{"id":1436804,"date":"2022-04-14T07:47:14","date_gmt":"2022-04-14T11:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1436804"},"modified":"2022-04-14T07:47:43","modified_gmt":"2022-04-14T11:47:43","slug":"upload-season-2-reveals-why-seeking-digital-immortality-will-leave-people-lonely-and-miserable-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/upload-season-2-reveals-why-seeking-digital-immortality-will-leave-people-lonely-and-miserable-2\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Upload\u2019 Season 2 Reveals Why Seeking Digital Immortality Will Leave People Lonely And Miserable"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fupload-season-2-reveals-why-seeking-digital-immortality-will-leave-people-lonely-and-miserable-2%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1436804&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/image-2022-04-12T155147.591-1.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Season two of Amazon\u2019s popular sci-fi dramedy \u201cUpload\u201d is still trending on the platform\u2019s top 10 a month after its release. The humor is average at best and the left-wing bias is almost obnoxious enough to kill the charm of the main characters\u2019 love story, but it is still worth watching for its exploration of cybernetic immortality, or \u201cupload.\u201d The effective transfer of human consciousness from the biological to a purely mechanical component is a project supported by transhumanists: people who believe humanity should not and will not be limited to pure, \u201corganic\u201d human biology.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Given the rapid uptake of web-based virtual reality, both seasons of \u201cUpload\u201d offer a glimpse into a future that is lived by many either mostly or completely in VR. It also exposes myriad reasons why \u201cuploading\u201d to a digital afterlife would unleash a pandora\u2019s box of social and spiritual ills.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The increasing marginalization of the historical Christian faith has provided bare soil for new religious systems to grow and, as the adage goes, \u201cnature abhors a vacuum.\u201d \u201cUpload\u201d as a headlining comedy shows a breakthrough of transhumanism into the mainstream consciousness. As Dr. Daniel Cebo <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/secret-cybernetic-immortality-prof-dr-daniel-cebo\">wrote<\/a>, \u201cCybernetic immortality can take the place of metaphysical immortality to provide the ultimate goals and values for the emerging global civilization.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Completely contrary to this secular optimism, the show aptly demonstrates that an inability to accept death leads to compounding dilemmas that never should have existed in the first place.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>Digitizing Relationships<\/h2>\n<p>The most obvious problem \u201cUpload\u201d presents is the upkeep of relationships with loved ones who are still alive. In the show, afterworld resident Nathan\u2019s real-world girlfriend hazards physical maladies and overt neglect of her real life by all but living in a sensation-enabled \u201chug suit\u201d to simulate her physical presence in the show\u2019s main digital afterlife, Lakeview.<\/p>\n<p>Continuing relationships with those who are passing on from this world are one of the chief reasons people would upload, or push their aging relatives to upload, in the first place. While death and grief are painful, entangling people in a faux world they cannot really inhabit and making it difficult to move on from loved ones who have passed is cruel.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And what happens when dozens of elderly relatives, maybe who\u2019ve lived into their 90s or beyond, upload and then expect a continued relationship and regular attention from their living relatives, whose time and emotional energy are stretched thin? Instead of \u201cfreeing\u201d the dying to continue living, we\u2019ve obligated the living to a set of relationships beyond their ability to maintain, or else abandoned the elderly to be cared for by AI bots indefinitely.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>Commodification of Children<\/h2>\n<p>Still more disturbing, the naked commodification of family in \u201cUpload\u201d through the prospect of rearing AI \u201cchildren\u201d blended from co-parents\u2019 \u201cprograms\u201d so dead people can feel more fulfilled is clearly a dig at the idea that one can start and raise families after upload.\u00a0One of \u201cUpload\u2019s\u201d chief problems that becomes obvious in season two is not only its propensity to create dysfunction in pre-existing relationships, but its inability to provide the basis for a functional natural family, the primary building block of healthy societies. <\/p>\n<p>Again, the problems in \u201cUpload\u201d are duplications or further complications of things that have already gone very wrong. We are increasingly engaged in the commodification of <em>real <\/em>children as the surrogacy and \u201cdesigner baby\u201d industries grow.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If AI babies exist and can convincingly grow and mature, would so-called \u201cchild-free\u201d individuals simply wait until the digital afterlife to give parenting a shot? Would women who desperately want a baby but have no real-world prospects of committed, loving relationships commit suicide to pursue an idealized AI family? <\/p>\n<h2>A Big Tech Dystopia<\/h2>\n<p>These are just the beginning of problems inherent in \u201cliving\u201d in VR. In \u201cUpload\u2019s\u201d technocratic near-future regime, controlling Big Tech corporations drive a sinister subplot, having gained all the power they lust after today.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A spoof of Google and Meta called \u201cHorizen\u201d stands as the clich\u00e9 big \u201ccapitalist\u201d baddie that\u2019s only looking to profit. In season two, they debut a newly legal feature called \u201cMindFrisk\u201d so they can scan residents\u2019 brains for key words or phrases (like things that are \u201canti-capitalist\u201d) that might indicate a potential threat. <\/p>\n<p>But Horizen\u2019s ability to control and surveil the denizens of its digital afterlife is far from dependent on its profit motive. And all the same threats to health, liberty, and privacy are presented right now in the leftist-controlled tech companies of Silicon Valley, including surveillance, censorship, attention-drain and perspective manipulation (i.e. newsfeed algorithms), loss of touch with reality, bombardment with advertisements, and body dysmorphia, to name a few.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>Man\u2019s Lust for Immortality<\/h2>\n<p>While Christians know that a soul cannot exist apart from the body in cyberspace, the possibility of \u201cupload\u201d is not the concern. Rather, it is the pursuit of a cheap, self-centered immortality that seeks, instead of being in communion with the one true God, to be <em>like <\/em>a god and live forever on one\u2019s own terms. The technological fantasy may be relatively new, but the story is as old as the Fall: A prideful human gets the idea that he knows best and ends up miserable.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Even while a growing number of people actively resisting God would be open to the idea of cybernetic immortality, the struggle of the uploaded to find rest in their \u201cretirement,\u201d even in a fictional reality that is meant to be humorous, should clue in even the secularists that this \u201cpost-human\u201d project is not desirable, even if it provided \u201canswers\u201d and goals to strive for. <\/p>\n<p>Much like biology-defying gender ideology, this faux immortality\u2019s solutions and \u201cfreedoms\u201d propagate problems of increasing complexity and causes for perpetual anxiety instead of providing clarity of purpose, morality, or comfort. If you do watch \u201cUpload,\u201d watch with that in mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Georgi is a Senior Contributor at The Federalist and host of <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-180-cast-with-georgi-boorman\/id1457346132%E2%80%9C\">The 180 Cast<\/a>, where she interviews people who have changed their minds on important political and social issues. She is a regular guest on Kevin McCullough Radio and other talk radio programs, and her editorial writing brings Christian and conservative principles to the foreground. She is also the co-author of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B07GCSVXWQ\/\">Clocking Out Early: The Ultimate Guide to Early Retirement<\/a>,&#8221; and enjoys a comfortably frugal life in central Washington with her family.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Season two of Amazon\u2019s popular sci-fi dramedy \u201cUpload\u201d is still trending on the platform\u2019s top 10 a month after its release. The humor is average at best and the left-wing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":660,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1436804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/660"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1436804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1436804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1436804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1436804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}