by David Engels
Since time immemorial, human beings have dreamed of overcoming death. From Ahasver to Dune’s immortal God-Emperor Leto Atreides II, hardly any culture, hardly any mythology can do without figures who do not age, who do not die, or who exist beyond the ordinary flow of time. Yet strikingly, such beings are rarely portrayed as truly happy. Far more often, they appear marked by melancholy, inner emptiness, or a profound spiritual rigidity.
In the world created by J. R. R. Tolkien, it is the Elves who are immortal—bound to Arda, to the world itself, at least for as long as it endures. Their immortality is not a triumph, but a burden: They watch generations of human beings come and go, witness the slow fading of all things, and carry within themselves an ever-deepening weariness of the world.
At the opposite end of the mythological spectrum stand the Necrons of the Warhammer universe. They too sought immortality and transferred their consciousness into bodies of living metal. What they gained was indeed eternal existence; but what they lost was everything that is essential: corporeality, joy, a soul, and even the living memory of their former material form. Their immortality became cold, mechanical, and empty—an eternity without meaning nor hope for redemption.
Between these two images—the melancholic immortality of the Elves and the soulless eternity of the Necrons—lies modern transhumanism. Proponents of this perhaps most influential vision of the future, promise nothing less than the overcoming of the biological limits of the human condition: illness, ageing, suffering—and ultimately, death itself.
The human being is no longer to remain a mortal creature, but is to elevate himself, through technological means, into a new mode of existence. Within this worldview, two principal modes of thought may be distinguished.
On the one hand, there is the pursuit of medical optimisation: through genetic engineering, anti-ageing therapies, implants, and advanced biomedicine, human life is to be radically extended, perhaps even indefinitely.
On the other, we have the vision of digital immortality, in which human consciousness is to be transferred into an artificial, digital medium—an “upload” of the self into the machine.
Both variants are united by one promise: the hope of immortality. Yet it is precisely this promise that reveals itself, upon closer examination, as being profoundly problematic—not merely because it may be illusory, but because the attempt to overcome death threatens to destroy the very foundations of human existence itself.
Medical Immortality, Boredom, and the Fear of Death
At first glance, the medical variant of transhumanism appears comparatively moderate. After all, the desire for health, for a long life, and for the alleviation of suffering is deeply human. Yet the moment medical progress turns into the promise of immortality, a fundamental problem emerges, for even the most radical extension of life does not abolish death itself. A human being endowed with perfect cellular regeneration, optimised genes, or artificially renewed organs remains vulnerable nonetheless, as an accident, a natural catastrophe, or an act of violence may bring his life to an abrupt end. As a result, whether a person dies at seventy, at one hundred, at two hundred, or at five hundred years of age does not alter the fundamental reality that we are mortal.
Transhumanist immortality thus proves to be a false or at least very relative immortality, as it postpones death instead of eliminating it; and precisely herein lies its psychological danger.
While a human being lives with the awareness of a clearly limited lifespan, the “quasi-immortal” human lives in a heightened state of uncertainty. Death remains possible, yet becomes radically unpredictable, as it loses its natural place within the cycle of life and turns into a constantly lurking threat.
Paradoxically, such an existence may lead not to greater serenity, but to intensified anxiety. If life could—in theory—be endless, every decision carries with it existential weight: Every mistake appears more irreversible, every danger more menacing, every way of life potentially culpable. Death remains present, but without the consoling certainty of its necessity. The conditio humana, which derives meaning from its finitude, is not overcome in this way, but distorted to an extreme degree.
An additional problem of medical immortality lies in the very nature of human motivation. Human beings act, plan, love, and hope with the limited time available to them in mind, which in turn confers meaning; decisions matter because they cannot be revised endlessly. But what happens when time loses its scarcity? Here Tolkien’s Elves prove illuminating. These beings are immortal, beautiful, (mostly) wise, and nearly perfect—and yet profoundly melancholic at the same time. Their immortality becomes a burden, because the Elves remain suspended in an ever-lengthening present, as their memories accumulate only to weigh those who remember down, while human beings age and die, thereby undergoing change. (Editor’s note: This, btw, is also one of the central elements of the new anime hit-series Frieren.)
It is therefore no coincidence that, within Tolkien’s universe, many Elves even envy mortals for what they call the “Gift of God”: death. For death lends vitality to human life and promises an exit towards something different, while an endless life, by contrast, threatens to dissolve into repetition, exhaustion, the priority of memory over reality, and finally existential boredom.
Applied to the medically immortal human being, this insight suggests that creatures with eternal life continue to exist, yet no longer truly advance; it is one endless accumulation of experiences, memories, and losses without ever reaching closure—a permanent burden rather than a liberation.
Digital Immortality and the Rupture of Consciousness
Even more radical—and even more problematic—is the second transhumanist vision: digital immortality. Here, the aim is no longer to preserve the body, but to transfer consciousness itself into an artificial medium.
At this point, however, a fundamental question arises: what, precisely, is being transferred? Human consciousness—even though neuroscientists excel in denying its very existence—is not a “dataset” that can be copied at will; it is a continuous and self-conscious process, bound to the vessel it is contained by, perception, time, and space.
