Have you seem the show dead like me It a rather interesting take on death random people are selected on there to become grim reapers with specific fields peacefull death plague what have you they each have a quota they don't know how many souls they need but until they reach it they are immortal
I've always enjoyed finding out about immortality weather your mind is uploaded to a computer or an unfeeling hologram or put into a younger clone or someone else when you die or at will, accelerated healing, regeneration (like DR who), a ghost, or an afterlife
The lack of choice seems to be the root of the horror in both death and eternal life. When you remove that, the horror disappears. The 'end' in immortality doesn't even need to be death. It could be a reset, or an augmentation.
This is also why the sandman experiment was wrong Giving the immortal a guy a choice per year is utterly difference from giving him enternal immortality with no choice It would have went soo much different
@@Mark-in8ju My immortality is both Dimensional, Spiritual, and Scientific. Not Divine, Magical, or Mystic based. Sci Fi Immortality Vs Fantasy Immortality
That would be amazing. It kinda comes like this in my head: - I want this nightmare to end, good thing I'll die soon..... But then it goes on. - It never stops, does it?
Omg this quote actually goes really well with an oc of mine I was planning on sharing in an actual comment, and not a reply, but oh well. The oc is immortal, and they are stuck in this world. They don’t want to make connections with others, as they know that everything and everyone dies, accept for them. They push people away, and yet they still make connections to others. They are still able to find love for those around them, even if they will have to leave others behind.
@Flooffy_number1 Something that might be interesting for them to discover is that temporary doesn't mean meaningless. Even as a human I recognize that my relationships to others will never be permanent. Either they die, we stop being friends or I die. There is no permanence in the relationship but that doesn't mean there isn't joy and meaning to be found in the temporary.
I have a crippling fear of death, I just get struck by the thought that I WILL die someday, and just start sobbing like a child every few nights. This video was oddly soothing to me, so thank you for that
IDK if this helps or not but when the time comes that you die, remember that billions before you have died and billions more will die once you're gone. Even as you're on your death bed you're dying with humanity, you're not dying alone
I suffer from the same thing. It’s an unshakeable shadow that looms over every waking moment, and makes falling asleep to miss these waking moments sorta terrifying for me. I find no comfort in knowing that masses have died and will die, only sorrow. No comfort in the lie that I would hate immortality, no overdue sorrow that everyone I know would die. They’re going to die anyways right? Either way someone will mourn, me or them. I’ve mourned a lot, and I could tolerate a lifetime more of it while still finding beauty in a sunrise. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk lol
@sethclement-burns4997 I have the same issue but immortality doesn't appeal to me despite it at all. In many ways for me immortality exemplifies my fear of death because, after years of that crushing feeling every time I thought about the inevitable end of my own existence I realized I wasn't actually afraid of dying. I was afraid of time. Time never stops. Even after we all die it keeps on going forever. Even just trying to imagine what that means, how long forever is, human minds cannot do it. You could live every life of everybody that has ever existed a thousand times over, until you'd memorized every work ever spoken and every second of human history, and you wouldn't have even begun to experience the effects of eternity. Dying is terrifying because I know it is the end, and they for the rest of that eternal period that is "forever", I will never again exist or be able to do anything. At the same time, living to watch humanity die, the stars burn out, entropy consume all of reqlity until there is nothing left but celestial bodies floating around in a vast and infinite expanse of pure darkness; that is worse. Because when I'm dead I won't have to experience eternity. Both options scare me but I've realized that death is the only option where that fear won't keep following me, because I'll be dead. It still keeps me up at night, but immortality isn't just a bad solution, its the opposite of a solution. A forced "forever" is worse than an unexperienced one.
@@sethclement-burns4997this! Dying is such a painful thought to me because it means one day ill not bd with the ones i currently love and enjoy, i will not be able to watch the sun and moon be the companions they aways were through out my life in so many moments i cherish. Someday i will not be able to listen to music or play it. Yeah life has horrible moments but also fantastic ones that makes it worth living, and they dont need to be something grandious and glorious, but just a simple moment like watching the sunset while listening to soothing spyro music.
That was me throughout the years. Just unable to sleep, up around 4 AM, and suddenly struck with the thought 'I'm going to die one day." Cue the quiet sobs.
When writers make a fictoional immortal race, most of the time those creatures never think about their immortality. But when they make an immortal human - OH MY GOD! THE PAIN! THE SUFFERING! THE CRUELTY OF THE WORLD etc.
I think that is because if being an immortal being is natural, then you really aren’t a human. You would be a creature that cannot die, that cannot age, that cannot perish. You’re no longer a normal human being at that point whether the character thinks they are or not. The suffering for immortality is the only link that makes you human, while still being able to obtain immortality with consequences/sacrifices.
I'd say it a matter of perspective. The humans in 17776 are called "humans", even though they are immortal. In the anime "Darling in the Franxx", which has almost the same premise, immortal humans are also called "humans" - the few mortal ones are called "parasites" there. The opposite (and, IMO, the best) idea was done in a 1999 film "Bicentennial Man", where a robot with a self-taught AI got an obsession to become a human, but was denied purely because the robot parts were making him practically immortal. So, he replaced everything inside him with biological components and died moments before being officially regarded as a human. So, if you can "become human" or "stop being a human", what even is a "human", anyway?
Cholera was natural, as was child mortality. We changed it and now we don't miss it. Natural things aren't necessarily better. Starvation is natural. Diseases are natural. Dying from a small cut due to infection used to be natural. Civilization is unnatural and it has made our lives way better.
@@Ramschat you're right excepy for saying civilization is unnatural, we are animals which lives in their own peculiar ways, we are natural so our way of living is also natural, it's just unique
"Being dead isn't painful. People who are dead aren't aware of it and don't feel anything. It's the people next to you that it hurts. It's the same with being stupid."
@@Immerteal I dunno, there are a LOT of religions of whom the main motivation to follow them is to avoid a supposed "eternal torture." Even though the cause of it would be dying, the idea of continuous pain has spooked lots of people into remaining devout.
I loved this angle of Frieren. An Elf isn't actually immortal, but live far longer than most Humans, and she can value the develeopment and cunning of "mortality".
I also love this interpretation of 'immortality' in Fireren. I like particularly how it affects Fireeren herself nad her perspective on life and making connections.
I just generally like this neutral depiction of immortality. Frieren isn't sad because she had to watch Himmel die, she's sad because she didn't get to know him better. She learns from that and tries to change. The other elves we see also aren't particularly depressed with their immortality, and are just kinda doing their own thing. We don't really know what Kraft is up to but he seemed to be doing fine. Meanwhile, Serie--whether she admits it or not--seems to love teaching magic and watching people reach their potential, and she's been doing it for centuries. And she _still_ gets excited when someone really talented shows up.
yeah, she and the other elfs are so long lived and so strong (the ones we meet anyways) that they might as well be considered immortal, and the story handles it so so well
An eternity of suffering isnt awful because it's eternal, its awful because it's suffering. When you claim that eternal life would be awful, you’re conceding that you feel that life is awful, and that is frankly a depressing perspective to have.
Being alive isn't awful. Living on this world is awful for the vast majority of it's inhabitants. Granted the degrees vary but the global economy is determined by corporations controlling governments in the lamest possible version of a dystopia to have, at least for the "Free" world. China has their own Dystopia going with the social credit system and thought policing peoples social media activities.
Yh for me i dont mind my life but i still wouldn't want eternity maybe a couple thousand years but defodont want to get burnt up by the sun in 5 billion years
It isn't quite that binary, eternity would be awful not because life is awful but because life would cease to not be awful, everything you want everything you desire every dream every hope, every bit of food every single fortune, you would achieve an uncountable amount of times, it makes sense you would think its depressing you're probably thinking about all the fun things you'd enjoy as an immortal, though even in actual humans it has been proven that ceaseless mundane actions usually lead to depressing, now if you are truly eternal you need to think in millions of trillions of billions of years because even that isn't big enough to fathom the time you will have and so every dream would eventually become a ceaselessly mundane action
idk. i constantly exist in a state of either "i want to live forever, no matter how painful" and "i want to be dead at this very instant and also have never been born in the first place" there is no in-between
_"Have you any idea how many would give their everything for immortality?"_ _"Immortality? Hahaha! For that word, all realms and beings have ruined themselves."_
Living forever is one of those things my mind has gone back and forth on all my life. Some days I'd imagine it as something to wish for, while others will have me thinking of it as an utter nightmare. It really is one of those timeless discussion pieces 🤔
I think it would depend on what comes with the immortality. You don't exactly need arms or legs to have a functioning brain so if only your lungs, blood, heart, and anything else I can't remember at this time is regenerating then life will be pretty bad.
Seems to me that all bad things about immortality are bad things about life in general: losing loved ones, stagnation, suffering. Even the really bad versions of immortality speak more about aging, trauma and chronic pain than immortality itself. And yet people largely choose to live despite all these things. So why would immortality be any worse?
@twilightvulpine Personally, I think it's probably because life IS temporary that people keep living despite all the suffering. Because you know that it'll end eventually. Once you're at a point where you can't die, the preciousness of life will probably lose all meaning. Not to mention that, at some point, the earth will die either because of us humans, or because the sun blew up, and then where will you be? most likely floating in space bored out of your mind with nobody to share in your misery/boredom. And sure, you may eventually end up floating somewhere that will let you do something other than just sit around with nothing but your own thoughts for company, but there's a reason humans' mental health deteriorates when they're completely isolated from everyone and everything for extended periods of time. Becoming immortal probably wouldn't change the fact you were born human and have the mentalities that goes along with it. (hopefully I'm making sense and not rambling incoherently. >_>)
Once I became old enough to properly disect my beliefs one of the first things that I discarded was the belief that immortality is bad, it was something I had been told by everyone my entire life but when I really looked at it I realised that living forever is not only a good thing but the greatest gift a living being can possibly receive for a number of reasons, one of the main reasons being that there will always no matter the circumstance be _something_ to do, whether it be building a house or a simple game of cards humanity will never run out of things to do.
I've recently begun reading Chinese Fantasy novels. The discourse around immortality is completely different from Western fiction. Honestly, it's like a breath of fresh air. I was tired of being lectured about how immortality was a curse. Here both the heroes and the villains try to and succeed in becoming immortal. You don't even need to commit evil deeds to become one, although being evil will give you some shortcuts. Often times, immortality isn't even the main goal of a character, it's just something they get along the path of becoming stronger. Anyone can become immortal if they cultivate enough (they absorb enough Qi/magic). The stories aren't just a quest for immortality. They are more like a quest towards divinity. You level up from a mortal human to an immortal god. Besides immortality, you'll gain a plethora of super powers (like flying through the air, blowing up mountains and having your personal domain within yourself). I think the reason for the different perception of immortality can be attributed to the different cultural influences. Qi cultivation is a concept which comes from Daoism and has long roots in Chinese history. The rejection of immortality in the Western world can be attributed to Christianity (which propagated the idea that eternal life only comes after death) and Nihilism (which propagated the idea that life is awful and extending it would be a bad idea). I recommend Chinese cultivation novels to anyone who is looking for something different from Western fantasy.
is it tale of demons and gods ? I agry about the breath of fresh air that is estern view on immortality, I also tired of the "imortality is abviously bad" take ^^' I mean, we have so much to do now... with a good balance in life, and a good enought health, we have occupations for centuries...
@@shellingford9941 Actually, I was reading Renegade Immortal by Er Gen. The start is slow and some chapters are entirely dedicated to explaining how cultivation works. But I enjoyed the change of scenery and I think it's a good introduction to the genre. It's a classical "underdog changes his destiny and becomes powerful" type of story.
You forgot two things from those stories that makes their immortality nowhere near as bad as the perfect one - the immortals can always be killed and the "mountain" they climb doesn't actually have a peak. So you have an immortality you can opt out of and a goal you can endlessly strive for. So it's not actually immortality that could make you suffer. Also, the "rejection of immortality" is not Christian, it's literally the lived experience of every single human who has ever lived. Christianity, and other religions, actually introduce immortality as a concept. And finally, Nihilism by itself doesn't have a stance on whether living long is bad or good, only that it's meaningless, that no matter what you do with it it will always be without meaning. As opposed to Existentionalism that has the same starting point (life being meaningless) but instead of being a prison of possibility it actually frees the human, saying that you can create your own meaning.
While living forever inherently doesn't do that, having an infinite number of experiences absolutely does. If you have one wife, then she is all the more precious to you because that's it - she's just the one. What about when you have two? Three? A hundred? Thousands? I'd wager there comes a point when you won't even remember the first time you held each of those thousand special person's hand. Or the first time you dated them. Or the first time you kissed. Or your first night together. As with everything in life, everything in excess does no good. There is a limit to what our human minds can comprehend.
but in an infinite amount of time and infinite amount of experience, those indivudial experiences lose their meaning and become nothing to you. This video was alot more dull than i had hoped. But it is a unique perspective.
15:30 i think the reason folks kneecap immortality with conditions has two related concepts to it 1) your sour grapes thing was my first thought 2) akin to characters, folks don't seem to enjoy "Mary Sue"/OP stories with no downsides or limits. So people carve out little catches to add literary texture and percieved depth. Those are my best guess for why humans continue to portray immortality this way.
Yes, immortality with no downsides would be boring. It would also be unrealistic unless your characters live in heaven/paradise. If one doesn't do the sour grapes thing, the average person would probably live with their condition just fine, but a few people would probably hate their existence in the same way people with depression and suicidal ideation do. There would also be those people who somehow always find new and exciting things to do, despite being able to procrastinate forever.
That, and immortality is most often used as a literary tool to discuss something else entirely, like the nature of obsession, or changing views on morality and/or politics, or what actually matters in life.
I'm surprised you didn't bring up the immortality of Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who. In this version, it is impossible for Jack to age or die for any reason, and for around a century, he actually did want to die somewhat. But then The Doctor inadvertently took him all the way to the total collapse of the universe in the far far future, and after Jack saw that there were still humans somehow surviving all the way to the end of everything, that inspired him to want to keep living, and enjoy all him time.
16:29 It could also be an effort to disuade people from chasing things like immortality." Money doesn't buy happiness" and all that. It may not, but it can be things that prevents suffering and facilitate happiness
My thoughts exactly. Immortality is for certain people. The rich and famous. Not sure if you’ve seen a movie called “Death Becomes Her” that’s pretty much the plot. Immortality is only afforded to the wealthy and famous.
My view is that the point of these stories isn’t that death is good, but *obsessing* over death is bad. They’re not meant to be big philosophical messages that apply to the whole of humanity, but fables about how one should personally view and approach life (because the main audience these stories are aimed at aren’t people philosophizing over the ethics of eternal life, but the children and the average person who just want to know how to live a good life). The whole “rotting corpse” aesthetic for liches serves as a sort together metaphor for how they are as people; sure, they’re “alive” but they aren’t “living,” not really. A good analogy would be money. Money is good. Money can put food in the table, can buy medicine, can get you entertainment for years on end. Objectively, it would be better for everyone in the world to have more money than they do, especially those that have it the least. But obsessing over it? Pursuing it, at the cost of friends, family, over morals or personal principles? And sure, it’d be nice to have more money without making any sacrifice or paying any price, same as it would be nice to immortal without having to do any evil blood rituals or be just a hobbling corpse. But that’s not how life works. A common theme in these sorties about accepting immortality is growing up. And a big part of growing up is accepting that sometimes… life sucks. It hurts, it’s hard, and people go away sometimes, and we’ll be gone too one day. That doesn’t mean we can’t or should strive for better outcomes or for a better world for ourselves and others, but sometimes, life just doesn’t go the way we want. Friends may die, we will one day die, but being constantly afraid or living in grief or anger that it will or had happened isn’t the right way to go about it. There’s a lot more to life, than just death. Sometimes, shit happens, and that’s okay.
"Objectively, it would be better for everyone in the world to have more money than they do, especially those that have it the least." have you ever heard of inflation? Apart from that you have some good points. The purpose of immortality is to let you live a longer life, as life is good, so those who aim for something like that by obsessing over death while not succeeding to become immortal actually ended up doing the opposite of what they wanted by wasting part of their life. The life that they got to actually live became shorter.
@@Crazed-Rat Edit: I just realised that I totally misunderstood your reply lol. You can still read this if you want but it doesn't really fit in with what I (currently) understand you were saying. ___________________ I guess you're right now that I think a bit more lol. On another note, would you prefer for everyone to get 10% more money than to live 10% longer? If we think about it seriously, the latter would cause economic issues because of population growth, though I guess that may kick a bit in slower than if everyone suddenly had more money. It's also possible that if the effect was *actually* immediate (for the money thing), that the inflation wouldn't be quite as severe, as it would at least be equally distributed inflation, not something that spreads over time, though I guess there would be other factors that affect this too, and I'm no economist so I don't really know in the first place anyway. What are your thoughts. I'm not here to argue, but to discuss, so if you totally disagree with everything I've just said I'm still interested in that.
