The Shaky Logic of Immortality

Because there has been a revival of the subject of human immortality recently, I thought I'd write a little about that today. I've discussed this in earlier posts. To recap, I said that it is possible that there have been aliens who became immortal, but got tired of being immortal and then decided to die. That was written in the context of never receiving any extraterrestrial communications. More recently, I said that if you made an electronic version of yourself and abandoned your body, you would effectively be dead. When your body died, all that would remain would be an electronic copy of you. I think that, in a physical sense, if you were able to remove your brain and integrate it with an artificial copy of your body, and then maintain your brain in much the same way that your body currently maintains it, you would not technically be dead, as long as your brain were operating in the same way that it was in your body. In this case, you would be immortal only as long as your brain was maintained in a manner similar to the way that it was maintained in your body. So, if everything went well, you would be immortal, but if your brain were irreparably damaged, then you would be dead. It would also be possible to become effectively immortal if advances in medical technology allowed your body to live indefinitely, but that would probably be more difficult than simply keeping your brain alive.

From reading about our place in the biosphere, I think there are other questions that come up. Whatever anyone thinks, we are all part of the Earth's biosphere. This raises the question of what it would mean to send part of the biosphere to a different solar system. In all likelihood, a biosphere on a planet in a different solar system would have different characteristics from ours, and by going there you might just die. How much fun would that be?

I would like to reiterate that even if a sustainable immortality for a human were achieved technologically, there is still the psychological problem of the potential of suicide. As organisms on Earth, all we are doing really is attempting to survive and have offspring who survive. This is built into our genes, and you can't make it go away through technology without altering your identity. We have this specific Earth-based motivation, which means that an immortal human may essentially be an engineered automaton with no inherent purpose. In effect, the more you remove biological characteristics from humans, the more they come to resemble stones or other inert objects. Compared to us, stones are immortal, and the tech bros may not have figured that out yet.

I think that a key distinction must be made between organisms and inert objects. At the moment, quite a few people are worried that H. sapiens may soon be superseded by a new species. In my view, because of my statements above, I think that there may actually not be a new species, and we may just end up with humans who have robotic bodies. Actual robots don't concern me that much, because they won't have the equivalent of survival instincts and would not have any reason to harm humans unless programmed to.

The Brontës III

In 1825, at the time of Maria and Elizabeth's illness at the Cowan Bridge School, besides Charlotte, Emily had just started. Patrick withdrew Charlotte and Emily, and they were homeschooled by Patrick and their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell. In 1831, Charlotte left home at the age of 14 for Roe Head School and completed her formal education in 1832. At Roe Head, Charlotte had been a top student and developed lifelong friendships with Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor. From 1832 to 1835, Charlotte tutored Emily and Anne at home. This was also a continuation of the period during which Branwell and Charlotte wrote about the fictional Glass Town, which eventually became Angria. Emily and Anne had been involved initially, but they started their own imaginary world of Gondal at about this time. The parsonage overlooked the moors, and the children went on walks there. 

When the four children were all at home, their behavior seemed insular. There seems to have been somewhat of a family trauma created by the deaths of the two eldest sisters. At the age of 16, Charlotte already stands out as being more worldly than her siblings. This is probably the result of having spent more time away from home than the others. Charlotte was short, nearsighted and not pretty, but she was quite intelligent and often privately thought that people were stupid. Judging from her behavior, she seems to have been far more ambitious in developing some sort of career plan for herself than her siblings. Not much has been said so far about Emily and Anne, perhaps because they are still quite young.

Branwell, who was a year younger than Charlotte, is a different story. Because he was male, he was educated entirely at home by Patrick in order to receive instruction in Latin and Greek. I am still a little perplexed by how Latin and Greek became core elements of the academic curriculum. I know that Latin is thought to be more precise than English and may be more suitable for certain documents. But Latin hardly seems essential now. My best guess is that this situation exists because of the Roman influence on England. It was part of the Roman Empire from 43 AD to 410 AD, and then the Roman Catholic Church swept in and controlled the religion from 597 AD to 1534 AD. Oxford and Cambridge were founded in 1096 and 1209, so it would appear that there is still a link between the Roman Catholic Church and education in the English-speaking world. Note that Charles Darwin was forced to learn Latin and Greek in order to enter Cambridge. It had little relation to his scientific career. Many scientists, such as E.O. Wilson and Richard Feynman, did perfectly well without it. The Roman Catholic Church made Latin the language of the church, and through much of its time in England services were entirely in Latin, making them unintelligible to those attending church. It was the language of the elite.

As far as I've read, Branwell is only 18, and is already showing signs of future failure. This was a very arts-intensive household. All of the children could write well; they could all draw or paint well; they could all play the piano. Branwell played the organ at the church and also the flute. Charlotte's poor eyesight caused her to give up the piano. Branwell's lack of early exposure to the outside world may possibly have interfered with his attempts to develop a career. Apparently he wanted to be an artist and wrote a letter to the Royal Academy of Arts but didn't send it. He was also considering being a poet and wrote to Blackwood's Magazine, which was very popular in the Brontë household, but that didn't lead anywhere. It may be that the girls were being directed by Patrick to become governesses or teachers, which had inexpensive preparations, whereas Branwell was underfunded for a loftier career. He did have an art teacher for a while, but the teacher wasn't very proficient, and, as a result, neither was Branwell. In 1835, Charlotte returned to Roe Head as a teacher, at least in part to help fund Branwell's art education. Patrick was a Tory, and, in modern terms, a sexist. He encouraged Charlotte to write only for recreation and to enjoy her traditional female duties, which she often didn't.

