5 Reasons Why Being Immortal Would Suck
Remember the final refrain of the classic Queen song “Who Wants To Live Forever?”
Who wants to live forever?
Who wants to live forever?
Forever is our today
Who has forever anyway…
If you’re like most people, you probably answered that in your head with “ME! I want to live forever!” It does sound appealing, doesn’t it? The idea that you would never die as long as you kept your head was what really captured people’s imagination about Highlander. The same goes for vampires. The big difference between vampires and other much more boring supernatural creatures like goblins, ghouls, ogres, and pixies is that they can live for thousands of years…. like God. Just imagine what you could do, learn, and become if you had thousands of years to do it! Unfortunately, there may be a few downsides people haven’t considered…
1) Sometimes, death is a mercy.
We get this when it comes to animals. When a pet’s whole life becomes misery, we put it down. Even though we don’t do the same with other humans because of political and cultural reasons, we understand it. But, if you were immortal and healthy, why would you ever WANT to die?
In Greek mythology, the immortal Prometheus was chained on a mountain, and each night a vulture came to rip out his liver and eat it.
In Ninja Scroll, the immortal Lord Himuro Gemma is washed into the sea by a wave of boiling gold, which hardens, traps him, and takes him to the bottom.
In the TV show Angel, the main character, who is a vampire, is sealed in a metal box and dropped to the bottom of the ocean.
In the TV show Supernatural, the unkillable Doc Benton is chained in a refrigerator and buried alive.
Imagine being caught in a landslide, being trapped in a plane that goes down over the ocean, or even being captured and experimented on by a government trying to learn the secrets of your immortality. There are times when dying beats all the other options.
2) It would make relationships with other people extraordinarily difficult.
The finest quote C.S. Lewis ever came up with:
Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.
If that’s true, how happy would an immortal be? As you get older, some of the deepest hurts are the losses, the people you cared about deeply who are no longer in your life. Imagine the impact of those losses stacking on top of each other, one after the other, decade after decade, century after century, millennia after millennia. Could you go anywhere, do anything, without it reminding you of someone you cared about whom you outlived? Imagine being immortal and finding your soulmate. Then, year after year, she’d grow older as you remained the same age. Eventually, you’d be a 25-year-old man in a relationship with an old crone. Even if you were okay with it, can you imagine how weird and awkward it would make her feel? What a depressing existence that would turn out to be.
3) Death is a big part of what makes life meaningful.
In Troy, Achilles delivers this line,
I’ll tell you a secret, something they don’t teach you in your temple. The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now, and we will never be here again.
If you’re immortal, how can you ever be a hero with no risk to your personal safety? How can you experience a thrill bungee jumping or sky diving when you know there’s no way you can die? Whose accomplishments could you measure yourself against? Why would you feel motivated to get up in the morning today? You could always do whatever you were planning to do today, tomorrow, next month, or in twenty years — what difference would it make?
We may not want to die, but it’s that finality, that end point, that race against the clock that helps give meaning to our lives.
4) Everyone would seem so stupid.
Karl Marx was wrong about most things, but he was right when he said, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Each generation likes to think of itself as fresh and original, but we repeat many of the terrible, yet appealing ideas that previous generations adopted with disastrous results. If you read history, you already know this. That’s bad enough, but imagine living through all that stupidity and watching governments adopt ideas you knew would fail 1000 years ago. The frustration of it would be crushing.
It would be even worse with people because they all start their lives as empty vessels that are never filled evenly. Everyone has foolish ideas, holes in their knowledge, and flawed beliefs — all of which would be readily apparent to an immortal. After all, if you talk to people for a few thousand years, you’ll pick up a few things. At some point, talking to other people would probably become like talking to a dog. “No, no, get away from that. Ok, good boy, good boy. Ooh yeah, you really shouldn’t hump that, buddy!”
5) It would be so boring.
As Susan Erz once said, “Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”
Now, ponder having an UNLIMITED number of rainy Sunday afternoons, stretching on endlessly, from here to eternity. Want to visit the Amazon? Have a threesome? Go mountain climbing? Get in a gunfight? Great! What happens when you’ve done all of those things 5 times each? What happens when there is literally nothing you want to do that you haven’t already done a dozen times? You couldn’t even use the AWESOME skills you’ve developed to become the world’s best baseball player or cure cancer because that would make it likely that 30 years later, someone would figure out your secret and you’d end up in the government lab mentioned earlier, wishing that you could die. So, welcome to Dullsville. Population you. Forever.
****
Recently from John Hawkins at PJ Lifestyle:
I’m aware of the criticisms mentioned in this article. However, I don’t think there is enough merit to them.
First of all, I appreciate the fact that unlike many critics, you are assuming people are immortally young.
1 – There is danger and risk in immortality. Some situations can result in a fate worse than death. That kind of undermines the idea that being an immortal removes the danger in life, doesn’t it?
2 – Probably the best of your criticisms is this one, that you would see everyone around you die. However, consider normal life – people around you die regularly. Taken to its logical extreme, your position favors an early death, to avoid outliving people. As to how people will deal with losing someone close to them and watching them age rapidly in front of them, consider than people still keep pets, despite the fact that Fluffy or Fido is almost certainly going to die well before their owner does. Also, this presumes you cannot share your immortality with others, which might just be possible with enough work.
3 – Why are young people motivated to do things when many of them view death as only an abstraction? Why, because they enjoy the activity or want to enjoy the result of the activity (like money from work). I really do not understand this point, and in fact I would say that if anything death makes things more meaningless. Most stuff that you do is going to have no effect in a few years, just about everything else will be washed away in a few generations. Here, you can watch the fate of your family, the fate of your nation, the impact of your deeds. For that matter, you could work on sharing your immortality if possible. You could spend years making the elixir of life, and end disease forever.
4 – If you are an immortal, you have a serious advantage. You can play the long game, and become extremely multi-talented. An immortal should be able be the smartest man in just about any room. You could easily find a market for such knowledge in the private sector, or the halls of government power. Anyone wanting to dissect you will have rivals who would appreciate your skills. That’s not considering that you could amass a vast fortune over time with good investments. The author considers this a bad thing, because you will feel smarter than most people. I don’t know about you, but I like hanging around kids, and I definitely have a huge intellectual edge over my five year old cousin. Doesn’t mean she’s not a sweetheart and an absolute blast to be around. And if you don’t feel frustrated by general historical ignorance now, start following politics. You don’t need to be immortal to feel that, you just need to have paid attention in history class.
