Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch (1921) is a cycle of five philosophical plays written by George Bernard Shaw, exploring the idea that human lifespans must drastically increase to allow for intellectual and spiritual maturity. The overarching theme, which Shaw calls "Creative Evolution," suggests that humanity must actively "will" itself to live longer, aiming for a life span of roughly 300 years to transcend current human failures.
Synopsis of the Five Parts:
I. In the Beginning (4004 B.C.): Set in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve learn about death. They fear it and, realizing they cannot live forever, choose to embrace life and procreation to keep humanity going.
II. The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas (Present Day): Two brothers, the Barnabas brothers, preach the new gospel of longevity: humans must increase their lifespan to 300 years to reach full maturity and manage the world efficiently.
III. The Thing Happens (A.D. 2170): The experiment has worked. Humans are beginning to live longer. The "elderly" now live 300 years, and they are taking over management of the world from shorter-lived humans, who are deemed irresponsible and child-like.
IV. Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman (A.D. 3000): A short-lived human visits a community of long-lived humans to ask for guidance. However, the long-lived beings have evolved so far beyond standard human experience that they find the elderly gentleman's emotional dependencies trivial and confusing.
V. As Far as Thought Can Reach (A.D. 31,920): Humanity has evolved into an almost purely intellectual, immortal species that is born from eggs, lives for centuries, and eventually sheds their physical bodies to become "vortices of thought," having abandoned art, passion, and physical existence entirely.
The work also includes a significant preface, titled "An Infidel Half Century," which sets up Shaw's arguments against Darwinian evolution and in favor of creative, purposeful development.l
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