@@Eternal_Reckoning understandable, i kinda realized how my comment could be missunderstood like that but i didnt bother fixing it.😅 Alot of people have been toxic online lately so i dont blame you.
Why does every immortality story have a twist? Because of the "story" part. There is no story if nothing happens or there's no moral. In the case of Sandman and his friend, he continues to choose life and little happens because he's a side story, a mirror to Sandman's existence.
I think the question is more that, why is this the story? Stories teach us lessons, and stories about immortality seem to almost universally tell us that immortality is bad. Why is that the case? That’s the question that he is asking.
I work in the medical industry, adjacent to geriatric, the care for age related diseases. I confront death often. What people want is not immortality. What they want is eternal youth. When you get older things become harder. It might begin in your thirties, it might be as late as your sixties. But one day you will feel like your body won't run forever. Things become painful and you can no longer move as you used to and never will again. When we speak of death in my field, it is with the sigh of sitting down after a long day of work. To rest. Immortality, if you are trapped in the life when new thigns speed you by, when the things that makes sense to you is weird and alien, when words no longer mean the same and new words mean something strange. Then immortality is scary. But if you have the energy of a twenty year old. You can jump out of bed, work for 16 hours without pay, eat a trashy sandwhich and do it again for half a week to make sure an event is going to happen. If you can combine that energy with the wealth, knowledge and experience of the old... Then immortality is a blessing. We need quality of life. Not quantity of life.
I work in hospice and this is exactly right. Eternal youth, vitality and health would need to come with immortality. If your brain continues to age, dementia will come for us all eventually.
@@stellasilvae eh. Assuming biological immortality akin to rockfish or naked mole rats, conceptually those issues are solved. Though the logistics is an issue since humans probably aren’t built in many ways to live this long. As an example those animals don’t physically age past a certain point. A super old naked mole rat isn’t more likely to get a heart attack than one notably younger than it. And mortality amongst old naked mole rats remains fairly consistent with similar causes like predators, random cave ins, starvation, etc. instead of degenerative disease. They’re also immune to cancer, which we’d also have to solve too.
In reality, this is a non-issue. You can't have immortality without eternal youth, you'd just die. It's like saying it'd suck to lose your ability to make choices if you transform into an abstract idea., "becoming an abstract idea" is just not a situation that happens.
@@blackjoker2345 Not necessarily. What kind of immortality? One kind of immortality, and the one most likely to work in reality is replacement. One organ fails and is replaced. Since organs don't all fail at the same time. (ignore the fact that the immune system is difficult to pin down as an organ, much less replace and yet is among the worst factors in life expectancy). If we replace organs as they fail we will not have eternal youth, we will have eternal about 50s, probably. About 30 for the rich and about 70 for the poor I'm expecting. Though varying degrees of failure. Eyesight and hearing would be better probably, since the issue is neurological. But cardiovascular, neurological and digestive systems will probably struggle from the sheer invasiveness of the operations to replace them. Those things matter a lot for the level of energy we have. Throw in muscular and nephrology, which i'm guessing will probably be easier (since we're a bit further in replacement for those) and we might be in a perpetual "I'm too old for this shit", but not old enough to retire. Peak capitalism. Peak cyberpunk.
If immortality is possible, there's no reason to believe it would be anything different than what we've already experienced. Not bliss, not hell, but grocery store, work, moving to a new town, good relationships, bad relationships, etc. I can't imagine immortality would be anything special. Wait long enough, you'll experience incredible wealth and stability and true happiness as the lord of his own fiefdom, then wait some more and you'll be a poverty-stricken jazz musician, then wait some more and you'll be the pleasant yet distant neighbor in a quaint cookie-cutter suburb with a steady cubicle job. Nothing special.
I personally think it’d be hell. Like literal hell. Look at the amount of horrible people in the world, the amount of greed and stubborn selfish people. Imagine what they would do with infinite time. Biblically they illustrate what they would be like Hell is both a pit of suffering and a sinners paradise. Both for the same reason the evil of man unbound by death with torture each other for eternity. The hedonism, the maliciousness, what could they do to someone who would never die?
The repetition would be hell. You would eventually reach a point where you’ve done everything you possibly can, with nothing new left to do. And you’ll have to continue repeating that forever, and ever, and ever. It would make every individual aspect completely worthless, meaningless, and pointless, since you’ve got an infinite supply of them.
If you're truly bored then going out and doing something different is an option. If you haven't played god of war 1-5 in 3000 years then there you go. You only remember bits of pieces of god of war and would enjoy playing it again. Go do that. I think it's important to mention that immortality doesn't mean enhanced intelligence or memory: you'll forget stuff and only remember that you did it before. Go back and re experience stuff you enjoyed.
@@JAiZUA-cam Let's say you play every single possible game of monopoly possible, does that now mean that there is no reason to ever play a game of monopoly ever again? (Also, loved your helm's deep videos.)
"Shouldn't you want to live?" - having been in the position where I would have answered no (several times) . . . I'm far more concerned with making life worth living for everyone than with considering any sort of immortality, limited as it may be
I think The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke is a fascinating and prime example of a story that explores immortality without the usual negative twists or 'catches' that make it undesirable. The book begins in the city of Diaspar, where the inhabitants are functionally immortal, cycling through endless lives with their memories preserved between incarnations. While there are no dire consequences like boredom or loss of meaning, Clarke still manages to tell a compelling story about the importance of curiosity, the desire for new experiences, and the drive to explore beyond known boundaries. In my opinion, it’s one of Clarke’s works that I can recommend giving it a read.
A lot of, maybe even most, stories with romances actually write about obsession rather than love. Thats where the idea comes from that people cant possibly bear to lose everyone they've ever known. This is a lesson you should have learned when you lost a family pet as a child; grief is just the punctuation of love. With enough time and the right evenvironment to heal you will eventually get over it. And if you've ever had a new family pet after the first one, you'll know that losing the first did not hamper your ability to love the new one in any way. The exception to this is obsession, that is, when you don't meet your love half way, instead, putting your everything into them, to the point where you deminish your own ego and exist completely for someone or something else. This isn't healthy, no matter what the novels say. It isn't healthy when you have a finite lifespan, and it wouldn't be healthy if you were an immortal either. I think if you're practicing good mental health habits, immortality won't be a problem for a long long time.
If you’re immortal, all you have is a long time. The amount of time you were sane is a blemish on the tapestry of your life, a long-forsaken preamble to the infinity you now belong in, and a preliminary that you will hardly remember.
@@Oldmeme592I think he’s basically saying, that no matter how much time you spend “sane and happy”, you are guaranteed to spend far more time “insane and unhappy”, to the point it will eventually be 99.99% of your immortal life. “Infinity” is a very long time, after all, you are guaranteed to hit a point where the amount of time you were happy is so short compared to the amount of time you were unhappy, that it pretty much doesn’t even exist.
@@JAiZUA-camyou aren't guaranteed to hit that point at all. You say it like you're happy for x years, then a switch flips and you're sad forever. In just a few years of life someone's outlook on life, emotional state, happiness, and a thousand other things change.
I genuinely can’t remember a time in my life when death frightened me. It just always seemed like the most obvious thing in the world that it’s going to happen sooner or later no matter what, so why worry about it. On the other hand, I’ve never really cared much for the idea of getting old, and as time has passed and I’ve watched multiple older relatives linger for years as they steadily deteriorate, I like it even less.
I've been struggling with my mortality pretty bad recently. This is one of the few videos I've found that I agree with. Death isn't good. Life is so amazing and unlikely in the grander scheme of things. If I could chose, I'd chose to live for longer. But we're unlikely to achieve immortality in our lifetime. So the best I can do is accept the grim reality and make the most of what I have. The hardest part is getting over the dread these thoughts have left me with, but ultimately I want to be happy again, and spend my life continually searching for it's beautiful till I've satisfied my love for it. Thank you for this video.
I am 100% sure we won’t achieve immortality because it is not possible,old age not being a thing tho is possible ,there are a lot of the cause for that,that are know and we can at least imaginate those being fix(Also basically all way to cure old age also increase by a lot the odd of someone developping cancer,because well if cells live longer or get more duplicated to fix body issues ,errors are more likely to happen)
I'm on the same boat. The best I can do is try not to think about it, but eventually you get that one night where the existential dread finally hits and you're laying awake at 3am
@@goldoum We are quite literally at most 30 years away from biological immortality. We have already successfuly reversed aging in mice. It all comes down to elongating telomeres by forceful transformation of cells into Stem cells and back into their orignal forms. The best part is, your worries are unfounded in this solution, as it basically also cures the root cause of cancer, as well as many other diesieases, such as all kinds of dementia, as it allows to regenerate nervous tissue. And yes, that also was already successfuly done on animals. You will most likely live long enough to witness biological immortality for those willing to take it.
Don't worry, if you're not dying within the next few decades we'll probably have aging cured somehow, after that you just need to be really, _really_ careful for the the next few centuries/millenia and I'd bet good money you'll be fine, me personally, I haven't genuinely thought that I'm ever going to die for years and even if I am proven wrong, well that just means I now have the freedom to throw away my life into tearing down whatever it is that prevents me from doing so and while I'm at it, maybe conclude a few personal vendettas against certain unsavoury creations.
i think of certain powerful people in business and politics today and think how awful the world would be FOREVER if they were immortal. there soon would be no room for children, robbing the world of innocence and the wonder of their new ideas.
One has to wonder; in the world as it is now, death really seems to be the only thing that holds the wealthy and powerful in check, as they can at least not be so wealthy or so powerful forever. If everyone were to become immortal, would the world inevitably be ruled by one god-emperor, all the wealth and resources controlled by one ultimate capitalist? Would immortal humans just let the society that exists now persist and continue to its logical conclusion? Or would they rebel, and cast down the rich and powerful? Perhaps simply discard the old economy, restart from the barter system, and work up to a new currency which is more fairly distributed for a time? Ignore the laws and decrees of the god-emperor? If starvation is no concern, how long would the immortal humans be willing to suffer hunger, as infrastructure shuts down because nobody will maintain it without compensation? How long could anyone risk spending imprisoned or worse as the whims of a capricious despot? How long could they be held or tortured? I rather imagine the world being gradually dotted with fortresses holding former kings and presidents and emperors, CEOs and investors, those who controlled too much or too many for too long, now living under eternal siege, imprisoned in whatever stronghold they felt safest in... perhaps forever, or perhaps only until enough time has passed, enough people have proven just as bad, that they're forgotten and finally allowed to slip away.
That final part is my belief about the necessity of death. If nobody dies, there is no natural change or hand over of the reins to someone else, the same hands will forever stay on the reins and nothing will ever change naturally due to the lack of new perspectives. On a smaller scale, we can see this stagnation happen in business, organisations etc that fail to bring new perspectives in. Birth and Death are the two cycles that keep the world fresh, without Death, nothing is forced to change, without Birth no new perspectives can be introduced.
Alternatively, I could see the masses of people seeking change for the reason that they themselves will live to see the future, not just their children. Think about how many people ignored things like climate change in the 70s and 80s because they knew that they would never have to deal with the consequences? It's one thing to suck up poor circumstances because you know they'll end when you do, but when faced with the prospect of poor circumstances forever, people will want to change. How much greater of a crime is it for healthcare companies to kill people through denied claims when they're not just denying someone a couple decades, but infinity? I think there will always be a need for children anyway, to replace those that die and to facilitate the expansion of the species, if nothing else. It would definitely be regulated to avoid overcrowding, sure, but unless we all become machines, we'll have a drive to reproduce.
In my opinion, death is not itself a specific good or bad thing, it is the way death is used that determines how people view it. When someone dies saving the world or even just saving the main character, death is suddenly good. It is something to be accepted and treated with respect and sadness. The main character might mourn but does not specifically hate death. However, when death is not accepted or does not come at the right time, that is when it is despised. It is the when someone knows they are going to die and knows there is nothing that will save them. While we will never know how the people who have died this way feel, the people who have to live with something like that, understandably, now hate death.
Ive always felt the demonization of eternal life as something not all its cracked up to be is just the result of our limited perspective. Eternity as a concept is so massive we cant even grasp the idea of witnessing it and so it must be a thing to fear.
To some, but look at the way the world is now. Live long enough, you'll experience the worst and best the world has to offer. Live longer, you'll see cities vanish, replaced by new ones, continents and countries reshape themselves, plagues come and go. Its not be feared; but dang it would get exhausting. Especially if you're the last one left. There would be amazing things you could do with it, amazing places you could go because you can't die or get hurt or sick. But there's also the flip side to it. And I think we need to be aware of both.
It's more that certain religions that promise a "life AFTER death" can't exactly have you being satisfied with something else providing REAL eternal life. Gotta keep people on that doctrine treadmill.
@@Werewolfoverlord12 This! In my case, I've been so exhausted for so long just by doing the bare minimum to try to support myself in life that I am increasingly eager for it to all end so I can stop being overwhelmed 24/7/365.
I spent a decade being suicidally depressed, kept alive only by the knowledge of the suffering my death would cause and as such thought about death and mortality every single day. During this period I reasoned that the passage of time is characterized by the movement of particles to different positions and therefore over an infinite period of time all matter would at one point exist everywhere in every combination. Returning that to a human level I reasoned that the particles that make up your body at any time will be everywhere, and "do" everything. Then, taking as a given that the effects of all actions are reversible with enough steps I reasoned that if you will at one point do everything in every order, then no matter what you will one day undo everything you've done. Death, I reasoned, was the only way to cement the effects of your actions as a permanent part of part of existence. Our actions have meaning because they change existence permanently, and purpose is the shape our actions mold reality into when the movement finally stops. I've since gotten therapy, medication, and undergone environmental changes such that I no longer need a reason not to die. However, I don't really believe my younger self was wrong in their logic. A light-switch immortality is good in my opinion because it avoids infinity, however I can not call a life lacking infinity immortality. Death is good because it is the endpoint which prevents infinity. Thus, my stance remains that indefinite life is good, but eternal life is a fate worse than any other.
The universe is still just a giant explosion. We are but eddies in the roiling flow. We get to influence, however infinitesimally, how the dust falls when it's over.
There was a Star Trek: Voyager episode that dealt with this theme. One Q decides he is done with existence and wants to hit his power button. The Continuum imprisoned him so he couldn't. The Voyager crew comes upon the prison and releases him. He asks for asylum from the Federation, and Janeway has to hold a hearing to decide, knowing that if she does give him asylum he will hit his personal backspace key. It's one of the more interesting episodes of the show.
I cried. But when the conclusion was said. I smiled... I'm scared. But I'm happy... Thank you for teaching me that.. Death can be scary, for all of us, for the one dying, and the one next to them. But just know you don't have to be afraid. Though it's ok to be afraid. As you're probably asking: What lies beyond life.. Where will I go... Is there an afterlife... But those questions don't need to be asked.. Life is a gift given to us. To use to express who we are, to try new things, to have fun.. To find love.. And you shouldn't waste those opportunities. Nor find a way to keep them forever... Live, don't survive. Enjoy the time you have left. If your curious, or if you wanna do something, don't wait.. Do what you love to do... Whether it be spending, or taking, because if you don't fulfill everything you wanted to fulfill, when u die, you'll die with a life unfinishd.. Keep doing what makes you happy.. And don't let anyone stop you... Have fun ya lil devil's.. The reaper will be here soon..
At 6:11 this also is the common response to the rapid raising in prices "It's just inflation, that's the way things are." Or war "It's for 'my' land or pride (or greed)." It's crazy to question those concepts despite being harmful or negative to many.
This is what I also think about immortality. Life is just so amazing. When I slow down, I start to appreciate everything. I hear sounds that I didn't pay attention to. I see things that I passed without a second thought. Immortality is both uplifting and sad. Many people you know will die, but life is always as vibrant. To soak in life and pursue an eternity of study is something that I find wonderful.
Its strange to find a similar mind, to me inmortality is the ultimate goal of life, death is the end of everything, they say things must always end but life and particularly human life is nothing but a celebration of feeling and experience, we build our lifes around perseverance and action, even if against others or ourselves. Death is not numbness, for numbness is a feeling, it is no longer being able to ever experience life again, and that is something I have found few people to truly understand.
@@dorthvoder9375 what about after the universe dies though? you'll just be stuck doing nothing for eternity - you won't even have a body, you'll just exist
@@dignatius4444that is the ultimate torment to me endless nothingness being aware but not able to do anything I'm glad it's impossible a mind cannot exist without a brain
@@dignatius4444 That depends on if the universe dies. And also, if humanity is unable to deal with it by then. A hypothetical based on an unrealistic complete failstate, which is rather silly.