5 – Boredom is a choice. There is always something to do. There is a library full of books to read, along with numerous journals and magazines. There are vast numbers of places to visit and revisit, tasks to work at, things to build, goals to accomplish. With a vast fortune from a life of investments, you could sponsor films from those obscure books that you like, or set up great works of charity. Build a mansion – yourself. Travel to Mars – sure it has risks of being stranded, but I seem to recall you saying that risk gives meaning to life. The amount of stuff we currently have for someone to do is enough to keep you occupied for at least the next century or so. By then, you’ll either need to rebuild civilization or we’ll have stuff even more amazing like perfect VR, interstellar travel, and artificial intelligences who can keep pace with you intellectually.
Honestly, I think the biggest issue would be hubris. It’s going to be hard to be humble and see yourself as no better than anyone else, when you are better than everyone else. You’d need a steady supply of trusted friends to remind you that you are still fallible, still capable of being stupid. Hopefully, an immortal could become wise over time, but there is the chance of becoming a supervillain.
So sign me up for immortality. I see it as a net gain to myself and hopefully the world.
I think you have spent too much time thinking about immortality. Either that, or reading too much. On the other hand, why don’t you write that book on immortals you want to write at last?
When I was young and in my prime,
I thought on existence and the end of Time.
Now I am old and turning gray
And I know that Time is here to stay…
Right.
Death does give meaning to some aspects of life, but takes it away elsewhere. Number one doesn’t impress me.
Two, yeah that would be the really hard one.
Three, oh lord. There are plenty of reasons to be motivated. Liking helping others.
Four. Yeah, but that’s already true.
Five. I agree with OP. boredom is a choice. Immortality could once one to do fewer meaningless, self oriented things like mountain climbing or thrill seeking, and focus on gaining wisdom and impassioned, teaching, helping. It old b enormously fulfilling.
ok, so lets just settle on living for 100,000 years. That is older than the oldest man made structure on earth. if I could out live the birth and death of a civilization, i would be happy. Or to watch the effects of tectonic plate movements on geopolitics….
I do not know who said it but it struck a cord, ‘The vagaries of old age prepare us for death’.
10 years as a feeble, sickly 90 year old, would be an eternity. 100,000 years as a youthful vibrant 21 year old would be a blink of an eye.
Our Lord, Jesus Christ, told us that we will all live forever, Mt.25.31-46. The question is, “Where and under what conditions?” Either with Him, in the kingdom He has prepared for us; or in eternal torment. Our choice. Should we choose to Trust, Love and Obey Him, all will be well.Otherwise all will be awful- forever.
This is not a subject for frivolity. Got it?
I happen to believe both outcomes spring directly from our existing for all eternity. (“Living” is not quite the term I would use for what Jesus referred to as the Second Death.) Leave a fellow to stew in his pride, hatred, lust, and greed for all eternity, and I can see how that would be Hell indeed. A majority of people seem to think of Hell as being an external punishment, but I think it’s entirely self-inflicted: even the flames and torment the Bible mentions could spring from being consumed with these various evils; after all, we speak in our language of “burning” with hatred or lust and the like, so why shouldn’t such a burning become very real and literal in some ethereal hereafter?
Heaven, likewise, comes from being purged of these traits for all eternity, leaving only whatever paltry virtues we might have cultivated as our eternal blessings. (If you didn’t cultivate them, well… it’s still Heaven, just not with so many blessings.) What we could be, absent our pride, hatred, lust, and greed, I can scarcely imagine, but I can likewise see how that kind of eternity could be Heavenly.
When people ask how a loving God could put people in Hell, therefore, the question they’re really asking is why God would do such an awful thing as to create us eternal, and then give us minds of our own and let us choose to be evil and carry our evils with us into eternity. To this, you can basically reply: “Maybe you’d prefer that we weren’t created eternal, then? Or that we didn’t have minds of our own and free will?”
The drawbacks mentioned are all applied to a rather limited notion of immortality: one single individual somehow uniquely enjoying absolute physical deathlessness. This likely isn’t close to what those who wish for “immortality” envision. The more modest-sounding “life extension” probably comes nearer to what people imagine, & I’d guess that, like me, they’d prefer to live longer with others who share the same capacity.
Being unkillable (while corporeal) generally belongs to the realm of fantasy. Yet Tolkien’s Elves, who could live indefinitely, might also be slain like any man–or die from psychic shock. I’d guess they’re more the model for us wanna-be immortals than vampires or Olympian gods.
As OmegaPaladin hinted, exploring the universe offers one way of using an expanded time budget.
Yes, I too was thinking of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings while reading this article. But I had another part of it in mind. Bilbo, the Hobbit, possessed the One Ring for many decades. Rings of Power afford you a very long life, if not outright immortality. But Bilbo grew tired. As he complained to Gandalf, he felt thin, like “too little butter spread on too much bread”.
When people think of immortality, it’s always life after death, going to Heaven, etc. On earth, there can be no immortality. But certainly, humans live longer today than they did 2000 years ago. And certainly, life spans will grow longer, as better medical science, healthier living, cleaner environment takes greater hold. We just have to keep going where no man has gone before. That way, we”ll always be occupied. And never feel “thinned out”.
More humans live to old age, but humans do not live longer nowadays. Top limit is the same as always, around 100.
I always wondered about Tolkein’s Elves myself. They sure didn’t mind being immortal but they all accepted the fact that they would all eventually die in battle sooner or later or shipping off from the Gray Havens to wherever-across-the-sea. You’d think there would be a serious female-to-male disproportion among the Elvish population as a result.
Wasn’t Elrond supposed to be the very oldest?
Not by a long shot. In fact, he married Galadriel’s daughter (Idreal(sp)?). But I think Galadriel was the only one to leave Valinor and survive to go back.
Yee haw, deploying advanced knowledge of Tolkien!
The oldest living elf in Middle Earth by the end of the Third Age was Celeborn, aka Mr. Galadriel. He was mentioned as the ‘wisest being in Middle Earth’ in the first book. He was most likely one of the ‘originals’ from the beginnings of the Elves; he is mentioned as a ‘kinsman of Elu Thingol’ and no birthdate is recorded for him. Galadriel’s birth is mentioned as having taken place in Valinor.
IIRC Celeborn is mentioned as having lived at one time in Tol Eressea within sight of the Blessed Realm and thus (likely) experienced the light of the Two Trees, which would make him Eldar and not Avari. He went with Galadriel into exile willingly (no accounts to the contrary), but the implication seemed to be that Galadriel was the one pushing this.
Beyond that we don’t have any definitive list of the members of Elrond’s household in Rivendell. Erestor, for instance, may be a Noldor, a Teleri, a Sindarin (or Nandorin)or even a Silvan (Avari). Most likely he was a Noldor, but that’s just a guess. And then there is the debate over Glorfindel and whether or not he was, in fact, the same Glorfindel that shows up doing deeds of derring-do during the First Age. He is mentioned as having seen the light of the Two Trees (implying Noldor or maybe Teleri) but the Silmarillion specfically states that the earlier Glorfindel got killed by a Balrog. Presumably, however, none of the other Elves in Rivendell are older than Galadriel or Celeborn.
