Immortality
- Thread starter Chameleon
- Start date
Sheik
:the:
No. Humans may come close, but I don't think a human being can actually last FOREVER.
And
No. I would get so sick of life if it lasted forever and I want to someday experience death.
And
No. I would get so sick of life if it lasted forever and I want to someday experience death.
It's not an experience. There's no turning back from that one. It's not like smoking, I think.
Sheik
:the:
Yeah, I kind of worded that wrong. What I mean is that I would want to know what death is. Of course I know I can't come back... But I don't want to not die. I want to know what happens after death.
Dang it, why am I even thinking about this. I will die someday. End of story.
Dang it, why am I even thinking about this. I will die someday. End of story.
Shadsie
Sage of Tales
Upon thinking about the issue a lot, I've sort of decided that I'm already immortal - in a way.
Hopes about an afterlife aside, I figure, if there isn't one, it would be logically impossible to know when you're dead. I mean, if you expect to "go into the dark" - darkness is *something.* Why wouldn't someone's brain send them "into the light" as with NDE experiences? Does it matter if they're "real" if they're your very last experience? It stands to reason that your last glimmers of consciousness/subconsciousness would "last forever" from your perspective. Yep, I've taken the Phillip J. Fry stance: "Thanks to denial, I'm immortal!" (Except it's really not so much denial as it is my natural ability to think in mind screw).
As for physical immortality... Eh. I can see humans making that into a kind of Hell. If we aren't able to kill people we don't like in wars anymore, we'll probably create some kind of eternal suffering engine, because... we're us. I don't really buy into the idea that transhumanism will make us better beings. At the very least, if people get the "brain uploads to computers" thing going on, I can see us having million-year flamewars over stupid stuff. Human-created Hell.
I've played with the idea of "humans achieving immortality" in a couple of my Legend of Zelda fanfictions, actually. In "The Great Desert" and the ongoing remake of said, "The Greater Desert," Hyrule's Golden Goddesses were once humans who achieved biological immortality through science and became... excessively bored gods. They like their immortality and are optimistic about taking care of an improving the world they created, but they are bored enough to play an eternal rock-paper-scissors game with Link, Zelda and Ganondorf's souls, which makes them kind of jerktastic. Physical immortality could do that to the best of us.
Hopes about an afterlife aside, I figure, if there isn't one, it would be logically impossible to know when you're dead. I mean, if you expect to "go into the dark" - darkness is *something.* Why wouldn't someone's brain send them "into the light" as with NDE experiences? Does it matter if they're "real" if they're your very last experience? It stands to reason that your last glimmers of consciousness/subconsciousness would "last forever" from your perspective. Yep, I've taken the Phillip J. Fry stance: "Thanks to denial, I'm immortal!" (Except it's really not so much denial as it is my natural ability to think in mind screw).
As for physical immortality... Eh. I can see humans making that into a kind of Hell. If we aren't able to kill people we don't like in wars anymore, we'll probably create some kind of eternal suffering engine, because... we're us. I don't really buy into the idea that transhumanism will make us better beings. At the very least, if people get the "brain uploads to computers" thing going on, I can see us having million-year flamewars over stupid stuff. Human-created Hell.
I've played with the idea of "humans achieving immortality" in a couple of my Legend of Zelda fanfictions, actually. In "The Great Desert" and the ongoing remake of said, "The Greater Desert," Hyrule's Golden Goddesses were once humans who achieved biological immortality through science and became... excessively bored gods. They like their immortality and are optimistic about taking care of an improving the world they created, but they are bored enough to play an eternal rock-paper-scissors game with Link, Zelda and Ganondorf's souls, which makes them kind of jerktastic. Physical immortality could do that to the best of us.
If I would be able to regenerate like the Doctor I would give it a try 
But seriously I don't think we will ever become immortal. I think we will get older and older but not reach immortality. The human body will age and age and that's a process that you can't fully stop YET.
And I don't think I want to be immortal anyway
But seriously I don't think we will ever become immortal. I think we will get older and older but not reach immortality. The human body will age and age and that's a process that you can't fully stop YET.
And I don't think I want to be immortal anyway
Mellow Ezlo
Spoony Bard
I hear people say all the time that they wish they could be immortal, and that people didn't die. But I honestly can't imagine what it would be like to have eternal life. I would eventually get so sick of being alive.
And I don't think humans will ever achieve immortality. Death is part of the cycle of life, and it has always been that way.
And I don't think humans will ever achieve immortality. Death is part of the cycle of life, and it has always been that way.
Justac00lguy
BooBoo
- Joined
- Jul 1, 2012
- Gender
- Shewhale
If we talk hypothetically, the maybe mankind could achieve such a thing.
