Would having the ability to live forever...

Well my sister says that she spends so much time in the house looking after the kids that she forgets what day it is, sometimes she can't even work it out. So I suppose if on a larger scale if you spent an exceptionally long time on earth the same may happen...hmmm...minutes fly now, years may fly then

I think it would. There would be no rush. I suppose that we are all so preoccupied with time running out, that to have an endless amount would make things seem a lot more achievable, or you may feel no need to achieve at all. You mat be able to just be and consequentially, time would not matter...

You've got me thinking now!

I don't think you'd lose it. But I think your idea of time would change. And you would long for mortality, a promise of change in the future.

in a word - NO.

my cats will only live for about 15 years, but they go in a frenzy in the morning and evening around the times that they usually get fed.

my hampster (since departed) lived to only one year, but she knew what time it was. she never used a clock, but you could set a watch by the time she woke up in the evening, and her regular 10pm to 1am exercise routine on her squeaky wheel.


it also depends on what your perception of "forever" is. one person might feel that living to be 1000 y.o. is forever, another might feel that living 10000 y.o. is forever. personally, if i lived to be 150 that would feel like forever.

damn glad, though, that i know i'll be kicking it around 70 to 80 (still a smoker). it puts the pressure on me to do everything i can while i'm able. i try to live my life as if i might die tomorrow and would want to feel like i experienced a lot before i kicked it.


symantecs sidenote: the phrasing of the question was "having the ability to live forever". this does not necessisarily (sp??) imply immortality. "being able to live forever" and "the inability to die" are two different things. like the vampires in anne rice's books. even though they can live thousands of years, most only live a few hundred due to being killed by others or committing suicide.

I think you're quite right, Cyracuz. Immortality -- or, at least, an unnaturally long life -- is always a curse in mythology, never a blessing. The Flying Dutchman, the Eternal Jew, a host of more recent literary creations -- they have all been cursed with the inability to die. We look for closure, for change, for surcease from this mortal coil, to use Shakespeare's terminology.

The only people who wish to live forever are those who's never given the prospect any thought.

Mortality is a blessing. Can you even be said to be alive if you're never going to die?

another perspective - it's the coherent knowlege that you are going to one day die that separates the homos (sapians) from the beasts. thus causing us to ponder such things as afterlife/morality, etc... could this awareness be a/the primary motivation to temper our behaviours and actions?? even a dog will fight for it's owner's protection (unless you're an abusive s.o.b.), but a dog will not fight to protect one thats not part of it's recognized family group. yet human beings have long been willing to risk mortality/morbidity over an ideal.

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ooh - this just struck me. according to the prior post, god may not be 'alive' (at least not in a coherent sense). now, reflect on the above, and if god doesn't have a first-hand knowlege of his/her mortality, what's to keep god in line??? surely, not a fear of eternal retribution for wrongs committed while alive. maybe we question "how could a loving god allow children to starve to death/take my mom/let little johnny get cancer?" and the real answer is god doesn't have a moral (er, mortal) compass. if all other beings not aware of their own mortality have a standard set of behaviours, why would we project a human sense of mortality and the associated fears and behaviour modifications that arise from those fears on god??

(d@mmit, thorman - does everything have to center on your agnostic leanings)

((although, you had to expect that a post dealing with immortality would eventually drift towards the spirit in the sky.))

All good stuff, thorman. Only problem I see is that you can't apply human values (morals) to a (supposedly) ominpotent, eternal, immortal entity. The ways, means and motivations of such an entity would be inscrutable to us mortals with our own sets of values.

Re: Would having the ability to live forever...



No. Your wristwatch would go on working as usual.

If we lived forever, would we age at all? Isn't aging the process of dying?
Would we have any disease or decay of our bodies at all?
Would wars be non existent, since one could not defeat an enemy? Would all natural disasters no longer occur?

If we lived forever, all of us, the entire pattern of social interactions and civilization would be extremely altered from what we know now. And one would have to assume a static population, since births would overpopulate the earth and simply consume all available space. So there would be no change, no social evolution, no "challenges" to stimulate the intellect, and our capacity for emotional attachments would likely be quite dulled. It would be a world of such continuing "sameness" that it would be devoid of much that makes life worth living for us now. There would be nothing to look forward to (or back on), and almost no need for morality. I think morality would be essentially irrelevant in such a scheme of things.

But, I do think we would need to maintain our perception of time, simply to organize the schedule of human interactions and activities, just as we do now.

Gungasnake, your wristwatch would be working, but it would have about as much value to you as the spinning wheel of a toy car. What is time to the patient one?

If I was immortal I would feel like the kid outside the fence, watching as all the other children are called to class by the sounding bell, knowing that this bell never would chime for me. It would be a true curse to live forever. To watch as all things dwindle, and to remain in the settling dust. The only one to bear witness of undoing, and thereby the only one to bear the burden. I consider this proof; To die is reserved for the lucky ones.

if you have read the Hichhikers guide part 3 thenn you know what you should do

I'm of the opinion that you'd count the next unit up, and keep following this pattern every 50 years or so, leaving you counting only the years by your 150th.

thorman: I really liked your post, especially the part about ethical degeneration into a beast. I disagree on the direction, however. I think you would go in the other direction: a monolithic sense of morality/life that only gets excited about the largest, most global events.

Also, your part about God's morality is very intriguing. Perhaps we could start a topic to discuss it?

discussion about god's mortality is almost sophomoric (i guess that makes me a sophomoron). the concept of 'god' receiving it's 'godlike' powers from others believing in 'god' is old hat. such literature as fred saberhagen's 'sword of______' series and even the xena tv show pondered that god's (or a specific god's in a pathenon [probably spelled wrong]) only weakness was the god's believers stopping to believe in the god.

Cyracuz

The worst thing that would happen to an immortal, is to forget.
Forget those we loved, the little things of the short moments of life - roses on a table, a kiss, vulgar words that become misterious between two people, the mourning for the death of loved ones. To forget the beauty of Beethoven's Sonatas and Quartets.

I see such immortal, as a man dead from the inside.

I disagree val. The curse is not forgetfulness. Even if he does forget, he will have all eternity to remember. No, on the contrary, in a neverending life the true curse would be memory. To wach all you love die over and over again. I would pray for oblivion.

Cyracuz, I agree. The remembering would be the worst, not the forgeting. Loss of certain memories would be a blessing, and especially good memories.

For a really fun read on this bit of fiction we are discussing I would recommend the vampire chronicles by anne rice. I think how she describes her characters dealing with immortality is very exciting. One of the characters has been alive for 6 thousand years when we are introduced to him in the books.

Andrews

But what are we, as human beings, if not memories of those short moments of life. An immortal would remember them as facts, not as experiences.
And, why the loss of good memories would be a blessing?

val, because it can be painful to remember things that one knows one will never again experience. I'd rather not recall the good times if I know that they are gone forever and beyond recovery.