Goodbye Green Day

by Donavan Hall

Travis Feldman's life is accelerating, but he feels like he's standing still rushing toward the inevitable end. He's not sure what he's supposed to have gleaned from his first thirty-five years and for all he knows, there's not going to be another thirty-five. Travis suffers from an existential ailment -- a personal crisis of meaning. He's afraid to die, but he's not sure why he wants to go on living. Force of habit? Maybe he's a fear junkie?

Salvation is one of those old fashioned ideas that Travis doesn't know what to do with anymore. The post-religious age has substituted pharmaceuticals for God. Is Travis more free than his medieval counterpart? Is he happier? Travis lives in a box. He works in a box. When he dies, someone will put his body into a box. And then what? Nothing.

God like the idea of the atom is an old concept. Each idea has experienced an opposing trajectory. For most of the last two thousand years people doubted the existence of atoms because we couldn't "see" them. On the other hand, people believed in God because they couldn't see him. Now scientists have shown us what atoms look like. We don't doubt the existence of atoms anymore, but God has become strangely silent and absent.

If God isn't there to give us the afterlife, then perhaps science will. When our bodies die, can we be resurrected as software running on an eternal computer? Will we be able to live forever? Then again, will we want to?