Paranoia is really setting in.

Ok, so I know my hysterical posts about robots are probably making me look like a conspiracy theorist wack job, and I KNOW this post isn't going to help me assert that I'm actually pretty level-headed. But I think this is important, so screw the consequences. Maybe I'll niche this blog and become a conservative anti-science, anti-technology windbag. Why not?

So here's what I'm terrified of now: Immortal Jellyfish. No, seriously. I'm not kidding.

This a very small (around 5 mm high and across) jellyfish, the Turritopsis nutricula originated in the Caribbean, but has been spread around the world accidentally by being small and tough enough to survive in ship's ballast waters when it gets sucked in, then spit back out elsewhere. And, because it is biologically immortal (we'll get to that) it is of course flourishing everywhere, resulting in headlines like "'Immortal' Jellyfish Swarming Across the World". A scientist at no less esteemed an institute than The Smithsonian has called their advancement “a worldwide silent invasion”. Yeah. And they're friggin' immortal.

How they've achieved a real, true, honest form of immortality is this: somehow over time, these teensy little buggers have evolved the ability to acutally devolve. Each individual can revert to its youthful, pre-reproductive state after hving already reached adulthood and procreated. By actually changing its cells and returning to its polyp state until it decides to mature again, the creature can actually bypass death from old age - theoretically unto infinity. Theoretically forever. Unless it gets eaten, which I'm sure happens quite frequently to tiny jellyfish, this thing can outlive - well - everything.

As far as I'm concerned, this news is bordering on nightmare-inducing. Jellyfish are strange and scary enough without immortality - they are such an alien form of life to us, what with their lack of skeletons and long, often-stinging, sometimes-deadly tentacles, and the ability of some species - the most deadly, in fact - to flourish in ocean dead zones where other species cannot live, they're already akin to some monstrous nightmare Cthulu beings. And now they've achieved an even greater likeness to Lovecraft's ancient god-creature - they just don't want to die, so they've decided not to.

What terrifies me on a deeper level, though, isn't so much the idea of the jellyfish themselves and their weirdness or their evolutionary checkmate - after all, I try to avoid swimming in ocean dead zones or near giant hordes of jellyfish, so although their abundance presents a very real oceanic problem, I can hold that at a distance from my psyche. What scares me, as usual, is what WE are going to do with the knowledge we will undoubtedly try to glean from these creatures. I'm not really scared that they're out to get us, per se. The paranoia stems from elsewhere: ourselves.

Immortality, or at least extended physical youth, has been the fodnest dream of the human being for about as long as anyone knows. The world-wide anti-aging industry was estimated at $97 BILLION last year alone. If we exhaustively study these vampire jellyfish, and we already are doing so, to discover their anti-aging, wrinkle-free secrets, no doubt we will immediately begin using them to make ourselve immortal as well, or at least as close to it as we can manage. We're already working on it, and now with the example of the Turritopsis nutricula, it seems we're well on our way.

I'm certainly not saying that the idea of immortality isn't deliriously attractive. I don't know anyone, least of all myself, who wouldn't want a shot at it if it were available to be had. To live for as long as one chooses, to have no fear, to exist with more hindsight than anyone has before you... all these ideas are seductive. Who wouldn't want that chance? But. Well. Let's be honest with ourselves, about ourselves. There are far, far too many of us already. We're sucking the planet dry of its resources, polluting the crap out of everything, destroying cultures through globalization, running out of space to share with animals, destroying rainforests and every other kind of natural habitat, killing off species, and generally fucking up everything we touch. We're spewing babies everywhere and we have no decent place to put them. Now add to the already far-too-large population a race of mutant immortals who will never die to leave a little more space for those babies. And imagine that race of freaks growing larger with every generation, piling up like driftwood along a cliff as the waves of new people push them forward with nowhere to go. That'll be us. (Meanwhile, in a forward-thinking move by the genius state of Georgia, Coweta County's board of commissioners has unanimously passed an ordinance banning all products that are produced or marketed "as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs", which will probably extend to prohibit the sale of ribbed/studded/other fun condoms. Because that's a good idea. But that's another blog.)

In my humble, Darwinian and naturalist opinion, global warming/climate change is the planet's way of killing off as many of us as possible, to reset the clock in the same way that the Black Death did in the 14th century and give us some room to breathe, because WE NEED IT if we want to survive. If we keep shooting out more children and defacing the planet, and refuse to die, we'll eventually just kill ourselves in some dumb way, probably nuclear war or simple toxicity. Lust after it as much as we may, I don't think immortality is strictly what we need right now. Not that what we need versus what we want has EVER stopped us before, but if I can win a few souls over to my side - the pro-dying one, yeah that'll be popular - then I'll consider myself successful.