Ancient story. Do we always realize that we die twice?

It's an ancient story. It's a story we share with more than 9.000 generations of 'homo sapiens' who lived before us: being born, live and die. Some of us reproduce ourselves and start a new generation. If we don't our personal familyline will stop. I was lucky to have known 3 of my 4 grandparents and my great-grandfather of my fathers mum. My daddies dad died 15 years before I was born. In retrospect I've met my ancestors mostly on normal, nothing special occasions: birthdays and drinking coffee on Sunday. In a way we (better: I) only love, take care and are emotionally involved to people we "meet" in person. Family, friends, collegues and acquaintances. And the others? They are Others whose lives are irrelevant.

What's the ancient story? All of us are little branches on the big tree - it's an image - of species 'homo sapiens'. We all die. Some get reproduced.  After 3 generations all of us - with or without kids - become statistics to the generations who come after us. "Jean Doorn, born 19 of January 1970,  died on {date}. Father of 4 kids". All the love I toke. All the love I gave. All the stories I heard. All the stories I told.  All laughs, kisses, tears and fears. All the tweets I read. All the tweets I wrote. We die twice. First the physical us. After 3 generations the us in the minds who love and hate us 2.

What do you think? Will Internet change all this? Will the future 'IT' (footnote) be able to "meet" someone who died more than 3 generations ago?

Footnote. 'IT' is the big computer with a huge amount of data in the book 'Journey  into Space' written by Toby Litt.   

Sexrobot Roxxxy & bookreview Litt/ Journey into space

Planet Earth turns slowly. Every day it turns around one time.

A few days ago (January 9, 2010) the first sexrobot Roxxxy made her public debut. It’s a female – don’t worry the designer is working on a male too. She has a program to learn the owner's likes and dislikes. Is able to talk about sports and cars, can carry on a discussion and expresses her love to you. Her vocabulary is being updated via Internet. She has five personalities: (1) outgoing Wild Wendy, (2) reserved and shy Frigid Farrah, (3) a young naive personality, (4) Mature Martha and (5) adventurous SM Susan. (Blogs on Roxxxy 1 and 2.)

Products like this fill my mind with hundreds of questions. Are there only five personalities of a woman? Will she interrogate you afterwards when you turned the robot off? Will she complain when you don't clean her after having sex with her? Is there a future for sexparties where you can change your partner, our personal Roxxxyies? Can she feel when she is being raped? How will she respond when you don’t talk to her for weeks? Can she learn me languages? Can she improve my language and be my teacher on a given subject too? Is there a button “random question, mood, behaviour or (dis)like”?  Will she be moody too when she has her period? Does she recognize my smell? Will she be able to give birth to our kids and make it possible to reproduce me and her into an thirth personality? How does she respond to my boss, the postman and my friends? Is she sensible for celebrities? Can she be jealous? When will be the first divorce because a wife feels neglected by him because of his Roxxxy?

Well, well what a great future for (wo)mankind. Buy one if you want to but I’ll not buy one. For me it’s the "wrong" track for the species ‘homo sapiens’. Is living your life really that hard? What is wrong with a partner whose behavior is not always predictable? Why do you need affirmation or a mirror that much? Why do you want to be in control of having sex? Why do you want to be in control of your partner? Why do you want to be in control of life? It’s an illusion! It’s a dangerous dream! Everyone whose mindset is set into this way of life can’t bear natural disasters (earthquake, waterflood, illness, invalidness etc) or wars between groups of human beings.  Can't bear!

Roxxxy brings me to Toby Litt’s (1968-) book ‘Journey into space’ (2009). It’s a Science Fiction (SF) book about a group of 100 ‘homo sapiens’ who travel in a vessel to a place 3 or 4 human-generations far away. They travel with ¼th of the speed of light. Halfway they get the message that humanity killed herself (caused by discussions about “Jerusalem”). All that exists of Earth is what “IT” has archived. The spaceship turns back to planet Earth finding out that 250 people survived. They look “horrible”. The book ends with the vessel as kamikaze bomb. Everyone dies.

I disagree with Litt’s future (SF) concept of love and reproduction. For me love is the cornerstone of our (dis)behavior. Sometimes the lack of love is the cornerstone of our (dis)behavior. We can’t separate love and reproduction. We can reproduce our species without love. We can’t live our lives without love, the need of love, the longing for love, the fact that we fall in love. Love is undividly incorporated in everyone of us. There will be no future on Earth or somewhere else in the univere without human beings that fall in love or are in love. We will not allow it to be taken away from us. Chemicals will not cure this "disease". Love is the motor of our species’ evolution. And it allways will be.

Planet Earth turns slowly. With or without us.