This weekend I watched Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, proudly scratching off one item from my endless “Movies to Watch Before I Die” list.
One of the ideas in the movie that got me thinking was the three scientists on board the spaceship Discovery One whose skills would not be needed for the first few months that the mission was supposed to last, so they were kept hibernating in a state of suspended animation, their vital signs carefully monitored by the sentient, on-board HAL 9000 computer.
So today I was surprised to read this post at Singularity Hub on Mark Roth’s impressive findings on suspended animation (hat tip to @jason_silva for this!). The TED talk is also well worth watching:
What I liked the most from Roth’s talk was the lucky coincidence that led him to the groundbreaking discovery of the relationship between hydrogen sulfide and suspended animation:
Mark Roth has gotten a lot of attention for his work, and a MacArthur “genius” grant. Yet when you hear him describe the process by which he came to use hydrogen sulfide in his work (around 8:40) it seems more luck than genius. But that’s one of the marks of a great scientist. Most researchers are pretty smart, great researchers are smart enough to recognize luck and take advantage of it.
By all means, that’s the kind of luck I believe in. It seems as if that same kind of luck is what brought me this amazing article, reconciling me a bit with the notion of progress during these times of financial meltdown and so many other ills.
There’s a song that’s been stuck in my head since I watched film, Pink Floyd’s 1987 hit, Learning to Fly:
And after reading the post on Roth’s discoveries, it all clicked. I remembered the lyrics of the song more clearly, and the phrase “suspended animation” is somewhere there:
There’s no sensation to compare with this
Suspended animation, A state of bliss
Can’t keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I
From Wikipedia, here’s what the lyrics of song are supposed to mean:
The song was primarily written by David Gilmour. It describes Gilmour’s thoughts on flying, for which he has a passion (being a licensed pilot with multiple ratings), though it has also been interpreted as a metaphor for beginning something new, experiencing a radical change in life, or, more specifically, Gilmour’s feelings about striking out as the new leader of Pink Floyd after the departure of Roger Waters.
So here’s my very Jungian analysis on “what the universe is reminding me” with this one.
Let’s keep up our faith in our capacity for constructive progress, even when at times it seems like we are heading for armageddon. It all really does boil down to the dualistic, Ying Yang nature of most of our cultural creations, science and technology prominently among them. They surely can destroy us, but because culture is at the core of what defines us, it can also allow us to become fully developed human beings. Which is almost like saying it can make us more attuned with nature rather than opposed to it, more God-like. Or in other words, a bit closer to immortality. Something like “suspended animation, a state of bliss…”
And from there it’s just a no-brainer to to conclude that how we make use of science and technology will only reflect which side of the Ying Yang we are at ourselves. It will depend on whether we do commit to making those radical changes in our lives, or not.
Or as Dave Gilmour would say, whether we Learn to Fly… or we stick to being just a bunch of earth-bound misfits.
I wish you all a great week from Buenos Aires. Good luck, and keep it up with the flying lessons.
