I had an interesting time this evening discussing the idea of immortality with a few of my fellow NHN classmates. Though the topic may be straying from what we have been talking about in class, but not necessarily from philosophy in general, it never fails to attract interest and attention. Since I assumed that we wouldn't have the opportunity to discuss this in class before the end of the semester, I thought the class blogs would be an appopriate place to bring it up, and asking people whether or not they would choose immortality over "normal" existence is always a great discussion starter. These are some of the points/questions that were brought up in our discussion this evening:
What does the term immortality mean to you? Does immortality suggest that we never die, or instead that we have the ability to live forever but are susceptible to death (ex- being murdered.) Does being immortal involve aging? If given the option of living an "immortal" lifestyle, would it be unique to you, or would others be able to join you?
For me, a major drawback would be outliving friends/family over and over again, and the possibility of missing out on any interesting afterlife that may exist.
Would you choose immortality?
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Ironically enough I wasn't planning on responding to this post since I was there to help inspire it. (yet here I am)
ReplyDeleteSo anyway, the reason my attention was thrusted back to this conversation is actually one of your downsides to the idea of immortality. You mention that one of the drawbacks to this living forever issue would be that it would only be you, and you would watch as your family died over and over again. Well, when I thought about this for a little bit, the one thing that really caught my imaginative curiosity would be this:
What if you could have the ability to hang out with your multigenerational relative from "x" number of years past? You personally would have the ability to watch your entire family tree take place, and for more unique purposes be their mentor in life.
To be honest, you would also have a particularly fun job oppertunity: you could be the curate for the libraries of the world; constantly taking care of the knowledge that you have lived long enough to witness, and available for talented scholars to let question you and share seemingly ancient information.
In the end, the more I think about it, the more it pulls me to the idea of it being worth while. As cool as it would be to live the above mentioned lifestyle, I must say that it still doesn't sell me unless I have the ability to die; for no matter how interesting the world of the living is, death is to mysterious to pass up forever.