That is probably it for the elves from the First Age, unless we want to include Maglor the Minstrel, who may yet be wandering the shores of Middle Earth mourning the Silmaril he tossed into the sea. But even he, a son of Feanor, would not be as old as Celeborn. Now if we want to talk NON-elves, then there are the Ents (of which Treebeard was the eldest and possibly predates the waking of the Elves) and, of course, Tom Bombadil (who as a Maia/Vala was 100% immortal) and his wife Goldberry.
***
Tolkien talks about immortality, saying the Elves did not fully understand the Gift of Men (death) and occasionally envied it, growing weary of mortal lands. Being tied to this world, e.g. being immortal, would tend to preclude advancement into other modes of reality, and Tolkien alludes to this. So if humanity were to leap into alternate planes of reality through a change in modes of existence, being immortal in this world would tend to suck out loud.
I’m such a geek. I understood that.
I could take or leave immortality. But please, give me back the body I had in my early 20′s while in the Marines. Holy crap do I miss that bod – the speed, endurance (in the field and the bedroom), the energy! I did things back then that I wouldn’t believe if I hadn’t been there and witnessed them.
My ultimate immortality fantasy would be to be immortal but SEEM to age. You could go through a normal lifespan with all of a mortal life’s loves and losses, triumphs and tragedies. Then, somewhere between eighty and one hundred, having made all the surreptitious preparations beforehand, fake your death and retreat to your Fortress of Solitude to regenerate your outward bodily appearance over a few weeks. Than, having restored yourself to age eighteen to twenty, with a new identity, with some of the fortune built up from your previous lives, step back into the world. Hopefully this would include the ability to change your appearance somewhat between regenerations so an ancient 150 year-old photograph doesn’t appear to blow your cover (like Nick Cage recently).
Leaving aside the fantasy of immortality based upon some supernatural force, it is likely it the future, certainly not mine, but possibly that of my children and almost certainly that of my grand-children that disease free indefinite life extension will have been achieved.
Also, almost certainly along with life extension will come the ability to change your genes so that everyone will have what is now considered genius level IQ.
But comes the question, when we are all Adonis or Helen of Troy, what then? How much time can be spent enjoying the shade in Elysian fields? How many jugs of wine can be consumed before the flavor turns to vinegar in our mouths?
Sure, we could spend our eternity cataloging the stars, but to what end? When you know at a fundamental level that which makes the light possible, doesn’t the mystery end and the magic run out?
To know all and to know there isn’t any more inevitably leads to madness, and to destruction by the gods.
I understand that one description of Elysium stated that the heroes were eternally happy there because their memories departed from them every night, so every day was, indeed, a new day. Now there’s an elegant solution to a particular problem!
Lovely – a bunch of immortals with Alzheimer’s. No thanks.
I like the immortality Option. As long as there’s an opt-out, too.
Yeah but there might just be compensations.
This must just be sour grapes, or why would you waste your mortal minute worrying about it?
Setting aside issues specific to particular religions, if you accept that there is such a thing as a human ‘soul’ then there already is some type of immortality.
If this is the case, then what does the soul do to stave off boredom for all eternity after the physical stage ends?
And if that is the case, then what is wrong with that soul continuing forever – just as a corporeal existence?
IMO, the soul has plenty to do in the next stage of existence. It must review its earthly actions and see (and experience) their consequences for other people. It must learn from its mistakes and atone for them. Eventually it must choose a new incarnation best suited to learning new lessons – or, if physicality is no longer necessary, it must transition to higher spiritual planes. There is always more to learn, more to do, more growth and evolution, as the soul makes its way back to the godhead from which it sprang. Plus, there is the love and companionship of other souls embarked on the same journey.
At least that’s how I see it after many years of immersion in relevant subjects: near-death experiences, mediumship, children’s past-life memories, mystical teachings and traditions, etc.
So don’t worry, be happy.
There is no such thing as reincarnation. There is only the resurrection of the dead. Anything contrary to the resurrection of the dead is deception.
I always find it amusing when two people who belive different but equally implausible things call each other ignorant/deceived/crazy or what have you.
Heh – so do I. Though I must say, if I had my druthers, I’d prefer reincarnation to most of the other theories I don’t belive.
So is begging the question.
@ disputin and mythbuster,
Like I said, “Setting aside issues specific to particular religions”….IMHO, it is enough to simply accept as a starting point that there is a soul and it lives forever.
If you accept that concept, then the rest is conjecture.
I still don’t see why it could not continue on indefinitely and without boredom or desire to end itself within a physical vessel.
Then again, I guess all of us will find the answer one way or another one day….
A decade long nap sounds nice. Then, maybe pie.
I imagine many PJ readers wouldn’t have a hard time picking which decade to snooze through…
“4) Everyone would seem so stupid.”
I am not immortal and I have already experienced this. In 1976 I voted for Jimmy Carter. Thirty two years later I saw young people voting for Obama with the same stupid enthusiasm for the same stupid reasons and with the same stupid result.
I think there’s a subtle distinction between actually wanting to live forever, and not wanting to actually die… Also, I believe the desire to live forever is closely related to wanting to go back in time, or wanting to know now what you didn’t know as a younger person. It’s simply a desire to for an edge, a desire for unlimited do-overs….
A.C. Swinburne said it best:
“From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever,
That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.”
Once on the Other Side, all bets are off…
A lot stress and sadness exists in people because they know their time is limited. There is stress to “just do it”, “be all you can be”, do it now, for tomorrow you may DIE! The type “A” personality is admired; if you are not juggling multiple tasks at once, you’re a slacker.
The idea of immortality sounds like a blessing to those of us who prefer a slower pace; who enjoy “wasting time” watching the sunrise, or smelling the flowers, or watching puppy videos on Youtube. With unlimited time, there is no need to worry about wasting time.
Another plus- if you’ve spent a good part of your life on a career and it turns out you hate it, no problem. You have all the time in the world to learn another trade. And you can keep changing careers whenever you get bored with the one you are in. Sounds like heaven to me.
But I do agree that the fantasy only works if my loved ones are also immortal. Without that, the heaven becomes hellish.
If you and your loved ones were immortal, you’d stop caring about them. Why care when you’ll never lose them. Why say sorry when you can always wait till tomorrow? It’s another bill of goods sold by the transhumanists.
That makes no sense whatsoever. Sure, I’d imagine a group of immortals could get into feuds that last longer without the pressure of looming death waiting to kill you all, but that isn’t the root of love and affection. I didn’t start to love my parents more when I realized they could die. If I can’t stand someone, I’m not going to fall in love because she is going to die shortly. People will still say sorry, because they want the good relationship they had back before the feud.
