Who Wants to Live Forever? And Why?

[Straw Dog]

highlanders were immortal except for getting their heads cut off, for instance

There can be only one!

 

[StarryNightshade]

Not imortality, but maybe live for roughly 500 years ( barley aging, of course) to witness the evolution and advancement of both humankind and the world. And when I grow tired of living, then I'd allow myself to rest.

Besides, if anything, I'd rather be reborn into different consciousnesses and experience life multiple times.

 

[Koldo]

Many things, the most obvious of which is not really experiencing life in the fullest sense, with the existential awareness of your inevitable demise. You'd have no real motivation if you could never die naturally, though if we assume you can't even die by trauma or such, that would make me into a virtual nihilist.

It could also be argued that we don't experience life in the fullest sense exactly because we are able to die.

How many times have you jumped from the top of a 200 meters high ( or higher ) building and landed on your own feet?

 

[Koldo]

If i was invulnerable to anything, had eternal youth, incapable of feeling any physical suffering, and able to kill myself any time i wish to, I wouldn't mind being an immortal.

 

[Me Myself]

It does depend on the conditions. This Earth and this sun wont last FOREVER. Would one end in space, for ever crazy for another breat without being able to fulfill it?

Then if you ciuld muster enough self mastery through meditation than it wouldnt be painful, then it wouldnt be painful (if such a thing would be deemed possible in this hypothetical)

 

[Kilgore Trout]

What do people want to live forever for? Most people recklessly squander their limited time as it is. Just look at all of us wasting time on an internet message board. What the heck would beings like us need with immortality? How many reruns of The Big Bang Theory can you possibly watch?

 

[starlite]

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]The Bible states that there is a way to have everlasting life:[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial, sans-serif](John 17:3) This means everlasting life, their taking in knowledge of you, the only true God, and of the one whom you sent forth, Jesus Christ.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Look for example at the way the human body is made. It is wonderfully designed to taste, hear, smell, see, and feel. There is so much on the earth that delights our senses—delicious food, pleasant sounds, fragrant flowers, beautiful scenery, delightful companionship. And our amazing brain is far more than a supercomputer, it enables us to appreciate and enjoy all kinds of things. Do you think that our Creator wants us to die and waste all of this? Isn't it more reasonable to conclude that he wants us to live happily and to enjoy life forever? Well, that is what the knowledge of God can mean for you.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial, sans-serif](Psalm37:29) The righteous themselves will possess the earth, And they will reside forever upon it.[/FONT]




Scriptural thoughts are from the New World Translation

 

[Penumbra]

What would make it a curse?

What would a person do after the first billion years or so?

Afterlives are generally depicted as either some spaceless and timeless (and therefore throughtless and actionless) void of existence, or as having some kind of spirit body that goes around and does things for an infinite period of time.

The first sounds like non-life and the second sounds like it would be infinitely boring after an unimaginable amount of time has passed.

 

[Koldo]

What would a person do after the first billion years or so?

Who knows? I don't see any reason to conclude there would be nothing interesting to do. If you consider how much the world is going to change within a billion years...

Afterlives are generally depicted as either some spaceless and timeless (and therefore throughtless and actionless) void of existence, or as having some kind of spirit body that goes around and does things for an infinite period of time.

The first sounds like non-life and the second sounds like it would be infinitely boring after an unimaginable amount of time has passed.

You are using how you feel in your current body as a parameter of how you would feel without your current body in the second case. Not a pertinent exercise.

 

[muichimotsu]

I think I misunderstood the OP.
The immortality I am thinking of is regarding the afterlife. I wouldn't want to survive in this body in this world forever and very much for the reasons you mention here.
Immortality in the afterlife is much more preferable and according to my beliefs immortality is for everyone so you wouldn't have to suffer through others dying.

I kind of factored that possibility in and I would argue that's just as bad in its own way. No one has any experience of suffering or anything that makes living and existence something that has balance to it. With only good, your perspective is skewed, especially with a prolonged period of time, i.e. eternity.

I don't want to live forever, that is the bigger point. I do not welcome death, I accept it as part of nature. To live forever seems to go against a basic necessity of existence: some people die so others may live in their place, a population control of sorts, so that humans cannot forever seek out fruitless endeavors knowing they will never die.

 

[muichimotsu]

Who knows? I don't see any reason to conclude there would be nothing interesting to do. If you consider how much the world is going to change within a billion years...

The bigger problem is that your emotional state would degrade, since you would see everyone around you die, assuming this is just you as an immortal. So what if you can solve all the world's problems, so many people will still die in the meantime while you slave away and start to lose your humanity

You are using how you feel in your current body as a parameter of how you would feel without your current body in the second case. Not a pertinent exercise.

