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Would you want to live forever? Discuss.

Would you want to live forever?

  • Total voters
    55
First and foremost, whoop whoop.

I absolutely do not want to live forever. That takes all the meaning, purpose, and fleeting beauty out of life. We're here for a short time and that time should be cherished. Death informs our lives and presents a sense of urgency to accomplish all that we can before the lights go out. To me, that's the point.

Or in other words,
when I die💀💀, show no❌pity. send my soul👻👻 to the juggalo🃏🃏 city🌇🌃. dig ⛏⛏my grave⚰⚰⚰ six feet deep⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️, and put two matches 🔥🔥by my feet👞👞. put two hatchets🔪🔪 on my chest, and tell my homies 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦👨‍👩‍👧‍👦👨‍👨‍👧‍👦👨‍👨‍👦‍👦I did my best💯

MMFWCL,
JCB69xXx

PS. Go hug ya mom, homies.
 
The sheer dread of eternal life is something that does haunt my mind, while our time on this mortal plane is finite and often times full of hardship and sorrow, I often look to the fact that I have people in my life that I care for greatly. If I had to bare the pain of watching myself out live them each and everytime? I'm not sure what I would do on an emotional level.

However, it is not all bad-- First and foremost there are plenty of inspirations in fiction about Eternally Long Lived Characters and the things they can do for the world they live in. My greatest inspiration is "The Doctor", a truly eternal being as a Time Lord and while in universe he CAN die, if left to his own devices he can live for a very....very long time. I would honestly dedicate myself to humanity's preservation and overall Health. Perhaps I'd take the time needed to learn the Sciences, Become a Surgeon, a Healer, An Actual Nurse or Doctor, A Psychiatrist, a Leader, and Person recognized as someone who tries to do the right thing not because I want clout or the laurels that come with being known as Benevolent and Immortal but, because I believe that if someone out there held Humanity's hand and gently nudged them from time to time that we could achieve a better world.

Not a Utopia or anything as fanciful as that because, I'll be the first to tell you that Hardship and Suffering make us strong....but, something like a world where we can accept our faults and move past them. To learn how to cope with our Traumas, Our Fears, Our Prejudices and set them aside for the Greater Whole of Humanity.
 
Razgriz said:
Much like the above, I am not sure immortality would be all it's cracked up to be. There's a certain comfort in knowing that one day things will end, for better or for worse. It's a defined endpoint in the otherwise infinite number of paths to it, a single point of order in an endless sea of chaos.

It also begs the question of *how* immortality would manifest. If you continued to age physically while living forever, eventually you would just be trapped in a weak frail body, undying but suffering worsening versions of the problems that the elderly face.

Even if you removed that from the equation, humans by nature find comfort (for the most part) in those they've grown up around. Imagine having to rebuild your entire social circle, over and over again (even if you are 'anti-social', most everyone has at least one person they confide in).
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I suppose I can further elaborate on this.

The prospect of death is an unattractive one. But in the end, everything will die, even those who are 'immortal'. I would so far to postulate that even if we might not see in 100 or even 1 million of our lifetimes, there will be a Big Collapse, where everything is essentially reset.

I will admit being able to live forever (with perhaps some means of freezing the aging and breakdown of the human body) and experiencing the advancement (or even destruction) of this world or any others would be fascinating.

If for that reason alone, to be a witness to the future, I would take it. But I also doubt I might stay sane long enough to enjoy it.
 
I'm wondering where people get the idea that being alive for longer would cause a breakdown of sanity. Where is the evidence for that? If anything, having a longer timespan would give me more time to work through my emotional issues and childhood trauma.
 
Only if I didn’t grow old and decrepit or got sick etc

I’d also want to be wealthy and as someone else mentioned you’d have to work out how to alter your identity or be comfortable being known as the 100 year old who looks 25!
 
Jericho Z. Barrons said:
I'm wondering where people get the idea that being alive for longer would cause a breakdown of sanity. Where is the evidence for that? If anything, having a longer timespan would give me more time to work through my emotional issues and childhood trauma.
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I don't think that would be the issue and it would depend on various factors, does everyone get to live forever or is it just a select few/are you the only one. Do the Immortals still get killed from accidents, assaults etc?

My point is, what if you saw everyone you love die. That may not start hitting you until your 80's, so still within your normal mortal life. But then what? Would you be able to live as normal as an immortal? Or well before hitting your 80's would you already have to take on a hermit lifestyle? Never getting too close to anyone for too long?

Then you have to deal with constant change. Of course as you got lived longer and longer you would probably forget all about your childhood anyway so any traumas would just vanish. But there would always be something new to deal with.

I'm just playing Devil's advocate here and also thinking about films like Highlander and Interview with the Vampire where they broach the pitfalls of living for eternity.
 
I think the idea of linking insanity with immortality lies within the concept of the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Living ten lifetimes and seeing the same issues - social, economic, political, resources, etc... - repeat themselves over and over again, you'd possibly start to go slightly mad knowing that you've seen it all, you know where it goes, but you know no-one's going to listen to your knowledge and understanding because the voices of the day know better.

Thus my idea that if I'm going to live forever, I want to be able to freely explore the galaxy at the same time.
 
....if you were immortal and we had documentation of you over time and it was known, I'm kinda skeptical people wouldn't listen to you if you were involved and trying to change the world for the better. In fact, the credulous would jump at the chance to give you worship status. So, if you wanted to change the world, I think you could especially if you were the only one who was living that long.

