If we have the urge to live forever, do we have the capacity? Anti-aging science keeps pushing back against the limits of mortality and opens a deeper conversation about what it means to be immortal. Would we use the extra time to be better people, or merely to descend further into depravity? Would such longevity set you free, make you a crazy risk-taker, or neurotically cautious? If only the rich could afford ‘immortality therapy’, how long before the poor take up their pitchforks and torches?
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4 replies on “Immortality: Will Anti-Aging Breakthroughs Help you Live Long Enough to Become Utterly Depraved?”
In 1941, Robert Heinlein wrote a series of Short Stories that were ultimately published as a Novella in 1958 called Methuselah’s Children. It was followed up in the Novel, Time Enough for Love.
The basic premise is an experiment in breeding that bred for long life.
It is an interesting psychological study when there is a relatively small group that has something the rest of humanity cannot have: in this case Long Life. A natural life span in excess of 150 years before “old age”.
Don’t want to give too much away (no spoiler alerts, the stories are only 80 years old 😉 ) but if you haven’t read them, this story goes well with the topic. It even includes some of the perversions.
The second novel does try to answer what is the value of long life.
The left relies on our limited number of years for it’s zeal. They have to make the world right while in it. This pushes them. We Christians know that this world will never be right, and we wait for the perfect world to come.
So, we live to 1000 with perfect bodies. How many careers , kids, or marriages would we have? How much money would billionaires accrue? How depraved, bored, arrogant, annoying would you be? How much would your dissatisfaction grow, and at what cost to others and Mother Nature?
Come quickly Lord Jesus!
We fear that death is the end of things. Fear of death is less in people of faith. My fear of death is primarily one of not being their for my wife, sons, and grandchildren.
The biggest obstacle in our toleration of aging is what happens with our cognitive deterioration. Also, it is unlikely we would be able to pay for nearly all of our joints to be replaced, over and over again.
Your discussion about getting more perverse and depraved doesn’t ring true for me. I find myself seeking less of these things and more contemplative as I age, wanting to be more of a role model for my progeny.
@Gentlemen,
I hope that Bill has been let out of the echo chamber to rejoin the rest of us in a normally-sounding world. I feel sympathy for him that he keeps falling into that tinny space.