Its something that, alongside other question regarding life and death, is kinda overlooked. It's easy to make simple arguments about this topic, "No cos all my friends would be dead" or "Yeah cos I'd never die." but I would like to know your considered opinions about this.

Just to clarify, I want to know whether, if you had the option to never die under any circumstances with no loopholes or appeals, you would take it. I personally cant say for sure. I'd be on the knife edge of saying yes. However, I suspect I'd regret it. Lonliness ans all that. However, I really want to see where it will all end in the future. Oh yeah, as for what happens when the universe ends, we'll assume for now that parrallel universes exist and you pass in into the next one. This is also up for debate.

All thoughts welcome.

R

It would not be worth it. there is a saying that goes,"do not envy the gods, for in reality they envy you. every moment could be your last and it is that much more beautiful for it" living forever would be monotonous after a while. living short and brilliant is greater in comparison.

I think living for ever doenst make happy. You ( can ) see all the things you want but what when you have sees it all? I dont know if i want to live for ever because i'm still 16, i got a whole life...But perhaps i would like to stay her for ever. But not in cities or where humans are. Perhaps in the jungle, i should not be afraid to die because i cant die so. This has nothing to do with god. God doenst controle if you can live for ever or not. In fact i do NOT believe at all. Please foks leave god out of this and say what you think.

No, i wouldn't live forever since it would really suck if you grow old and look like a sponge.
All your family would be dead, your friends.
so no, i will not live forever


yay post 100000

I wouldn't want to live forever. It would be so sad watching friends and family die over and over again, but it would be just as sad if not worse to distance yourself from people. Even with seeing everything that will come in the future, I imagine life would get pretty dull. It just wouldn't be worth it for me.

Nah I wouldn't live forever. Having the people i know and love now is enough.. And if i do live forever they are all just going to be replaced and thats just sad. When they do get replaced you're going to eventually forget them, while when you have a short life you can always remember them when you die or when they die which will keep them in your memories even longer. Yes I would love to experience life in the future but then again its just going to be a sad life alone.

Ohhh, an interesting topic.

I would say YES!. That way I could be able to learn everything, discover everything, know the things nobody knows, write a thousand books, just imagine what you can know if you had the time for that, you would no longer be human anymore, you could finnaly be something superior than a mere human.

I can't imagine when I am 200 years old/older and I can't die. I don't have a single tooth to eat, can't speak fluently, can't walk normally anymore, I can't do anything 'coz I have to sleep a whole day, many diseases, only bones and skin, etc
Nope, I don't wanna live forever

Its interesting. I really expected a bigger variation in opinion than what I'm seeing in both (oops) topics. One quick thing I would like to point out is that it was implied that you wouldn't physically age as the aging process is what kills you. Anyway,

raveordie

"do not envy the gods, for in reality they envy you. every moment could be your last and it is that much more beautiful for it".

A beautiful phrase I'll give you that but I would question if you can really believe that. The idea of living knowing only that the only certainty is being cut down before you can explore the merest sliver of what awaits. Beautiful, I couldn't say, terrifying, or the very least unfair, certainly.

Kibas333

I think living for ever doenst make happy. You ( can ) see all the things you want but what when you have sees it all? I dont know if i want to live for ever because i'm still 16, i got a whole life...But perhaps i would like to stay her for ever.

Im 19. That means that I've already gone through one fifth of my entire life span. What have done in the great scheme of things? Nothing. Humanity will never accomplish anything without a broader perspective, this is especially true of the individual. As for what to do once you've seen it all? Easy, see the rest. The universe is a sea of limitless knowledge. There no end to this and only by having and infinity in which to explore it will we ever see the truth. Flowery language I know, but it conveys the right message. I have a real thirst, a strong drive to learn. I cannot stand the thought of having all this within my grasp only to have it snatched away against my will.

AgentHyatt

It would be so sad watching friends and family die over and over again, but it would be just as sad if not worse to distance yourself from people.

Good relations with people are important, true. However, death is a part of our experience anyway, we all will have to deal with it at some time. Personally, I would sacrifice sharing the experience of death with people I love if it meant gaining a deeper meaning to my own existance. You say it is worse to distance yourself form others. I would appreaciate some more discussion of that. Being distant is only seen as bad as we feel drawn togther as a species through the fact that we need other people to justify our brief existance. To say "You only did [whatever], but it is important and the world is a better place for it". To divorce yourself from mortality means this support mechanism is no longer required.

Killer-Teddy

Having the people i know and love now is enough.. And if i do live forever they are all just going to be replaced and thats just sad. When they do get replaced you're going to eventually forget them, while when you have a short life you can always remember them when you die or when they die which will keep them in your memories even longer. Yes I would love to experience life in the future but then again its just going to be a sad life alone.

When you move away to new places, you meet new people. When others move away from you somethimes you forget them. This is normal. So why would this change just because the loss is permanent. For every individual lost another is gained. It is arguable that this is an improvement on meeting a limited number of people during a limited life span. Memories are lost when you die. By your own argument, living on will preserve the dead indefinately. It would not always be a sad life alone. You would still have those around you, just be more keenly aware of their impermanence. However, if living alone is the price for the biggest treasure imaginable, I'd be willing to pay.

Hadora

I would say YES!. That way I could be able to learn everything, discover everything, know the things nobody knows, write a thousand books, just imagine what you can know if you had the time for that, you would no longer be human anymore, you could finnaly be something superior than a mere human.

