The implications of immortality

I feel that a lot of philosophical and mental anguish arises from the revelation that we, as thinking things, have a beginning and an end. The anguish being caused by the fear and loathing of death. In the infinite expanse and existence of the universe, the little flicker that is human beings amounts to nothing; is worthless.

Verily mortality has been a source of nihilism. Our world is dotted with decaying structures left behind by tyrannical men in power who desired to defeat time and death by building these monuments to themselves; to be remembered.

They reason that by creating something for future generations, they will in some sense still be alive, or have more value.

Now i wouldn’t try and tell someone that helping future generations is not valuable, as many of you know i would say value is entirely subjective, and depends on your desires. So if creating things gives you comfort, by all means do so, but there is a point where you must asses your desires, and determine which ones are rational to fufill. The first emperor of china used his desire for grandeur to unite China, which probably was for the good, though i cannot say for sure, but he fell prey to that age old desire to be immortal. He devoted his life to looking for some way to defeat death and become immortal. He eventually resolved to build the terracotta army in order to conquer the afterlife (in lunacy).

People fear death. Not just instinctually like something with big teeth, but like an idiot stands on train tracks, screaming and pointing at a train that will hit him in 52 years.

I suppose many religions try to adress this discomfort by giving reassurance that there is an afterlife; that life has a begining but no end. Personally i have never experienced anything that would make me believe in any mainstream religion, nor have i seen anything that would make me belilieve that we are anything more than biological beings whose consciousness arises from and is dictated by the physical universe.

Being agnostic, I do not claim to have all the answers or to know what happens after death, but i am prepared for the worst.

Spending your potentially only life chasing immortality seems a very risky gamble. Ask yourself, what are the odds you will discover a way to live in this world forever? You’re probably better off risking death to see where that leads. But again i have to say that if you are that unsettled by the prospect of death, and if searching for a way to cheat it is the only way you can rest easy, then by all means go right ahead.

As an agnostic i’d like to think i am prepared for and have accepted the possibility that when i die i will become no more, and never think or feel pain and pleasure again. I’ll be gone.

In accepting that, this life and the time you have in it becomes infinitely valueable; it’s everything you have. It is indespensible.

This position is somewhat similar to the point from which nihilism would come in and and say that since you die, nothing you do matters and you are worthless. However this is not the same sort of nihilism that arises from comparing the finite with the infinite, it’s more of a fear of loss. All we have is life, and time, and we know that’s something. It’s definitely the most important thing we have if anything was ever important. If you accept that comparing what we have to what we could have if we were immortal incites nothing but jealously and obsession, not nihilism.

So if time is valueable, it should matter how we spend it, it should matter what we do during life, to ourselves anyway.

The nature of our consciousness leads me to say things like “people want to be happy” or “comfort is the ultimate goal”. Given that, is it rational to spend the greater part of your llife struggling to create a monument to be remembered? do you think the peace of mind you get from that is worth the sacrifice of most of your time in life? When you’re dead it’s not like you can continue to enjoy your sucess, so what was it all for? Is it also rational to spend your entire life in search of a way to defeat death? Spending your entire life in a futile struggle doesn’t seem very comfortable to me. People throw away all the time they have for the chance at an infinite amount of time, and wind up with nothing. People wadger that entering into any bet where the reward is unlimited is a good bet to make, but what they don’t realise that though the pay off is infinite, the odds are infintesimal.

To exist for eternity is inconcievable. For all intents and purposes you can think of immortality simply as the ability to exist for a really really long time, but to actually be immortal is inconcievable.

Many nihilists i know disregard the value of life as not worth the price of pain they pay, yet they still want to exist forever. Would this just result in an eternal struggle or eternal discomfort and pain? They want to exist as an all powerful immortal, not like the do now, but as their ideas would have it; to be god. If that’s rational then i’m napolean.

How long would it be before we lost al interest in life and committed suicide? 6000 years? How spoiled would be become with god like powers?

Here’s a question for you, can god satisfy his own insatiable desires?

The implications of immortality are many, and i have spoken of how the desire to be immortal can be irrational.

My logic professor said that if my desires are irrational, then i should change my desires. I must admit that changing my desires is easier said then done, at least i can change which desires i act on.

