I initially wrote “Would Immortality Be Worth It?” for my Introduction to Philosophy class. It’s a thought-experiment essay for a unit on The Meaning of Life towards the end of the semester. The essay was then published in Objectivity (1:4, 1992, 81-96) and is now online in pdf format.
The issue I take up is this:
When confronted with the fact of their mortality, many thoughtful people conclude that death makes life meaningless. What is the point of life if one is going to be dead soon anyways? Others conclude that only life after death, i.e., immortality, could make life meaningful. Both positions agree that a finite, mortal life is in itself pointless.
I then raise three questions: Would immortality change anything, as say those who say mortality makes life meaningless? Would an immortal life be worth it? And: Is the amount of time one has to live one’s life the key question to ask when asking what makes (or would make) life worth living?
My answer is at the end of the essay.
Hi Steve,
Fun post. I remember reading about a statistical study that someone did about what the average lifespan would be if, in fact, we were immortal. Purely on the basis of accidental death, something on the order of 90% of the population would have died by the 10,000 year mark. But I don’t remember exactly.
This is a fun gedanken experiment, but I disagree with you that immortality would necessarily be boring, even with a brain that somehow managed to remember everything it did in good detail. Things change. New opportunities for experiences arise as civilization advances, as technology advances, and especially as technology (genetics, cybernetics) may be applied to the human being to potentially increase our powers or modes of awareness.
Over the long haul, stars die and are reborn, organisms and ecosystems evolve. The universe a billion years from now will be very different. Only the quantity of mass/energy in the universe is constant; time has no end. Perhaps I am just more optimistic. I remember reading “Contact” by Carl Sagan who hints that in the future intelligent beings will be controlling the formations of galaxies… some kind of galactic engineering.
To avoid relying on a decidedly non-empirical premise, you might consider arguing entirely from the point of view of human psychology, from our need to grow– a very insightful idea that can be defended with studies in psychology.
best,
Brett
I agree with your conclusion that it would be nice to have a long perhaps indefinite lifespan with the ability to end it.
One of the thoughts I have always had about Eastern Reincarnation religions is that the idea of Nirvana (the goal of one’s soul presumably) is really the idea of spiritual suicide. The whole point is to reach Nirvana, a state of complete elimination of the ego where reincarnation finally stops. If that is not suicide, I’m not sure what is.
In many ways death gives meaning to life.
All good things must come to an end.
I am reminded of Woody Allen’s statement that he wished to achieve immortality by not dying.
And George Burns said his goal was to reach 100 years, since almost nobody dies past age 100.
Problem is immortality is not indestructibility, even if one was immortal things still break and decay irreversibly. There may be a fundamental limit on how long a human mind can live before disorganization takes over.
Quite frankly the Utopian idea that man will be godlike in the future seems far fetched, the descendent’s of human beings would not be recognizable as human beings to us, they would be something qualitatively different in organization to a regular biological human being, there is also no guarantee that human biologicals can “cross over” to a higher immortal form of life without losing what they like about their humanity (i.e. their feelings, etc, etc).
I once thought it would be nice to be immortal so I’d have time for all of the books I should read, but then I suspect that they would just keep writing more. So what’s the point?
And I would still probably never understand women. (Is that a hardship or perk?)
The primary problem with immortality is what is a procrastinator like me to do?
The problem mortals have with procrastination is they don’t really have the time for it. That problem would go away, and one could procrastinate with a clear conscience?
[Oh, boy, another Prof. Hicks place to vent my ideological wild oats!]
To be immortal implies that one cannot die, but be mortal, yet live indefinitely, is quite different. One might recall the myth of the king who loved a Greek goddess, and she obtained ‘immortality’ for him. Only, he wasn’t given eternal youth, and turned slowly into a grasshopper.
Well, he could still jump around and chirp!
If a human was given a promise of “life everlasting” he would still need to eat, sleep, and attend to his health and obligations. Human existence is impossible without the body and brain, and these need water, air, and proteins, to cite a bit of the menu. Therefore, it would seem that the only beings who could desire “immortality” would be creatures of energy, with bodies of quirks and quarks or whatever, and who might only need to bathe in some burning star to renew their libidos.
No one who enjoys life, has health, retains some youthful vigor, and who eats well, thinks well, and loves well, would really go to a calendar and circle the date of his death. I’ve dealt in medicare insurance for years and they always say, “If I ever get into a nursing home with tubes going in and out of me, I’ll end it all,” but, they never do.
I watched my mother and my father die in a hospice. They had signed living wills which forbade their being kept alive in extremis. Yet, one could observe the ferocious desires of their bodies unwilling to die until the last breath came…and went.
Without life, there is nothing.