My definition of a loved one is someone you need to be with in order to be happy. So you will still care about and apologize to your loved ones, because you’d be miserable without them in your life. If you don’t care about seeing someone regularly, he’s not a loved one; he’s merely an acquaintance.
Love isn’t based on death; it’s based on need. Lack of death alone doesn’t lead to needing people less. A relationship may sour over time to the point where you no longer need or want a particular person in your life– perhaps even due to boredom; but that’s pretty standard even among us non-immortals.
Maybe you are imagining that as immortals we would evolve into beings who no longer need strong emotional ties to other humans — which is of course entirely possible. But is it plausible? Would we give up the pleasure that arises out of needing other people– especially when the pain of losing them is absent– unless we were somehow better off without it?
Mr Hawkins, I refer you to the works of Robert A. Heinlein, specifically “Methuselah’s Children” and the epic “Time Enough for Love”.
As usual, Science Fiction has already trodden this path – 25 to 50 years ago – and has dealt with immortality, genetic engineering, trans-humanism and other topics suddenly being discussed as they loom in our near future.
BTW, those who can endure the problems of immortality will likely be all that is left of humanity after a few generations.
Yeah, most of the sci-fi authors who envisioned humanity discovering the secret of immortality (or at least a vastly lengthened lifespan) usually envisioned humanity becoming stagnant and decadent as a result.
“Time Enough For Love” especially captures these issues exquisitely. And the protagonist, faced with living this life, to end it…unless he can be offered a reason to live.
Jonathan Swift: Immortals keep aging and eventually just become reeeeaaaaallllllly old and feeble and are ignored by society and treated as dead anyway.
Douglas Adams: Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, became immortal through an accident and was not instinctively able to handle it. His big downfall was his inability to handle rainy Sunday afternoons. So, he decided to insult everyone in the universe, in alphabetical order.
Just thought I’d throw those out there. Really enjoy your writings. Keep it up.
Heh – forgot that one. He said most of what Heinlein said in Methuselah’s Children in a few sentences. (And better…Lazarus had issues – his kids/grandkids/Mom/AIs etc. seemed not to.) Maybe a cultural thing, but I think Heinlein had a bias. And I wish he’d lived long enough to favor us with more of it. And I wish Douglas Adams had lived far longer, too. Sigh. My MAIN wish for immortality is for others I want to keep going at least till I go. (Their mileage may vary.)
How do you know they won’t die first to get away from YOU?
This was already done on cracked.com like 2 years ago.
http://www.cracked.com/article_18708_5-reasons-immortality-would-be-worse-than-death.html
And done much better.
Well, the sort of immortality you describe is, not really plausible. I mean, for example, if you’re buried alive eventually you’re gonna die. You’d have to be hopped up on some sort of physics bending magical nano fairies to get around the whole lack of oxygen thing, or from simply being crushed.
Now, immortality through biological regeneration is plausible, in fact I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot more about that in the coming decades. Suffice to say, the idea there is that, through various therapies and medical treatments, your cells can be prompted to regenerate to such a degree that they become indistinguishable from cells generated in your prime. They’ve been able to do this already, just, not not a scale necessary to take an eighty year old man and make him look like a twenty year old.
This however is more eternal youth, rather than immortality. It’s not only more realistic, but may also be somewhat preferable. Not that I’m holding my breath mind you, scientists think they’re getting relatively close, but they said similar things about Mars Bases in the 70′s. It’d be nice, but its a fantasy until the scientists crack it
Even in a thousand years man would not get a chance to talk to all the beautiful people that occupy the world, not to mention all the millions of creatures that also occupy the world. The fascination would never cease. Imagine being able to talk with every living creature.
Would your wisdom allow you to nano yourself to particle size and traverse the inner universe of living organisms or small enough to witness atoms and quarks and in the spaces that are the realm of quantum physics?
Would immortality allow you to travel to Mars, or how long will it take to explore our solar system and witness the machinations of planetary growth and erosion.
Become a thought and sojourn the galaxy. How long will that take, and with billions upon billions more?
What other life forms to meet and share. The possibilities are endless, the worm holes, surfing black holes.
I have limited knowledge but I see a never ending story, and I didn’t even mention God yet.
If you are immortal why limit yourself to earth?
Death would not be joy and mercy, it would be the ending of fascination, explorations, praise and glory.
If you become immortal, would not everyone also have the chance to become immortal and also share the expanse of the infinite universe?
God must cry out in pain, extreme pain each time a child dies without the knowledge and faith about what is to come, knowing that the child forgot or refused the ticket to life the meaning of life itself, to immortality.
Someone once said, if you don’t believe, you won’t see it.
The Bible says even with eyes they won’t see.
It is not boring, even in a thousand years I would not see 1/1000 of what I would like to see,eat or experience on earth.
Time is an illusion. The great religions hint that we will eventually reach a realization of that truth. We are already immortal.
Douglas Adams (in So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish) called this “the long, dark tea-time of the soul”.
The problem isn’t that there isn’t “anything to do”. It’s that there is too much time to brood, due to there never being enough to do to fill the available time, even allowing for the “work expands to fill” principle.
This probably explains the Greek gods’ constant meddling in mortal affairs. It gave them something to occupy themselves, especially Zeus.
This would probably be the fate of any immortal. With longevity would come power, like it or not. Imagine living long enough that even a simple savings account accumulates enough in interest to essentially buy the Solar System- and it’s you that owns it, not your remote descendants. Or owning patents which no one can live without; you don’t need to be a genius, just know enough to bankroll someone who is.
Imagine an immortal who invested in Christopher Spencer’s National Tabulating Machines, Inc., in 1912; today, it’s known as IBM. Now imagine it still exists five centuries from now. Interplanetary Business Machines, Inc. probably owns half of the technology in the System. Picture having preferred stock in that.
Or, if you’re not into economics, start a religion which no one can resist. (Examples too numerous to list here.)
Sooner or later, an immortal will very likely be very powerful, indeed.
And with power, and boredom, comes the inevitable need to do something. At which point Chalker’s Law kicks in;
There’s a reason most immortals in myth and literature are either Dionysian libertines, Byzantine schemers, or raving psychotics. This is it.
On the whole, Heinlein’s immortals (the Howard Family, such as Lazarus Long) are probably more comfortable neighbors than Roger Zelazny’s (Lord of Light, the Amber novels, etc.). All Lazarus & Co. really care about are being left alone and having a good time; their definition of same includes constantly learning new things (see Libby Long in The Number of the Beast), and occasionally monkey-wrenching somebody who richly deserves it (see their “meddling” in the WWII Luftwaffe raid on Coventry, England in To Sail Beyond The Sunset).
