Would You Choose To Stay Immortal If You Could?
Humans have always been wildly fascinated with the idea of achieving true immortality, and to see everything that the universe has to offer. Our desire to experience everything to it's fullest, even life, is something that defines us really well as a species.
We often see the same idea displayed in a variety of different art forms, whether it's movies, paintings, poems, songs, literature or pretty much anything. We have always wanted to "see it all" and know everything that there is to know.
Our hunger for knowledge about our own universe is what feeds our curiosity which makes the thought of immortality sound rather appealing because it means we get to witness, explore, dream, and learn for as long as we please.
But even if we do achieve the power of immortality someday in the far future, the question still remains, should we actually use it? On one hand, it would be really disappointing to not put one of mankind's biggest successes to use, but on the other hand, there are some major concerns that need to be addressed.
Will Life Become Meaningless?
If you look at it this way, even though the power of immortality would grant us eternal life and end our fear of death entirely, it might still rob us of everything that makes life worth living in the first place!
Think about it. The only reason you, me, or anyone else, values their life is because we know that our days are numbered and that we only have a limited amount of time in this world before we fade away into nothingness.
But if death wasn't a problem and we had infinite years to live, we wouldn't value our lives as much as we did before when we feared death. It's that fear itself that makes you want to take action and spend your time wisely.
The past is a big evidence for this. Before all the progress in modern medicine, people used to die a lot earlier which made life for them extremely precious and rare, which means death was a lot more common for them so they tried to live the best out of the very limited time that they had.
Now, however, even some of the most dangerous diseases can be fought so to prolong life. This itself, is a really good thing, but we can't help but notice how we also do waste our time a lot more often these days. We don't see death as an immediate threat but as a phenomenon that will occur somewhere in the distant future when we're old and grey.
If you stress on it a little bit, you will see how there's a clear correlation between the length of life and the fear of death. The more number of years you have in your life, the less you fear death, and thus, the less you care about life as a whole.
The same applies to the concept of immortality. If you literally had forever to live, you would just postpone everything and never really want to take actions because you always have more time to do it later. Life wouldn't seem that precious or rare to you. It would just seem as something that exists, endlessly.
But of course, all of this is just my personal opinion. There might be a lot of things that I'm not seeing yet and maybe you guys have something really interesting to say about immortality and how it might actually enrich life. Curious to know your thoughts on this.
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I see what you are saying here I just don't agree. I feel like a lot of those traits come down to more of who you are than because you live longer. When we are born we are not aware we will die and might spend many years before someone explains that to us. I feel that the people who set short term goals and push to reach them and on to the next would continue to do that if they lived forever. Those that already waste time would continue to do that.
Also, I think that if we became immortal we would care more about life. Now, most of the world has created an after-life of some kind that helps us to cope with all the death we see. It is common to hear things like, "they are in a better place now" "They will watch over us now" all this could be true but we have yet to prove it. Even a killer know that that person they killed would have died one day away. If this wasn't true anymore I feel like over time murders would happen a lot less. Losses that right now feel like they might define your life would only be a small part of it.
The real issue I see is that if science pulls this off. It will be the rich that get to use it. They won't just give it to the poor. Because this world is becoming a mess with how many of us there are now. If we stopped dying it would get worse fast.
That does make sense. If you weren't aware of the concept of death in the first place, it wouldn't be a factor. Life would just go on as it did before.
But I think people would be a lot more curious and involved in finding the true meaning of life if death didn't exist. Think about it. If you, at this very second, were hit with this realisation that you'll live forever, it would probably be really important to you to know what your life means.
Existential crisis would become the new normal for people because if immortality really did exist, there would be no such thing as the after-life.
A majority of religions focus strongly on the idea of after-life and how it's a place where you finally find solace after you die, which makes religious people find comfort in the present time and less fearful of death. But with immortality, there's no concept of after-life, and hence we wouldn't understand the concept of death either, and as we know, what a human doesn't understand, it fears.
And about the population part, the world's population won't just keep increasing forever. Every country goes through a Demographic Transition:
The reason why the population is increasing so rapidly now is because most of the developing countries are at the second stage. In the coming years, the population will come to a balance as fewer babies will be conceived in those developing countries.
Curious to know your thoughts on all this.
Would I want to live forever? A part of me says yes. Oh to be young and beautiful and being able to enjoy the luxuries of life!
But, as you have been saying, life will become meaningless and boring. Perhaps, life and health insurances will even go out of business because, why would you ever pay for them if you can live forever.
I think that "limited" life has more meaning because one gets to savour and appreciate it better knowing that there is an end to it.
Exactly! If you know that there's no end, why would you even try to do anything in the first place? I mean, it does sound fun in the beginning because you get to see and explore more, but like I said, with time, you'll begin to see how repetitive everything seems.
Amen and that is why King Solomon chose wisdom over long life and death of all his enemies!
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$upvote YOUR-POST-LINKand you will receive upvote on your post.Being immortal makes you a god over the mortals. The ultimate power for the elite.
Yup. But the main question is, what if everyone was immortal? What if death didn't even exist in the first place?
then how would we know about death. or Decay
sounds like Edan
I don't know because I know about death and have no experiences without it to make a statement
it is a question that people have been trying to answer for thousands of years 😉👍