Bet on Immortality. Column in ComputerreOnline #81

In this column I want to continue reflections on how to compare ethical values. Here I explained why I consider that, for their comparison (however difficult), two characteristics are important: the measure of their uniqueness and the expected duration of their existence. Here I tried to reason about how uniqueness can be measured, and in this story I gave an example of how the value of human creativity and the uniqueness of a historical moment can be reflected in the objects that come into contact with them. It remains to think about how we assess the prospects of existence of what turns out to be valuable to us.
But first I will digress. The key thought for this conversation I encountered in Teilhard de Chardin, and I want to recall under what circumstances.
...It was the perestroika of the Soviet Union, 1989. I was a student who brought a report on Teilhard de Chardin to a conference organized by the Moscow Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology (founded in its time by V. I. Vernadsky). Teilhard, a priest, Jesuit, paleontologist, evolutionist, struck my imagination. My work was devoted to how Teilhard anticipated and simultaneously developed ideas that entered (through other authors) modern systems theory.
I learned about Teilhard from a book by Vadym Ivanovych Nazarov, an employee of that institute. In a distinctly Soviet book, Nazarov exposed French idealists in the field of evolutionary theory, but did so by highlighting the strong points of the views he formally condemned. Seeing a friend’s “The Phenomenon of Man” by Teilhard, I already knew, thanks to Nazarov, that it was an extremely interesting book. I asked to read it, wrote a paper, came to the conference and talked with Nazarov himself.
He suggested that some unpublished in the USSR translations of Teilhard’s works might be in the Trinity‑Sergius Lavra, in the Moscow Theological Academy. The Orthodox Church could have made these translations for its own needs. I broke into the academy library for almost a week. I was told they would let me in if I brought a petition addressed to the archbishop asking for his blessing for such work, written by the institute’s director. The director declared that he was an old communist and would not ask priests for a blessing. The scientific secretary asked. The archbishop considered the petition and blessed it. The library director allowed me to work with any sources included in the catalogue, but prohibited photographing them. One way or another, I got in...
The library indeed contained translations of then‑unpublished works of Teilhard. I manually copied “How I Believe” and “The Mass on the World”. Returning, I went to a biological station whose director allowed me to use a powerful electric typewriter. I printed as many copies as I could, distributed them to interested people. Later I saw a reprint made from my printout. I am proud: I managed to contribute to the unique Soviet phenomenon of samizdat.
At the same time I won a competition of works organized by the Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology. I was commissioned to produce a preprint—a brochure from a series the institute issued. I wrote it, sent it to print… and nothing else happened. A few years later I went back to the institute to learn the fate of my manuscript. An employee opened a folder with preprints that had been prepared for printing but remained unpublished due to the collapse of the Union and the cessation of funding for such publications. My manuscript was the first one. Soon after, the translations of Teilhard that I had hand‑copied were published (perhaps from the very typewritten originals I had worked with!) with a thoughtful and friendly foreword by Alexander Men.
Thus, I clearly remember how, in the theological academy library, I was struck by the strange attention Teilhard gave to immortality.