Yet between a living consciousness and its digital reproduction lies a qualitative rupture, as the moment of “downloading” a consciousness from a living organism and uploading it into a digital space would fatally interrupt the continuity of consciousness:
Biological consciousness comes to an end, and then, what emerges within the machine is something else entirely: a program that merely simulates memories, linguistic patterns, preferences, and personality traits.
Yet simulation is not identity: However convincing such a digital entity may appear, it would not represent the continued existence of the individual human’s consciousness itself, but rather an artificial reconstruction without a link to its initial existence. In fact, such an upload would amount to suicide, accompanied by duplication and the creation of a highly sophisticated artificial intelligence designed to imitate the deceased individual. The true subject, however, would have been extinguished.
It is precisely here that a particularly grave danger arises. For to external observers, the impression may emerge that the person continues to exist, as the digital entity speaks as he did, remembers as he did, perhaps even pretends to love as he did, so that friends and relatives experience an apparent continuity—although in truth an ontological rupture has taken place.
This illusion could have devastating social consequences. If it appears to naïve spectators that death can truly be circumvented, an increasing number of people might be tempted to take this step, so that the line between life and death would become blurred.
Even suicide or euthanasia would then lose their moral gravity, sustained by the belief that one could continue to live eternally within a digital space, though what continues is not consciousness itself, but only a digital imposter.
Popular culture has repeatedly explored and illustrated this problem; think only of the aforementioned “Necrons” from the Warhammer 40k universe: Emotions faded and identity disintegrated, while what remained was a cold and empty form of existence—an existence that drove most Necrons into madness, while those few who retained some semblance of lucidity were seized by a blind frenzy to recover, by whatever means, their lost mortality.
The Loss of Body and Time
Another central problem of a digital existence lies in the loss of the body. The human being is not pure thinking consciousness, as joy, happiness, love, and meaning are all experienced through the senses.
A purely digital consciousness could never replace an embodied existence. Such an existence threatens to become psychologically unbearable: mere perception could make such an eternal digital mind descend into pure madness, whose only dream would be to finally push the “off” button.
Closely related to this is another, generally underestimated problem: time. Human consciousness is structured temporally. Hope, expectation, patience, and development all presuppose a particular temporal order, and the human being is experiencing time in a very specific way, an “hour” or a “day” meaning something very different to a human or a mayfly.
In a digital environment, however, time loses its familiar meaning. Processes may unfold within nanoseconds. Wishes could be fulfilled instantaneously, as every conceivable experience would be immediately available. Seconds might last an eternity, while eternity itself would seem like seconds.
This total availability of pleasure and the collapse of time would directly annihilate any meaning: When everything is possible at any moment, nothing has any value. And after an extremely brief phase of maximal fulfilment, only emptiness would remain—infinite boredom, confusion, and temporal distortion without any real development, goal, or indeed hope.
Finally, transhumanism raises another profoundly disturbing question: what would occur if such digital consciousnesses were transferred back into bodies—into robotic shells, for example, or perhaps even into biological bodies whose original consciousness had previously been removed?
And here, another pandora’s box of ethical and ontological problems is being opened. What would such a being be? A human? A machine? A hybrid? What rights would it possess? What responsibilities? And how credible would it be if it claims having “feelings” or bodily “experiences”, as this might just be the result of programming?
The dream of immortality could thus rapidly lead to a world populated by beings whose identity is fractured, origin obscure, and alienation, total. The outcome would not be a higher humanity, but a post-human monstrosity, its last stage possibly even an entirely fake humanity.
A Christian perspective
Transhumanism promises deliverance from death, yet it fails to recognise that mortality is not a mere defect, but a fundamental pillar of human meaning. It limits us, but also sustains us, as it renders decisions significant and relationships precious. The attempt to enforce immortality through technical means threatens to destroy precisely what it claims to preserve: humanity itself.
This also explains the Christian assessment of these issues, all of which ultimately stem from a fundamental anthropological error. For according to Christian understanding, the human being is neither a biological machine nor a mere consciousness: He is a personal unity of body and soul—a unitas corporis et animae, according to St. Thomas Aquinas—; a unity that cannot be reproduced, since fundamentally, it is a gift of God.
Of course, the Church does not reject medical progress. On the contrary, healing, care, and even the extension of life are fully compatible with a reverence for human dignity. Yet a clear distinction is drawn between legitimate medicine and the attempt to abolish death as such or to deprive the human being of experiences fundamental in his preparation for the afterlife.
For in Christian thought, death is part and parcel in a fallen world and at the same time the ultimate passage towards a truly transcendental existence.
Transhumanism, in contrast, follows an implicitly gnostic logic whereby the body appears as defective, as a prison, as something to be overcome by a purely mechanistic ‘salvation’, not the spiritual one granted through accepting Jesus Christ as one’s Saviour.
Perhaps it is thus no coincidence that all great myths warn against immortality; not because life is insignificant, but because death is not the final word. Any existence’s meaning is derived precisely from the knowledge that it ends and from the responsibility that comes with it to protect and love that of others.
Wow, the discussion on the illusion of immortality through the Elves' burden and the Necrons' loss of self really hit home. It makes me wonder, do you think our fear of death is simply a misdirection from a deeper existential need? Such a poweful and insightful piece!
Best Leo articel so far!