Life After Death in a Type V Civilization | Unveiled

Life After Death in a Type V Civilization

To some, there’s no greater goal for humanity than life immortal. There’s no higher aim for science and technology than ensuring that we, human beings, can live forever. We’re not there yet, but rise to the top of the Kardashev Scale… and we almost certainly will be.

This is Unveiled, and today we’re exploring the extraordinary, probable reality of life after death in a type five civilization.

On Nikolai Kardashev’s original Kardashev Scale there was no type five. Nor type four, for that matter. But, in the years since the 1960s and when Kardashev first devised his now famous model, it has been added to. Type four foretells of a civilization with all the power potential of the universe… and type five takes it one step even further, with all the power potential of the multiverse. By now, we’re imagining a supremely advanced society, far, far beyond us as we are today. In fact, to our eyes, a type five civilization would be a wholly alien - even god-like - place. Type fives not only understand that the multiverse is real, but they can travel it and use it in whichever way they want. This is an age of time travel, then, of limitless energy, collective consciousness, and of many, many more dimensions than the three (kind of four) that we, ourselves, enjoy. As such, it’s also an age at which whoever (or whatever) makes it that far will never die.

There are multiple ways to achieve this. The most obvious (and inevitable) is via the hive mind. But, really, by the time of type five even the “standard” hive mind is a thing of the dim and distant past, swapped out and improved upon over probably millions of years so that it’s now something even more sophisticated. Today, when science fiction imagines a hive mind, it’s usually wrapped up in the bits and files and downloads of digital technology. We’ve watched in recent years while computers and systems and motherboards have accelerated almost everything about our lives… and so, there’s a tendency to assume that, in the future, it will be much the same, only even bigger and faster.

And perhaps that’s all well and good for types two and three… but, by the time we’re dealing with the multiverse, even the likes of quantum computing will be an archaic technology. Technology itself could be a wholly forgotten concept. A type five being exists literally outside and apart from this universe. It can see and contemplate other universes, too. And it’s a sure bet that it isn’t organizing its day via an app on its smartphone. Instead, type fives are usually presented as though they have instant knowledge of everything, whenever they require it, as though it’s built-in to their existence. Again, when we think of such total knowledge ourselves, we generally go straight to the internet as a prime example. But, at type five, even the internet is but a drop in the ocean of everything else that’s known to them. It’s a footnote on a tiny, miniscule section of history, for a being that doesn’t even really have a consideration of “history” in the first place, because time is all around them - rather than only in front and behind.

With such omniscience, then, a type five may well have transformed itself into less a physical thing and more a metaphysical construct. Indeed, in some predictions for type five, the civilization itself inevitably merges into one, single entity. That entity might employ physical objects and beings to exist as though on its behalf… but, ultimately, the civilization (as a whole) is so efficient that it channels itself instantly and totally through one “thing”. Again, this is then more than most versions of the hive mind as we currently understand it. Rather than technological supremacy, this is a celestial phenomenon.

There’s life after death, then… 1) because the type five can never truly die in the first place, so even if parts of it do then the remaining parts would continue while the rest could presumably regenerate, and 2) because purpose-built afterlives will have been created on the journey to type five, as well.

Taking human beings as an example of so-called “intelligent life” (because it's the only currently confirmed example there is) we can already chart the progression of the afterlife. We’re now around a type 0.7 on the Kardashev Scale, but the afterlife was born at a slightly earlier stage. Theories vary, but there’s some evidence that ancient humans - alive 100,000 years ago, or more - may have had some level of spiritual belief. There are clues unearthed in burial sites to suggest that when our distant ancestors buried their dead, they did so believing that part of them lived on.

From here, this idea has morphed and evolved over millennia, to become the multi-faceted afterlife concept that we have today. From reincarnation to heaven and hell, there are now many versions of life after death, with most mainly influenced by the world’s religions… which, although they may seem constant, have actually only been around for just the last couple thousand years or so. By the future time of type five, it’s perhaps highly likely then that these ideas will’ve changed beyond recognition again. Religion (period) may even have disappeared. But still, the seed for the afterlife that might be possible at type five will have been planted by us, and by those who came just a short time before us - in the grand scheme of things.

If we then accept that we’re fast heading to upper-type-one and lower-type-two status, we can predict what’s to come. What the next stage will be. And, again, most claims are that the afterlife will soon be physically possible and understood. That we’ll no longer require Faith to make it happen, but rather an armored server and an inexhaustible digital power source. Mind uploads, for example, have moved from being a wholly science fiction idea to an imminent real-world technology. From microscopic roundworms, to macroscopic insects, and even small animals like mice… scientists are busily creating whole “brain maps” for increasingly complex living things, with human beings being the ultimate goal.

In 2019, news broke that a combined team from Harvard University and Google had mapped the most detailed piece of the human brain yet. Meanwhile, the Human Genome Project describes itself as “one of the greatest scientific feats in history”, and that’s probably still putting it modestly. All in all, we’re seemingly paving the way for some kind of post-biological human existence; where we no longer need the physical bodies (amazing, but also temporary) that have carried our species this far. This could be the next big step for the afterlife, transforming from idea (or unproven concept) to solid, verifiable, implementable fact.

So, what comes after that? There’s much to be done, with that Harvard-Google breakthrough, for example, still only amounting to one cubic millimeter of the human brain total. But the Kardashev model gives some hints as to where we’re headed. At type three, for instance, when we’re packing the energy potential of the Milky Way galaxy, might whole planets double up as next generation (or, next type) supercomputers to house all of us together? It’s a genuine offshoot of a wider concept sometimes known as a Matrioshka Brain. At type four, do those planets connect across the universe, to form a kind of Matrioshka Network? Naturally, the path is impossible to know… but, as with everything else on the Kardashev Scale, the goal will always be to expand and to make the afterlife more and more efficient. From belief to physical reality, to high-functioning background noise.

And then, finally, we again arrive back at the top, to that type five “hive mind” that isn’t really a hive mind (as we understand it) at all. It’s far more than that. An installed way of being rather than a strived-for way of carrying on; or of surviving. Indeed, for a type five entity, even thinking about the afterlife won’t be necessary. It’ll just be there… something like the given, expected elements of life at our current level, such as air and light. To some degree, then, there actually won’t be an afterlife at type five. A type five being will have moved past such things. After all, it does have all of the multiverse to contend with, and it doesn’t really get more eternal than that.

What’s your verdict? Would you like to wield the god-like power that type five would give? Or are you happy enough with this regular life, back at type 0.7? Perhaps there are positives and negatives for both… but still, some predict that one day, somewhere, type fives will exist. Or even that they already do… although that’s another story. For now, we can see that the prospect of dying could wholly change the longer we keep on living. Because that’s what life after death in a type five civilization would be like.