I think to add a bit about the good characterization of death, a phrase that got to my mind was "money is the root of all evil" and how it was actually shortened from "the love of money is the root of all evil" In a similar vein, i think that saying "death is good" is a product of saying "the fear of death is bad". Fearing death can be a contriving thing that shortens and hinders your way of experiencing life, showing many of the things ofteen asociated inmortality "boredom from a lack of stimulation" "lack of love from being to scared of being betrayed" "decaying of ones body from old age" from this mindset of fear is that one gets your typical "inmortality". However, that dosnt make death itself good, it just makes the excessive fear of it, as all things, bad.
I think it's less sour grapes, and more too much of a good thing. I love cake, for example, I almost never don't want some, but, I usually only want one slice at a time. If I had an endless supply of cake slices I HAD to keep eating all the time, I'd get pretty sick to my stomach. Life is like that, it's one big cake slice our soul slowly eats, and when we're done, we die. We might be done prematurely, like dropping the plate, or we might pick up crumbs left near the end, to try and hold on a little longer, but eventually, we can't eat any more, and the plate goes into the sink, crumbs are washed away, and we move on. Our souls weren't made to live endless lives, just like our stomachs weren't made to eat endless cakes, even if we wanted to. Too much cake will make you sick, too much rain will lead to floods, too much light will blind you, too much life...probably wouldn't do you much good.
But... you're beginning from the idea that there's an immortal soul that carries on after death. You're already ascribing some form of immortality to a human, in the form of a soul. If there's no "Soul", then there's no "You" to set down the fork after eating the cake. When you say "Too much life probably wouldn't do you much good," well... there will be no "You" to do any good or bad to.
@@isaiahfisher2337 the existence of a "soul" isn't the core of his argument. What he's saying is that too much of anything is never a good thing - regardless if there's a soul or not. We as a species aren't designed to live forever just like our stomachs aren't designed to hold an infinite amount of cake. His point is that if eating too much cake would give you diabetes, having too much of life will inevitably do something bad to you just as well.
You never know until you try it right? We can speculate all we want, but what good will that do? All the debates on this video are happening exactly because no one has lived for 1000s of years yet to tell the tale.
I think some people both underestimate and overestimate the consequences of Immortality. Just because your immortal doesn't automatically gartenteed suffering, of course I'm not saying you wouldn't suffer, I mean, imagine someone capturing you to harvest organs for all eternity, also I will admit some people who are immortal would probably use it for evil deeds, but lets keep this in mind, "This Isn't A Story", you're not a hero, or a villain, or anything like that, you're just a person with a normal life who just happens to be immortal, don't expect to have the world be about you or be against you, you're not special just because you're immortal.
Honestly I figured this out years ago, mortality is a cure which people trick themselves into thinking is a blessing because it makes the finite nature of their existence less terrifying to think that way
I think one of my favorite versions of semi-immortality is in D&D. A high level wizard can cast the Clone spell. Which, as the name implies, creates a perfect copy of the caster that essentially gives them an extra life if and when they die. The caster can even determine how old the clone is when it's created. The only real caveat is that the spell requires some rather expensive components in order to cast it. But aside from needing a small piece of the caster's flesh as an ingredient, there's not really anything reprehensible about the spell itself. It just exists as a handy tool to be used.
And its also isnt A mery-sue/a "no downsider" sinse its also impliments a Theseus ship idea, that can be explored if people r interested in more philosophical. Perfect copy. But the dead body is out there Intrigue I see why thats ur favorite, orr its just starting to become my favorite too n im only now realising it
@@zeppie_ Something like that. You could theoretically live forever as long as you have enough clones and the resources to cast the spell repeatedly. But that material cost is the main drawback, along with prep time.
Another cool element to it (for anyone who doesn't play/read D&D) is that the soul and essence of the caster enters the clone body upon death, it's basically just an easy resurrection for them.
In the manhwa The Shop With No Name main villain is an immortal\hard-to-kill human turned vampire, and his main feature is his attractiveness. Noone suspects him, women love him, and he is a vicious maniac.
2:13 I think I would want to live for a long time imagine all of the things that are coming and I won’t be around to experience them or I would be too old to enjoy them properly.
I always find it interesting to counter someone when they ask "how can you be human if you cannot die?" with "what does it mean to be human?" We seem to have this idea put into us that there is some clearly defined idea of what this is until we actually analyze it and then realize much of it isn't even rational sense or even properly based on anything at all. Just whatever suits them as an idea of "normal" at any given point of time. To which I also ask "what even is normal?" and to make it one better "why do you even want that?" Most of the time the arguments I get aren't usually personally based, they typically bring up grand concepts beyond themselves or something that isn't immortality itself being the problem.
The other guy is right. They aren't neatly spaced out by 100 years, not all of them became worldwide epidemics, and the diseases used to make the claim only go back to the 1700's. Fact is there's usually a major epidemic every 30 to 50 years but the reach and fatality rates vary wildly.
@@viktormadzov5286 Still, viruses evolve just liike living things do, even if they aren't set in stone. Take polio, we can crush that which hurts us given enough time.
I guess I've just never had a Sour Grapes mentality. For as much as I am Depressed and for as much as I find Death beautiful, I want to live forever. Not because I'm afraid of dying, but because I want to see what happens next, even if it means experiencing that unique pain of losing things I've come to love again and again. The world we know is ever-changing, and I so want to experience all its highs and lows as it happens.
You are the person in the story who decided to stay behind and not enter the portal while the others went in. One day that portal will involuntarily come for us but good thing you’ve decided to stay here for now to enjoy as much as you can, despite the lows. Good Luck👍.
@@Jeremy-bt8lo I highly recommend you watch the Good Place, it's a funny show with a nice take on the afterlife, Heaven, and Hell. Also Florida Man is a character.
@@timberwolfbrother Oh is that what the story about the ending portal was about. I looked it up and realized it was a tv show. I thought the reference was to an older story in a book lol
Oof, this hit me hard in my current emotional state. Interestingly, it sort of reminds me on an interesting take of immortality explored in the Soul Calibur series of games, of all places. A character in one of the games had achieved immortality, but after a few hundred years or so he reached a point where he felt he had nothing left to live for, and so sought a means to remove his immortality. But on the precipice of doing so, he caught a glimpse of the future, and saw the many things that mankind would achieve and marveled. He wanted to see those marvels for himself. And so he stopped his pursuit of ending his immortality, because he had come to believe that the future would continue to hold wonders and marvels for him to experience, if he would just show patience.
Yeah, that's kind of my view on the whole thing. I'd take Hob Gadling's deal out of... well, to call it FOMO would be flippant. I want to see what the future has to show us! I would *love* to pop in on a 31st- or 41st-century Time Team-equivalent archaeological dig and snicker to myself at all they're getting wrong about The 21st Century People, and that's just a start.
If you cannot change a situation, change your attitude. We cannot currently change the fact that death is inevitable for all of us, so we work hard to convince ourselves that we're okay with it. I like this. Thank you
Ive also thought immortality was a case of “hate em cuz we aint em” whenever someone says its bad. But after the sour grapes point, when it came to the part in the video about like one not wanting more of their life? That was pretty damn insightful. If a true no-catch immortality was offered, I think a lot of people would take it. A huge part of what makes death bad, is that it is almost always not on ones own terms. This grants people the freedom to at the very least have some agency. I think that makes it in some objective sense a positive thing.
Death = Time As Jean-Luc Picard was written as saying, "Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived.
We either outlive the ones we love, or they outlive us. There is always the survivor, the one that carries on through the grief. I don't believe the eternal life is the curse, but the eternal loss. Loss of your lovers, your children, your sense of connection. But there is a hopeful side people often ignore, the part where someone gets to carry the torch. To make sure all the stories written are eventually read, all the art viewed, all the good and bad and right and wrong ultimately weighed. Someone gets to survive everyone, gets to make all the meaningless deaths have meaning to something.
Well there's also the hopeful side where eventually you also have eternal gain. Gain of new lovers, children, and connections. Depending on the method of immortality, you might not stay the only immortal. Eventually those loved ones might be other immortals too.
until the hopeful side running out you have to live for eternity remember ? you will outlive everything, i mean EVERYTHING. also you can't end your suffering, you have to look at the "notthing" for eternity after you outlive everything and someday you will outlive the "notthing" too. until you are the only thing left
I had recently read Scott McCloud’s the sculptor, it’s a fantastic story about the urgency placed on knowing you will die someday. But you can’t help but wonder would David and Meg be better off if they could live for longer. I cried because their life together was cut short, never given the opportunity to be everything they can be. There is always something to live for.
Thanks for this. I always loved Dream and Hobb's story and that it keeps progressing throughout the series. At his lowest moments, he always had a reason to live.
My grandfather died 2 days ago He had late stage Dementia In every clear moment of his he talked about wanting to end his life... I think he is in a better plqce now One should not be forced to life a live to the last 10% when you have done and seen all you wanted I dont want eternal life I just want a happy life
My grandfather died from dementia a couple years ago and I was struggling with it. I had a dream after his passing that the soul leaves the body the final third of life with diseases like dementia, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, etc. so it isn't damaged from the trauma of these diseases.... It gave me some peace I hope it will you also 🫂
What about a happy life, for as long as you want? A happy life in a timeframe decided by noone but yourself. No genetic disorders, no tragic accidents, no unlucky incidents.
Dementia is caused by aging, and immortality requires aging to stop. Of course magical immortality as an aging wreck would be torture, but those that want to live forever are thinking of a more realistic form of immortality: stopping the aging process of the body
Reminds me of a trope: "Blessed with Suck." It refers to a situation where someone gets something that is usually considered a great boon, but all sorts of negatives are artificially attached to it, so as to make it not worth it. It pretty much only applies to good people. Villains get "Cursed with Awesome", where they are given a "punishment" which actually gives them great power. Like The Mummy (1999). "You have betrayed me by sleeping with my queen. I sentence you to a terrible fate where you will gain immortality and godlike powers. I'll bet you're feeling sorry, now!" I've always considered Blesses with Suck to be pretty lame and a lazy way to present the protagonist with difficulties without having to actually figure out a story reason to present obstacles. On the other hand, there is the universe of Leiju Matsumoto's Galaxy Express 999/Space Pirate Captain Harlock. In it, there is the Machine Empire, which consists of people who have given up their human bodies for mechanized ones, basically becoming cyborgs. They exist forever, but lose all sense of humanity and purpose, for the most part. Harlock and the other characters refuse to get machine bodies because a limited, mortal life brings an urgency to one's actions, and a desire to actually live your life while you can.
I had a story about an immortal "superhero" whose ability was literally unkillable. However, he still suffered from all the wounds, so that eventually they all accumulated and turned him into a walking burnt zombie, but his unkillability made him functional anyway. He is one of the most positive and kind characters, who was the first to found a "league of heroes" by finding the same people with superpowers, and helping them find a better use for them, despite the great losses from the fact that he lived for many centuries and looked terrible from the outside, he never lost hope. And he never lost his humanity in the first place. (despite this, death overtook him at one point when he had to make a sacrifice) This is how I see an example of immortality in a person, and how it will affect him. Also in the story there are a couple of other characters with immortality, but they have a completely different outlook on life and personality. And their abilities already make them less like people and more like super-entities.
a character that tackles this question and philosophy wonderfully is Skips in Regular Show, a cartoon when I was growing up. He addresses seeing everyone he's loved die before him and not able to join them and becomes jaded because of it however uses his suffering to help those within the mortal coil make the right decisions to live their lives to the fullest.
Dying isnt easy, normaly, to literaly most people Normaly its something horrific, accidents, mistakes either piling up or falling on you emideitly, and you didnt bounce back
If you had to chose to die like you have to choose and use effort to live I think people may feel the same. Once you chose, you can't go back. I think choosing life or death you left go of what you were, and that is scary.
When I think of immortality I always think of a quote from the 12th Doctor. “A life this long, do you understand what it is? It’s a battlefield, like this one, and it’s empty because everyone else has fallen.”
“I’ve lived long enough to know a longer life isn’t always a better one. In the end you just get tired. Tired of the struggle, tired of losing everyone that matters to you.”
@@JaxdoesArt The problem with that idea is you can gain new people that matter to you, eventually. Can wait long enough for new immortals to exist too.
One of the most troubling things about death is the idea of nonexistence: it is simply, and _literally_ , unimaginable. To imagine something is to form a perception in your mind; but if there is no perceiver, there can be no perception. Being conscious, we want to extend that consciousness _ad infinitum_ .
I think part of a realistic issue with immortality is that eventually, your brain runs out of space. So you as a personality eventually die due to being over written by a new personality, or you lose the ability to create new ones
From the youngest years I never understood view that immortality is bad, I always saw it as the biggest blessing one could ever receive, for me any realistic question would be "how much would you sacrifice for it?", not "do you accept it?" and truth be told I can see myself sacrificing ALMOST anything in a heartbeat for immortality, obviously not the monkey's paw type of immortality with eternal aging, ending as sentient dust.
I feel the real curse of immortality is the inevitable cycle of apathy it'd cause. Try as you might, if you can't ever die or be permanently destroyed, you're gonna repeatedly fall in and out of periods where you're only thought towards many aspects of life is "why should I care?". Granted, the same argument can made for mortality as well.
@@furrymessiah My point is having an infinite lifespan is gonna trivialize a lot of things. It's gonna get hard to care at times because you'll inevitably get another chance at it, not to mention all the other experiences that won't matter as much if you can't die anymore. I never said it'd be permanent, I said you'd cycle in and out of it.
@@MataNui. i think its just a difference in perspective. With immortality, you have to be prepared for all the things its going to change about your whole life; We're all already so used to mortality that we cant think of a life without it. We prioritize, dream, love, grieve, cheat, and help with the perspective of our mortal limited life in mind. Its the awareness of how our lives are right now that make us very susceptible to immortalitys mental pitfalls. If everyone was born as immortals from the very beginning, i doubt that a lot of the problems we fear of eternal life now would be that intense; so id say, if we had a choice to live a non-side effected immortal life, its possible with enough perspective preparation and willingness to risk yourself to take that role, even if the guarantee of a mentally healthy one is impossible to confirm.
❤❤ absolutely beautiful video! I have grappled with this problem since I was a very very small child and I have never ever understood this strange aversion to immortality and The love/ hatred of death. I wish this topic was spoken of so openly and honestly more often and across more mediums, I think it would change how we interact with each other, how we run our governments from our small communities all the way up to national issues, how we interact with medical issues and scientific discoveries and overall how we are as human beings; All for the better. I love your channel, please keep up the good work! What You do matters greatly!❤
Thank you! I've spent years arguing with people who think immortality is bad simply because they have been told so by fiction. You really can tell someone something enough times and they will start thinking it themselves.
The problem I see in immortality is stagnation. It is bad in the personal scope, but it is so much worse when you consider society as a whole. What if immortality had been discovered hundreds of years ago? How would you feel being ruled by kings that not only believed in their divine right, but also that slavery is fair, and women should submit to their fathers and husbands? Those immortals could possibly evolve their opinions over millennia, but it's likely that, like an oak, their minds would grow less flexible with every season. I feel it's best that we die to give space for our children and their children to make better mistakes.
You're putting the cart before the horse. This problem doesn't even exist yet, but you're using its theoretical existence to argue against immortality? There are plenty of theoretical issues that we could have brought up to prevent the invention of nuclear reactors, wind power, vaccines, airplanes. Should we have never invented any of those for fear of what theoretically might have happened?
Not technically, human beings don't have unlimited memory. With so much time, and with their minds presumably good enough to still rule, they'd have to improve or like any other society, be trampled by those that do. Even if all the world leaders are immortal and set in their ways, all it takes is one rebellion to build an empire of progress and innovation, forcing everyone else to keep up. One person can be powerful, but they are never an island.
Monarchy didn't end because all the kings died... Ideas in society can change. My ideas change, do yours not do as well? Do you not grow as a person, learn new perspectives and change your mind?
@@Ramschat Most of my change happened up to early adulthood, and it is well known that people get less open to new ideas the older they are. Even a genius like Einstein had difficulty accepting a radical new theory such as quantum physics. If kings sound too far-fetched, imagine a world where CEOs and judges never retire, where the same politicians run for the same elected positions for centuries on end. Does that sound like a dynamic society to you?
@@rubinelli7404 this might be due to aging, not just living. In this case, it can be fixed probably by the same thing which gives immortality. And if it's just a mentality issue, it's even more fixable then.
"A scientist knows very well that no one can ever learn and understand everything, there is ALWAYS more." I agree with immortality and invincibility. Time will change everything else but you. You will always have something new, never getting bored. You will be incredibly famous, people betting over your death and losing. You will have an immense amount of understanding of your surroundings and people. You will be able to talk ancient English and God knows how many other languages in the year 200025. You will see Andromeda probably! You will see time travel, inside of a black hole, countless things that were lethal back then. You can swim inside a volcano, win every single game and eat anything you want! But, there's still a catch... "Good" and "bad" always changes with the context, culture and personality. Whatever you give humans, they WILL find a way to love it. That's what I love about them. : )
"time will change everything but you" is one of most ignorant statements imaginable. The "you" won't even exist anymore due to erosion of your identity, people can change vastly in just two decades, let alone centuries, your brain would adapt to almost everything, which would make it extremely hard to be excited about things. Your idea is that new things equals existing things but it doesn't necessarily mean that at all, nothing will be truly new at that point.
