If you ask someone what superpower they want, I would bet you a lot of money that a lot of people would say immortality. And, don’t get me wrong, it sounds like a great power. But when you take a deeper look into it, you realize it’s not all that it's cracked up to be.
The most prominent thing I discovered when researching was the fact that you wouldn’t be able to lead a happy life with anyone else. You would always outlive them. If you fell in love, you would be forced to watch them through immortal eyes while they grew old and died. Your closest family would die, and over and over again you would be forced to grieve over the family that you have lost. You would have to shut yourself away, in the hopes of never connecting with anyone again because you knew you would lose them. That doesn’t really sound like the life you were thinking of now was it? And, even if you said you would be fine not talking to anyone, humans are naturally social creatures. We need human interaction to survive. Not hearing another person’s voice forever would drive anyone insane. You would be forced to interact with people, knowing that you could never again get attracted to anyone. (Unless you’re some sort of sick psychopath that loves grieving)
The next example will be focusing on the type of immortality where you can’t die at all.
Another horrible downside to immortality would be what would happen to you if you got stuck somewhere. Let’s say you are at the Grand Canyon because why not? You live forever, you might as well do what you want. You are having a great time with no other people around. Suddenly, you fall into a deep hole. You fall so deep down that when you finally reach the bottom you look up at the sky, you can’t see any light. You would be stuck here forever. No way of getting out, no one even would know you were there. You would be stuck for all eternity. It would be incredibly boring. Nothing to entertain you, you couldn’t even die. You would live forever, slowly but surely becoming more and more deranged by the year. And that is how you would live. Forever.
You might be thinking, that won’t ever even happen to me. The odds of that happening are close to zero. But then I would tell you, those odds are only calculated for a normal human life. The youtube channel, “Because Science”, does a good job of explaining this. At exactly 5:19 minutes in, he starts to talk about the odds of everything. As he says, “All the untimely deaths will become timely”(5:24) This means that everything that probably won’t happen to a normal human person, will definitely happen to you somewhere during your infinite lifetime. The odds of a shark attack are 1 in 11.5 million. But every one of those possibilities you are going to play out if you live forever. Infinite time means infinite time for those possibilities to occur. Struck by lightning? Going to happen. Injury from a sneeze? Going to happen.
I for one would want immortality. I think that it would be useful in so many ways. I could do all the things I wanted, I could work at any place I wanted, I could become anything I wanted, and I could watch whatever I wanted. But, I would probably want the type of immortality where you can’t die from old age, but you can die from other things. I wouldn’t want to not be able to die, period.
Questions
Would you like immortality?
If so, why?
What would you do if you were immortal?
Sources
Replies
I would not like immortality after a couple hundred years because you would want to die after a while. You would watch all of your friends and family die and then have to move on with life. If I was immortal I would keep it quiet and live in the forest by myself.
I understand wanting to just be by yourself for a long time. Spending time in the woods would be kind of fun, especially because you could do that forever. You could build the world's biggest tree-house, you could make a cool house, you could do anything you want.
Just not being able to die from old age is called biological immortality, which is the most common in media. The elves in Lord of the Rings, the Asgardians in both Norse myth and Marvel, and the Eternals in Marvel are great examples of this. I don't think I would want immortality because you would lose all urgency to do anything. If I were immortal, I would like to have biological immortality.
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