Zelazny’s immortals, by comparison, have a positively unhealthy fascination with the pursuit of power for its own sake. Unhealthy for everyone else who gets caught in the blast radius, that is.
This may also explain why immortals have apparently never occurred in real life, at least that we know of.
When you play games at this level, sooner or later you’re likely to annoy somebody else with enough power to demonstrate their annoyance in no uncertain terms.
In that respect, Prometheus may have gotten off easy.
cheers
eon
I’ll say just one thing:
Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged
(Hitchhiker fans will understand the reference)
Technically, Duncan McCleod isn’t immortal. I think that is just a semantic point though.
Immortality while remaining otherwise normal and stuck on Earth would indeed be terrible for the reasons listed. A few science fiction stories have delved into this very prospect, often ending up with immortals eventually turning mortal again and die.
However, given how the world really works, if scientific immortality were discovered the elite would no doubt keep it to themselves then we might see the return of early Biblical lifespans. Imagine an Obama, Carter, Hitler or Stalin ruling for 20,000 years or even a few hundred. That’s not counting all the behind the scenes players, bankers, etc., who would get the treatment. Of course, without some very serious treaties they might not last very long as the lust for power and wealth led the to fight each other for more.
No, to be interesting immortality would have to be from something other than science and include the ability to move between worlds and other places. One could still return to Earth every few decades to see where in the cycle of stupidity Humanity is at the moment, if they haven’t killed themselves off yet, but spend most of the time elsewhere.
Remember that even the Elves eventually wearied of the change and evanescence of Middle Earth. Immortality would mean nothing unless it was joined with the joy and wonder of youth. Being in my sixties, I can understand eventually tiring of reading new things, visiting new places, hearing new music. There comes a point when you realize that, although it seems new, it’s really just the same old thing. There also comes a point that things seem to change too quickly (compared to our internal clocks) for our comfort. The world slowly becomes a little frightening and uncomfortable, as it passes beyond our understanding. We start to long for the days of our youth. If you get old enough, death comes as a relief.
Yes. And the increasing thought that one does not really belong here, in this kind of physical body, anymore and that by faith and revelation a better consciousness, a better “home”.
Sorry, sir, but humans ARE immortal. It is just a matter of where we go after we leave our fleshly bodies.
Saw on a truck in Florida one time (something to this effect):
“There are three things to consider regarding life after death:
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION”
There is so little evidence and so many problems with the concept of life after death that it is not something that anyone should count on – with apologies to my religious friends who are so invested in that belief. But I have been able to find peace by seing it this way: If there is such a thing as life after death it will be an unexpected bonus. If there is not, it will not matter to me – by definition. The only thing to worry about is how uncomfortable your transition is from life to death.
There is no such thing as life after death. You know it. I know it. Even the American people know it. Grow up.
Well, it wouldn’t be so bad if you were like the hero Maciste of Italian cinema. You would be immortal, but show up in all different places and in different times fighting evil evil tyrants, monsters, witches and molemen! Of course you might get a little tired of always “righting wrongs and fighting evil”
I for one would love to have an eternally 27 year old body, and I think I could enjoy watching the rise and fall of empires as I now enjoy watching the passing of the seasons.
Following on Marx’s observation about history: there are far many more tyrants like Obama and docile, dependent populations waiting down the line than patriots like George Washington and stalwart, self-reliant peoples. Who wants to endure the slaughterbench of history until the earth finally meets its cosmic termination? Eighty years is enough, thank you, especially after seeing the Fall of the Berlin Wall and “The End of History” only then to witness an upsurge in the madness of the jihadis.
By coincidence I have been re-reading some of the stories of my favorite author, Jorge Luis Borges. In once of them, actually called “The Immortal”, he writes of a Roman soldier who goes in search of a fabled river that will grant those who bathe in it immortality. This river is supposed to flow near a great and spectacular city where “The Immortals” all now live. He finds a sandy, shallow stream in a faraway desert land that is populated by seemingly ignorant, skeletal, disgusting and mute savages.
After casually dousing himself in the unimpressive stream he does find the city but also finds that it is a nightmare of mazes, labyrinths (a favorite Borges device) and incredibly irrational buildings with staris leading to nowhere. Eventually he finds that the sandy stream is, in fact, the river of grants immortality and that the savage troglodytes are indeed the immortals (as he now is.) They have built the mad city because immortality is a form of madness and they have devoted themselves to pure thought and nothing else. Eventually he goes in search of a fabled stream that will remove the curse of immotality.
Its the best refutation of the desire for immortality I have ever read.
Sounds kind of like the “Casca” series of novels. In that series, Casca was a Roman Legionnaire and it was he who thrust the spear into the side of Christ on the cross. Christ cursed him “A soldier you are and a soldier you shall be.” From that point on Casca can’t be killed and lives on as the eternal mercenary.
While he is never blown to bits, though I suspect he might regrow from the biggest bit since he is under a divine curse, he has other close calls. He’s buried alive a couple of times but passes out until he get air again, for example.
His condition does weigh on him, but he keeps going hoping that one day the curse will be lifted. It may help that he keeps meeting people who seem to be the reincarnations of friends from his Roman days, so perhaps the divine is showing some mercy, something a scientific immortality would not grant.
It’s not exactly classic literature, but I remember the Casca series being a lot of fun to read back in my navy days. That and “The Executioner” series.
It may do well to think of our physical life in this sense – it is a non-renewable, finite resource. You only have a certain amount of it, and once it’s gone it’s gone.
That finite limit is a huge part of why we don’t give up life so easily. We all value our own lives for that reason – and hopefully we are all living a full life and getting the absolute most out of our time on this earth.
I personally believe there is something that comes after life, but I’m like everyone else in that I’m not in any hurry to find out what that something is personally.
If immortality – in the sense that one couldn’t die even if they tried – were possible, would life cease to be valued as highly? After all, that which is rare is cherished and valued, that which is plentiful becomes devalued.
Is this what ultimate immortality would bring with it?
On the other hand, if immortality is simply a state where you just keep living and living and living unless some lethal event intervenes – much as applied to the old Greek gods who supposedly could be killed – then I could see life being seen as even more valuable. This would be especially true if that state of being came with youthful vigor and no hazard of dementia or similar ailments.
The threat of death remains, but you can continue on for hundreds or even thousands of years.
What would Leonardo Da Vinci think of man actually flying, setting foot on the moon or wiping out polio? What would he think of the great artists who followed him after the Renaissance?
I suspect they would have appreciated the opportunity.
Still, I hold that we really do have some measure of immortality in the sense that we have souls, so it’s a moot point.
There would have to be some adjustments to Social Security. Insurance companies would have to re-write their annuity plans. It would be wise to buy property in North Dakota, in case global warming continues. I could learn to read music and would have time to read War And Peace.