"whatever you give humans they will find a way to love it" so I guess depression, despair and general boredom isn't a thing. There is a difference between coping with something and loving it.
Death is good and normal, its what I keep repeating to myself whenever I start to think about death a little too much. Death to me, the idea of non-existence, is something I can't fully comprehend. When you're dead, your mind stops thinking, you do not know you are dead, you do not know anything, no boredom, no fear, no memory. I get emotional and empty inside every time I consider this, immortality would mean not facing this fear of not existing. I would, no matter the pain, choose existence over death.
little-known downsides of immortality: 1. tearing your favorite article of clothing and discovering that it's irreplaceable because the technique of its manufacture has been lost 2. realizing you've thought of the perfect comeback to someone who's been dead for 300 years 3. not being able to eat your favorite dish because the source of some critical ingredient has gone extinct 4. having strong opinions about sports that are no longer played 5. getting a song from the 13th century stuck in your head and being unable to get it out because you don't remember how it ends and you're the only person on earth who remembers the song at all 6. having that perfect pun you've been waiting forever for a chance to use stop working due to linguistic drift 7. Watching your favorite constellation slowly lose its shape as the stars drift apart over millennia. 8. Having to constantly re-learn the same skill every few centuries because the tools or methods keep changing. 9. Realizing that the secret to happiness you’ve finally figured out is now irrelevant because society has completely restructured itself. 10. Developing a lifelong love for an art form, only to see it replaced by something you find incomprehensible. 11. Living with the knowledge that you own the last surviving copy of a historical artifact, but no one in the modern world cares. 12. Forgetting entire centuries of your life, only to find them referenced in some obscure history book that gets the details all wrong. 13. Watching jokes about mortality never land quite right because your friends think you’re being ironic. 14. slowly losing your true native language due to needing to adapt to linguistic drift 15. continuing to biologically age, after thousands of years (why didn't i wish to stay youthful forever instead?) 16. having millennia of bad experiences to randomly think about 17. news agencies seemingly at your door 24/7 asking about some random historical events 18. needing to pass time during the heat death of the universe somehow 19. every army in the world is probably trying to draft you
Imagine being immortal, and existing beyond the end of the universe. When every single star has gone out, all there is is darkness, and you're left on some barren cold planet. Alone.
Well, eventually that barren cold planet would be gone as well, its atoms all slowly quantum tunneling to become Iron-56, then randomly quantum tunneling to collapse into a black hole, which then decays. So really with true immortality you'd be floating in the void for the vast, _vast,_ *_vast,_* majority of your life. Eventually a random entropy decrease _might_ create another big bang after the heat death of the universe, but it would take something of the order of 10^10^10^120 years (or really any other time unit we use, it just disappears into the rounding error on those scales) iirc.
It's like eating your favorite food. Yet immortality would be never stop eating it. Turning your favorite food into a punishment. It could be interesting. Seeing era's come and go. But past that it seems annoying. Like unless you were rich to a point where the wealth just builds passively you would have to work forever. At least if you want a place to live. Guess one could just go into a world. Not like sickness or no food will kill you...
It always seems to me that the people who want immortality the most are usually the last ones who should have it. It's never because they want to keep making the world better, but usually because it's some tyrant who cannot give up control of something.
I recently read "never die twice" and I really liked the main character. His greatest goal is to resurrect everyone that ever died and making them immortal. Especially one scene when a paladin says that death is just and shouldnt be abolished and he answers with "You couldnt know, you never died" stuck around. great book
The paradigm that has to shift is transferring from, "How do you find meaning in a life that will end?" to, "How do you sustain meaning in a life that doesn't end?" They are fundamental questions with very different answers. It's a question of resource usage.
This is kind of beside the point of the video, but I find the idea of giving someone a choice about immortality interesting. I know someone who once tried to end their life; thankfully, they failed, and now things seem to be going well for them. So, if we give a person the option to end their life because it has been bad for a hundred or even a thousand years, what if they could have found happiness a million years after that? But also, what if we don’t give them the option and they never find happiness?
If it was me, I'd get them to that million years but if I or the person I'm saving can't keep going then guess the guy is just gonna have to die. Nothing more or less to do unless told to do more.
People assume that immortality means perfect memory. There is a web comic that I read sometimes which has a race of immortals, and they do a mental reboot every century or so. They keep a few core memories, and they can have diaries to refer to, but they're pretty much new people. Even without a reboot, your memories will fade with time. I'm not the same as I was twenty years ago, I'd be so much different in a hundred, and I'd only have a few core memories colored by nostalgia from the previous century
I believe a UA-cam comment said it best about this topic. I forget the exact quote, but it went something like “It’s not that we want to live forever. We just want to choose when to die.”
I do think this "cope" isn't universal. It's just, you don't really see stories about the good kind of immortality as much because it's harder to make a good story with it.
Death also gives writers a stake It's the most basic kind of stake, but it means characters have something to lose On some level you have to be more creative to find ways to threaten a character who can't die Of course plot armour means certain characters can't die anyway so writers still have to think up fun things to threaten the main characters with like shattering their identity, destroying relationships or crippling them Cup of tea anyone
I think one of the biggest concerns of immortality is that old ideas and thought stick, and doesn’t allow new ones to grow. Because people are afraid of change. It may be good for the indivius and maybe a community, but wouldn’t it make humanity as a whole static and unchanging? At least socially?
I grew up religious and am now raising my kids secular. My six year old last year started having death anxiety and would come into my room unable to sleep every night saying “I don’t ever want to die but I don’t want to live forever!” It’s truly so difficult to resist the urge to give easy comfortable answers like the ones I had at that age. Maybe kids need that until they grow out of it, then they need room to question? Or maybe getting her to tolerate the uncertainty will help her down the line in life? I truly don’t know the answer, being a human aware of our mortality is something we all cope with our entire lives. You could say being human is just coping with death in different ways.
as someone who experienced death or something close to it. death is not scary, it's nothingness and calming. However I would still grab the opportunity if offered immortality, just the amount of experience I can gather with immortality is something I would like to observe.
@@avivyoukerharel2140This is exactly what happens in 177776, the immortal people achieved all they could and were left with a boring meaningless existence. Except for those dedicated to that Football match, who played for millennia just to give themselves purpose
I feel calling it sour grapes is cope. Perhaps people would live mundane life’s and just continue on forever. But look at how people act in situations where inhibitions are removed where they don’t fear death. Think about all the crazy and wreck less stuff that could be done just because there are no consequences. A good modern times example would be the “Kia boys” children as young as 10 stealing cars and going on joyrides because they know there won’t be any consequences. They perform carjackings, run over pedestrians, and smash into other cars and know they won’t be punished. I would expect this kind of reckless abandon of human decency of many who were granted immortality.
What a silly conclusion. If anything it's more likely to be the opposite. Death guarantees an eventual end to any consequences, regardless of how horrible the act. Immortality guarantees you have to deal with the consequences of any action, and thus should be more careful. Someone who just acts without any care, lets say repeatedly committing atrocities with no sign of a willingness to improve, would then have to suffer potentially endless imprisonment, isolation from the rest of the world and greatly reduced freedom FOREVER (or at least a very long time, until they eventually can reform). Any remotely sensible person would take great care to not end up ruining an eternity of life. Also because often the most rash people are people who are young and haven't learned better. At worst it's neutral, and tbf I think it is very close to just neutral, because of course the real root of terrible behavior is usually some character flaw and/or societal issue. There would still be terrible rash people, but I think people who have the sense to be decent in their current normal life span would also have the sense to be decent if they lived a thousand years. There might be some cases of people breaking bad after a long time, but I think there'd be as many if not more cases of people redeeming themselves after hundreds of years.
@@rylace perhaps I was just being pessimistic but even so I still feel the same that trying to claim that there wouldn’t be any downside to immortality is cope simply my looking at human nature. How many people are able to stay with “it”? My father is 73 and an engineer/mechanic. He has worked with tech all his life yet he’s never gotten the hang of smart phones and no matter how many times I try to explain how 3D printers work he is baffled. Look at how millennials seem to cling to there 90’s nostalgia and think about someone from the 20s doing the same thing for 100 years. Perhaps someone could keep reinventing themselves but it’s more likely that they be set in their ways before their 50. Not to mention what the trauma might be if they were to become trapped in an accident. Forever frozen alive on Mt. Everest or stuck in a cave thanks to a wrong turn or a cave in. Even if they were rescued the trauma of that sticking with you for eternity. Perhaps it could result in someone becoming a shut in to avoid potential fate worse than death. I like to consider myself an optimist but I can’t help but be filled with pessimism when it comes to the idea of how a human would act without the threat of death.
Being trapped somewhere for centuries would just be a chance to meditate and become Buddha-like - it's only scary to us because we know we're running out of time to get back to civilization and things we enjoy, but if you know the mountain will crumble or the cold will dissipate in aeons you just gotta wait it out and spend time figuring out who you are Of course there's a heavy dose of assuming immortals would be taught how to be their own therapist + someone works out how to fix the problems our brains develop after long periods of isolation - but I'm seeing that as a non-issue if we're willing to imagine a world where immortality has been figured out
@@roccovolpetti7363 Try reading the whole post next time but I’ll explain it simply. When I say no consequences I mean no direct personal consequences. Sure you can put them in jail for a century but what does that mean to them when they have an eternity? Who cares if a drug douse horrible things to your body if it can’t kill you? Why not climb Everest naked if you can’t die? Without the direct threat of death most people will ignore secondary consequences. You might not die from climbing Everest naked but you can still freeze and be trapped there. Not to mention all the people you can piss off. They might not be able to kill you but they can sure find a way to make you wish they could.
The character "Me" in Doctor Who was given immortality, but we learn later she also kept her human memory meaning she forgot things over time like all humans. A character like her in 17776 would eventually enjoy things cause old experiences would feel like new because the original experience decayed with time. The downside being she changed with time, growing as she experienced the centuries and millennia.
And that's just how memory works. Over time, memories fade. The bigger the thing to you, the longer it will take to fade. But as someone born in the 60s, I can see that given long enough everything will fade.
Anyone think the art scene in 17776 would go _crazy?_ Like every human on the planet has infinite time to hone whatever craft they want, and the shared experience of immortality would create such interesting works. Even aside from that, no need for money means no capitalistic minds would cancel stuff cuz like, why not just let it keep being made? Not like the artists were doing anything else. Idk, seems like that'd be a fun place to live. Over 15000+ more years of art at highly technological levels. Oh yeah, and because of that people could basically just implant their brains into a virtual reality where we basically become our own gods and can create whatever we want for ourselves. Could even replicate the experience of death if you wanted. Seems like a sweet deal to me.
Same!! The worldbuilding and entertainment industry would thrive like no other. Imagine what people can do by making something for a hundred of years and mooving on w their expierense to create anither great comic? And people will have to to read it too! 50 years of worldbuilding... Were death is indeed bad and not glorified And having to team up for big projects wont hold back people from making something by themselves anymore sinse they now can just learn every field of team members they needed, and itd be indeed THEIR animation show, all hours, all made by one person Creativity is far more endless then simply 15k years Entertainment? Entertainment they will give!
Or maype having lots of time will make people lazy An endless cycle of procrastination with no deadline Also alot of art is drived from either a conscious or unconscious need to live on a way to immortalize your self “ i cant live forever but my legacy can!) But the questions is if u can indeed live forever would u bother building a legacy?
Also no kids no new generation no new idea it is the same old people going slowly depressed and insane honestly sometimes i think best experience to describe how immortality would feel is covid lockdown “We all kept taking about how if world stopped for a min and we stayed at home we will do everything we ever wanted to do but it didn’t have the time to do but then covid happened and most people didn’t do anything
I was having a conversation with someone on Reddit that asserted that eternal life would get boring eventually because they'd run out of things to do. So I asked the obvious question: "Are you saying that your to-do list of fun things to try has ever gotten shorter? That's not an experience I've ever had. What was that like?" They deleted their whole account ten minutes later.
The problem isn't necessarily the search for immortality, but what you are willing to do to get it. And in most stories, that immortality comes at a cost someone other than the potential immortal has to pay. But most of the stories also don't explicitly point that out, which I find kind of annoying. Immortality that doesn't come at the cost of some people's lives would like be much more widely accepted as a concept.
@@ArthurWangArtthe cost is the extinction of many more other species that the ones we already made go extinct, that IS the cost. Have the respect to acknowledge that.
I think that the way that they approach immortality in Frieren is neither super boring nor just pain, but it does focus on how life is change and for someone who lives so long change is hard. At least that was what I took away from the story so far.
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Have you seem the show dead like me
It a rather interesting take on death random people are selected on there to become grim reapers with specific fields peacefull death plague what have you they each have a quota they don't know how many souls they need but until they reach it they are immortal
I've always enjoyed finding out about immortality weather your mind is uploaded to a computer or an unfeeling hologram or put into a younger clone or someone else when you die or at will, accelerated healing, regeneration (like DR who), a ghost, or an afterlife
7:04 the 2 text overlap, I'm unsure if its an error or artistic decision ... just wanted to point it out
What about afterlifes that's your mind living forever
Didn't you already do a video on last human as humans upgrade
The lack of choice seems to be the root of the horror in both death and eternal life. When you remove that, the horror disappears. The 'end' in immortality doesn't even need to be death. It could be a reset, or an augmentation.
THIS
This is also why the sandman experiment was wrong
Giving the immortal a guy a choice per year is utterly difference from giving him enternal immortality with no choice
It would have went soo much different
@@nourtamer3189 The choice is given once every century.
YEAH!!!
In Death Note, the gods are immortal, but they continue to take human lives because they themselves are still afraid to die.
Sounds like something an immortal who doesn’t want any more competition would say.
There can only be one!
@@BG-bj7cd Calm down there, Highlander.
He's a robot
Atium compounders and Atium leechers from Scadrial have supernatural immortality.
@@Mark-in8ju
My immortality is both Dimensional, Spiritual, and Scientific. Not Divine, Magical, or Mystic based.
Sci Fi Immortality Vs Fantasy Immortality
When I touch the snail and nothing happens
I see somebody still remembers that...
@@tisunstrider6177 wrong snail
Just wait, the effect is still loading
That would be amazing. It kinda comes like this in my head:
- I want this nightmare to end, good thing I'll die soon.....
But then it goes on.
- It never stops, does it?
I like how you can say the snail and the internet understands
As I've heard one person say "I've discovered that the horrors persist but so does the joy."
Though in unending life joy turns to a horror in itself
@@christianottley8542 And horror turns into a joy, you know, as an acquired taste
Omg this quote actually goes really well with an oc of mine I was planning on sharing in an actual comment, and not a reply, but oh well.
The oc is immortal, and they are stuck in this world. They don’t want to make connections with others, as they know that everything and everyone dies, accept for them.
They push people away, and yet they still make connections to others.
They are still able to find love for those around them, even if they will have to leave others behind.
@Flooffy_number1 Something that might be interesting for them to discover is that temporary doesn't mean meaningless. Even as a human I recognize that my relationships to others will never be permanent. Either they die, we stop being friends or I die. There is no permanence in the relationship but that doesn't mean there isn't joy and meaning to be found in the temporary.
@@christianottley8542 not really no
I have a crippling fear of death, I just get struck by the thought that I WILL die someday, and just start sobbing like a child every few nights. This video was oddly soothing to me, so thank you for that
IDK if this helps or not but when the time comes that you die, remember that billions before you have died and billions more will die once you're gone. Even as you're on your death bed you're dying with humanity, you're not dying alone
I suffer from the same thing. It’s an unshakeable shadow that looms over every waking moment, and makes falling asleep to miss these waking moments sorta terrifying for me.
I find no comfort in knowing that masses have died and will die, only sorrow. No comfort in the lie that I would hate immortality, no overdue sorrow that everyone I know would die. They’re going to die anyways right? Either way someone will mourn, me or them.
I’ve mourned a lot, and I could tolerate a lifetime more of it while still finding beauty in a sunrise.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk lol
@sethclement-burns4997 I have the same issue but immortality doesn't appeal to me despite it at all. In many ways for me immortality exemplifies my fear of death because, after years of that crushing feeling every time I thought about the inevitable end of my own existence I realized I wasn't actually afraid of dying. I was afraid of time.
Time never stops. Even after we all die it keeps on going forever. Even just trying to imagine what that means, how long forever is, human minds cannot do it. You could live every life of everybody that has ever existed a thousand times over, until you'd memorized every work ever spoken and every second of human history, and you wouldn't have even begun to experience the effects of eternity. Dying is terrifying because I know it is the end, and they for the rest of that eternal period that is "forever", I will never again exist or be able to do anything. At the same time, living to watch humanity die, the stars burn out, entropy consume all of reqlity until there is nothing left but celestial bodies floating around in a vast and infinite expanse of pure darkness; that is worse. Because when I'm dead I won't have to experience eternity. Both options scare me but I've realized that death is the only option where that fear won't keep following me, because I'll be dead. It still keeps me up at night, but immortality isn't just a bad solution, its the opposite of a solution. A forced "forever" is worse than an unexperienced one.
