s what makes us… well… us. Even if we all would be the ideantical clones, each clone will have own life, so what will be different in them? Same brains, same minds, heck, even same memories. The different will be the soul.

So, lets define a soul as a running instance of consciouseness.

Our consciouseness can be copied. We can create a myriad of identical copies of it, transfer it from one clone to another, although CONCORD prevents us from having more than one active clone at the same time - it’s still a possibility, and Sansha Kuvakei who is openly defiant to CONCORD actively uses that which can be easily seen if you have fought against his minions.

Our consciouseness is like a program for NeoCom. You can make as many copies of a program as you want. You can launch it multiple time and they all will be running, because it’s just data that can be stored, read, and, apparently written.

But data by itself doesn’t make the life, it’s the change of the data that makes programs running, it’s what makes us alive, it’s what makes us think and realize that “I am I, and that clone however identical to me is, is not me, because I am in this clone now, it’s what I feel”.

It’s the essence of our souls - that thread of changes of our “data”, it’s evolution of our consciouseness. It pauses when we sleep, it disappears when we die…

But think about it, what happens with an instance of consciouseness when our consciouseness is transferred. It’s like copying of a program and running it again. Will it be the same program? Yes, it will be. But will it be the same running instance? No, previous one will disappear and new one appear. When you die and your new clone emerges, you won’t feel it already, because you will be gone, if there’s afterlife, you’ll be sitting drinking tea with your ancestors while watching how your another copy roams the stars.

CONCORD made so the evolution of our consciouseness is continuous. But the running instances in each clone is different. Just think about it, imagine next time you will be copied, you will get instead of one clone whole three, and each one will get a number ‘1’, ‘2’ and ‘3’ etched on their chest. Your consciouseness will be transferred at the same time in all three, even if it will be illegal - but it’s possible, the data is data. So, tell me, when you wake up, which number will you see on your chest: 1, 2 or 3? Apparently you can’t see all numbers at the same time, every clone will see just one number, which is theirs. But what you will see? For me, it’s apparent that my soul will be already gone and there will be three new souls which see their own corresponding numbers, each of them bearing my consciouseness, but… not my soul.

So, who we are?
We are mayflies, who believe in their invincibility, we jump into combat and die next day after being born thinking we are immortals. We die, and our clones with their new souls will think they are still us, and they again think they are immortal so they can just as easily jump into combat again… to die.

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Strange things. One says we are still humans, or, she still feels human, while another one aknowledge fully that we are only ghosts, even just one ghost among many possibly others, of one mind that once was.
I feel none is wrong.

A soul is maybe what made us still feel human. Maybe a soul can be shared, after all. Maybe it should be shared.

And, I am a mayfly, but I never believed in my invicibility. I know, like you, I will die, and born again, and again. And again… And while I forget who I was, I remember too. But I just remember. I’m not this one anymore. I’m another, I’m a monster, with memories from another.

And the abyss is looking to me, and I just grin like a fool.

How does it feel to be a pure empty thing filled by force with strange memories, while you where singing with the angels?
I wonder.

That’s the thing, we won’t forget whom we were. We inherit memories of our ancestors, ancestors, ancestors… We remember everything. This is our gift. And this is our curse.

Whom we were.
Memories, like you seem to believe.
Or… Something more primal, before this memories imprint?
What are we? I know your memories, like mines, make you believe things. I believe I am a lost ghost full a memories lapses, but…

Maybe soul and, mind, memories, and humanity are not what defines immortality after all.
Maybe it’s just : to be?
But I’m a bit doing a solo reasoning here.

Seek out my Heart
Seek out my Soul
Find my Truth
For You Know
Who I Am
And where I am headed
My Goal
Is Your Goal
Ultimately

Guide me Home
To where I Know
My own Throne
And my Will
Is my Own

Release my Heart
Release my Soul
I see the Truth
On my own
I am not
Your possession
And my Goal
Is my Own
Ultimately

Guide me Home
To where I Know
My own Throne
And my Will
Is my Own

Free Will, What is it really?
Is it Yours, or is it mine?
My Will, What has it come to?
My conclusion, or is it Yours?
Your Will, is there a difference
From mine…?

Guide me Home
To where I Know
My own Throne
And my Will
Is my Own

because that too is what is confusion, and much more

I’m not sure I love or hate you, fellow monsters.

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Newsflash, pilot:

You’re not immortal.

You can come back from death sometimes, but that does not mean you will, forever.

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The Jovian technology is as advanced as incomprehensible and still has many questions. Who can say the one you are now is the one you were before? The transference of a consciousness to another body via machines, any technology is that, is treated as a file transference in a normal computer, a “1” become “0” and a “0” become “1” but who can say that “1” was the same “1” of before? It can act perfectly as the previous one but it’s not the same one. To solve this dilemma, many responded with terms like “Quantum physics” but Jovians are so advanced that would have considered this one maybe also obsolete and in any case it’s not confirmed. So, the question is still unsolved; this being is “one, nobody and one-hundred-thousand”: Alive, dead, or anyone else, I’m buried at Planet Bourynes VI and this being can be someone else and/or himself at the same time.

Your period of uncertainty seems not to have lasted long. For yourself, your mind seems made up. Were you ever truly unsure?

You’re not the first to find this place. And I’ll freely concede that my conclusions at a glance look boring. Just “being human” isn’t all that romantic, maybe, next to being a ghost or a kumiho. My predecessor analogized herself to these, but what she did with the license that gave her means I can never set foot on my homeworld again.

Even if I can’t remember ever having been the person who did those things.

“If I were human, I should slit my own throat.” Her own words, many times. But she didn’t want to die, so she denied her own humanity.