Anybody who is so easily bored that they would rather be dead is welcome to not participate an any looming immortality the rest of us may be fortunate enough to experience.
A very good book that explores this topic is The Ship of a Million Years, by Poul Anderson. Only difference: the “immortals” in his book can be killed, although they can’t die of disease or old age, and have extreme healing.
Since they can be killed, the immortals who actually survive work hard to keep a low profile.
The excellent book, The Postmortal, explores this idea. A cure for aging is developed a few years from now and it follows the main character for the next 60 years or so. A good read – http://www.amazon.com/The-Postmortal-Novel-Drew-Magary/dp/0143119826/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348607580&sr=8-1&keywords=the+postmortal
Seriously, why would pajamas media publish this kind of rubbish?
I thought pajamas media was supposed to be a milieu for classical liberalism/American conservatism. The underlying principles of such are individual
liberty, free markets, limited government, an an open unlimited future for whomever wants it. This piece directly contradicts every single one of these principles.
Radical life extension, as we call it, is an integral part of classical liberalism and American conservatism.
It’s been a long strange trip dude. Lighten up, you’ll live longer. Heh.
Woody Allen cracked that eternity is a long time–especially near the end.
He also said that he did not believe in re-incarnation because he did not want to sit through the Ice Capades again.
“imagine living through all that stupidity and watching governments adopt ideas you knew would fail 1000 years ago.”
Technology has progressed so well that stupidities can be repeated with even greater negative consequences. “We can make it work”, “This time is different” repeat again and again throughout history, but times of personal liberty are rare.
Scarier still is the thought that technology may someday actually provide a semi functional cradle to grave Nanny State. I wouldn’t want to live in it.
Wasn’t this the entire point of the Highlander series – well, the first movie and the first TV series? To explore all these various facets of immortality? Every idea you present here was dealt with in at least one episode of the series. Not saying that Highlander was high-minded science fiction, of course, but its protangonists did face serious dilemmas over the nature of their lives. Why discuss the most obvious (and boring) of these here, like this?
Immortality if defined as an infinite lifespan is probably not possible. When we technologically extend life, it is not an extension to a specific age, but a Gaussian curve. We move the mean to hundreds, thousands or millions of years, but the tails of the curve mean that decreasing numbers of people live lives that are 1, 2, 4 or more standard deviations longer or shorter. In a world of ‘functional immortality’, many will live to be thousand or hundreds of thousands of years in age. However, with current actuarial stats would have about half dying by accident before age 500, so we will need some methods to put bits back together and re-animated to get truly staggering spans. That will probably come at some point, once we have the ability to do full backups of ourselves. If one could make it out to a few hundred years in age from now, chances are those technologies will exist.
It is unfathomable to me that so many of you hate life so much that you wish to end it. Even in my 60′s I look forward to future decades with excitement and a sense of adventure. What comes next? What will happen next year? When will we make it to the stars? What wondrous things or apocalyptic things or a series of both await us? I want to know. Don’t you? If not, why not? Why do you fear the future? Why do you fear knowing?
If you want to die young (ie under a few hundred years old), I feel great pity for you because you do not know how to live and have given up on learning and changing.
Arthur C Clarke explored this in “Against the Fall of Night”/”The City and the Stars”. A person lived for 500-1,000 years than was recycled and reborn again at a later date, with the memories they chose to keep. This cycle had been happening for a billion years. It’s the same basic story, just written twice since Clarke wasn’t happy with it the first go around.
Interesting article. It suggests that, without risk of death, nothing could be of value. I think this is ultimately true. But why is it true?
Now, I don’t mean to go too far off point but this raises some interesting philosophical issues. (Interesting to me anyways.)
When exploring morality, Ayn Rand began her inquiry by asking whether men need an ethical code (or code of values) and, if so, why? To answer this question, she thought to first define what is meant by “value” or to ask ‘what facts give rise to this concept’?
She defined “value” as “that which one acts to gain and/or keep.” She also observed that “value” presupposes an answer to the question “of value to whom and for what”. In other words, you have to have an entity that can act to “gain and/or keep” something.
We don’t see rocks or doors or mountains pursing values, only living organisms.
She observed that 1) the existence of inanimate objects are unconditional. You can crush a rock or knock over a mountain and all you do is change the form of the matter. The matter still exists.
Living organisms on the other hand face an alternative between life or death. If we kill something that is living, its life goes out of existence. Its physical elements remain but its life is over.
She reasons (very generally stated by me) that it is only the concept of “life” that makes the concept of “value” possible. Thus, if something does not fact this fundamental alternative of life or death, it has no reason to pursue anything.
If you cannot die, you cannot value.
but just as it is written,
“Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard,
And which have not entered the heart of man,
All that God has prepared for those who love Him.”
These are all pretty silly, viz.:
(1) “Sometimes, death is a mercy.” You have presumed there is NO escape. But that’s silly. If you’re immortal, there is always an escape, if you wait long enough, because no matter how unlikely the chance of escape, if it’s not exactly zero — and what is? — then it will happen, sooner or later. Plus if you’re immortal, any obnoxious interval waiting for, e.g. your underwater stainless steel coffin to dissolve away, molecule by molecule, will be infinitismal compared to the bazillions of years you have to spend. As Lazarus Long would say, you can do a century of close confinement or pain or whatever standing on your head, as easy as we mortals can do 5 minutes.
(2) “It would make relationships with other people extraordinarily difficult.” First, who says so? You’d be the wisest person around. That’d be worth babes, if not honor and glory. You’d always be making new friends, to replace those you lost. Relatively few of us have the same friends at 70 we had at 16. Friends come and go naturally anyway. Second, it’s kind of an odd supposition to think (a) you’re the ONLY immortal and, (b) given eternity to work on it, you simply can’t make at least one more.
(3) “Death is a big part of what makes life meaningful.” That’s completely silly. You can say risk-taking is what makes life meaningful, if you wish, but there are many varieties of risk besides risk of death. You can risk months and years of happiness, or work, or the happiness of others, or wealth, or self-esteem, or any number of things. I doubt very many entrepreneurs starting up a tiny business are thinking “Wow, the major risks here are that I might be killed by angry customers.” They’re usually thinking in terms of loss of security, humiliation, loss of leisure. An immortal wouldn’t think differently.
Or you could put it this way: people take risks because they want their life in the near future to be more meaningful, and they are willing to risk it being a lot less meaningful. That calculus would not change for an immortal, who is presumably just as capable of regarding months and years of life as a waste, something to be deplored, and would be just as likely to value months and years of happiness and leisure.
Besides which, it’s a very weird kind of immortality that isn’t subject to any accidental death. When most people speak of “immortality” they usually mean you can ONLY die by accident (or murder), and not of old age or disease. That kind of immortality would do nothing to deter fear of accidental death.
