MasterPo: Immortality has long been the dream of humanity. But living forever may not be as wonderful a thing as dreamed of. The impact on society – civilization itself! – could be far reaching and more devastating than the thrill of the discovery. Sir Isaac Newton's first law of motion states that for every action there is an [equal] opposite reaction. This can similarly be applied to people and societies in the form of the unofficial "Law of Unintended Consequences" (the often stated "No good deed goes unpunished" philosophy). For decades fiction and science fiction writers have fantasized about humans becoming immortal and all the wonderful things that (they hoped) would come from it:

Brilliant scientists could work for centuries on ideas and inventions.
Doctors could longer research cures and treatments.
People could stay in school longer and grow their minds.
The workforce would be more productive as the rush to establish a career then settle down to have a family wouldn't seem so narrow a window.

These are wonderful futuristic ideas that draw on the milk of human kindness and thirst for good that is (hoped to be) in all people's souls.

But then other points of view, darker and more subdued, began to creep into the dream of immortality. In their writing and prose they envisioned several possible scenarios of dire consequences coming from immortality. These I think are worth exploring in discussion.

As one generation withers and leaves the world, a new generation comes to age. They bring new ideas, new concepts, new ways of thinking. Advancement in the sciences and technology comes from new minds with fresh ideas. Minds that challenge old concepts and assumptions. But if the old guard never moves on, these old ideas and concepts may never change. The establishment has a vested interest in keeping things the way they are (they won't rock their own boat so to speak). Technology and the sciences may not actually advance as much as it is thought if the same people work on the same problems for centuries or longer.

There may not even be enough scientists to follow suit either. If one lives for every the concept of a 4-year degree becomes pointless. Even investing the time for a 10 year Doctorate (the amount of time most PhD and other doctoral degrees take to earn, including dissertation) becomes irrelevant when you live for ever. So why bother going to advanced school right out of High School anyway? You can always go to college 100 years from now too.

That's also presuming there will be children to grow up and attend school. It is a touchy subject with some people but the reality is often women have children when they do for fear of waiting too long and not being able to conceive or carry a child. Age of the mother does play a big part in the decision to have children. Even men will choose to settle down and have a family while they are physically (and mentally) capable of the effort needed to make and raise children. But if people become immortal then (presumably at least) the window of child bearing years also extends with the immortal life. So the urgency to stop and make offspring just isn't there anymore. When a woman remains say 29 or 30 for centuries why be in a rush?

The dynamic of the family and relationship will change and maybe not for the better. One of the reasons people remain close and in contact with each other is because of the finality of time we have to spend others.

But if you're immortal then leaving your home, family or community for 2 or 3 hundred years is meaningless. It's possible a person could leave their home for centuries at a time, get so involved in another part of the world and/or culture they even forget where they came from and how to return! Even upon returning, not having been with formerly familiar people the specific relationships between people in a family may be lost. It's possible they may forget who is their parents, their brother or sister, aunts, uncles, wife, husband, even their own children! After all, when you're immortal there's always time to spend with your family later – except later always remains later and may never become now.

The purpose of this isn't to discourage the dreams of immortality. As a philosophic goal it is worth always pursuing. Who knows, the search may lead to other answers, maybe even a cure for the common cold.

But, as the philosophers say, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Buyer beware.

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Helping the living, the dead, and those in between.

Cute baby.

I dont believe that immortality is meant for an earthly existence. It is meant for an ethereal existence.

being immortal is pretty stupid. Sure living forever can be great ( at times), but it can be alot worse. You can be blown into millions of pieces and still be alive, never being able to do anything, or you can be tortured for an eternity. Everyone around you would die as you would move on. And you'd run out of things to do eventually. . i'd rather live, fufill, my purpose, then die and wait to be born again with a new purpose.

But there are some people who do want it.

Eternal Life means nothing without Eternal Youth. It would really suck to be able to live for a thousand years, but grow old to the point of decrepitude by 100.

i could deal with immortality

but that much time will change individuals. humans as we see them today would be mere rodents compared to immortals.

immortals could retain every secret in the universe but ultimately humans becoming pawns will be a pass time.

although immortality is better for space travel.

Immortality would be nice. Of course everything has a "bad" & "good" side.

I don't think I could live forever knowing everyone I know. Would die. It make me depressed.

