Immortal by not dying

A Steve Taylor lyric of the 1980s came to mind this afternoon:

"Immortality's what I'm buying
But I'd rather be immortal by not dying."

It was the death of Robert Ettinger that reminded me. The sort-of-late Robert, in case you're wondering, was the founder of the cryonics movement.

 Mr Ettinger's theory is - to say the least - coldly logical. If he weren't by now deep-frozen, he would have no chance of living again on this un-reconstituted planet. Whereas he now has the chance to be revived by friendly futurenauts who will - he hoped/s - reprogram his DNA, reverse his cell damage, soup him up and fit him to live forever.
Obviously, the "forever" is a slight over-estimate. Nothing in this current universe lives forever. Time's arrow just keeps on pointing forwards, until the point at the extremes where the energy would not be available to repair the machines to keep Bobby E's body lasting forever. A resuscitated Ettinger would hypothetically last a long time - an unimaginably long time - but Anno Domino would still win out in the end.

All round it strikes me as more likely that, at some future point of civilisation breakdown, you'd be thawed out due to a long-term power outage, at which point you might make a TV dinner for some desperate 22^nd Century post-Apocalyptic survivor. Or just melt and rot. Either way, it wouldn't matter much, what with you being dead and everything. But in my mind, the cryonics movement is most strongly associated with Dennis Potter's shocking, imaginative Cold Lazarus. And if you've seen that spooky closing work of Potter's, you'll understand the worry that, if you came back, you'd find yourself floating in a tank, wired up while TV producers try to make a documentary out of you. Or some wally bringing you back to life, just to say "I am the Ultimate Prankster! I have power over Life and Death! And you're not one of the lucky ones..."

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/cold-lazarus

And not to mention the unfortunate tale of Trygve Bauge's granddad...

It's a very modernist view of life, and death, that Mr Ettinger had/s. That infinite progress would one day eliminate death - and that the people of the future, against all the evidence of the 20^th Century, would be benevolent with their technology. It's a view that already looks touchingly dated. Still, good luck to him. For myself, I'm going with the immortality that you might gain by dying everyday, and I'll hope along with the closing thoughts of Daniel Feeld.

Will there be any stars, any stars in my crown
When at evening the sun goeth down?
When I wake with the blest in the mansions of rest
Will there be any stars in my crown?