(4) “Everyone would seem so stupid.” Unlikely. Would a horse become as smart as a human being if it was only immortal? Would a cat? I think you tremendously overestimate the role of experience in wisdom. Most people are probably about as wise as they’re going to get by age 30 or so. (A good proof is the number of 50 year olds who screw their marriages, careers or finances up, in exactly the same way they did at age 20.) Living to 300 or 3,000 isn’t going to make people superhumaly wise, any more than living to 200 makes Galapagos tortoises as smart as a (human) fifth grader.
No doubt you would steadily accumulate a memory of precisely the same experience that would make you at least somewhat wiser — provided you could remember it all, which is a little tricky when you’re talking infinite memories. But, again, why could you not, given infinite time with which to play, find remedies for this? Is it really so bad being smarter than everyone around you? Pretty much everyone with IQ over 140 feels that way already, given the number of people you typically interact with. Being smarter than the 10,000 people you might interact with every year isn’t materially different from being smarter than all 6 billion people on the planet, and people deal with that routinely.
I agree totally. Also, some of these points apply if you are the only post-mortal around. Unlikely. Once the technology is available, lots of people will avail themselves of it. Most of us will be post-mortal and society in general will be composed mostly of post-mortals.
In any case, there are lots of things other than death that give life meaning. Long term endeavors such as space colonization will become more attractive because people will have the life expectancies long enough to make such pursuits worthwhile. Post-mortals will derive meaning from long-term endeavors compared to today’s people.
The best SF depiction of a post-mortal society is Peter Hamilton’s “Commonwealth” novels (Pandora’s Star, Judas Unchained, Void Trilogy). Heinlein’s Lazarus Long novels are good as well. I recently found the Lazarus Long quote book in a bookstore some time ago and found that “his” worldview and personal philosophy is nearly identical to my own, particularly with regards to society, religion, and interpersonal relationships.
“…imagine living through all that stupidity and watching governments adopt ideas you knew would fail 1000 years ago.”
I feel like that now, and I’m only middle aged!
Interesting thought….been discussing what the immortal would be thinking throughout this discussion – but what about the people who would know this immortal?
Think of it, sitting down with someone and having them describe to you, first hand, what it was like to follow Washington at Yorktown, discuss philosophy with Jefferson, witness the quiet dignity of Lee, look over Rafael’s shoulder as he created a masterpiece, visit the court of Charlemagne, or see firsthand a Roman crucify a Nazarene….
Are there any questions one could not have answered?
Wouldn’t such an immortal, intentionally or otherwise, make the world a better place simply by being here?
There are plenty of questions they couldn’t answer. They might have plenty of time but they have the same limitation of morals: space. They can only be in one place at a time and they only have one frame of reference, their own.
For most of history, news of events would travel at the speed of foot or sail. Quality of the news would also degrade over time as it was passed from mouth to mouth and might even be lost if the hearer were forgetful or uninterested. By the time the immortal hears rumors of Buddha, hops a caravan on the Silk Road and heads to India, he’d probably be long since dead. That’s assuming such news would even have been noteworthy in Buddha’s lifetime, noteworthy enough to make it to, say, Greece or Rome. The same would go for countless other people and events.
It would be like walking through a 1,000 square mile forest. Say you hike all the way across. How much would you really see? A line about 31 miles long but, save for a few spots, probably not over 100 yards wide. That would give you about 3.5 square miles that you’ve actually seen. Prior to the modern age with its media, an immortal’s field of experience would be pretty small.
Thomas Sowell explained it well “Intellectuals and Society.” He explained that they went wrong running society because, in spite of their educations and experience, they would still only have a small percentage of the knowledge available to them even as a group. So, an immortal might have 2 to 3 percent of the knowledge out there and that knowledge is likely specialized in history.
To sum up, while they might live a long time they can’t be everywhere at once. Much of what they know will be just like our knowledge: it will come from second and third hand sources, save for the comparatively few events they manage to witness.
You do have a point – they can’t be everywhere at once, and I would doubt their ability to predict where all of the interesting stuff happens at and be able to make it there on time.
However, if we accept that premise then we also have to accept that mankind has not always existed in the sheer numbers that he enjoys today.
Go back to 10,000 BC and the number of ‘cities’ is quite small and are little more than mud and thatch villages and you’re talking about a worldwide population of only 1 million souls. Go back to 1,000 BC and it’s 50 million but they are heavily concentrated in certain areas. 1,000 AD and you have 500 million, and so on and so forth.
The point is, millions sound like a lot – but when you compare it to the current population it’s a drop in the bucket PLUS they historically stayed within well defined geographic areas.
An immortal traveling through those societies and possessed of a sense of curiosity would naturally seek out the most interesting things if for no other reason than to stave off boredom.
That curiosity would, in turn, naturally lead him into contact with the more interesting historical figures.
If that immortal preferred to remain unknown to the general population, then that immortal would have to do a lot of traveling over the centuries just so people would not notice the lack of aging on his part.
So to go back to your analogy of a 31 mile long by 100 yard wide path through the forest – an immortal’s path by necessity would be thousands of years long and wind through some of the most historically significant periods in human history. By sheer odds, that immortal would HAVE to come into contact with some very interesting characters and HAVE to have seen some amazing things.
As for any greater store of knowledge they would bring to any discussion, I would liken it to paying attention to the elderly. They have lived longer than you have, and as such the odds are they know more than you do – at least about certain things, and most especially about human nature.
Multiply that knowledge of humanity by a factor of several thousand and you have an individual you could not hope to outsmart on your best day, and who undoubtedly would be able to enlighten you on all manner of subjects.
Or, perhaps, to put it more simply. Think of a master swordsman who’s spent 40 or 50 years, from childhood, perfecting his technique.
Then imagine him going up against a master swordsman who’s spent 4,000 or 5,000 years perfecting his technique….
“Each generation likes to think of itself as fresh and original, but we repeat many of the terrible, yet appealing ideas that previous generations adopted with disastrous results. If you read history, you already know this. That’s bad enough, but imagine living through all that stupidity and watching governments adopt ideas you knew would fail 1000 years ago. The frustration of it would be crushing.”
There are no new lessons to be learned, only the same old ones being re-learned by a bunch of bright, smiling new faces.
Wouldn’t eternal life in Heaven be just as boring?
Most of these seem to boil down to, “Being the ONLY immortal would suck.” Apparently, other people are not necessarily Hell.
If nothing else, I’d like enough time to read all the books, and see all the films I haven’t gotten around to yet. Not to mention playing through a huge game collection dating back to the NES days. As the great philosopher Calvin said, “There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.”
Of course, I’d also want to travel and get doctorates in, well, everything I find remotely interesting.