The Brontës II

As you may have guessed, I'm not in reading mode and am moving through this book at a snail's pace. Actually, I don't want to rush through it, because it is not only interesting to me but also of extremely high quality. There is too much information in the book to provide a detailed summary, but I will make an effort to extract some of what I think are the important facts. The writing isn't entirely in exact chronological order but is still easy to follow.

The chronology skips ahead to the time of Charlotte's death in 1855. Her siblings had already died. Charlotte had published four novels, Emily one and Anne two. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall had all been popular, but they were often considered "coarse" and were criticized accordingly. Charlotte admired reviews written by G.H. Lewes, probably because he was straightforward and unpretentious. She was relieved that his review of Jane Eyre was generally positive. They corresponded and eventually met, but had a falling out when he wrote a negative review of Shirley. Following Charlotte's death, Patrick asked Mrs. Gaskell, the novelist, to write a biography of her. She had been acquainted with Charlotte and had previously visited Haworth. That biography shaped public opinion of the Brontës for many years, and Barker goes to great lengths in this book to correct the errors promulgated by Gaskell. As a novelist, Gaskell was probably not the right person for a biography, and she apparently made several inaccurate descriptions. The one of most concern to Barker is her characterization of Patrick as stern, remote and volatile. To some extent, Barker's book is a corrective, indicating that Patrick was close to his children and sensitive to their needs. 

Haworth in 1820 had problems similar to those in other rural towns at the time, i.e., families were enormous, and people died young from tuberculosis or scarlet fever. In Haworth, the local sanitation was also poor, with untreated sewage accumulating in a ditch by the road. The Brontës apparently had a working privy. In those days, the population of Haworth was growing, but the people were poor. This all added up to a very high death rate. I am often amazed to read descriptions of the daily lives of people hundreds of years ago, and enjoyed the description of a church service in 1833 written by a friend of Charlotte:

The people assembled, but it was apparently to listen, any part beyond that was quite out of their reckoning. All through the Prayers a stolid look of apathy was fixed in the generality of their faces, then they sat or leaned in their pews; (some few perhaps were resting after a long walk over the moors). The children from the school pattered in after service had commenced, and pattered out again before the sermon. <began> The sexton with a long staff continually walked round in the aisles 'knobbing' sleepers when he dare, shaking his head at and threatening unruly children, but when the sermon began there was a change, attitudes took the listening form, eyes were turned on the speaker. It was curious now to note <to note> the expression, a rustic untaught intelligence gleamed in their faces, in some a daring doubting questioning look as if the lips would like to say something defiant.

Patrick had a fairly heavy workload, with baptisms, burials and marriages. In 1821, Maria became ill, and her health gradually declined. Elizabeth Firth, a friend from Thornton, came to help. Later, Maria's sister, Elizabeth Branwell, came from Penzance to help. Maria died on September 15, 1821; the cause was thought at the time to be uterine cancer. Maria's death meant that her inheritance from her parents, which was paid as an annuity, would cease. This put an immediate financial pressure on Patrick, and his subsequent behavior seems to indicate that he was in a panic. In December, Patrick proposed to Elizabeth Firth; she was deeply offended and temporarily broke off contact with the Brontës. Elizabeth Branwell did stay and help for a long period, but in those days it was illegal for a sister of a deceased woman to marry her husband. Barker speculates that Patrick also considered proposing to Isabella Drury, another wealthy local woman, but apparently he didn't. Just to show how desperate Patrick was, he also contacted Mary Burder, his former fiancée from Wethersfield, whom he hadn't seen in nearly fifteen years. She was still unmarried, but his overtures went nowhere.

Barker continues with Brontë family life in Haworth. The Brontë children were quite creative by any standard. Branwell went by his middle name and dropped "Patrick." Apparently he came up with various fictional ideas, and Charlotte, Emily and Anne followed suit. They wrote stories and made tiny books in which the print resembled that of a real book. Maria, Elizabeth and Charlotte attended the Cowan Bridge School, which was fictionalized by Charlotte in Jane Eyre as Lowood School. The conditions were rather bleak there, and both Maria and Elizabeth died from the tuberculosis that they contracted. However, in Barker's account, the school was not particularly substandard for the time. There do seem to be special linguistic and storytelling abilities in the family.