I’m not sure how these ideas will be recieved. I have talked about why immortality is an irrational desire, but i would not tell you to stop day dreaming.

If you take anything from this post let it be the the tenacity to cast aside your fears and confront death, and plan for it. Your death is comming and you need to know that, so you don’t waste any time.

So in your spare time dream about being a vampire, leprachaun or a Q from Star Trek, but when it comes to your direction in life, do what will make you the happiest, applying reason to your decisions of course…

Wonderer-

I don’t necessarily think that creating a monument to be remembered by is always a struggle. It’s more like, ‘I want to learn more about a particular field of knowledge,’ followed by ‘I want to discover something new in this field,’ and ‘if I get recognized for it, even better.’ And it’s not always a sacrifice, more like something one desires to do for the rest of one’s life, like studying philosophy.
The strive for immortality has become an irrational attempt because we’ve seen so many people fail at it – but I bet those who first experimented with it believed that they were thinking “rationally.”
It’s just one of those failed experiments that we’ve seen throughout history. Who knows, maybe it can be done some day? Who would have thought that cloning would ever be possible.

Why do you persue philosophy? do you with to be famous or to give something to future generations? Do you want to learn philosophy for its uses?

I did try to make clear the case in which you actually desire and enjoy struggling for something irrational.

If all i had to do to maintain my happiness was become an artist then i would. If i had to live as a hermit i would. If i had to search for the fountain of youth, even in vain, i would.

If i could plug myself into the matrix i would.

Let me give you an example of what i was refering to.

Lets say the desire to overcome death leads you to conclude that by building the biggest monument, you will have the best chance of being immortal, or special somehow for being remembered a lot. So they set out to accomplish this goal which consumes a lot of time and requires a lot of work. The pay off is a ridiculous gamble. I can think of so many ancient rulers who spent their dying days waiting for some monument to be completed. What makes you happy about building a monument, toiling for a reward unrelated to your task? You want to be immortal, not a mason. In this way gambling for immortality is irrational.

Another example is the fetish that many people have with finding a way to cheat death all together. When i was a kid all the good heroes were immortal. Again don’t get me wrong, if you like the feeling of getting bit by radioactive spiders, or adventuring in the jungle looking for the fountain of youth, or being exposed to gamma radiation from space, by all means knock yourself out. But if you took any kind of gambit or even search for some form of immortality you’re only wasting your time and effort and setting yourself up for failure.

Even excessive longing for immortality can be detrimental. That would be like me obsessing over brittney spears; i would never meet her, and she would dissapoint me if i did.

There is no reason not to day dream or fantasize about things, but do so carefully, you could wind up with a sense of entitlement or intense desire, which doomed to be unfufilled, could be the source of great anguish.

The odds of people wearing wool sweaters and banging rocks together to start a fire have about as much chance of cloning a sheep as we have at achieving immortality.

I don’t study philosophy with the intention of making a contribution to the field. But if I come across new/profound thoughts, something worth sharing, I might publish my findings.

I agree. I initially read your reference to a ‘monument’ as a metaphor.

I agree that fetishes and excessive longing are unhealthy. But I don’t see how that can be compared with the obsessing over Britney scenario. You would be able to meet her – it’s not an impossible task. Why do you say that she would disappoint you if you did meet her (metaphorically speaking)? If you knew you’d be disappointed, why the pursuit after her specifically?

Agreed. But then again, dreaming and fantasizing are different from actual experimentation.

How about learning from failure, assuming we study past experiments before launching our own?

I don’t know, maybe I’m just irrationally optimistic?

what i was getting at is that if the odds are i’ll be dissapointed, or never get to meet her, then i shouldn’t even try. Me throwing away my life obsessing over britney spears would be just as useful as obsessing over immortality. It’s an ill planned infatuation, which i can imagine leading to a lot of discomfort.

I worry at which point fantasy starts to become obsession, and when your satisfaction with a dream world starts to overtake and affect your satisfaction in the real world.

i wouldn’t tell someone not to look for immortality at all, just not to get their hopes up.

i know hundreds of people who are hopelessly lost in their mindset that the human immortal soul exists, and that servitude in this life gives everlasting paradise in the next.