You're presupposing how one might feel in the second body, so that's hardly logical either. If we can remotely extrapolate, that's better than speculating, with no basis from which to derive calculations. If we're in a corporeal body, there are logical repercussions that are different than if we had some spiritual/incorporeal body, such as the ability to feel physical pain, etc.

 

[muichimotsu]

Not imortality, but maybe live for roughly 500 years ( barley aging, of course) to witness the evolution and advancement of both humankind and the world. And when I grow tired of living, then I'd allow myself to rest.

Besides, if anything, I'd rather be reborn into different consciousnesses and experience life multiple times.

That is preferable, though it could still become troublesome to live for that long

Reincarnation/rebirth is definitely another nice idea, since it can enable you to still appreciate life and also recognize its transience.

 

[muichimotsu]

It could also be argued that we don't experience life in the fullest sense exactly because we are able to die.

How many times have you jumped from the top of a 200 meters high ( or higher ) building and landed on your own feet?

Just because we are able to die does not mean we cannot experience life to the fullest. Intentionally endangering your life is a problem in itself, since it means you take your living for granted instead of trying to protect it as best you can while also taking risks.

 

[muichimotsu]

It's not that I want to live forever it's that I don't want to die.

That's more an issue of your perspective on death. No one wants to die, but we cannot simply deny that it exists or we can't have a full appreciation for life as it is.

 

[muichimotsu]

If i was invulnerable to anything, had eternal youth, incapable of feeling any physical suffering, and able to kill myself any time i wish to, I wouldn't mind being an immortal.

If you could kill yourself anytime you wanted, you wouldn't be invulnerable, so there's your first problem, you can't even keep the terms of your immortality straight.

Incapable of feeling any physical suffering including disease and invulnerable would make you so different from humans that there are a few results: arrogance at your state of near godhood or despair at the fact that you cannot interact normally with other human beings.

 

[muichimotsu]

What do people want to live forever for? Most people recklessly squander their limited time as it is. Just look at all of us wasting time on an internet message board. What the heck would beings like us need with immortality? How many reruns of The Big Bang Theory can you possibly watch?

We're ignorant entities in many cases, wanting things without any foresight of the consequences or results

 

[muichimotsu]

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Look for example at the way the human body is made. It is wonderfully designed to taste, hear, smell, see, and feel. There is so much on the earth that delights our senses—delicious food, pleasant sounds, fragrant flowers, beautiful scenery, delightful companionship. And our amazing brain is far more than a supercomputer, it enables us to appreciate and enjoy all kinds of things. Do you think that our Creator wants us to die and waste all of this? Isn't it more reasonable to conclude that he wants us to live happily and to enjoy life forever? Well, that is what the knowledge of God can mean for you.[/FONT]

Our appreciation is what makes life worth living in that it is temporary, enabling us to recognize its transience and thus see the significance therein.

If there was a creator who made us immortal, I would seek every possible way to eliminate this entity from existence. Happiness is only as significant as the amount of sadness we also experience and compare it to. We are happy because we could also be sad.

 

[Penumbra]

Who knows? I don't see any reason to conclude there would be nothing interesting to do. If you consider how much the world is going to change within a billion years...

Like what would change?

You are using how you feel in your current body as a parameter of how you would feel without your current body in the second case. Not a pertinent exercise.

No. The OP provides a whole variety of immortality types to consider. I'm not using any one unique thing in my assessment and instead looking at it in multiple ways.

Living a bit longer in some sort of good body would be kind of nice, but beyond that, I do think that extending life indefinitely can reduce the value of each moment proportionally. Life could become an endless tedium of events with the person knowing that there's no end, nothing to hurry for, nothing to get done, etc.

Actually I think quite a bit of human suffering is caused by human desire for permanence.

 

[Koldo]

The bigger problem is that your emotional state would degrade, since you would see everyone around you die, assuming this is just you as an immortal. So what if you can solve all the world's problems, so many people will still die in the meantime while you slave away and start to lose your humanity

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe people will figure out a way to be nearly immortal eventually too.

You're presupposing how one might feel in the second body, so that's hardly logical either. If we can remotely extrapolate, that's better than speculating, with no basis from which to derive calculations. If we're in a corporeal body, there are logical repercussions that are different than if we had some spiritual/incorporeal body, such as the ability to feel physical pain, etc.

Where did i presuppose anything about how one might feel in the second body?

 

[Koldo]

Just because we are able to die does not mean we cannot experience life to the fullest. Intentionally endangering your life is a problem in itself, since it means you take your living for granted instead of trying to protect it as best you can while also taking risks.

You haven't answered my question.

There are limits to what you do exactly because your death is certain.