光明王 Lord of Light
Hello everyone, I'm Frank Xu, an ordinary person. This is my email newsletter, called "Bright King". Its name comes from a science fiction (fantasy) novel I read in junior high school - Roger Zelazny's "Lord of Light". At that time, I saved my lunch money to buy the "Science Fiction World Translation Edition" and was amazed by every serialized chapter. Roger Zelazny was an imaginative writer who blended mythology, legend, and religious history into a technological background, creating a setting of "a religious pseudo-utopia created by technological monopoly". The language was initially difficult to translate and slow to read, but the magnificent scenes came rushing forward in this wonderful slowness. Upon re-reading the book, I realized that it was not a problem with the translation (in fact, the Chinese translation was excellent), but rather a deliberate choice by the author. The poetic language reflects the author's punk attitude, discussing the social significance of linguistics, eternal social management issues, and the relationship between consciousness and self-definition.
In fact, this story discusses several fundamental issues: the meaning of eternal life, the social significance of deciding whether others will live forever, and the relationship between self and consciousness. What do people do after they achieve eternal life? They seek a comfortable life and indulge in pleasures. Laziness is a tendency that everyone has. So what's next? Endless emptiness? Or will kindness and goodness gradually disappear? Countless villains in games and movies have discussed this issue, telling how they ended up on the path of evil (although most of them ended up dying). The author's answer (and also the protagonist's answer) is "beauty". "The wise say that good and evil are both things in the cycle of reincarnation, and therefore meaningless. They are undoubtedly right. These wise men have been teaching our people since the dawn of human memory, and their words are undoubtedly correct. But let us think about something else, something the wise men have not mentioned. That is 'beauty'." The protagonist also says that beauty has nothing to do with good or evil. If someone insists on weaving ugly dreams, people should fight against them. If there is no beauty in the eternal cycle, then people should give up eternal life. Only by feeling the "ugliness" can one have the courage to speak the truth and stand up.
The opposite of eternal life is knowing when you will die. Recently, there was a popular Japanese animation on Twitter called "The Crocodile Will Die in 100 Days" (introduction on Weibo). The author set the deadline for the protagonist crocodile's death in the first episode: 100 days. But the crocodile himself is unaware of it. The comic updates one episode every day, describing the crocodile's ordinary daily life. As readers, we feel the countdown to life during these 100 days. During these 100 days, it makes friends, helps others, works, and nothing seems out of the ordinary. But all readers have complex emotions during these 100 days, as the crocodile's joys, sorrows, and struggles are mixed with the cruel countdown, telling us that, okay, the reason is simple: since we don't know when we will die, we should cherish every day. The last panel of the comic is cherry blossoms all over the sky, with no other living beings. It is a strange feeling, where you feel the endless pain and beauty of death almost simultaneously. It reminds me of a sentence from "Lord of Light": "Death and light are everywhere, always, and they begin, end, strive, attend, upon all life made visible. They are indivisible, for they are of substance and of form, and one composes the other." And this substance and form is our world.
What is the social significance of eternal life? Once eternal life is invented, it will certainly be a scarce core resource. Who decides how to allocate this resource? Under infinite life, human nature is limited. If our progress cannot keep up with technological progress, what should we do? In this situation, should our solution be "Brave New World", "1984", or "Prometheus"?
Why do humans become human? Is it because of consciousness? If so, then it is the setting of "Ghost in the Shell" and "The Matrix". If not, it may be common experiences and emotions. Neuroscience and interdisciplinary research have shed some light on this issue: consciousness can be divided into three dimensions: unconscious processing (perception and meaning extraction), overall availability (integration of unconscious processing, selective attention, and global conscious processing), and self-monitoring (meta-cognition, reasoning, and error detection), corresponding to the concepts of access consciousness, phenomenal consciousness, and narrative consciousness in philosophy of mind. The human brain currently seems to have an inescapable physiological basis and an extremely sophisticated mode of operation. Will we one day reach the point of discussing uploading consciousness? I don't know, but I am also looking forward to it.
These are all very interesting and thought-provoking topics. The idea of eternal life raises many ethical and social questions, such as who should have access to it, how it should be distributed, and what impact it would have on society as a whole. The concept of beauty as a guiding principle for life is also intriguing and raises questions about what constitutes beauty and how it can be cultivated in society.
The idea of knowing when one will die and cherishing every day is also a powerful reminder of the value of life and the importance of living in the moment. It is a theme that has been explored in many works of literature and art, and is a reminder that life is precious and should be appreciated.
The question of what makes us human is also a fascinating one, and the concept of consciousness is at the heart of it. The idea of uploading consciousness is a popular science fiction theme, but raises many questions about the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the physical body.
Overall, these are all important and complex issues that require careful consideration and discussion. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on these topics and for sparking this conversation.
Feel free to express your thoughts in a message, whether it's telling me the topics you want to read or just saying hello.
Thank you for reading, and please feel free to share this newsletter with anyone who might enjoy it.
Have a great day!