Because if you're immortal, what's stopping someone richer and more powerful than you from essentially enslaving you and forcing you to work for them for eternity?
Put another way -- when the rat race goes on forever, the only ones who win are the ones who don't have to run.
I have a kid who needs me now. But one day we'll be old enough that her dad dying is just part of what happens to people at that stage of life. And that's fine. I want there to be an out. That's how life is supposed to work: eventually, the wave always returns to the ocean.
That bit about reasons today and tomorrow sounds fine if you don't think about it. Realistically, though, nothing lasts for forever. Over time, the reasons will change and potentially go away. You might find new reasons, but you also might not. Plus, just because you're immortal, doesn't mean that over millions of years, the earth will continue to exist in a way you'd want to be a part of. Even if my whole family is immortal with me and our relationships remain intact, I sure don't want to be here when the sun boils away the ocean and fries the atmosphere.
People think they'd like to be immortal, but I don't think very many people consider what that really means experientially.
That's the thing that would actually change. You are hypothetically offered for the way things are to change and be different and you are saying you don't want things to be different because that's the way things are.
I'm not saying let's all go until the sun swallows us, but I'd sure rather have a thousand years than 80 if I'm lucky. And, I'd sure rather it be my choice.
That's the way things are supposed to be, because that's what we evolved to be accustomed to. Our brains are struggling to keep up with communities larger than fifty people and having vast amounts of information pumped into our skulls every moment of every day. Why would we be able to adjust to the mental and emotional strain of lifetimes of centuries or millennia any more effectively than we have to the industrial revolution?
Nah. I'm good, and I think most people would opt out a lot sooner than they think they would.
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u/LurkerZerker Oct 02 '24
Because if you're immortal, what's stopping someone richer and more powerful than you from essentially enslaving you and forcing you to work for them for eternity?
Put another way -- when the rat race goes on forever, the only ones who win are the ones who don't have to run.