:/

Wow! Glad to see this article has inspired much thought.

When I spoke of immortality in the article I was referring to halting the aging process, not necessarily eliminating all illness, disease. and accidents. Just not growing older.

I once read an article that some statistician computed that if aging stopped at 30-40 y/o a person would only live about 500 years. By then he computes an illness or accident would have gotten you.

Good thing there are no immortals. Otherwise there would REALLY be no Pension or Social Security money by the time I retire.

I wonder how that Saint Germain guy is doing this days.

There is no money now! The most depressing part of living forever is also working forever. The pain, the pain, when will it end?

Just think what those 401Ks would eventually be worth though heh.











I am immortal, I have inside me blood of kings. I have no rival, no man can be my equal....

Interesting article. Really raised some good points. One thing I was thinking about would be immortality's strain on the planet as if we could all live forever, we could theoretically never stop producing children, if we wanted. No way would there be enough resources on the planet to support us if this eventuality occurred - even today with the presence of death to limit population, we are still struggling to support our growing population.

There can be only one!

If someone truly stives for immortality, it could only be fuelled by selfishness. Grow old gracefully then die I say. Im actually quite looking forward to being to decrepit and senile.

I think even if science could extend human life by another 30-50 years, which seems a realistic scientific target, the planet simply could not cope with the added strain of trying to provide enough resources for modern man to exist.

As already said, we're already struggling to keep ourselves upright - we're starting to use up too many of our resourses.

Death can be a good thing, (if sad, but anyway...) has everyone heard of a small hamster-like animal called a lemur? They hurl themselves off cliffs just to keep their population down and their resourses abundant. Now I'm not saying that everyone should go and jump off a cliff, (because I'm not) but we need to die.

Besides, could you imagine living forever (and for some reason you didn't get a disease or have anything else kill you) and end up in something like the Big Snap? (supposing something like that would happen, of course) Or what if for some reason we never get off this planet and have to face the sun becoming a red giant? I dunno about you, but I don't want to be around for that.

There are reasons why living things are not immortal, and we shouldn't try to change it so that we can become immortal. Not ever.

well if being immortal is gonna strain the planet and the population would be out of control ect...

id become a space explorer,then i would have all the time i need to discover new worlds and alien life

Just remember never to wear a red shirt.

In his book, The Physics of Immortality, Frank Tipler calculates that the human brain has memory capacity for about 1,000 years.

After that, you would run out of storage space. What then? I suppose you could always back-up your memories into a spare "disk" -- or find some technological way to increase your storage capacity.

I could see a time in the future when everyone would have a kind of WiFi connection to a "Mainframe" brain -- so just as everyone has a personal computer connected to the Internet -- in the distant future, when people run out of personal person brain storage space, they could hook up to a "Human Brain Mainframe" and interect with that as a way to keep on gathering those golden memories.

The Human Brain Mainframe could be run and managed by ..... Congress? The Vatican? The National Sciene Institute? Microsoft Corp? The United Nations? The Dick Cheney Institute for the Betterment of Mankind?

Incidentally -- "Human Brain Mainframe" would be a great name for a rock band.

Yep. Me too. I would definitely not want to live forever. I have enough trouble fighting boredom as it is. I'd be hopeless if I lived forever. Ugh, and think, if you were to live forever and somehow you got life in prison? *awkward*

Earlier I mentioned the immortal St. Germain but I'm not sure if this was a 19th century urban legend.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_of_St_Germain

Supposedly this man discovered the "philosopher's stone" through alchemy. This gave him the ability to be immortal.

First off, a Lemur is a primate. What your talking about are Lemmings, and its still wrong. Lemming suicide is fiction. Contrary to popular belief, lemmings do not periodically hurl themselves of cliffs and into the sea. Cyclical explosions in population do occasionally induce lemmings to attempt to migrate to areas of lesser population density. When such a migration occurs, some lemmings die by falling off cliffs or drowning in lakes and rivers. These deaths are not deliberate "suicide" attempts however, but accidental deaths resulting from the lemmings' venturing into unfamiliar areas and being pushed to close to dangerous ledges. In fact, when the competition for food, space, or mates, becomes to intense, lemmings are much more likely to kill each other than to kill themselves.

