On the Problem of Being Immortal
Commentary, Truthiness Comments (3)
And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. -Abraham Lincoln
We humans are near the cusp of a break thru on human evolution and longevity and we shouldn’t do it.
Let’s work with some numbers (thou false, they illustrate the point). Take for instance a normal cell. every time it divides it loses a piece of itself, so in effect, it has lost a limited life, say 300. Then it would be replaced, but even that has a limited number of replacements. But a cancer cell does not have that limiter, meaning, cell life is a matter of chemistry and biology and so a long life of many cells is really possible.
Now, there are obvious problems with a really long life (or near immortality.)
Reproduction. Why do it? After all, the race goes down instead of every 100 years, down every 200, or 300. Evolution of the human race would come to a general crawl as we learn to fix the many “shifts” in genetic code.”
Other problems that come to mind
- Murder becomes more of a heinous crime, because you now stop someone from living potential centuries.
- Their is the obvious overpopulation and overuse of resources by the living humans. Where will we put them all?
- How about who gets the “drug?” who can afford it? will the rich be the only ones living the good life? Give it to people in america but not in India? What about people living on a small island in the pacific? Now it gets dicy.
There are yet so many things to live for thou. The march of technology, living to see a woman president of the USA, or the first man on Mars, but, there is alway something to look forward to, and the past is just as always spots in the retold record. I can find dozens of reason to live, but, unfortunately, Life is worth living because we die.
OceansOfThought @ July 10, 2008
This topic makes my skin crawl. Will the natural maturation of bodies/minds differ proportionally with the increase in lifespan? after all, our great grandparents weren’t expected to live nearly as long as we do today, but they also quit school in the 8th grade (unless they were farmers, then it was even earlier) and got married when they were 14-17 (when they’d also start having children).
I wonder if people live to be 300 (or 200) will we have 40-60 year olds running around wreaking havoc like today’s teenagers? will “kids” need to be enrolled in school until they’re 40? or learn to drive when they’re 35?
will the old people still have their faculties about them? today I can look at a select few healthy 90 year-olds that might benefit from an extra year or two, but more often I’ll see severe decreases in mobility and many suffering from dementia to the point that they don’t even recognize their own family or daily healthcare workers.
I suppose it will ultimately depend on the generally agreed upon definition of “life” and whether it’s worth preserving…does a human vegetable deserve more rights than the tiny, moist mouse fur jacket mentioned several weeks ago? I thougth that the living garment was creepy enough, but the idea of a nation of vegetables (or more likely their associated legal proponents) demanding prolonged care chills me through to my very bones.
One of the things i didn’t add to the article was suppose the aging is stopped, (instead of just living long) so now, what age do you want to be? What should you look like?
I myself want to live quite a long life, but i don’t want to look 200 years old or drool over my chest…
Not to be an arrogant jackass (though I suspect it’s far too late for that) but I don’t think I’d mind being 32 (my current age) for an extended period. It’s the first time in my adult life I haven’t had worries about money or work or having kids or relationships or housing or education (etc). It kind of rules.