As far as seeing the same problems repeating, I'm skeptical again over how solid iron my memory would be. I guess we would have to exactly, biologically define the mechanism of the longevity. Is it a cell regeneration type thing? Like, the normal wear and tear of entropy doesn't happen and thus you would no longer have a regular human functioning mind because now, it's a super brain at full capability. You would remember everything. But...if it were a super brain, capable of remembering everything you experience forever, would you be vulnerable to the same human flaws and mental aberrations? Like would the grief of seeing your beloveds die every few generations truly cripple you mentally if your brain was operating at a higher functionality than normal human bodies are capable of?
 
Given the way the world works if you were an anomaly and tried to live as an immortal openly then you may find yourself studied like a lab rat. Depending on the social and Govt forces of the moment that might be harsher or more humane.

Once it was known you are immortal that would be it. No putting the genie back in the bottle. So you would always be at the mercy of society.

I think I’d love selfishly and devise ways of living under different identities etc I wouldn’t be sharing my secret. I wouldn’t be caring about making society a better place etc
 
It's an old question - but my answer has always been the same:

Eternal existence? Heck no. It might be fun for now, but eventually spending the rest of eternity swallowed up, undyingly burning alive in our expanding red giant sun's celestial fire? No thank you.

Just eternal youth - no aging but being as weak to physical harm as I have always been? Definitely! (With the caveat that it's kept a secret - nobody wants to be restrained in a secret government research base forever.)
There are few disadvantages here. Yes, you see your loved ones die - but that's a rather nihilist view of things. If seeing a few people die outweighs the joys of life for you then you have a pretty suicidal mindset. My life is a net-positive. Yes, bad things happen - but on average it's good, so of course I'd want more of it. Should that average ever change I can seek death on my own terms.
 
I would like to see humans on Mars, Star Wars like cars and cities, etc. To see human marvel spread and see where it can lead us. I'd love to see our wonderfully glorious species thrive and expand and solve problems and do what we do best.

But I wouldn't want to live forever.
 
I love the depth and breadth of thinking everyone’s dropped in the thread already, so here’s a dash my own thoughts!

Would I want to live forever if it were only me with the immortality? Yes. I will already someday face the inevitable loss of my loved ones, the prospect of meeting so many more generations of my family after me outweighs having to go through the loss again as each generation passes. And even if the family tree were to grow so broad, and the branches so long, that the nth generation no longer recognizes me as family there’d be so much left to live for.

I think the social importance placed on family is at least partly based on the finite time we have to form and experience relationships. With infinite time, I think I could realize the most altruistic and ‘man-of-the-world’ self I’m theoretically capable of being. I could dedicate myself to continuing to learn and contribute my skills to mankind’s progress, in ways a mortal lifespan cannot reach.

I think it would be scarier actually, if everyone were to live forever. The prospect of enjoying the company of my family forever brings me immeasurable joy, but the societal level questions that would need answering are daunting.

Earth has finite resources, so how do we ensure we don’t end up with an infinitely growing populace? There’s a great Love Death + Robots episode that explores that. What does an economy look like where the same people are always around? Where the population is never-changing? Our whole understanding of economics is based on mortal participants and a constant push for growth.

I’d still want to live forever in that case, but it might be scarier in it’s own way than being a lone immortal.
 
Hell, no! No way, nowhere, no how. There are too many caveats.

  1. Would I be immune from aging? I don't want to be 5 billion years old if it means I'm sucking turkey through a straw and watching re-runs of Matlock for 4.9999 billion of those years.
  2. Would I be immune from injury? What if George Jetson hits me with his space car and paralyzes me ten years from now? See my above comment about sucking turkey through a straw for eons.
  3. Would I have a killswitch? What if I decide enough's enough?
Assuming I was immune from injury/aging, it'd take the fun out of living. Where's the adrenaline rush in risky activities when you know you're safe? I can skydive without a parachute, get up and do it again. It loses something in practice.

The only *small* upside would be that when the Earth finally does explode, I'd be the first (and only) to make the Marvin the Martian joke that I finally found his Earth-shattering kaboom!
 
Wretched fools! My machinations over the past centuries will make you rue the day you faced off against Quindiesel!
-me, doing my best to pay off student loans at $10/month until end of time.
 
Quindiesel said:
Wretched fools! My machinations over the past centuries will make you rue the day you faced off against Quindiesel!
-me, doing my best to pay off student loans at $10/month until end of time.
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4qugey.jpg
 
I want to clear a century at least. I would prefer certain bucket list events to occur before I die, with one being vastly more important than all of the others combined. I Living forever is preferable, but dying on my own terms would be acceptable. I will have strong negative physiological responses about this post later, and it sucks. Those responses are probably shortening my telomeres.
 
I know a guy who saw the world in his late teens and early 20s: the North Atlantic and south Pacific and was on one of the ships in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered. He was married for 67 years before she passed. They raised a family, owned a home, sent their kids to college, had a good life by any standards but not a spectacular one. But now he's slowing down. I don't think he wants to live forever, I think he'd say that concept was flat out stupid. If anything, I think he wants to meet his wife again.
 
Yes. I'm sure there going to be a lot of downsides, but I'll have a lot of time to either overcome them, or just get used to them.
 
I am petrified to die. The thought alone can spike a panic attack, and sometimes I can think about it and shrug my shoulders with no fear. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, trembling, wondering what’ll happen when that day comes. What will I feel? Will I be a vegetable who can still feel and hear, even see things but can’t move, just trapped in my body? Is there an afterlife, if not will I still hurt?

I try and think about before I was born, and obviously I can’t remember what happened, so I take it as the same when it comes to death, but the thought about actually dying is still very scary. I want to live forever just because of this phobia, but at the same time I’m glad we don’t. I’ve encountered so much death at such a very young age that I’m not surprised this is why I have this phobia, but I wish I could come to terms with it and not be so fearful. I’m so scared…

…it sucks because no amount of comforting or theories that’ll happen could ever soothe me and it’s just something I have to find out for myself.
 
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