Disney's White Wilderness was filmed in Alberta, Canada, which is not a native habitat for lemmings and has no outlet to the sea. Lemmings were imported for use in this film, purchased from Inuit children by the filmmakers. The arctic rodents were placed on a snow-covered turntable and were filmed from various angles to produce a "migration" sequence; afterwards, the helpless creatures were transported to a cliff overlooking a river and herded into the water. White Wilderness does not depict an actual lemming migration - at not time were more than a few dozen lemmings ever shown on screen at once. The entire sequence was faked using a handful of lemmings deceptively photographed to create the illusion of a large herd of migrating creatures.

Nine different photographers spent three years shooting and assembling footage for the various segments that comprise White Wilderness. It is not known whether Disney approved or knew about the activities of James R. Simon, the principal photographer for the lemmings sequence.

Nature documentaries are notoriously difficult to film, as wild animals are not terribly cooperative. Many nature films and shows in this era - including Disney's "True-Life Adventure" movies and TV's Wild Kingdom - staged events to capture exciting footage for their audiences. The sight of a few lemmings mistaking a lake or ocean for a stream and swimming out to far, or being pushed over a cliff during the frenzied rush of migration, has become the basis of a widespread belief that lemmings commit suicide en masse when their numbers grow to large.

You would have eternal youth if you have eternal life.

Not necessarily. Depends at what age the aging process stopped. If it stopped at as 50 I wouldn't call that so youthful.

ps- Good comments all!

I'd hate immortality...

Wow, after reading the majority of comments you paint immortality as a burden picture worth only a brief looked then to be locked up in the museums basement. Aside from our personal views which are influenced by our beliefs and wants and such, less not forget that while healthy (presuming we stay in a healthy non aging state if were immortal) all life strives to resist death as well as change, it is natural for us to resist death. We are all talking from a point where we can't really say for sure what immortality can or can not be like. However, it is our very resistance to death our experience of living that is our most important drive to live and want to keep living. I doubt anyone on their death beds at that moment would not say they wouldn't give another day to walk out side in the sun, or the rain, to pick up a stone or read a book, or engage in the latest debate or discussion (for those who say it would be boring, it is the little things that we enjoy now on a day to day basis that makes our lives memorable- bored, hardly) In our mortal lives we strive to live as long as we can in a healthy state, if we were immortal and live such for say a few hundred or so years at which point we might ask if not already, what then drives us to be? I think that is the question alot of us don't want to face, becuase what is left after PResumably doing everything is to do it all again, in other words relive a moment thus creating a unique experience each time. Sounds boring, but is it? Countless time to prepare to compete, life would become more remincient of chess then we care to realize and far more interesting once the natural threat of death is removed. One would need to reconstruct the purpose and meaning of life it self hence it is hard for most to actually grasp a simple understanding of what immortality would or could present.

Just my thoughts whynsos

Man from Earth, anyone seen this movie, one of the things that this guy says having lived for some thousands of years when asked if he wanted to die...He said no, he wanted to keep going to see what was "around the next corner" so to speak. Great movie!

Immortality would be a terrible thing. Imagine a world with Saddam, Nero, Charles Manson, Sweeny Todd, Atilla the Hun ALL alive together. Complete chaos. Mortality is best left untouched... Imagine a world with Bush...FOREVER!

None of these individuals were left uncontended, there is and will always be some type of balance, you can't simply through in "con" examples without looking at the "Pros" to justify why something would or would not work.

the whynsos

So to help with over population would we haft to draw lot for extermination?

How about a life lottery?
Your number comes up, your inplanted identification chip explodes or releases a chemical agent into your blood stream.

What about manditory forms of birth control. This one I feel would be a good idea for certain areas of the world now.

In my article I did say that one possible consequence of immortality would be a sudden drop in the birth rate (at least in the Western world) as the "biological clock" no longer has meaning.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned it but one terrible thing about immortality within our present state would mean that we would live to see the sun burn out and the earth spin hopelessly away without gravity. That is if the planet itself survived that long and again if it survived a possible supernova. But we would survive and then just be floating in space or some such until even that collapsed.

Immortality in the way the world is heading...no..i think people would rather kill themselves as they do now.

If it is possible to stop the aging process, what makes you think that reversing it would not be possible? Go look up on Aubrey De Grey's work.