@@sethclement-burns4997this! Dying is such a painful thought to me because it means one day ill not bd with the ones i currently love and enjoy, i will not be able to watch the sun and moon be the companions they aways were through out my life in so many moments i cherish. Someday i will not be able to listen to music or play it. Yeah life has horrible moments but also fantastic ones that makes it worth living, and they dont need to be something grandious and glorious, but just a simple moment like watching the sunset while listening to soothing spyro music.
That was me throughout the years. Just unable to sleep, up around 4 AM, and suddenly struck with the thought 'I'm going to die one day." Cue the quiet sobs.
When writers make a fictoional immortal race, most of the time those creatures never think about their immortality. But when they make an immortal human - OH MY GOD! THE PAIN! THE SUFFERING! THE CRUELTY OF THE WORLD etc.
I think that is because if being an immortal being is natural, then you really aren’t a human. You would be a creature that cannot die, that cannot age, that cannot perish. You’re no longer a normal human being at that point whether the character thinks they are or not. The suffering for immortality is the only link that makes you human, while still being able to obtain immortality with consequences/sacrifices.
I'd say it a matter of perspective. The humans in 17776 are called "humans", even though they are immortal. In the anime "Darling in the Franxx", which has almost the same premise, immortal humans are also called "humans" - the few mortal ones are called "parasites" there. The opposite (and, IMO, the best) idea was done in a 1999 film "Bicentennial Man", where a robot with a self-taught AI got an obsession to become a human, but was denied purely because the robot parts were making him practically immortal. So, he replaced everything inside him with biological components and died moments before being officially regarded as a human. So, if you can "become human" or "stop being a human", what even is a "human", anyway?
It almost like their immortality is natural and they are built for it
Cholera was natural, as was child mortality. We changed it and now we don't miss it. Natural things aren't necessarily better. Starvation is natural. Diseases are natural. Dying from a small cut due to infection used to be natural. Civilization is unnatural and it has made our lives way better.
@@Ramschat you're right excepy for saying civilization is unnatural, we are animals which lives in their own peculiar ways, we are natural so our way of living is also natural, it's just unique
"Being dead isn't painful. People who are dead aren't aware of it and don't feel anything. It's the people next to you that it hurts. It's the same with being stupid."
We’re too dead to care.
that's what scares me
people arent being scared of pain. They are being scared of being dead.
@@Immerteal I dunno, there are a LOT of religions of whom the main motivation to follow them is to avoid a supposed "eternal torture." Even though the cause of it would be dying, the idea of continuous pain has spooked lots of people into remaining devout.
How'd you know it wasn't painful? Are you dead?
I loved this angle of Frieren. An Elf isn't actually immortal, but live far longer than most Humans, and she can value the develeopment and cunning of "mortality".
I also love this interpretation of 'immortality' in Fireren. I like particularly how it affects Fireeren herself nad her perspective on life and making connections.
I just generally like this neutral depiction of immortality. Frieren isn't sad because she had to watch Himmel die, she's sad because she didn't get to know him better. She learns from that and tries to change.
The other elves we see also aren't particularly depressed with their immortality, and are just kinda doing their own thing.
We don't really know what Kraft is up to but he seemed to be doing fine.
Meanwhile, Serie--whether she admits it or not--seems to love teaching magic and watching people reach their potential, and she's been doing it for centuries. And she _still_ gets excited when someone really talented shows up.
yeah, they should make a video about frieren
yeah, she and the other elfs are so long lived and so strong (the ones we meet anyways) that they might as well be considered immortal, and the story handles it so so well
Haven't gotten around to Frieren yet..... but I think that will just add, to depth and intrigue in a way.
An eternity of suffering isnt awful because it's eternal, its awful because it's suffering. When you claim that eternal life would be awful, you’re conceding that you feel that life is awful, and that is frankly a depressing perspective to have.
Life is awful and it is simply a fact
Life _is_ awful, and so is death
The only winning move is to have never existed in the first place
Being alive isn't awful. Living on this world is awful for the vast majority of it's inhabitants. Granted the degrees vary but the global economy is determined by corporations controlling governments in the lamest possible version of a dystopia to have, at least for the "Free" world. China has their own Dystopia going with the social credit system and thought policing peoples social media activities.
Yh for me i dont mind my life but i still wouldn't want eternity maybe a couple thousand years but defodont want to get burnt up by the sun in 5 billion years
It isn't quite that binary, eternity would be awful not because life is awful but because life would cease to not be awful, everything you want everything you desire every dream every hope, every bit of food every single fortune, you would achieve an uncountable amount of times, it makes sense you would think its depressing you're probably thinking about all the fun things you'd enjoy as an immortal, though even in actual humans it has been proven that ceaseless mundane actions usually lead to depressing, now if you are truly eternal you need to think in millions of trillions of billions of years because even that isn't big enough to fathom the time you will have and so every dream would eventually become a ceaselessly mundane action
"As a robot looking at the human race, I can understand the desire to run an experiment like this"
The cake is a lie.
The Romulan ale and data rod is a .. fake.
idk. i constantly exist in a state of either "i want to live forever, no matter how painful" and "i want to be dead at this very instant and also have never been born in the first place" there is no in-between
Same lol
lmao fair
I have multiple pieces of my mind conflicting over that, but primarily one craves immortality
@@arcturuslight_ agreed.
Our perpetual existential crisis in a nutshell
_"Have you any idea how many would give their everything for immortality?"_
_"Immortality? Hahaha! For that word, all realms and beings have ruined themselves."_
Ahhhh where is that from?? It's sitting at the edge of my mind but i can't put my finger on it
@@dark-5825 Same. I don't remember from where, but I've heard it recently
@@dark-5825 it's from black myth: wukong
@@dark-5825 black myth wukong im pretty sure
@@timcheater6336 You are correct
Living forever is one of those things my mind has gone back and forth on all my life. Some days I'd imagine it as something to wish for, while others will have me thinking of it as an utter nightmare. It really is one of those timeless discussion pieces 🤔
I think it would depend on what comes with the immortality. You don't exactly need arms or legs to have a functioning brain so if only your lungs, blood, heart, and anything else I can't remember at this time is regenerating then life will be pretty bad.
Seems to me that all bad things about immortality are bad things about life in general: losing loved ones, stagnation, suffering. Even the really bad versions of immortality speak more about aging, trauma and chronic pain than immortality itself.
And yet people largely choose to live despite all these things. So why would immortality be any worse?
@twilightvulpine Personally, I think it's probably because life IS temporary that people keep living despite all the suffering. Because you know that it'll end eventually. Once you're at a point where you can't die, the preciousness of life will probably lose all meaning.
Not to mention that, at some point, the earth will die either because of us humans, or because the sun blew up, and then where will you be? most likely floating in space bored out of your mind with nobody to share in your misery/boredom. And sure, you may eventually end up floating somewhere that will let you do something other than just sit around with nothing but your own thoughts for company, but there's a reason humans' mental health deteriorates when they're completely isolated from everyone and everything for extended periods of time. Becoming immortal probably wouldn't change the fact you were born human and have the mentalities that goes along with it. (hopefully I'm making sense and not rambling incoherently. >_>)
Once I became old enough to properly disect my beliefs one of the first things that I discarded was the belief that immortality is bad, it was something I had been told by everyone my entire life but when I really looked at it I realised that living forever is not only a good thing but the greatest gift a living being can possibly receive for a number of reasons, one of the main reasons being that there will always no matter the circumstance be _something_ to do, whether it be building a house or a simple game of cards humanity will never run out of things to do.
@@twilightvulpine id say that immortality is worse because its eternal and while death is eternal too, you arent conscious through all of it
I've recently begun reading Chinese Fantasy novels. The discourse around immortality is completely different from Western fiction. Honestly, it's like a breath of fresh air. I was tired of being lectured about how immortality was a curse.
Here both the heroes and the villains try to and succeed in becoming immortal. You don't even need to commit evil deeds to become one, although being evil will give you some shortcuts. Often times, immortality isn't even the main goal of a character, it's just something they get along the path of becoming stronger. Anyone can become immortal if they cultivate enough (they absorb enough Qi/magic).
The stories aren't just a quest for immortality. They are more like a quest towards divinity. You level up from a mortal human to an immortal god. Besides immortality, you'll gain a plethora of super powers (like flying through the air, blowing up mountains and having your personal domain within yourself).
I think the reason for the different perception of immortality can be attributed to the different cultural influences. Qi cultivation is a concept which comes from Daoism and has long roots in Chinese history.
The rejection of immortality in the Western world can be attributed to Christianity (which propagated the idea that eternal life only comes after death) and Nihilism (which propagated the idea that life is awful and extending it would be a bad idea).
I recommend Chinese cultivation novels to anyone who is looking for something different from Western fantasy.
is it tale of demons and gods ? I agry about the breath of fresh air that is estern view on immortality, I also tired of the "imortality is abviously bad" take ^^'
I mean, we have so much to do now... with a good balance in life, and a good enought health, we have occupations for centuries...
@@shellingford9941 Actually, I was reading Renegade Immortal by Er Gen. The start is slow and some chapters are entirely dedicated to explaining how cultivation works. But I enjoyed the change of scenery and I think it's a good introduction to the genre. It's a classical "underdog changes his destiny and becomes powerful" type of story.
these juniors truly don’t see mt tai
@@glizygxbler3131 The hawk cares not for the squabbling of mealworms, senior brother.
You forgot two things from those stories that makes their immortality nowhere near as bad as the perfect one - the immortals can always be killed and the "mountain" they climb doesn't actually have a peak. So you have an immortality you can opt out of and a goal you can endlessly strive for. So it's not actually immortality that could make you suffer.
Also, the "rejection of immortality" is not Christian, it's literally the lived experience of every single human who has ever lived. Christianity, and other religions, actually introduce immortality as a concept.
And finally, Nihilism by itself doesn't have a stance on whether living long is bad or good, only that it's meaningless, that no matter what you do with it it will always be without meaning. As opposed to Existentionalism that has the same starting point (life being meaningless) but instead of being a prison of possibility it actually frees the human, saying that you can create your own meaning.
Finally. A take on immortality that i agree with.
Living forever doesn't devalue all the experiences you can have.
This is such an important thing for someone to understand when talking about immortality.
Can you have an infinite number of experiences?
@@carlbell2226 How much has the world changed in the last 20 years, let alone the last 200? Life is always changing. It's fascinating.
While living forever inherently doesn't do that, having an infinite number of experiences absolutely does.
If you have one wife, then she is all the more precious to you because that's it - she's just the one. What about when you have two? Three? A hundred? Thousands? I'd wager there comes a point when you won't even remember the first time you held each of those thousand special person's hand. Or the first time you dated them. Or the first time you kissed. Or your first night together.
As with everything in life, everything in excess does no good. There is a limit to what our human minds can comprehend.
but in an infinite amount of time and infinite amount of experience, those indivudial experiences lose their meaning and become nothing to you. This video was alot more dull than i had hoped. But it is a unique perspective.
Everyone wants to die "someday," but nobody want to die "today."
I am jumping on the immortality train so quick I will die
Some folk want to die to end their own suffering. Everyone else knows they will day someday but just do not want it to be today.
I want to never die,ever
"Who wants to pass away someday?"
_all hands raised_
"Who wants to pass away?"
_everybody lowers their hands_
I've wanted to die several days but for the most part and most people you are right.
15:30 i think the reason folks kneecap immortality with conditions has two related concepts to it
1) your sour grapes thing was my first thought
2) akin to characters, folks don't seem to enjoy "Mary Sue"/OP stories with no downsides or limits. So people carve out little catches to add literary texture and percieved depth.
Those are my best guess for why humans continue to portray immortality this way.
Yes, immortality with no downsides would be boring. It would also be unrealistic unless your characters live in heaven/paradise. If one doesn't do the sour grapes thing, the average person would probably live with their condition just fine, but a few people would probably hate their existence in the same way people with depression and suicidal ideation do. There would also be those people who somehow always find new and exciting things to do, despite being able to procrastinate forever.
Frankly, for a storytelling channel it's a huge oversight they didn't mention the whole limitations and complications thing for depth and texture.
Literally my thoughts!
@@annaa3772 eternal procrastination why does that sound like very well could happen.
That, and immortality is most often used as a literary tool to discuss something else entirely, like the nature of obsession, or changing views on morality and/or politics, or what actually matters in life.
I'm surprised you didn't bring up the immortality of Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who. In this version, it is impossible for Jack to age or die for any reason, and for around a century, he actually did want to die somewhat. But then The Doctor inadvertently took him all the way to the total collapse of the universe in the far far future, and after Jack saw that there were still humans somehow surviving all the way to the end of everything, that inspired him to want to keep living, and enjoy all him time.
Actually in one episode he said that he does age, just very, very slowly.
Atium compounders and Atium leechers from Scadrial have supernatural immortality.
That sounds like a nightmare
16:29 It could also be an effort to disuade people from chasing things like immortality." Money doesn't buy happiness" and all that. It may not, but it can be things that prevents suffering and facilitate happiness
My thoughts exactly. Immortality is for certain people. The rich and famous. Not sure if you’ve seen a movie called “Death Becomes Her” that’s pretty much the plot. Immortality is only afforded to the wealthy and famous.
My view is that the point of these stories isn’t that death is good, but *obsessing* over death is bad. They’re not meant to be big philosophical messages that apply to the whole of humanity, but fables about how one should personally view and approach life (because the main audience these stories are aimed at aren’t people philosophizing over the ethics of eternal life, but the children and the average person who just want to know how to live a good life). The whole “rotting corpse” aesthetic for liches serves as a sort together metaphor for how they are as people; sure, they’re “alive” but they aren’t “living,” not really.
A good analogy would be money. Money is good. Money can put food in the table, can buy medicine, can get you entertainment for years on end. Objectively, it would be better for everyone in the world to have more money than they do, especially those that have it the least.
But obsessing over it? Pursuing it, at the cost of friends, family, over morals or personal principles?
And sure, it’d be nice to have more money without making any sacrifice or paying any price, same as it would be nice to immortal without having to do any evil blood rituals or be just a hobbling corpse.
But that’s not how life works. A common theme in these sorties about accepting immortality is growing up. And a big part of growing up is accepting that sometimes… life sucks. It hurts, it’s hard, and people go away sometimes, and we’ll be gone too one day. That doesn’t mean we can’t or should strive for better outcomes or for a better world for ourselves and others, but sometimes, life just doesn’t go the way we want. Friends may die, we will one day die, but being constantly afraid or living in grief or anger that it will or had happened isn’t the right way to go about it. There’s a lot more to life, than just death. Sometimes, shit happens, and that’s okay.
"Objectively, it would be better for everyone in the world to have more money than they do, especially those that have it the least."
have you ever heard of inflation?
Apart from that you have some good points. The purpose of immortality is to let you live a longer life, as life is good, so those who aim for something like that by obsessing over death while not succeeding to become immortal actually ended up doing the opposite of what they wanted by wasting part of their life. The life that they got to actually live became shorter.
@@Eternal_Reckoning I love the irony of that.
@@Crazed-Rat
Edit: I just realised that I totally misunderstood your reply lol. You can still read this if you want but it doesn't really fit in with what I (currently) understand you were saying.
___________________
I guess you're right now that I think a bit more lol.
On another note, would you prefer for everyone to get 10% more money than to live 10% longer?
If we think about it seriously, the latter would cause economic issues because of population growth, though I guess that may kick a bit in slower than if everyone suddenly had more money.
It's also possible that if the effect was *actually* immediate (for the money thing), that the inflation wouldn't be quite as severe, as it would at least be equally distributed inflation, not something that spreads over time, though I guess there would be other factors that affect this too, and I'm no economist so I don't really know in the first place anyway.
What are your thoughts. I'm not here to argue, but to discuss, so if you totally disagree with everything I've just said I'm still interested in that.
@@Eternal_Reckoning understandable, i kinda realized how my comment could be missunderstood like that but i didnt bother fixing it.😅
Alot of people have been toxic online lately so i dont blame you.
@@Crazed-Rat yeah. I often sort of assume that anyone online is trying to start stupid arguments if I don't know them personally lol.
Why does every immortality story have a twist? Because of the "story" part. There is no story if nothing happens or there's no moral. In the case of Sandman and his friend, he continues to choose life and little happens because he's a side story, a mirror to Sandman's existence.
Atium compounders and Atium leechers from Scadrial have supernatural immortality.
@@Mark-in8ju Why the hell are you spamming Sanderson propaganda?
@@Mark-in8ju Isn't immortality already supernatural?