Looking back, it’s hard not to judge her harshly. She was traumatized and angry in ways I’m not, and unable to cope with her fear, also in ways I’m not. And in the end, not being “human” didn’t save her, either.

Of all the interpretations this is one I have special trouble with: the idea that we’re soulless. Some of the Amarr probably believe this, but to me it’s an obvious, cruel absurdity.

See, I don’t have those old memories anymore. Not at all. All the ones I have, I made more recently. I’m kind of an old egger; by registry data my career spans some sixteen years, but my current sense of “self” covers much less. I guess by that measure I’ll be turning seven in a few days.

So if my soul is long-departed, what kind of pathetic, hollow creature does that make me? … But I don’t feel hollow at all. This framing of it feels like an insult. At the start, when I had little sense of self, it burned. When I was asking who I was, it was the taunting voice that giggled back, “You’re nothing.”

Now, years on, brimming with all that I’ve seen and done and been? It’s still insulting, but it lacks sting. Its claim to truth feels like what’s hollow. I’m not at all the creature it seems to expect.

It feels like a joke that fell flat. Even if it still upsets me a little, I guess.

I’m not that sure. I just try to be, because otherwise I feel this would lead me towards a path a madness.
I was mostly curious about the ways others capsuleers cope with our nature, and your views are very interesting.

In the end, Elsebeth Rhiannon is very right : despite our transcendance, we are still very mortal. I tend to forget that too often, and slip to the romantic view of the things. And, you know, I believe that “just feeling human” isn’t boring at all. It’s very romantic too.

The notion that we’re immortal is pretty much a marketing gimmick, yeah. The conditions that allow for frequent cloning aren’t … very common outside our career, and the average pilot career is I think about a year.

Ah, what a troubling thing to say!

To me it just feels true. Or, well, more specifically, it feels like something that must be treated as true.

Human beings throughout history have used tools to expand their capabilities. Human hands and teeth aren’t powerful weapons, but a human with a rock can attack at great distance; with a sling, greater still. Bows and blades add lethality, and then pretty soon we’re up to railguns.

So is a human with a bow other than human? How about a human with a peg leg (an early prosthetic, a first step towards today’s cyberknights)? The answer might be less obvious than it seems: in the end, “human” is just a word people use for that which is of like-kind to themselves. It has the meaning we give it, and we can broaden or narrow it as we wish.

So far, we’ve chosen at each stage to answer “yes” when asked whether a modified person is still human. If cloning isn’t different in kind somehow (and that’s an argument that’s been raging for quite a bit), then it’s just another tool for avoiding death, in this case by hopping into a prosthetic body.

Is this really the place to draw that line and alienate ourselves from literally everyone else?

That doesn’t seem wise, and it doesn’t seem safe. Already there are those-- including some capsuleers-- who’d like to see us exterminated. Maybe we’d deserve it; our work tends to be soaked in blood. But calling an act “inhuman” is more a wish than a fact:

“I wish humans didn’t do these things.”

But, they do. And they do them to things that are not of or like themselves ever so much more easily.

Again, “human” is a word. It means what people accept it as meaning.

Deadly as we are, if we declare ourselves inhuman, voluntarily step outside of the circle of humanity, then we are essentially asking the rest of the circle to kill us.

If that happens, I can accept it. But I don’t really want it to, you know?

I don’t feel any different for being a capsuleer. For all the wealth, power, and privilege it affords, I find that what I most desire are simple pleasures and comforts that I think most people want to enjoy. Friends, family, companionship and memorable experiences. Capsuleer status is no guarantor of these things, and I’m quite pleased that I have to work just as hard to obtain or maintain them like everyone else.

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Dear Nazka, this question has been debated for a long time by the theologians of the Empire. It is only recently that they came to the conclusion that capsuleers do have a soul indeed.

Allow me to quote from the address of Cardinal Sourem Itharen on the occasion of the celebration of the coronation of Her Imperial Majesty:

"As the faithful will know, this Exhortation by the Theology Council contained the judgment that cloned humans should be accepted as embodying souls in communion with the Imperial Rite.
On the most wise advice of the Privy Council, Her Imperial Majesty Catiz I has accepted the judgment of the Theology Council and declared that it is included in the Final Law and Scripture of the Amarr Empire."

Maybe you do not adhere to our faith, and maybe you reject the expertise of the Theology Council. But in that case I think the best advice is, even if you do not know whether you have a soul, live like you have one.

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We are aberrations and, if we have a soul, we must fracture it many hundreds - if not thousands - of times by moving on to the next infomorph, trapping us in a temporal bubble of sorts where we never truly age but the universe does around us.

I tend to leave such philosophical debates to Amarrian theologians, but I had a few moments between switching ship in station.

Personally I adhere to the one body, one mind belief of my people, as long as I dont illegally make multiple clones of myself, my mind and spirit remain intact until I join the Ancestors.

After every clone jump I check the medical reports, searching for any sign of neurological degradation during transfer, after I’ve collected myself with a cup of synthetic coffee, I play back the memories before clone death searching for any missing pieces. It’s the experience and accumulated memories that shape who we are, as long as they remain intact my spirit is unbroken.

The effect of functional Immortality on our soul is all around us, I’ve seen capsuleers who care only about death and destruction, masochists of the highest order, others are as cold as the deep black, putting financial outcomes and industrial output above all else. None of them cares about your average baseliner, while some were probably this way before they became pod pilots, there’s a disproportinal number of them.

At the end of the cycle I’d say our line of work makes it easy to lose your soul, you have to fight to keep it alive.

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Meh,

My soul jumps with me from each infomorph to each infomorph.

Sounds like yours is broken.

Probably should get that looked at.

Sounds about right, lovely. Doubt anyone would want to save it by now, though.