Immortality, personally and otherwise

[Greg Montalbano]

On Thu, 1 Feb 1996 10:49:00 -0500 (EST) you said:
>
>
>On Wed, 31 Jan 1996, Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt wrote:
>
>> 	 But what do others make of the many voices from the 'other side'
>> present in GR, and the Thanatoids in Vineland? I have always
>> considered them metaphors, at most pesonifications of rather Freudian
>> suppressions, rather than some superficial claim of _personal_
>> immortality....
>>
>
>Personally, I don't think TRP is trying to start a new religion or
>anything. No offers of resurrection, redemption, victory over death.
>The voices are not _real_ (by which I mean physical, corporeal).
>Possibly, they are sprirtual/moral, offering some kind of "moral
>victory", which to my way of thinking is no victory at all.
>
>The GR world is a pretty bleak place (if it weren't so funny, that is). I
>will take my inspiration today from the Hades episode, which I have just
>been inspired to reread as the result of another p-lister's post of a few
>days ago.
>
>It seems that until recently the orthodox, received, religious
>faith in GR world was death, death, death--pure and simple, with out
>regard for race, social status, or whatever. Father Rapier sums it up
>thusly:
>
>"Death has been the source of Their power. It was easy enough for us to
>see that. If we are here once, only once, then clearly we are here to take
>what we can while we may. If They have taken much more, and taken not
>only from Earth but also from us--well, why begrudge Them, when they're
>just as doomed to die as we are? All in the same boat, all under the same
>shadow . . ."
>
>And "[t]o believe that each of Them _will_ personally die is also to
>believe that Their system will die--that some chance of renewal, some
>dialectic, is still operating in History. To affirm Their mortality is to
>affirm Return. . . "
>
>But, that was _then_ and this is _now_. Father Rapier, now acting in his
>role as "Devil's Advocate", questions whether what we have all believed
>is really true.
>
>"I think there is a terrible possiblity now, in the World. We may not
>brush it away, we must look at it. It is possible that They will not die.
>That it is now within the state of Their art to go on forever--though we,
>of course, will keep dying as we always have."
>
>And so, Father continues, " . . . perhaps we will choose instead to
>turn, to fight: to demand, from those for whom we die, our own
>immortality. They may not be dying in bed any more, but maybe They can
>still die from violence. If not, at least we can learn to withhold from
>Them our fear of Death. For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of
>cross. And at least the physical things They have taken, from Earth and
>from us, can be dismantled, demolished--returned to where it all came from."
>
>Ah ha! Is this the long promised Counterforce, for which all have
>been waiting, hoping . . ? Only trouble is, it's another one of
>those darned spiritual happenings. The "immortality" promised is again
>only a "moral victory" over death. It is a kind of _getting even_, may
>be environmentally beneficial, but we all still die.
>
>Don't look for solace in GR. But it's a damn good read.
>
>				P.
>
>
>
>
>
>
...and a corollary from VL:

"...remember that windowpane, down in Laguna that time?  God, I knew then,
I knew..."
     They had a look.  "Uh-huh, me too.  That you were never going to die.
Ha!  No wonder the State panicked.  How are they supposed to control a
population that knows it'll never die?  When that was always their last
big chip, when they had the power of life and death.  But acid gave us
the x-ray vision to see through that one, so of course they had to take
it away from us."