@@sinisternorimaki At least three times within this video 🤣🤣
I think the question is more that, why is this the story? Stories teach us lessons, and stories about immortality seem to almost universally tell us that immortality is bad. Why is that the case? That’s the question that he is asking.
I work in the medical industry, adjacent to geriatric, the care for age related diseases. I confront death often. What people want is not immortality. What they want is eternal youth. When you get older things become harder. It might begin in your thirties, it might be as late as your sixties. But one day you will feel like your body won't run forever. Things become painful and you can no longer move as you used to and never will again. When we speak of death in my field, it is with the sigh of sitting down after a long day of work. To rest.
Immortality, if you are trapped in the life when new thigns speed you by, when the things that makes sense to you is weird and alien, when words no longer mean the same and new words mean something strange. Then immortality is scary.
But if you have the energy of a twenty year old. You can jump out of bed, work for 16 hours without pay, eat a trashy sandwhich and do it again for half a week to make sure an event is going to happen. If you can combine that energy with the wealth, knowledge and experience of the old... Then immortality is a blessing.
We need quality of life. Not quantity of life.
I work in hospice and this is exactly right. Eternal youth, vitality and health would need to come with immortality. If your brain continues to age, dementia will come for us all eventually.
@@stellasilvae eh. Assuming biological immortality akin to rockfish or naked mole rats, conceptually those issues are solved. Though the logistics is an issue since humans probably aren’t built in many ways to live this long.
As an example those animals don’t physically age past a certain point. A super old naked mole rat isn’t more likely to get a heart attack than one notably younger than it. And mortality amongst old naked mole rats remains fairly consistent with similar causes like predators, random cave ins, starvation, etc. instead of degenerative disease.
They’re also immune to cancer, which we’d also have to solve too.
Bingo. Why does this not have the likes it deserves
In reality, this is a non-issue. You can't have immortality without eternal youth, you'd just die. It's like saying it'd suck to lose your ability to make choices if you transform into an abstract idea., "becoming an abstract idea" is just not a situation that happens.
@@blackjoker2345 Not necessarily. What kind of immortality? One kind of immortality, and the one most likely to work in reality is replacement. One organ fails and is replaced. Since organs don't all fail at the same time. (ignore the fact that the immune system is difficult to pin down as an organ, much less replace and yet is among the worst factors in life expectancy).
If we replace organs as they fail we will not have eternal youth, we will have eternal about 50s, probably. About 30 for the rich and about 70 for the poor I'm expecting. Though varying degrees of failure. Eyesight and hearing would be better probably, since the issue is neurological. But cardiovascular, neurological and digestive systems will probably struggle from the sheer invasiveness of the operations to replace them.
Those things matter a lot for the level of energy we have. Throw in muscular and nephrology, which i'm guessing will probably be easier (since we're a bit further in replacement for those) and we might be in a perpetual "I'm too old for this shit", but not old enough to retire. Peak capitalism. Peak cyberpunk.
If immortality is possible, there's no reason to believe it would be anything different than what we've already experienced. Not bliss, not hell, but grocery store, work, moving to a new town, good relationships, bad relationships, etc.
I can't imagine immortality would be anything special. Wait long enough, you'll experience incredible wealth and stability and true happiness as the lord of his own fiefdom, then wait some more and you'll be a poverty-stricken jazz musician, then wait some more and you'll be the pleasant yet distant neighbor in a quaint cookie-cutter suburb with a steady cubicle job.
Nothing special.
I personally think it’d be hell. Like literal hell. Look at the amount of horrible people in the world, the amount of greed and stubborn selfish people. Imagine what they would do with infinite time.
Biblically they illustrate what they would be like Hell is both a pit of suffering and a sinners paradise. Both for the same reason the evil of man unbound by death with torture each other for eternity. The hedonism, the maliciousness, what could they do to someone who would never die?
Guess I'll have to start looking for hobbies instead of just doing the same thing 😅
The repetition would be hell. You would eventually reach a point where you’ve done everything you possibly can, with nothing new left to do.
And you’ll have to continue repeating that forever, and ever, and ever. It would make every individual aspect completely worthless, meaningless, and pointless, since you’ve got an infinite supply of them.
If you're truly bored then going out and doing something different is an option. If you haven't played god of war 1-5 in 3000 years then there you go. You only remember bits of pieces of god of war and would enjoy playing it again. Go do that. I think it's important to mention that immortality doesn't mean enhanced intelligence or memory: you'll forget stuff and only remember that you did it before. Go back and re experience stuff you enjoyed.
@@JAiZUA-cam Let's say you play every single possible game of monopoly possible, does that now mean that there is no reason to ever play a game of monopoly ever again? (Also, loved your helm's deep videos.)
"Shouldn't you want to live?" - having been in the position where I would have answered no (several times) . . . I'm far more concerned with making life worth living for everyone than with considering any sort of immortality, limited as it may be
I think The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke is a fascinating and prime example of a story that explores immortality without the usual negative twists or 'catches' that make it undesirable.
The book begins in the city of Diaspar, where the inhabitants are functionally immortal, cycling through endless lives with their memories preserved between incarnations. While there are no dire consequences like boredom or loss of meaning, Clarke still manages to tell a compelling story about the importance of curiosity, the desire for new experiences, and the drive to explore beyond known boundaries.
In my opinion, it’s one of Clarke’s works that I can recommend giving it a read.
A lot of, maybe even most, stories with romances actually write about obsession rather than love. Thats where the idea comes from that people cant possibly bear to lose everyone they've ever known. This is a lesson you should have learned when you lost a family pet as a child; grief is just the punctuation of love. With enough time and the right evenvironment to heal you will eventually get over it. And if you've ever had a new family pet after the first one, you'll know that losing the first did not hamper your ability to love the new one in any way.
The exception to this is obsession, that is, when you don't meet your love half way, instead, putting your everything into them, to the point where you deminish your own ego and exist completely for someone or something else. This isn't healthy, no matter what the novels say. It isn't healthy when you have a finite lifespan, and it wouldn't be healthy if you were an immortal either.
I think if you're practicing good mental health habits, immortality won't be a problem for a long long time.
If you’re immortal, all you have is a long time.
The amount of time you were sane is a blemish on the tapestry of your life, a long-forsaken preamble to the infinity you now belong in, and a preliminary that you will hardly remember.
If only thedude9091 was speaking in basic English, I'd understand what he's saying.
@@Oldmeme592I think he’s basically saying, that no matter how much time you spend “sane and happy”, you are guaranteed to spend far more time “insane and unhappy”, to the point it will eventually be 99.99% of your immortal life.
“Infinity” is a very long time, after all, you are guaranteed to hit a point where the amount of time you were happy is so short compared to the amount of time you were unhappy, that it pretty much doesn’t even exist.
@@JAiZUA-camyou aren't guaranteed to hit that point at all. You say it like you're happy for x years, then a switch flips and you're sad forever. In just a few years of life someone's outlook on life, emotional state, happiness, and a thousand other things change.
FR
I genuinely can’t remember a time in my life when death frightened me. It just always seemed like the most obvious thing in the world that it’s going to happen sooner or later no matter what, so why worry about it. On the other hand, I’ve never really cared much for the idea of getting old, and as time has passed and I’ve watched multiple older relatives linger for years as they steadily deteriorate, I like it even less.
I've been struggling with my mortality pretty bad recently. This is one of the few videos I've found that I agree with. Death isn't good. Life is so amazing and unlikely in the grander scheme of things. If I could chose, I'd chose to live for longer. But we're unlikely to achieve immortality in our lifetime. So the best I can do is accept the grim reality and make the most of what I have. The hardest part is getting over the dread these thoughts have left me with, but ultimately I want to be happy again, and spend my life continually searching for it's beautiful till I've satisfied my love for it. Thank you for this video.
I am 100% sure we won’t achieve immortality because it is not possible,old age not being a thing tho is possible ,there are a lot of the cause for that,that are know and we can at least imaginate those being fix(Also basically all way to cure old age also increase by a lot the odd of someone developping cancer,because well if cells live longer or get more duplicated to fix body issues ,errors are more likely to happen)
I'm on the same boat. The best I can do is try not to think about it, but eventually you get that one night where the existential dread finally hits and you're laying awake at 3am
I relate to exactly how you feel.
@@goldoum We are quite literally at most 30 years away from biological immortality. We have already successfuly reversed aging in mice. It all comes down to elongating telomeres by forceful transformation of cells into Stem cells and back into their orignal forms. The best part is, your worries are unfounded in this solution, as it basically also cures the root cause of cancer, as well as many other diesieases, such as all kinds of dementia, as it allows to regenerate nervous tissue. And yes, that also was already successfuly done on animals. You will most likely live long enough to witness biological immortality for those willing to take it.
Don't worry, if you're not dying within the next few decades we'll probably have aging cured somehow, after that you just need to be really, _really_ careful for the the next few centuries/millenia and I'd bet good money you'll be fine, me personally, I haven't genuinely thought that I'm ever going to die for years and even if I am proven wrong, well that just means I now have the freedom to throw away my life into tearing down whatever it is that prevents me from doing so and while I'm at it, maybe conclude a few personal vendettas against certain unsavoury creations.
i think of certain powerful people in business and politics today and think how awful the world would be FOREVER if they were immortal. there soon would be no room for children, robbing the world of innocence and the wonder of their new ideas.
One has to wonder; in the world as it is now, death really seems to be the only thing that holds the wealthy and powerful in check, as they can at least not be so wealthy or so powerful forever. If everyone were to become immortal, would the world inevitably be ruled by one god-emperor, all the wealth and resources controlled by one ultimate capitalist? Would immortal humans just let the society that exists now persist and continue to its logical conclusion? Or would they rebel, and cast down the rich and powerful? Perhaps simply discard the old economy, restart from the barter system, and work up to a new currency which is more fairly distributed for a time? Ignore the laws and decrees of the god-emperor? If starvation is no concern, how long would the immortal humans be willing to suffer hunger, as infrastructure shuts down because nobody will maintain it without compensation? How long could anyone risk spending imprisoned or worse as the whims of a capricious despot? How long could they be held or tortured?
I rather imagine the world being gradually dotted with fortresses holding former kings and presidents and emperors, CEOs and investors, those who controlled too much or too many for too long, now living under eternal siege, imprisoned in whatever stronghold they felt safest in... perhaps forever, or perhaps only until enough time has passed, enough people have proven just as bad, that they're forgotten and finally allowed to slip away.
That final part is my belief about the necessity of death. If nobody dies, there is no natural change or hand over of the reins to someone else, the same hands will forever stay on the reins and nothing will ever change naturally due to the lack of new perspectives. On a smaller scale, we can see this stagnation happen in business, organisations etc that fail to bring new perspectives in. Birth and Death are the two cycles that keep the world fresh, without Death, nothing is forced to change, without Birth no new perspectives can be introduced.
@@rowhuw3553 absolutely
Alternatively, I could see the masses of people seeking change for the reason that they themselves will live to see the future, not just their children. Think about how many people ignored things like climate change in the 70s and 80s because they knew that they would never have to deal with the consequences? It's one thing to suck up poor circumstances because you know they'll end when you do, but when faced with the prospect of poor circumstances forever, people will want to change. How much greater of a crime is it for healthcare companies to kill people through denied claims when they're not just denying someone a couple decades, but infinity?
I think there will always be a need for children anyway, to replace those that die and to facilitate the expansion of the species, if nothing else. It would definitely be regulated to avoid overcrowding, sure, but unless we all become machines, we'll have a drive to reproduce.
In my opinion, death is not itself a specific good or bad thing, it is the way death is used that determines how people view it. When someone dies saving the world or even just saving the main character, death is suddenly good. It is something to be accepted and treated with respect and sadness. The main character might mourn but does not specifically hate death. However, when death is not accepted or does not come at the right time, that is when it is despised. It is the when someone knows they are going to die and knows there is nothing that will save them. While we will never know how the people who have died this way feel, the people who have to live with something like that, understandably, now hate death.
Ive always felt the demonization of eternal life as something not all its cracked up to be is just the result of our limited perspective. Eternity as a concept is so massive we cant even grasp the idea of witnessing it and so it must be a thing to fear.
To some, but look at the way the world is now. Live long enough, you'll experience the worst and best the world has to offer. Live longer, you'll see cities vanish, replaced by new ones, continents and countries reshape themselves, plagues come and go.
Its not be feared; but dang it would get exhausting. Especially if you're the last one left.
There would be amazing things you could do with it, amazing places you could go because you can't die or get hurt or sick.
But there's also the flip side to it. And I think we need to be aware of both.
i mean death is exactly the same, both are experiences that are impossible to imagine
It's more that certain religions that promise a "life AFTER death" can't exactly have you being satisfied with something else providing REAL eternal life. Gotta keep people on that doctrine treadmill.
@@Werewolfoverlord12 This! In my case, I've been so exhausted for so long just by doing the bare minimum to try to support myself in life that I am increasingly eager for it to all end so I can stop being overwhelmed 24/7/365.
idk about you but my demonization of eternal life is just because i hate normal, non-eternal life as is.
I spent a decade being suicidally depressed, kept alive only by the knowledge of the suffering my death would cause and as such thought about death and mortality every single day.
During this period I reasoned that the passage of time is characterized by the movement of particles to different positions and therefore over an infinite period of time all matter would at one point exist everywhere in every combination.
Returning that to a human level I reasoned that the particles that make up your body at any time will be everywhere, and "do" everything.
Then, taking as a given that the effects of all actions are reversible with enough steps I reasoned that if you will at one point do everything in every order, then no matter what you will one day undo everything you've done.
Death, I reasoned, was the only way to cement the effects of your actions as a permanent part of part of existence.
Our actions have meaning because they change existence permanently, and purpose is the shape our actions mold reality into when the movement finally stops.
I've since gotten therapy, medication, and undergone environmental changes such that I no longer need a reason not to die.
However, I don't really believe my younger self was wrong in their logic.
A light-switch immortality is good in my opinion because it avoids infinity, however I can not call a life lacking infinity immortality.
Death is good because it is the endpoint which prevents infinity.
Thus, my stance remains that indefinite life is good, but eternal life is a fate worse than any other.
The universe is still just a giant explosion. We are but eddies in the roiling flow. We get to influence, however infinitesimally, how the dust falls when it's over.
There was a Star Trek: Voyager episode that dealt with this theme. One Q decides he is done with existence and wants to hit his power button. The Continuum imprisoned him so he couldn't. The Voyager crew comes upon the prison and releases him. He asks for asylum from the Federation, and Janeway has to hold a hearing to decide, knowing that if she does give him asylum he will hit his personal backspace key. It's one of the more interesting episodes of the show.
I cried. But when the conclusion was said. I smiled... I'm scared. But I'm happy...
Thank you for teaching me that..
Death can be scary, for all of us, for the one dying, and the one next to them. But just know you don't have to be afraid. Though it's ok to be afraid. As you're probably asking: What lies beyond life.. Where will I go... Is there an afterlife...
But those questions don't need to be asked.. Life is a gift given to us. To use to express who we are, to try new things, to have fun.. To find love.. And you shouldn't waste those opportunities. Nor find a way to keep them forever...
Live, don't survive.
Enjoy the time you have left.
If your curious, or if you wanna do something, don't wait.. Do what you love to do... Whether it be spending, or taking, because if you don't fulfill everything you wanted to fulfill, when u die, you'll die with a life unfinishd..
Keep doing what makes you happy.. And don't let anyone stop you...
Have fun ya lil devil's..
The reaper will be here soon..
At 6:11 this also is the common response to the rapid raising in prices "It's just inflation, that's the way things are." Or war "It's for 'my' land or pride (or greed)." It's crazy to question those concepts despite being harmful or negative to many.
This is what I also think about immortality. Life is just so amazing. When I slow down, I start to appreciate everything. I hear sounds that I didn't pay attention to. I see things that I passed without a second thought. Immortality is both uplifting and sad. Many people you know will die, but life is always as vibrant. To soak in life and pursue an eternity of study is something that I find wonderful.
Its strange to find a similar mind, to me inmortality is the ultimate goal of life, death is the end of everything, they say things must always end but life and particularly human life is nothing but a celebration of feeling and experience, we build our lifes around perseverance and action, even if against others or ourselves. Death is not numbness, for numbness is a feeling, it is no longer being able to ever experience life again, and that is something I have found few people to truly understand.
@@dorthvoder9375 what about after the universe dies though? you'll just be stuck doing nothing for eternity - you won't even have a body, you'll just exist
@@dignatius4444that is the ultimate torment to me endless nothingness being aware but not able to do anything I'm glad it's impossible a mind cannot exist without a brain
@@dignatius4444 That depends on if the universe dies.
And also, if humanity is unable to deal with it by then.
A hypothetical based on an unrealistic complete failstate, which is rather silly.
@@chelvo56 The second law of thermodynamics cannot be beaten.
