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The Wright Perspective℠

Social Commentary from the C-Suite to Main Street℠

A Blog by Gary Wright II

The Quantum of Your Soul & Dangers of Eternal Life

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

Several years ago, I heard about doctors who were trying to measure the weight of the soul. They would carefully weigh a patient close to death, and then quickly weigh the body immediately after death. The difference measured would have been theoretically the quantum of the soul. At the time of the experiments, such a precise measurement just wasn't possible. It would be very interesting to see the results of this experiment done with our current technologies. What is the weight of your soul?

America now has several autonomous vehicles for every possible theater of conflict, and that fact is going to change our world in immeasurable ways.

For the land, there are autonomous vehicles like the War Pig, which follows the soldiers and carries all of their supplies. There are also several models of robots that can be armed with any weapon and then be driven remotely without ever putting a human at risk.

In the air, we have vehicles like the Fire Scout. It is an unmanned helicopter that can carry any load and be loaded with any weapon. It has a point and click interface, so you just click on the map to give it the waypoints, and it will go carry out the mission. This is invaluable asset, because using its sensors, the Fire Scout is able to operate in adverse conditions that otherwise would not be possible due to the limitations of human visibility. It can deliver supplies, evacuate wounded troops, and even be outfitted with weapons. There are also several models of drones, such as the Predator, that are capable of similar critical missions.

On and under the sea, there are remotely powered vehicles such as the Talisman. Other underwater robotic craft come in several configurations, based on the mission.

In space, amongst an enormous cloud of space debris, there are many satellites that constantly monitor and control our atmosphere and outer space.

We must never forget that there are only two purposes of war: to break things and to kill people. Will the nation with the best robots dictate the future of mankind? As soldiers and sailors are replaced with these autonomous vehicles, what will happen to humanity? If all future wars will be fought by robots, how do we measure the cost of war? The tendency is to measure wars by lives lost and blood shed, but that would no longer apply.

Research has given us many great medical advances, but some of the new technology being used has grave implications to our future. We have mapped the human genome, cloned mammals, and now can grow entirely new organs in a medical laboratory. With breakthroughs in nanotechnology, in the near future it may be entirely possible to achieve eternal life. By using the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of a patient, a new organ can be grown without the dangers of organ transplant rejection by the patients own immune system.

The world is already overpopulated, so extending the human life span will exponentially increase the environmental issues with our consumption. When we run out of resources, who will decide which people should remain eternal and which people should die? Should there be a maximum age restriction where anyone over the age of 100 should be killed?

What happens to a society that has eternal life? If there is no death, then it would be very easy to feel like our actions have no consequences. The justice system will have to be completely reformed because what is a 30 year prison sentence to someone with eternal life? If someone with eternal life is sentenced to life in prison, are we really going to have to keep them locked up indefinitely?

These are deep questions, but they are not far off from the reality that many of us may experience in the very near future.

As a society, we need to rethink the way that we currently live and hopefully find a way for everyone to live together peacefully.

What is the weight and value of a soul??? I'm not quite sure how to measure that yet....

-- Gary Wright II

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