The Brontës I

I've embarked on this extremely long biography by Julie Barker. It is going to take me a lot of time to finish, so I may end up making posts on other topics intermittently. The book is thorough and extremely well-written. It covers more people than the other biographies I've read, and also references historical events such as the Napoleonic Wars, particularly the Battle of Waterloo, because the family patriarch, Patrick Brontë, admired the Duke of Wellington. There is also a fair amount of social history. Brontë was a contemporary of Robert Owen and Jane Austen. In the north of England, the mills were dominating the economy, the Luddites were rebelling, and there was a lot of pollution. In the south of England, there was an epidemic of social climbing, as chronicled by Jane Austen, who lived in Chawton, Hampshire (at the same time as some of my ancestors). The Brontës ended up in Haworth, West Riding, Yorkshire (I also had ancestors in Spofforth, nearby, at about that time). Though I am looking forward to reading the book, I have some trepidations. That is because, although Patrick Brontë lived to the ripe old age of 84, everyone else died young, including five daughters, one son and his wife. The entire Yorkshire branch of the Brontës became extinct then, since he had no grandchildren. Furthermore, he was an Anglican cleric, which may have appealed to George Eliot when she wrote Scenes of Clerical Life, published in 1858, at the beginning of her career. If you've read much of this blog, you will have noticed that I'm not a religious zealot.

Patrick was the first of ten children born to Hugh Brunty in 1777. Hugh was a poor, illiterate Protestant farmhand who had moved from southern Ireland to Northern Ireland. Patrick was mostly self-educated, and decided that he wanted to attend college and become an Evangelical Anglican preacher. He had been a tutor for Reverend Thomas Tighe's children, and Tighe agreed to sponsor him for admission to St. John's College, Cambridge, which he had attended. In those days, a recommendation from Tighe was all that was required for entry. Though he had little money, Patrick left for Cambridge in 1802, when he was 25. He had a sizar scholarship, which was not generous and required him to perform various jobs. He graduated in 1806. It isn't entirely clear to me why he changed the spelling of his name, but I think that he didn't want be identified as Irish. Furthermore, the Irish probably faced a social stigma in England at the time. Patrick had little contact with his family after he left for college.

This book does have the years at the top of each odd-numbered page, but it is still a little difficult to grasp the chronology of events by date, particularly the timing of the sequence of events from Patrick's departure from Cambridge in 1806 to his arrival in Haworth in 1820. During that period he became an ordained preacher and worked in several parishes, seeking his own. The first was in Wethersfield, Essex, in 1806, where he was the curate for two years. While there, he had a whirlwind romance with Mary Burder, and they planned to marry. She came from a wealthier family, and, when they rejected Patrick, he became assistant curate in Wellington, Somerset. In less than a year, he moved to Yorkshire in 1809 and became curate in Dewsbury, West Riding. He subsequently held positions in nearby Hartshead and Thornton, and finally Haworth in 1820, where he was offered the position of perpetual curate.

I suspect that Patrick was sensitive to English snobbery and recognized that there would be less of it in Yorkshire. So far he seems to be fairly extroverted and could read people easily and make friends when he wanted to. I sort of noticed the same thing on my first long trip to Oxford in 1993. After a few days in Oxford, I immediately noticed what I think of as the crudity of the people in York when I visited there. More recently, when reading about Charles Darwin, I was struck by the fact that his brother, Erasmus, who studied medicine in Edinburgh after graduating from Cambridge, disliked Edinburgh to the extent that he didn't socialize at all and returned to England as soon as he could. In his later life, he was sort of a social butterfly in London. In those days, people in Oxford and Cambridge were highly sensitive to accents and judged others accordingly.

Patrick seems to have been fairly busy once he arrived in Yorkshire, but was still interested in a spouse. In early 1812, while living in Hartshead, he visited John Fennell, a friend from Wellington, in nearby Rawdon. There he met Maria Branwell, who was a niece of Fennell's wife and had moved in with them from Penzance after the deaths of her parents:

Maria was twenty-nine years old, petite and elegant though not pretty; pious and something of a bluestocking but also of a bright, cheerful disposition. She was the daughter of a successful, property-owning grocer and tea merchant of Penzance, Thomas Branwell, who had died in 1808; her mother, Anne Carne, the daughter of a silversmith in the town, had died a year after her husband. Maria had grown up in a totally different world from Patrick. The eighth of eleven children, at least three of whom had survived infancy, Maria had enjoyed all the benefits of belonging to a prosperous family in a small town.

After an enthusiastic courtship, Patrick and Maria were married on December 29, 1812 in Guiseley. Patrick had been living in Hightown while working in Thornton, and moved to a different house in Hightown with Maria after the marriage until 1815, when they moved to Thornton. Their first child, Maria, was born in Hightown in 1814, their second child, Elizabeth, was born in Hightown in 1815. The remaining children were born in Thornton: Charlotte in 1816, Patrick in 1817, Emily in 1818, and Anne in 1820. In April of that year, the entire family moved to Haworth Parsonage.

Though there has so far in the book not been much discussion of writing, I should mention that in 1815 Patrick published The Cottage in the Wood, or the Art of Becoming Rich and Happy. He also anonymously published the novella The Maid of Killarney: or, Albion and Flora: a Modern Tale in Which Are Interwoven Some Cursory Remarks on Religion and Politics in 1818. In addition there were two books of poems: Cottage Poems (1811) and The Rural Minstrel (1813).