I think to add a bit about the good characterization of death, a phrase that got to my mind was "money is the root of all evil" and how it was actually shortened from "the love of money is the root of all evil"
In a similar vein, i think that saying "death is good" is a product of saying "the fear of death is bad".
Fearing death can be a contriving thing that shortens and hinders your way of experiencing life, showing many of the things ofteen asociated inmortality "boredom from a lack of stimulation" "lack of love from being to scared of being betrayed" "decaying of ones body from old age" from this mindset of fear is that one gets your typical "inmortality". However, that dosnt make death itself good, it just makes the excessive fear of it, as all things, bad.
I think it's less sour grapes, and more too much of a good thing. I love cake, for example, I almost never don't want some, but, I usually only want one slice at a time. If I had an endless supply of cake slices I HAD to keep eating all the time, I'd get pretty sick to my stomach. Life is like that, it's one big cake slice our soul slowly eats, and when we're done, we die. We might be done prematurely, like dropping the plate, or we might pick up crumbs left near the end, to try and hold on a little longer, but eventually, we can't eat any more, and the plate goes into the sink, crumbs are washed away, and we move on. Our souls weren't made to live endless lives, just like our stomachs weren't made to eat endless cakes, even if we wanted to. Too much cake will make you sick, too much rain will lead to floods, too much light will blind you, too much life...probably wouldn't do you much good.
But... you're beginning from the idea that there's an immortal soul that carries on after death. You're already ascribing some form of immortality to a human, in the form of a soul.
If there's no "Soul", then there's no "You" to set down the fork after eating the cake. When you say "Too much life probably wouldn't do you much good," well... there will be no "You" to do any good or bad to.
@@isaiahfisher2337 the existence of a "soul" isn't the core of his argument. What he's saying is that too much of anything is never a good thing - regardless if there's a soul or not. We as a species aren't designed to live forever just like our stomachs aren't designed to hold an infinite amount of cake. His point is that if eating too much cake would give you diabetes, having too much of life will inevitably do something bad to you just as well.
You never know until you try it right?
We can speculate all we want, but what good will that do? All the debates on this video are happening exactly because no one has lived for 1000s of years yet to tell the tale.
I think some people both underestimate and overestimate the consequences of Immortality.
Just because your immortal doesn't automatically gartenteed suffering, of course I'm not saying you wouldn't suffer, I mean, imagine someone capturing you to harvest organs for all eternity, also I will admit some people who are immortal would probably use it for evil deeds, but lets keep this in mind, "This Isn't A Story", you're not a hero, or a villain, or anything like that, you're just a person with a normal life who just happens to be immortal, don't expect to have the world be about you or be against you, you're not special just because you're immortal.
Honestly I figured this out years ago, mortality is a cure which people trick themselves into thinking is a blessing because it makes the finite nature of their existence less terrifying to think that way
See people after they died they look the same a little bluer
I think one of my favorite versions of semi-immortality is in D&D. A high level wizard can cast the Clone spell. Which, as the name implies, creates a perfect copy of the caster that essentially gives them an extra life if and when they die. The caster can even determine how old the clone is when it's created. The only real caveat is that the spell requires some rather expensive components in order to cast it. But aside from needing a small piece of the caster's flesh as an ingredient, there's not really anything reprehensible about the spell itself. It just exists as a handy tool to be used.
And its also isnt A mery-sue/a "no downsider" sinse its also impliments a Theseus ship idea, that can be explored if people r interested in more philosophical.
Perfect copy. But the dead body is out there
Intrigue
I see why thats ur favorite, orr its just starting to become my favorite too n im only now realising it
I suppose it is immortality, but only for the latest iteration of the clone
@@zeppie_ Something like that. You could theoretically live forever as long as you have enough clones and the resources to cast the spell repeatedly. But that material cost is the main drawback, along with prep time.
Another cool element to it (for anyone who doesn't play/read D&D) is that the soul and essence of the caster enters the clone body upon death, it's basically just an easy resurrection for them.
@@louzo5175 Cloning is basically just identical twins but later in life.
In the manhwa The Shop With No Name main villain is an immortal\hard-to-kill human turned vampire, and his main feature is his attractiveness. Noone suspects him, women love him, and he is a vicious maniac.
I'm now interested in checking that out. Hm, *"the shop with no name"*
2:13 I think I would want to live for a long time imagine all of the things that are coming and I won’t be around to experience them or I would be too old to enjoy them properly.
I always find it interesting to counter someone when they ask "how can you be human if you cannot die?" with "what does it mean to be human?" We seem to have this idea put into us that there is some clearly defined idea of what this is until we actually analyze it and then realize much of it isn't even rational sense or even properly based on anything at all. Just whatever suits them as an idea of "normal" at any given point of time. To which I also ask "what even is normal?" and to make it one better "why do you even want that?" Most of the time the arguments I get aren't usually personally based, they typically bring up grand concepts beyond themselves or something that isn't immortality itself being the problem.
Loved this video! I've for a long time had an issue with this general acceptance of "immortality bad", and you dealt so well with the concept!
That kind of reminds me how every 100 years there's a major virus that spreads through the whole world
Its nowhere near as regular and simple as 1 major virus epidemic per century😅
The other guy is right. They aren't neatly spaced out by 100 years, not all of them became worldwide epidemics, and the diseases used to make the claim only go back to the 1700's.
Fact is there's usually a major epidemic every 30 to 50 years but the reach and fatality rates vary wildly.
@@viktormadzov5286 Still, viruses evolve just liike living things do, even if they aren't set in stone. Take polio, we can crush that which hurts us given enough time.
I guess I've just never had a Sour Grapes mentality.
For as much as I am Depressed and for as much as I find Death beautiful, I want to live forever. Not because I'm afraid of dying, but because I want to see what happens next, even if it means experiencing that unique pain of losing things I've come to love again and again.
The world we know is ever-changing, and I so want to experience all its highs and lows as it happens.
You are the person in the story who decided to stay behind and not enter the portal while the others went in. One day that portal will involuntarily come for us but good thing you’ve decided to stay here for now to enjoy as much as you can, despite the lows. Good Luck👍.
@@Jeremy-bt8lo I highly recommend you watch the Good Place, it's a funny show with a nice take on the afterlife, Heaven, and Hell.
Also Florida Man is a character.
@@timberwolfbrother Oh is that what the story about the ending portal was about. I looked it up and realized it was a tv show. I thought the reference was to an older story in a book lol
There is still always so much to do think see etc etc etc etc ⏳⏳⏳
@@Jeremy-bt8lo Yeah, and I highly recommend it. Definitely worth the time to watch it, with lots of humor and philosophical influences.
Oof, this hit me hard in my current emotional state. Interestingly, it sort of reminds me on an interesting take of immortality explored in the Soul Calibur series of games, of all places. A character in one of the games had achieved immortality, but after a few hundred years or so he reached a point where he felt he had nothing left to live for, and so sought a means to remove his immortality. But on the precipice of doing so, he caught a glimpse of the future, and saw the many things that mankind would achieve and marveled. He wanted to see those marvels for himself. And so he stopped his pursuit of ending his immortality, because he had come to believe that the future would continue to hold wonders and marvels for him to experience, if he would just show patience.
Yeah, that's kind of my view on the whole thing. I'd take Hob Gadling's deal out of... well, to call it FOMO would be flippant. I want to see what the future has to show us! I would *love* to pop in on a 31st- or 41st-century Time Team-equivalent archaeological dig and snicker to myself at all they're getting wrong about The 21st Century People, and that's just a start.
If you cannot change a situation, change your attitude. We cannot currently change the fact that death is inevitable for all of us, so we work hard to convince ourselves that we're okay with it.
I like this. Thank you
Ive also thought immortality was a case of “hate em cuz we aint em” whenever someone says its bad. But after the sour grapes point, when it came to the part in the video about like one not wanting more of their life? That was pretty damn insightful. If a true no-catch immortality was offered, I think a lot of people would take it. A huge part of what makes death bad, is that it is almost always not on ones own terms. This grants people the freedom to at the very least have some agency. I think that makes it in some objective sense a positive thing.
Death = Time
As Jean-Luc Picard was written as saying, "Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived.
We either outlive the ones we love, or they outlive us. There is always the survivor, the one that carries on through the grief. I don't believe the eternal life is the curse, but the eternal loss. Loss of your lovers, your children, your sense of connection.
But there is a hopeful side people often ignore, the part where someone gets to carry the torch. To make sure all the stories written are eventually read, all the art viewed, all the good and bad and right and wrong ultimately weighed. Someone gets to survive everyone, gets to make all the meaningless deaths have meaning to something.
Well there's also the hopeful side where eventually you also have eternal gain. Gain of new lovers, children, and connections. Depending on the method of immortality, you might not stay the only immortal. Eventually those loved ones might be other immortals too.
until the hopeful side running out
you have to live for eternity remember ? you will outlive everything, i mean EVERYTHING. also you can't end your suffering, you have to look at the "notthing" for eternity after you outlive everything and someday you will outlive the "notthing" too. until you are the only thing left
I had recently read Scott McCloud’s the sculptor, it’s a fantastic story about the urgency placed on knowing you will die someday. But you can’t help but wonder would David and Meg be better off if they could live for longer. I cried because their life together was cut short, never given the opportunity to be everything they can be. There is always something to live for.
When they said cats could also be immortal I was sold.
Thanks for this.
I always loved Dream and Hobb's story and that it keeps progressing throughout the series.
At his lowest moments, he always had a reason to live.
12:01
Death from Puss In Boots: And I took that personally.
My grandfather died 2 days ago
He had late stage Dementia
In every clear moment of his he talked about wanting to end his life...
I think he is in a better plqce now
One should not be forced to life a live to the last 10% when you have done and seen all you wanted
I dont want eternal life
I just want a happy life
Ya, if immortality came with healing like a regeneration superpower then he'd definitely be able to be happy again.
My grandfather died from dementia a couple years ago and I was struggling with it. I had a dream after his passing that the soul leaves the body the final third of life with diseases like dementia, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, etc. so it isn't damaged from the trauma of these diseases.... It gave me some peace I hope it will you also
🫂
Nice to see positivity
What about a happy life, for as long as you want?
A happy life in a timeframe decided by noone but yourself. No genetic disorders, no tragic accidents, no unlucky incidents.
Dementia is caused by aging, and immortality requires aging to stop. Of course magical immortality as an aging wreck would be torture, but those that want to live forever are thinking of a more realistic form of immortality: stopping the aging process of the body
Reminds me of a trope: "Blessed with Suck." It refers to a situation where someone gets something that is usually considered a great boon, but all sorts of negatives are artificially attached to it, so as to make it not worth it. It pretty much only applies to good people. Villains get "Cursed with Awesome", where they are given a "punishment" which actually gives them great power. Like The Mummy (1999). "You have betrayed me by sleeping with my queen. I sentence you to a terrible fate where you will gain immortality and godlike powers. I'll bet you're feeling sorry, now!" I've always considered Blesses with Suck to be pretty lame and a lazy way to present the protagonist with difficulties without having to actually figure out a story reason to present obstacles.
On the other hand, there is the universe of Leiju Matsumoto's Galaxy Express 999/Space Pirate Captain Harlock. In it, there is the Machine Empire, which consists of people who have given up their human bodies for mechanized ones, basically becoming cyborgs. They exist forever, but lose all sense of humanity and purpose, for the most part. Harlock and the other characters refuse to get machine bodies because a limited, mortal life brings an urgency to one's actions, and a desire to actually live your life while you can.
I had a story about an immortal "superhero" whose ability was literally unkillable. However, he still suffered from all the wounds, so that eventually they all accumulated and turned him into a walking burnt zombie, but his unkillability made him functional anyway. He is one of the most positive and kind characters, who was the first to found a "league of heroes" by finding the same people with superpowers, and helping them find a better use for them, despite the great losses from the fact that he lived for many centuries and looked terrible from the outside, he never lost hope.
And he never lost his humanity in the first place.
(despite this, death overtook him at one point when he had to make a sacrifice)
This is how I see an example of immortality in a person, and how it will affect him.
Also in the story there are a couple of other characters with immortality, but they have a completely different outlook on life and personality.
And their abilities already make them less like people and more like super-entities.
a character that tackles this question and philosophy wonderfully is Skips in Regular Show, a cartoon when I was growing up. He addresses seeing everyone he's loved die before him and not able to join them and becomes jaded because of it however uses his suffering to help those within the mortal coil make the right decisions to live their lives to the fullest.
Dying is easy. It's living that scares the hell out of people.
Dying isnt easy, normaly, to literaly most people
Normaly its something horrific, accidents, mistakes either piling up or falling on you emideitly, and you didnt bounce back
@@louzo5175 The point is that if you really want death it can be easy, the same cannot be said for living
If you had to chose to die like you have to choose and use effort to live I think people may feel the same. Once you chose, you can't go back. I think choosing life or death you left go of what you were, and that is scary.
Not really, I'm more scared of death than living honestly.
Dying is easy, but leaving is hard.
When I think of immortality I always think of a quote from the 12th Doctor. “A life this long, do you understand what it is? It’s a battlefield, like this one, and it’s empty because everyone else has fallen.”
Then its a beautiful field.
Walk in the park. Built on the ashes
“I’ve lived long enough to know a longer life isn’t always a better one. In the end you just get tired. Tired of the struggle, tired of losing everyone that matters to you.”
Atium compounders and Atium leechers from Scadrial have supernatural immortality.
@@JaxdoesArt The problem with that idea is you can gain new people that matter to you, eventually. Can wait long enough for new immortals to exist too.
"Immortality isn't living forever,
It's everybody else dying"
You're missing something: Humans change, it's part of what makes us human. How would we change, given infinite time? That, to me, is truly terrifying.
One of the most troubling things about death is the idea of nonexistence: it is simply, and _literally_ , unimaginable.
To imagine something is to form a perception in your mind; but if there is no perceiver, there can be no perception. Being conscious, we want to extend that consciousness _ad infinitum_ .
I think part of a realistic issue with immortality is that eventually, your brain runs out of space.
So you as a personality eventually die due to being over written by a new personality, or you lose the ability to create new ones
From the youngest years I never understood view that immortality is bad, I always saw it as the biggest blessing one could ever receive, for me any realistic question would be "how much would you sacrifice for it?", not "do you accept it?" and truth be told I can see myself sacrificing ALMOST anything in a heartbeat for immortality, obviously not the monkey's paw type of immortality with eternal aging, ending as sentient dust.
The Thing from the Fantastic 4 is only allowed to age 1 week each year. He died of age in 6012 A.D.
I feel the real curse of immortality is the inevitable cycle of apathy it'd cause. Try as you might, if you can't ever die or be permanently destroyed, you're gonna repeatedly fall in and out of periods where you're only thought towards many aspects of life is "why should I care?". Granted, the same argument can made for mortality as well.
If your only thought of immortality is inevitable apathy, then you're a boring person to begin with.
@@furrymessiah My point is having an infinite lifespan is gonna trivialize a lot of things. It's gonna get hard to care at times because you'll inevitably get another chance at it, not to mention all the other experiences that won't matter as much if you can't die anymore. I never said it'd be permanent, I said you'd cycle in and out of it.
@@furrymessiahrude
@@furrymessiah Looks like someone didn't read the comment carefully enough.
@@MataNui. i think its just a difference in perspective. With immortality, you have to be prepared for all the things its going to change about your whole life; We're all already so used to mortality that we cant think of a life without it. We prioritize, dream, love, grieve, cheat, and help with the perspective of our mortal limited life in mind. Its the awareness of how our lives are right now that make us very susceptible to immortalitys mental pitfalls.
If everyone was born as immortals from the very beginning, i doubt that a lot of the problems we fear of eternal life now would be that intense; so id say, if we had a choice to live a non-side effected immortal life, its possible with enough perspective preparation and willingness to risk yourself to take that role, even if the guarantee of a mentally healthy one is impossible to confirm.
❤❤ absolutely beautiful video! I have grappled with this problem since I was a very very small child and I have never ever understood this strange aversion to immortality and The love/ hatred of death. I wish this topic was spoken of so openly and honestly more often and across more mediums, I think it would change how we interact with each other, how we run our governments from our small communities all the way up to national issues, how we interact with medical issues and scientific discoveries and overall how we are as human beings; All for the better.
I love your channel, please keep up the good work! What You do matters greatly!❤
Thank you! I've spent years arguing with people who think immortality is bad simply because they have been told so by fiction. You really can tell someone something enough times and they will start thinking it themselves.
The problem I see in immortality is stagnation. It is bad in the personal scope, but it is so much worse when you consider society as a whole. What if immortality had been discovered hundreds of years ago? How would you feel being ruled by kings that not only believed in their divine right, but also that slavery is fair, and women should submit to their fathers and husbands? Those immortals could possibly evolve their opinions over millennia, but it's likely that, like an oak, their minds would grow less flexible with every season. I feel it's best that we die to give space for our children and their children to make better mistakes.
You're putting the cart before the horse.