The peace of mind these people have is not unlike a drug; something they will not seperate from. Perhaps their peace of mind is so great that inspite of their servitude they are happier than they would be if facing death knowingly. If that is the case i would not protest, as i promote maximum happiness.

There is no reason to convince a 90 year old there is no god, and there’s no reason to convince a 4 year old that there is one.

Think of pascals wadger. He said that it’s right to be christian simply because the risk of eternal damnation and the risk of loosing eternal paradise is too epic. (epic is my word)

In other words, pascal would live in servitude caused by his fear. He would throw away his life for the chance at more life.

In your opinion, which life would be happier, a god fearing neurosis accompanied by a lack of comprehension explained by the necessity of blind faith? (lol, i can be alittle critical sometimes) or one where you understand what you have, where you are going, and are morally free.

Note- To any theist reader i would understand all your objections to some of the descriptions used in this post. But i want to make clear that i am not talking about all theists or religious people. The type of person i described comes directly from my own life and what i have observed, if anyone must object, i would ask you start with pascals wadger, and my interpretation thereof.

Interesting. It’s always a pleasure reading your thoughts, Wonderer. I’ve been an ILP member for quite a while, but I simply observe and admire from afar. You’re one of the characters I always look forward to reading.

I have a question for you, since you seem to know something about the emperors of China. Those that did pursue immortality, did they have no concept of an after-life? I’ve read about the 8 Daoist immortals, who had been historical individuals before being recognized as such, and this seems to suggest that an after-life had been a possibility. So why not wait for the after-life rather than striving for immortality on Earth? They would certainly be held in much higher regard as spirits rather than immortal mortals, so to speak. But then again, you did say it was the emperor who sought immortality and as far as I know, the emperor is very much respected as a god.

By the way, I apologize for digressing. If you want, we can carry this discussion elsewhere, or MSN perhaps?

it can be taken metaphorically. It could be the difference between a writer writing because they want to be remembered, or because they enjoy writing and entertaining or educating others.

Again i must stress that i am not against people being spiritual or religious, or making monuments or memoirs. It is when people do these things in search of a pleasure they will never experience that they are in my opinion squandreing their lives.

If you justify the dedication of your life to actions like building momuments, writing memoirs or having blind faith simply in search of a way to defeat death by being remembered, being great or being saved, imagine what you will have wasted.

I was hoping for your thoughts, your opinion. I was wondering whether you knew more about this ^^^^ than I do. It’s an off topic question, I’m not trying to defend or prove any point I tried to make earlier.

To tell you the truth i don’t know that much about the religious specifics :slight_smile:. What i do know is that he though he needed his army in the afterlife (i’ve only heard it refered to as “the afterlife”).

He basically had a god complex. He felt that the gods should reveal themselves to him, he, who had conquered and united China, who was larger than life. When this didn’t happen his sanity kind of slipped. They say he would go out fishing and pretend to catch fish, and other strange things.

Leo tolstoy is another example. He was a famous writer, who wrote to be famous. He owned many fiefs and didn’t have to work at all. Then he hit the old philosophical snag that since his happiness was to end, everything was meaningless (that crazy old snag). he typically contrasts his short life with the infiniteness of the universe. he says nothing has value. He said that he had to convince himself often not to commit suicide. He walked among the pesants and wondered why they regarded suicide as a horrible thing.

In the end he “philosophically concluded” that Christianity was the only truth (really the only thing that could amke him happy). He who has everything, has nothing left to get, and becomes bored, and eventually unhappy.

Tom Cruise is an excellent example. His ego must be the most inflated one on earth, and it’s natural that he would fall prey to something like scientology.

In the end, they can only find something more in their wlidest dreams. :laughing:

I’m going to read up on this Leo Tolstoy character you speak of.

here is a link to his relevant work “my confession”

grtbooks.com/exitfram.asp?id … ssion.html

start at page 3 and read until he accepts christianity, that should contain everything relevant.

my input on him is that he was very opinionative in terms of what it takes to live.

i was introduced to tolstoy in a philosophy class, he was more or less chosen not because of what he got right, but how and what he got wrong.

good luck :slight_smile:

Will do. Thanks for the pointer!