"Rage, rage against the dying of the light!"

Abridged version of my Utopian Literature paper (2008).

My Utopia is not on a small island; it does not follow any specific form of government and its structure is unknown to me. It is not a place, but rather it is a time. My Utopia is quite simply the future. I am not talking about the future of a hundred years from now, but rather the future of billions of years from now. Imagine the most distant future you have ever even attempted to conceive, and then go further, much further. Look past our galactic collision with Andromeda, past the destruction of the sun, past so many things that we figure to be beyond the scope of humanity. It is a time when diverse beings of profound intelligence roam the galaxies, beings descended from us. The beauty of the future as a Utopia is that it is so very possible. To bring forth this divine future, all we must do is survive and contribute constructively to progress of humanity.

The basic principle of the future as a Utopia was outlined in an essay by Martin Seligman, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. The essay was titled The First Coming, and opened with the sentence, “I am optimistic that God may come in the end”. There are two things that are very provocative about this sentence. The first of these is that God does not come in the beginning as the creator, but rather at the end of time. The second and most important point however, is that this sentence was written by an atheist. Seligman is not referencing the Judeo-Christian God, he is instead referencing “an alternative notion of God relevant to the secular community”. The first point he makes is to abandon the idea of God as the original creator of the universe, for this is what makes God so hard to accept for the secular community. He asks us to forget the creation aspect of God and to “let the mystery of creation be consigned to the branch of physics called cosmology”.

Without the aspect of creation, that leaves us with three characteristics of what makes God, omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence. Seligman asks the question, “Does this God exist?”. If God is to be defined as a being that is omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent, it would seem impossible, with the science and technology of today, that this God could develop naturally. Then we must consider the astronomically immense future that awaits us if we have the persistence to meet it. Over this extensive period of time, biological and cultural evolution is always progressing towards greater complexity. Billions of years ago our ancestors were bacteria. So we can assume that billions of years from now, our ancestors will be as different from us as we are from bacteria. As our technology, knowledge, and positive institutions expand, we become more and more powerful. Seligman looks at this immense future and then references the list of the characteristics of God. “A process that selects for more complexity is ultimately aimed at nothing less than omniscience, omnipotence and goodness. Omniscience is arguably the ultimate end product of science. Omnipotence is arguably the ultimate end product of technology. Goodness is arguably the ultimate end product of positive institutions…So in the very longest run, we have a God who is not supernatural but who has acquired omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence through natural processes”. Simply put into mathematical terms, as the limit of humanity approaches the end of time, we constantly approach divinity.

This is similar to the Isaac Asimov short story, The Last Question, which helped inspire Seligman’s essay. In it, humanity has designed a supercomputer known as Multivac, which answers any question given to it. Multivac gives humanity the plans to directly power all of Earth with the sun. Some technicians at Multivac begin to discuss this. One of them makes the claim that humanity can run off of the Sun’s energy forever. The other reminds him that in a few billion years, the sun will burn out. He reminds the technician, “Entropy has to increase to maximum, that's all”. So they ask Multivac if entropy can be reversed, to which Multivac responds “INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER”. The story progresses until after humans have used up the sun, and the computer gives the same response, this is repeated once humans have used up all the space in the galaxy and again when humanity has spread to every galaxy in the Universe. Then entropy continues to progress and the universe begins to burn out, the computer continues to give the same response. Then humanity fuses itself into the computer, which is now built outside of space and time and works to figure out the answer to the question, “Can entropy ever be reversed?”. Finally they arrive at an answer and this being which was created by humanity and sitting outside of time says, “LET THERE BE LIGHT!” after which Asimov writes, “and there was light”. Asimov portrays humans and their technology as a God through their ability to reverse entropy, which creates a new universe.

This belief of humanity infinitely approaching divinity makes every human being very important, because we are all building blocks towards a better future. As Seligman put it, “I am optimistic that this is the door through which meaning can enter our lives…that as individuals we can be a tiny part of this process, which has at its ultimate end the bringing of a God who is omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent”. But to reach this dream, to approach the limit, we first must survive to see it. Survival is a game of problem solving on our part, but it is also a problem of probability. I tend to lean towards Sagan’s philosophy of survival, which lies in decreasing the probability of annihilation by expanding human civilization into space. In his book The Pale Blue Dot, Sagan suggest that "if we were up there among the planets, if there were self-sufficient human communities on many worlds... then the safer the human species will be”. It is our duty to survive so that the intelligent species who descend from us can continue the journey towards omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent beings.

The dangers of our extinction are more prevalent now than ever, especially as we are now entering a century when our self-destruction is becoming more practical than ever. Sir Martin Rees talks about this in his book Our Final Century in which he predicts that we have a 50% chance of surviving the 21^st century. Rees believes that “in this century not only will our world be changing faster than ever, but in new and different ways”. He goes on to discuss how technology is going to speed up our evolution. He notes that through AI and genetic enhancement, “human beings, their physique and character, have not changed for thousands of years, it may change this century”. We have great challenges ahead; for, as our world becomes more connected, a computer virus begins to have the ability to cause disaster, “indeed catastrophe could arise simply from technical misadventure, error rather than terror”.

Humanity has a lot of challenges to face if it is going to survive to see the distant future, but humans are up to the task. Humans are not ones for lying down and accepting death. “The brain stem and amygdala will always do their job of struggling to preserve life at any cost”. When catastrophe strikes, we will fight for the preservation our species and we are intelligent enough to succeed. Sir Martin Rees, although predicting a low probability of survival, believes that we are more than capable of making it. Rees recognizes that “whatever happens in this uniquely crucial century will resonate into the remote future and perhaps far beyond the Earth”. Carl Sagan knows that the next few decades will be a challenge, but he also is confident in humanity because “we humans also have a history of making long-lasting social change that nearly everyone thought impossible”.

We humans tend to think in the short term, and have a hard time imagining many thousands of years, let alone billions. I’m sure many people will look at this and think that the notion of the intelligent beings of the Universe becoming God as blasphemous or impossible. For those who see it as blasphemy, that is their religious view and I can respect that. For those who think it impossible, they are underestimating the grand scale of the future. There is plenty enough future left for an intelligent species to evolve and constantly approach a definition of God. Such beings would hold so much power in the Universe, that they could mold the entirety of space into their own personal Utopia. This is an important idea for us, because being alive in the twenty-first century means that we will be some of the most crucial building blocks to bringing about this future. It is time to take the first steps towards the future by insuring our survival. This is a fight we must begin here and spread into the cosmos, or as Dylan Thomas writes, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light!"