Technology is a strange thing as well as ever growing, it's amazing to see just how much we are advancing year on year to the point were in a thousand years I doubt we could fathom what level of intelligence we'd have and what technology advances we'd have made.
There's complications though, would mankind be able to survive for many more millennia? If we were to say that mankind would be able to prosper for thousands, maybe millions of years ahead of our time right now, then I think immortality could be achieved in some fashion.
Technology is a strange thing as well as ever growing, it's amazing to see just how much we are advancing year on year to the point were in a thousand years I doubt we could fathom what level of intelligence we'd have and what technology advances we'd have made.
There's complications though, would mankind be able to survive for many more millennia? If we were to say that mankind would be able to prosper for thousands, maybe millions of years ahead of our time right now, then I think immortality could be achieved in some fashion.
Shadsie
Sage of Tales
I once had an idea for a novel/story/series... that I never wrote because I could never quite get the ideas to work for me... about a mysterious, sudden event causing all the people presently on earth to become immortal. As in, they couldn't even be killed - they could feel the pain of wounds and could feel the pain of starvation and whatnot, but not die.
My main character was going to be a young man who was something of a "gunslinger" in that, in the absence of Death, people started treating violence and developing violent sports as a kind of video-game replacement. (I was thinking that the event would wipe out electricity, too, regressing us to Old West days). Said main character winds up being cruel to and killing animals randomly (because it's only humans who cannot die) - He's jealous of animals because they can die.
Also, in this world, most people stop having children. It's not just that something happens to reproduction, people start naturally gravitating more and more toward asexuality because immortality means no more need for population increase. Children are hated in this world and people who have them are hated even more.
My story idea was that main characters were searching for a way to bring Death back to the world.
And, like I said, I never wrote it. These are just some ideas floating around in my noggin, taking a back seat to some even weirder ideas that seem to want to get made more.
My main character was going to be a young man who was something of a "gunslinger" in that, in the absence of Death, people started treating violence and developing violent sports as a kind of video-game replacement. (I was thinking that the event would wipe out electricity, too, regressing us to Old West days). Said main character winds up being cruel to and killing animals randomly (because it's only humans who cannot die) - He's jealous of animals because they can die.
Also, in this world, most people stop having children. It's not just that something happens to reproduction, people start naturally gravitating more and more toward asexuality because immortality means no more need for population increase. Children are hated in this world and people who have them are hated even more.
My story idea was that main characters were searching for a way to bring Death back to the world.
And, like I said, I never wrote it. These are just some ideas floating around in my noggin, taking a back seat to some even weirder ideas that seem to want to get made more.
misskitten
Hello Sweetie!
I'm with Shadesie on the human-created hell. If we were unable to die, we would abuse it, and some would spend their eternity wishing it had an end. Everything that is considered to have value has it because of its limitation. We are unable to appreciate something if we cannot compare it to an alternative. It's the same with life, if there isn't death, we cannot appreciate life for what it is.
Sir Quaffler
May we meet again
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2012
People tend to forget that for all the hardships death has brought about, it's a form of kindness for us humans in our conditions. I mean, I don't want to be immortal the way I am now. There's too much wrong with the world and with the people in it for immortality to be anything but an eventual hellhole. I don't have a death wish, I want to live as long as I possibly can, but I do want to leave the mortal coil and into the life hereafter at SOME point.
Garo
Boy Wonder
Life has meaning because it is finite, because it ends. It is not the standard state, the natural order, but rather a brief and fleeting aberration of chance and potentiality. That aberration, even in the few places where it occurs, eventually decays and returns to the natural order. Thus that short time during which we are able to experience "life," this bizarre and unlikely sensation of awareness, is powerful and profound.
Were it to be infinite? That power and profundity vanishes almost immediately. It becomes the sort of novelty that can wear off rather than a consistent wonder that holds us rapt in awe. To trade the fantastic nature of life, the parts of it that make us want to live forever and to experience it all, for the ability to do so? That's a paradoxical and harsh irony - in seeking a means to experience more of life, one removes the one thing that drives the desire for that experience.
Were it to be infinite? That power and profundity vanishes almost immediately. It becomes the sort of novelty that can wear off rather than a consistent wonder that holds us rapt in awe. To trade the fantastic nature of life, the parts of it that make us want to live forever and to experience it all, for the ability to do so? That's a paradoxical and harsh irony - in seeking a means to experience more of life, one removes the one thing that drives the desire for that experience.
onebizarrekai
gay energy
Immortality isn't something people are going to achieve in this life, otherwise they would be miserable, considering that the meaning of life is basically for everybody to be happy.