Firstly, finally someone who agrees with me on this. Beginning to feel I was slightly marginalised here. Secondly, you pretty much summed my own position. It is easy to dwell on what you would lose you become blind to the potential gains. To me, knowledge, and the ability to do all the things that I know I'm never going to be able to do, is the biggest prize I can dream of. I'm strangely aware of my life slipping past and amounting to pretty much nothing. I do astrophysics at Uni in an attempt to find out as much as I can before I die but if was offered the chance to see it all. I would take it. Call me what you will. If the choice was between infinte knowledge and retaining a sense of connection to humanity, the contest is almost over.

R

Oh my! I never thought of it that way raveordie. My decision would balance on the edge of a knife however, it could be swayed either. True, you would be lonely, you'd make friends and then lose them, lovers and such. But loseing people is a part of life. Surely, if you are given the chance to make this decision, you would have enough insight to realise this. Yes, you'd lose friends but you'd make new ones. I always find myself asking myself stuff like "will they ever solve this problem? Will they ever invent something like that? Save this endangered species?" Questions that I'm sure won't be answered in my life-time. Also, if you couldn't die, you could potentially do great things, like a super hero. (asumming a righteous person was given this opportunity) You would also get to know answers to questions man could never know the answer to, like if there is another dimension that you could cross over into. However, life would become meaningless wouldn't it? Also you could do such evil things with your life that one wouldn't dream of doing now, when you are mortal. What a tough decsion. However, I'm glad I'll never have to make it. Maybe its good to just not have control over such things.

There comes a time where you just have to die. I would not like to live forever, but I would like to live long enough to prove to myself whether or not history will repeat itself, or if we're just screwed up now (or then for that matter). There comes a time when you just get bored of life, and you have to end it all.

Ahaha, live forever. read "Tuck Everlasting" people...or if you are not the book type, watch the movie. =]

for me? a no. why? i guess i can write an essay on this. hold on, i already did. a long time ago...for english class, when we studied "tuck everlasting". but i have no clue where those papers are buried...or whether i even have them. anyway.

we live for the moment. no? we love thrill, danger, we love to scare ourselves (although most of us likes to know that we are also somewhat safe. (but you might also beg to differ in saying that you prefer safe stuff)) anything that gets the adrenaline rushing. for people who like the unknown factor, the factor that cannot be controlled, knowing that they'll never die inevitably takes some excitement out of life. we cherish what we know has a due date when we must give that item away. and so we live for today while trying to grasp tomorrow...perhaps not alway thinking about dying, but knowing yeah, there's a final date.

as previously said, something endless gets monotonous. too much of ANYTHING gets boring, even if you might not believe it right now.

life is a series of goodbyes. if life goes on forever, then it's a series of forever goodbyes. of course, you might argue that with if things end, they must first begin, so life also has an endless series of beginnings and hellos too. well, quote juliet (shakespeare) "parting is such sweet sorrow." i don't know if anyone here has moved a dozen times too many for their age, but many people who move too often have said goodbyes too often and a part of them always dislikes the frequent moves. imagine a lifetime of such goodbyes, since you live not by time's rule's a day is the same as a lifetime, and you live simply to see the people come and then die off.

plus, acquiring knowledge requires communication. how do you communicate with people if you are not like them? people have an attraction to people who are resemblant of themselves. but you are a loner, an abnormality in a world where all things have an end. you are stuck outside of the circle of life, stranded outside of the river of time. do you really think people will accept you? do you really think they will be able to relate to you, see things the way you--an immortal observer--does? humans need to feel like they belong and to feel the support and love of people...and those emotions are burdens. (though this lack of positiv relationships could prevent tearful goodbyes.)

i can go on an on but i'll stop. really though, tuck everlasting was a pretty good book.

I don't want to live forever. You will get very old and wrinkly I guess. Unless you don't age and everybody gets to live forever, then I don't want to live forever.

To live for the moment is something I could never do. It carries no significance of the bigger picture, of the meaning of anything. As mortals, individuals are really rather insignificant. The achievements of any one person only usually benefit those of future generations who use that to make new discoveries to help their future generations. We are feeding all our energy into this vague and hazy 'future'. It's like a hive mind. Living for the sake of the group as a whole, not for yourself.

Putting all your trust and faith in people is always a bad plan. People are too movable and insubstantial to be the basis for your existance. To aim higher you must look for goals beyond this. As for the issue of the communication of information, it wouldn't really be that hard surely. As long as you dont broadcast the fact you cant die (and lets face it if you did who'd believe you) you could drift along in the sea of humanity and learn from it as you did. No integration required.

As for boredom. It's taken around 3000 years of humanity really trying to understand one small planet and we're nowhere near done. I think its fair to say that by the time a person had finshed studying an entire universe of possibilities the things they learned first would have progressed so far as to be unrecognisable.

Tuck Everlasting eh? Rings a bell but I cant say Iv read it but from the reviews on google results I think I get the idea. Suffice it to say that I found a source of eternal life I would not then spend eternity living in a forest guarding it (I think thats the gist of the book but I may misunderstood, some reviews were kinda sketchy). Feel free to correct me on this.

Er, I'm afraid I dont quite get that Dualistico. Could you rephrase that at all? In my view a connection to humanity is not all it's cracked up to be.

R

Will I still age? Because I don't want to be umpteenth years old and look like I'm umpteenth and one.

If I won't then answer is no. Lonliness isn't really a problem because after you lose that one person and you're still alive, what's the point?

Also, the whole "the world is your oyster" thing would seem like a chore. The only reason people go around the world to experience things is so they have the bragging rights and another check off their "THings to do before I die" list. If you will never die, there's not really a point to anything anymore. People do stuff only so they can succeed and become a success and have some sort of landmark in the world before they die.