This problem doesn't even exist yet, but you're using its theoretical existence to argue against immortality?
There are plenty of theoretical issues that we could have brought up to prevent the invention of nuclear reactors, wind power, vaccines, airplanes. Should we have never invented any of those for fear of what theoretically might have happened?
Not technically, human beings don't have unlimited memory. With so much time, and with their minds presumably good enough to still rule, they'd have to improve or like any other society, be trampled by those that do.
Even if all the world leaders are immortal and set in their ways, all it takes is one rebellion to build an empire of progress and innovation, forcing everyone else to keep up. One person can be powerful, but they are never an island.
Monarchy didn't end because all the kings died... Ideas in society can change. My ideas change, do yours not do as well? Do you not grow as a person, learn new perspectives and change your mind?
@@Ramschat Most of my change happened up to early adulthood, and it is well known that people get less open to new ideas the older they are. Even a genius like Einstein had difficulty accepting a radical new theory such as quantum physics. If kings sound too far-fetched, imagine a world where CEOs and judges never retire, where the same politicians run for the same elected positions for centuries on end. Does that sound like a dynamic society to you?
@@rubinelli7404 this might be due to aging, not just living. In this case, it can be fixed probably by the same thing which gives immortality. And if it's just a mentality issue, it's even more fixable then.
"A scientist knows very well that no one can ever learn and understand everything, there is ALWAYS more."
I agree with immortality and invincibility. Time will change everything else but you.
You will always have something new, never getting bored. You will be incredibly famous, people betting over your death and losing.
You will have an immense amount of understanding of your surroundings and people.
You will be able to talk ancient English and God knows how many other languages in the year 200025.
You will see Andromeda probably!
You will see time travel, inside of a black hole, countless things that were lethal back then.
You can swim inside a volcano, win every single game and eat anything you want!
But, there's still a catch...
"Good" and "bad" always changes with the context, culture and personality. Whatever you give humans, they WILL find a way to love it. That's what I love about them. : )
"time will change everything but you" is one of most ignorant statements imaginable.
The "you" won't even exist anymore due to erosion of your identity, people can change vastly in just two decades, let alone centuries, your brain would adapt to almost everything, which would make it extremely hard to be excited about things.
Your idea is that new things equals existing things but it doesn't necessarily mean that at all, nothing will be truly new at that point.
"whatever you give humans they will find a way to love it" so I guess depression, despair and general boredom isn't a thing.
There is a difference between coping with something and loving it.
Death is good and normal, its what I keep repeating to myself whenever I start to think about death a little too much. Death to me, the idea of non-existence, is something I can't fully comprehend. When you're dead, your mind stops thinking, you do not know you are dead, you do not know anything, no boredom, no fear, no memory. I get emotional and empty inside every time I consider this, immortality would mean not facing this fear of not existing. I would, no matter the pain, choose existence over death.
little-known downsides of immortality:
1. tearing your favorite article of clothing and discovering that it's irreplaceable because the technique of its manufacture has been lost
2. realizing you've thought of the perfect comeback to someone who's been dead for 300 years
3. not being able to eat your favorite dish because the source of some critical ingredient has gone extinct
4. having strong opinions about sports that are no longer played
5. getting a song from the 13th century stuck in your head and being unable to get it out because you don't remember how it ends and you're the only person on earth who remembers the song at all
6. having that perfect pun you've been waiting forever for a chance to use stop working due to linguistic drift
7. Watching your favorite constellation slowly lose its shape as the stars drift apart over millennia.
8. Having to constantly re-learn the same skill every few centuries because the tools or methods keep changing.
9. Realizing that the secret to happiness you’ve finally figured out is now irrelevant because society has completely restructured itself.
10. Developing a lifelong love for an art form, only to see it replaced by something you find incomprehensible.
11. Living with the knowledge that you own the last surviving copy of a historical artifact, but no one in the modern world cares.
12. Forgetting entire centuries of your life, only to find them referenced in some obscure history book that gets the details all wrong.
13. Watching jokes about mortality never land quite right because your friends think you’re being ironic.
14. slowly losing your true native language due to needing to adapt to linguistic drift
15. continuing to biologically age, after thousands of years (why didn't i wish to stay youthful forever instead?)
16. having millennia of bad experiences to randomly think about
17. news agencies seemingly at your door 24/7 asking about some random historical events
18. needing to pass time during the heat death of the universe somehow
19. every army in the world is probably trying to draft you
This is one of the best videos I have ever seen on UA-cam, and I've been watching it for over a decade with thousands upon thousands of hours
Imagine being immortal, and existing beyond the end of the universe. When every single star has gone out, all there is is darkness, and you're left on some barren cold planet. Alone.
8
You have billions of years to invent multiversal travel or anything of sort. If your universe dies, just go to another one.
Well, eventually that barren cold planet would be gone as well, its atoms all slowly quantum tunneling to become Iron-56, then randomly quantum tunneling to collapse into a black hole, which then decays. So really with true immortality you'd be floating in the void for the vast, _vast,_ *_vast,_* majority of your life. Eventually a random entropy decrease _might_ create another big bang after the heat death of the universe, but it would take something of the order of 10^10^10^120 years (or really any other time unit we use, it just disappears into the rounding error on those scales) iirc.
Easy. Go to sleep until something happens.
It's like eating your favorite food. Yet immortality would be never stop eating it. Turning your favorite food into a punishment.
It could be interesting. Seeing era's come and go. But past that it seems annoying. Like unless you were rich to a point where the wealth just builds passively you would have to work forever. At least if you want a place to live. Guess one could just go into a world. Not like sickness or no food will kill you...
It always seems to me that the people who want immortality the most are usually the last ones who should have it. It's never because they want to keep making the world better, but usually because it's some tyrant who cannot give up control of something.
I recently read "never die twice" and I really liked the main character. His greatest goal is to resurrect everyone that ever died and making them immortal. Especially one scene when a paladin says that death is just and shouldnt be abolished and he answers with "You couldnt know, you never died" stuck around. great book
The paradigm that has to shift is transferring from, "How do you find meaning in a life that will end?" to, "How do you sustain meaning in a life that doesn't end?" They are fundamental questions with very different answers. It's a question of resource usage.
Give me nothingness, or give me eternity.
Anything in between is the most evil and cruel of torture.
Well said.
Preach!
This is kind of beside the point of the video, but I find the idea of giving someone a choice about immortality interesting. I know someone who once tried to end their life; thankfully, they failed, and now things seem to be going well for them. So, if we give a person the option to end their life because it has been bad for a hundred or even a thousand years, what if they could have found happiness a million years after that? But also, what if we don’t give them the option and they never find happiness?
If it was me, I'd get them to that million years but if I or the person I'm saving can't keep going then guess the guy is just gonna have to die. Nothing more or less to do unless told to do more.
99% of immortals...
People assume that immortality means perfect memory. There is a web comic that I read sometimes which has a race of immortals, and they do a mental reboot every century or so. They keep a few core memories, and they can have diaries to refer to, but they're pretty much new people. Even without a reboot, your memories will fade with time. I'm not the same as I was twenty years ago, I'd be so much different in a hundred, and I'd only have a few core memories colored by nostalgia from the previous century
I believe a UA-cam comment said it best about this topic. I forget the exact quote, but it went something like “It’s not that we want to live forever. We just want to choose when to die.”
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
I do think this "cope" isn't universal. It's just, you don't really see stories about the good kind of immortality as much because it's harder to make a good story with it.
Death also gives writers a stake
It's the most basic kind of stake, but it means characters have something to lose
On some level you have to be more creative to find ways to threaten a character who can't die
Of course plot armour means certain characters can't die anyway so writers still have to think up fun things to threaten the main characters with like shattering their identity, destroying relationships or crippling them
Cup of tea anyone
@@timebomb4562 Not every story needs death. What if it's a slice of life?
@@einekartoffel2490 true certain genres like romance don't need to kill anyone and probably would suffer for it unless it's Romeo and Juliet
Read chinese cultivation novels. Characters become immortal all the time and is seen as a good thing
i think people are so depressing. @@kingkapybara9964
100% I'd absolutely partake in immortality given the chance. There's too much fascinating to observe and learn in the world to ever become bored.
And you'd have even more things to do in 1 year. We keep coming out with new stuff.
@@Oldmeme592 Literally the gift that'd never keep giving.
I think one of the biggest concerns of immortality is that old ideas and thought stick, and doesn’t allow new ones to grow. Because people are afraid of change. It may be good for the indivius and maybe a community, but wouldn’t it make humanity as a whole static and unchanging? At least socially?
I grew up religious and am now raising my kids secular. My six year old last year started having death anxiety and would come into my room unable to sleep every night saying “I don’t ever want to die but I don’t want to live forever!”
It’s truly so difficult to resist the urge to give easy comfortable answers like the ones I had at that age. Maybe kids need that until they grow out of it, then they need room to question? Or maybe getting her to tolerate the uncertainty will help her down the line in life? I truly don’t know the answer, being a human aware of our mortality is something we all cope with our entire lives. You could say being human is just coping with death in different ways.
as someone who experienced death or something close to it.
death is not scary, it's nothingness and calming.
However I would still grab the opportunity if offered immortality, just the amount of experience I can gather with immortality is something I would like to observe.
I dont want to live forever, i just want to have enough time to experience everything I dont have time for.
"I don't want to live forever, I just wanna live forever, so I can do everything"
Ok
@@GothAtheist eventually 'everything' will run out, and when that happens I'll be good to go, but till then why wouldn't you want more time?
@@avivyoukerharel2140 it will never run out, the universe is infinite and there is always stuff to do.
@@avivyoukerharel2140This is exactly what happens in 177776, the immortal people achieved all they could and were left with a boring meaningless existence. Except for those dedicated to that Football match, who played for millennia just to give themselves purpose
177776? What's that?
I feel calling it sour grapes is cope. Perhaps people would live mundane life’s and just continue on forever. But look at how people act in situations where inhibitions are removed where they don’t fear death. Think about all the crazy and wreck less stuff that could be done just because there are no consequences. A good modern times example would be the “Kia boys” children as young as 10 stealing cars and going on joyrides because they know there won’t be any consequences. They perform carjackings, run over pedestrians, and smash into other cars and know they won’t be punished. I would expect this kind of reckless abandon of human decency of many who were granted immortality.
What a silly conclusion. If anything it's more likely to be the opposite. Death guarantees an eventual end to any consequences, regardless of how horrible the act. Immortality guarantees you have to deal with the consequences of any action, and thus should be more careful. Someone who just acts without any care, lets say repeatedly committing atrocities with no sign of a willingness to improve, would then have to suffer potentially endless imprisonment, isolation from the rest of the world and greatly reduced freedom FOREVER (or at least a very long time, until they eventually can reform). Any remotely sensible person would take great care to not end up ruining an eternity of life. Also because often the most rash people are people who are young and haven't learned better. At worst it's neutral, and tbf I think it is very close to just neutral, because of course the real root of terrible behavior is usually some character flaw and/or societal issue. There would still be terrible rash people, but I think people who have the sense to be decent in their current normal life span would also have the sense to be decent if they lived a thousand years. There might be some cases of people breaking bad after a long time, but I think there'd be as many if not more cases of people redeeming themselves after hundreds of years.
@@rylace perhaps I was just being pessimistic but even so I still feel the same that trying to claim that there wouldn’t be any downside to immortality is cope simply my looking at human nature. How many people are able to stay with “it”? My father is 73 and an engineer/mechanic. He has worked with tech all his life yet he’s never gotten the hang of smart phones and no matter how many times I try to explain how 3D printers work he is baffled. Look at how millennials seem to cling to there 90’s nostalgia and think about someone from the 20s doing the same thing for 100 years. Perhaps someone could keep reinventing themselves but it’s more likely that they be set in their ways before their 50. Not to mention what the trauma might be if they were to become trapped in an accident. Forever frozen alive on Mt. Everest or stuck in a cave thanks to a wrong turn or a cave in. Even if they were rescued the trauma of that sticking with you for eternity. Perhaps it could result in someone becoming a shut in to avoid potential fate worse than death. I like to consider myself an optimist but I can’t help but be filled with pessimism when it comes to the idea of how a human would act without the threat of death.
Being trapped somewhere for centuries would just be a chance to meditate and become Buddha-like - it's only scary to us because we know we're running out of time to get back to civilization and things we enjoy, but if you know the mountain will crumble or the cold will dissipate in aeons you just gotta wait it out and spend time figuring out who you are
Of course there's a heavy dose of assuming immortals would be taught how to be their own therapist + someone works out how to fix the problems our brains develop after long periods of isolation - but I'm seeing that as a non-issue if we're willing to imagine a world where immortality has been figured out
What’s wrong with being crazy and reckless if there aren’t consequences?
@@roccovolpetti7363 Try reading the whole post next time but I’ll explain it simply. When I say no consequences I mean no direct personal consequences. Sure you can put them in jail for a century but what does that mean to them when they have an eternity? Who cares if a drug douse horrible things to your body if it can’t kill you? Why not climb Everest naked if you can’t die? Without the direct threat of death most people will ignore secondary consequences. You might not die from climbing Everest naked but you can still freeze and be trapped there. Not to mention all the people you can piss off. They might not be able to kill you but they can sure find a way to make you wish they could.
Well this is the first video on youtube that brought me to tears. Thank you for making it.
Atium compounders and Atium leechers from Scadrial have supernatural immortality.
In the immortal words of Cardinal Copia: "Don't you forget about dying. Don't you forget about your friend Death. Don't you forget that you will die."
The character "Me" in Doctor Who was given immortality, but we learn later she also kept her human memory meaning she forgot things over time like all humans. A character like her in 17776 would eventually enjoy things cause old experiences would feel like new because the original experience decayed with time. The downside being she changed with time, growing as she experienced the centuries and millennia.
And that's just how memory works. Over time, memories fade. The bigger the thing to you, the longer it will take to fade. But as someone born in the 60s, I can see that given long enough everything will fade.
Anyone think the art scene in 17776 would go _crazy?_ Like every human on the planet has infinite time to hone whatever craft they want, and the shared experience of immortality would create such interesting works. Even aside from that, no need for money means no capitalistic minds would cancel stuff cuz like, why not just let it keep being made? Not like the artists were doing anything else. Idk, seems like that'd be a fun place to live. Over 15000+ more years of art at highly technological levels. Oh yeah, and because of that people could basically just implant their brains into a virtual reality where we basically become our own gods and can create whatever we want for ourselves. Could even replicate the experience of death if you wanted.
Seems like a sweet deal to me.
Same!!
The worldbuilding and entertainment industry would thrive like no other.
Imagine what people can do by making something for a hundred of years and mooving on w their expierense to create anither great comic? And people will have to to read it too! 50 years of worldbuilding... Were death is indeed bad and not glorified
And having to team up for big projects wont hold back people from making something by themselves anymore sinse they now can just learn every field of team members they needed, and itd be indeed THEIR animation show, all hours, all made by one person
Creativity is far more endless then simply 15k years
Entertainment? Entertainment they will give!
yeah 17776 rocks, its so cool, its sad we dont have that
Or maype having lots of time will make people lazy
An endless cycle of procrastination with no deadline
Also alot of art is drived from either a conscious or unconscious need to live on a way to immortalize your self “ i cant live forever but my legacy can!)
But the questions is if u can indeed live forever would u bother building a legacy?
Also no kids no new generation no new idea it is the same old people going slowly depressed and insane honestly sometimes i think best experience to describe how immortality would feel is covid lockdown
“We all kept taking about how if world stopped for a min and we stayed at home we will do everything we ever wanted to do but it didn’t have the time to do but then covid happened and most people didn’t do anything
@@nourtamer3189 Personally I make art cuz it's fun, I'm sure I'd treat it differently over time but still
I was having a conversation with someone on Reddit that asserted that eternal life would get boring eventually because they'd run out of things to do. So I asked the obvious question: "Are you saying that your to-do list of fun things to try has ever gotten shorter? That's not an experience I've ever had. What was that like?"
They deleted their whole account ten minutes later.
r/thatHappened
The problem isn't necessarily the search for immortality, but what you are willing to do to get it. And in most stories, that immortality comes at a cost someone other than the potential immortal has to pay. But most of the stories also don't explicitly point that out, which I find kind of annoying. Immortality that doesn't come at the cost of some people's lives would like be much more widely accepted as a concept.
The cost is tons of scientists, many years, and a lot of funding.
I'd say that's worth it for a happy, healthy life for as long as you choose. 🎉
Atium compounders and Atium leechers from Scadrial have supernatural immortality.
@@ArthurWangArtthe cost is the extinction of many more other species that the ones we already made go extinct, that IS the cost.
Have the respect to acknowledge that.
Yeah just as long as it's not people then it's okay.
You're proving why this species is doomed.
I think that the way that they approach immortality in Frieren is neither super boring nor just pain, but it does focus on how life is change and for someone who lives so long change is hard. At least that was what I took away from the story so far.