That ought a fill an eon or ten.
Assuming you could live forever with a forever-young body and forever-nimble brain, and managed to stay out of the living fossil museums our species’ descendants set up, you’d have to make it out of the solar system before the sun’s expansion destroys life on Earth. As an immortal, you could hop from sun to sun, given proper food-storage technology, but eventually you’ll run into the heat death of the universe. Then try worming your way out of that.
My biggest problem with immortality is: How would I pay for it?
The current system: You work until you’re in your seventies or so, then you get to have a little fun, and hope you die before the money runs out.
As an immortal, how would that work? Nobody hires anyone over fifty (despite what the laws say), so the best you could hope for is to be stuck in the same job forever, or until that company went under. Who’s retirement plan is so awesome they can literally live on it forever?
So immortality would mean either living under a bridge, or doing the same boring job for centuries, or probably both. For centuries.
No thanks.
Interesting article, but to tell the truth, I’m not going to dwell on it too much, lol! In 2000 I was diagnosed with a failing liver. In the five year wait until my transplant, the hospital called the family in for last goodbys, on three different occasions, but I fooled their butts, lol. New liver in 2005, just hit sixty, and doing great. God is Good!
Interesting discussion. Hope I’m not missing anything here.
Tolbert: “How many jugs of wine can be consumed before the flavor turns to vinegar in our mouths?”
Well, I’ve been eating & drinking for many years, & I’m still not tired of it!
Khotekki:
“This was already done on cracked.com like 2 years ago.”
Scott:
“And done much better.”
OK, that version had certain further specific objections, such as the sex problem–which still assumes one’s preferred associates would not be available & ignores possible technological fixes. Those of us who identify as asexual wouldn’t care anyway. The business about time speeding up as we age holds for a life in which we’re always aging & has yet to be confirmed in the hypothetical alternative life. Then there was the memory problem. It’s been claimed that our brains would adequately hold a millenium’s worth of memories, however.
GamerFromJump:
“Most of these seem to boil down to, ‘Being the ONLY immortal would suck.’”
Yeah.
eon:
“At which point Chalker’s Law kicks in;
Power is meaningless to its possessor unless it can be used against another- at the victim’s expense.”
Chalker’s opinion.
Thane36425:
Sounds kind of like the “Casca” series of novels…. Christ cursed him… From that point on Casca can’t be killed and lives on as the eternal mercenary.
Looks as if someone stole the “Wandering Jew’s” McGuffin.
Carl Pham:
“As Lazarus Long would say…”
While I’ve never read those novels, my nom de guerre is a tribute to him & his author.
One phrase comes to mind for wanting immortality….
“Space, the Final Frontier”
These would make the “voyages to seek out new life, to go where no man has gone before” a potential reality. I’d go for that!
LMAO, if being immortal will make me like that horrendous meme, I’d pray for merciful death too
Our Lord, Jesus Christ, said that all men will live forever, the only questions being, Where and Under What Conditions. There is no choice in the matter. We can Trust, Love and Obey Him and live, forever, happily, in Heaven, with Him; or fail to do so and live, forever, unhappily, in Hell. without Him. Our choice.
Not sure where JC specifically said that, among other things
I’m not certain why someone would take the time to write an article on this subject, but, since you did, I guess I’ll take the time to comment on it. You mentioned Duncan McCleod & Edward Cullen, from “Highlander The Series” & “Twilight” respectively, so I will use that general notion of immortality as a base for my comments. (Especially since I was a huge fan of the “Highlander” series and am familiar with the details.)
Yes, there are definite downsides to being immortal. Literally (almost) everyone & everything you love will disappear in time. That’s your reality, but there are always new things & new people to love, and you’re not the ONLY immortal on Earth. So you can fall in love with another immortal & have that ‘immortal love’ we all dream about! That’s be a benefit I’d think. It would also be quite nice to be able to have both the wisdom of age and the physical abilities of youth at the same time! And, speaking as someone who became a paraplegic at age 24, not having to worry about being forever handicapped in some stupid accident and then having to watch all your life-long dreams die right in front of you as a result, not to mention the lasting & in many cases quite extreme physical pain that comes with it, would be a HUGE ADVANTAGE!!!!! I’d take the ‘problems’ of immortality over that problem every day of the week and twice on Sundays! Finally, if you really do get sick of living & just truly want to die, it’s not all that difficult to make it happen. Simply find someone who is willing to chop off your head (or maybe lie down on a set of railroad tracks with your neck across the track while a train is coming) & problem solved!
As someone has already said, the reason that most people eventually come to see death as a friend is because they’ve been living with the pain of disease and/or old age for years. Without that pain, life can look pretty damn good for a pretty long time!!!
When talking about living forever only includes the physical body you can see why that wouldn’t work out in most instances, at the present time anyway.
When you talk about the soul, which is you, maybe you don’t really have a choice.
“Even though we don’t do the same with other humans because of political and cultural reasons …”
Oh, so simple morality has nothing to do with it. Eutanasia is just swell in a differnt political system or culture?
This is stupid beyond belief, just like about everything else this guy writes.
Like it or not, you were created in the image of God and you have an immortal soul. It is up to you where you spend that eternity.
Science Fiction has explored this topic many times. May I suggest two particularly good examinations of immortality?
1. Robert A. Heinlein’s book Time Enough for Love, which recounts the adventures of Lazarus Long who is 2000 years old and counting. He’s done just about anything you can imagine and is ready to die – until he finds a new reason to live.
2. The film The Man from Earth (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/), which features a man who may well be 14,000 years old. The author of the screenplay is Jerome Bixby who wrote some of the original Star Trek episodes. It’s a small independent film which likely escaped your attention but it’s top notch.
I recommend a third SF selection – Peter Hamilton’s Commonwealth novels: Pandora’s Star, Judas Unchained, and the three Void Trilogy novels.
Is any other reader, who gets this far down the reply list, old enough or well-read enough to recall Isaac Asimov’s three great lost discoveries of the 20th century: indestructibility, invisibility, and immortality? The three individuals possessing these all ended badly. The invisible man invaded a harem to see what really went on, and was killed by a blind eunuch. The indestructible man hid out on top of a nuclear test and was ejected from Earth at well over escape velocity. And the immortal man contracted pneumonia. The bacteria also became immortal, keeping him sick, so eventually he was simply buried.
These short stories might have appeared in the old Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, which I subscribed to over 50 years ago. Then again, maybe not. Google doesn’t seem to know. Anybody else remember?
More on #58. These guys seem to think the author was Fredric Brown. See:
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Uk/uk.media.tv.misc/2011-07/msg02283.html
“From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown”. The story is “Great Lost Discoveries II – Invulnerability”, I and III being Invisibility and Immortality respectively.
There can be only one! (Someone had to say it.
)