On immortality
The idea of living forever has excited humans… well, forever. I can’t help but think of the gods of the ancient Greeks, sitting on Mount Olympus, bored, playing with little toy humans. This is an immortal life of leisure and quarrels that – that doesn’t really lead anywhere. Oh, we’ve been serious about achieving immortality. Just look at all the alchemists throughout time and geographies, subjects of many romantic adventure novels too, searching for the Elixir of Life.
Short of an elixir that grants immortality, we seek fame or infamy; invading countries and creating empires, writing books and having statues of ourselves made, creating legends and stories to keep us alive long after we are gone.
But would you really want to live forever? Or at least for a few hundred years?
Yes, it would be exciting to see the human lifespan extended significantly, as long as it is a healthy life. Being able to do more, learn more, meet more people, create, being able to see our descendants grow up and having more time with parents and grandparents are all great things. Modern-day alchemists are scientists working at biotechs on ever more exciting innovations to extend healthspan. But, today already, we need to rethink our mid- and later lives, to find new things to do. To find meaning.
I’ve always found the future exciting. So much possibility for development as humans and of course for our technologies and societies. I remain optimistic about the long-term future of humanity and would love to be able to see ahead, even ‘pop in’ at different times in the distant future. Who knows, maybe I’d decide to stick around a few hundred or thousand years from now, provided I am compatible with the new society and environment. And, if I can get the physical and neural enhancements they have – otherwise it would be very hard to adapt.
Jumping ahead in time is quite a different concept though to living forever.
Human life as we know it is a journey, with a beginning – and an end. That is what we are used to, how our societies evolved. Dealing with death is a very important part of all cultures. Being on an open-ended, never-ending road feels not so much scary as against our cultural norms. Against our instincts.
I am not worried about having to retrain and reorient ourselves many times through life. We already have to adapt that mindset now, which is a massive change to how previous generations lived. Even in 2021 having the same job or same profession for 50-60 years feels way too long. We are already actively switching during mid-life or create flexible portfolio careers. And that is for a life expectancy of around 100 years. Still, having unlimited tries for new careers and hobbies doesn’t sound too bad.
It’s the moral questions of immortality that are really interesting. Can you even keep track of or have a meaningful relationship with all your descendants? A forever life would require regular recalibration and adaptation to something new as technologies and societies evolve driven by each new generation. How long can you keep that up and stay sane?
Our moral codes and behaviours would be upended. Can you transgress freely because whatever the punishment you have plenty of time to start again? Or quite the opposite, punishments can go on forever?
Does everything just become a blip on a never-ending timeline and do significant moments even lose their significance? Just how special would that 146,000th sunset on the beach be?
Human relationships would need to be rethought completely as ‘they lived happily ever after’ or ‘love you forever’ would take on a whole new meaning if forever means literally in perpetuity (again, we are already recalibrating romantic relationships).
If we were to live an immortal life that is unchanging wouldn’t that be unbearably boring. But if it involved regular change, everyone would need serious help to stay sane. Or just to even remember people you met a long time ago.
My mind can easily process a stretched-out lifespan of about 300 years. You could take more time to achieve certain things, have several careers and hobbies, learn more, do more and create more. I could probably even add an extra few hundred years. But forever? That just sounds really long to have to find meaningful things to do, even if aided by a mental shift from being on a journey to just being.
So, do we really want to be gods? As a friend put it, immortal life sounds exhausting.